Stolzes Herz

So by now you might have noticed I take a pretty relaxed attitude to this blog

Here as promised I will present some tips on how to be, if not successful, at least decent. Success depends a lot on a bunch of other factors I’ll get into later on.

So what is travian and why should I care ? When to start ? What are quadrants ? Playing against bigger players and how not to be a farm !

Travian is a web-browser war game. You own initially one village and the purpose of the game is to expand your villages production, number of villages and your army. There a a bunch of servers open so check if your country has one or if you want a steeper learning curve you can go directly to the .com servers and start there. I will only discuss the normal server in these guides which usually lasts about a year Why should you care: it’s fun and  let’s you meet new people.

Always chose a server that has just restarted, preferably start a few days late, since most guides recommend 3 days late I suggest starting at least 5 days late but no later than a week. Going to the forums before the server starts (every server has a subforum) might give you a clue where some people might choose to start and get a feel of the players that will also start the same server. The travian map is divided in quadrants (North-East, South-East, South-West, North-West) and you get to choose your location. Generally  it doesn’t matter what you will choose, I prefer SW or NE because I find it easier to communicate positions if the signs are (-,-) or (+,+) respectively. Accounts spawn from the middle to the edges, starting late ensures you are a) further away from the border b) further away from experienced players that expand their economy by robbing resources from beginners.

So about resources, they ensure the growth of your village and your expansion. You can either a) Build up fields, there are 4 resources your village needs in order to expand: wood, clay, iron and crop (for reasons unknown to me crop is called wheat on .us servers), you need crop because it is what feeds your villagers and your troops and talking about troops: b) stealing from other players around you.  As a general rule you’ll want to do both, stealing resources gives you the upper hand against your neighbors making you expand quicker however for this to be working you’ll need to spend a lot of time in front of the computer in the first weeks of a server and make sure your account has good coverage. And now we get to the first problem for a new travian player. Multiple people playing an account is not against the rules. While you can check the account a couple of times a day but still have to work, study, go out, exercise, watch a movie and sleep you’ll be away from your account (or your computer) for a while. Here is where multiple players on an account that live across different time-zones  gain a big advantage: they can raid resources, build up fields and train troops around the clock (supposing they keep in contact, have a similar degree of experience and agree to follow a common plan). If you play alone there’s not much you can do. The game allows you to build crannies to hide your resources, to send your troops far away when you are away from the computer but you’ll still expand slower than they will, have less troops etc.

What can you do about it ? Well this is the first people new players need to learn: how not to be a farm. Farm as in account without defenses that can be raided for resources at will (this is travian talk, I’ll introduce such terms as we go along). First off the best defense early game is a good alliance. The problem here is that, with the exception of pre-formed alliances made up of people who have played travian together before, there are no good vs bad choices. What you want is an alliance having at least one good raider, a good mix of tribes (I’ll get to that later, tribes are important  and you chose your tribe when you register, but they become less relevant as you understand this games’ mechanics), an alliance encouraging it’s players to grow, that cares about all it’s players not just the leaders, with good communication and that can give you tips and more experienced players can help out by sitting your account. Needless to say such alliances are hard to find Just like good mafia families willing to teach and recruit are hard to find and make no mistake travian organization can be pretty similar to gangster movies.

What you should/shouldn’t do in the face of a greater force: a) you shouldn’t show your weakness by messaging the account attacking you, communication can show an enemy your habits and playing times and allow him to attack you with greater efficiency, you’ll rarely find mercy for the beginner b) defend smart, never lose your own troops defending against a bigger account, find an alliance willing to take you in, preferably before you get attacked by bigger accounts, and organize defensive moves with that alliance defensive coordinator: say your opponent raids you 6-8 times a day with an army of 10  to 80 offensive troops, talk to your fellow alliance members that are not under attack that they each should send some defensive units and crop to feed them to your town at a precise time, say 10 people sending each 20 defensive units each, you’ll kill of his offensive troops a couple of times and make him think twice about attacking you, but you can only do that if his troops meet all of your reinforcements (that’s why timing is important), say instead of defending with 200 troops against 80 troops once you defend with 20 troops against 80, 10 times, as real life logic would dictate it you’ll hardly make a dent in his offense.

(to be continued)

More than a year has past since I’ve written anything on tomycs.com

Facebook is the better bet for keeping up with me : http://www.facebook.com/tomi.chitu

However soon to follow: pics, travian tips, bike tips & general words of wisdom

just two flower pics

On the way to Amsterdam

Been to Birmingham for a week to do some work. First no jet lag which is always welcome J . Went there to use a machine they (Bham University) had and we (Emac) didn’t and test some samples

Scheduling on the machine I was supposed to operate was lacking to say the least so I had to wait for other people, negotiate, talk to people in charge (professors) etc Talking to the professors got the PhD students off my back but the undergrads remained (undergrads working with guess what, other PhD students). Explaining that I came from France and was only there for a week to test my samples didn’t impress people too much as apparently I wasn’t convincing enough. It’s always hard to explain to someone why your time is more important than theirs. Maybe I should check my Dale Carnegie books see what I was doing wrong. Well for one putting my needs before theirs, though in this case I think my lack of authority in front of them had more to do with the outcome. It’s really hard to sugar coat “I need the machine now so could you work on it later, please”. Also impolite answers on their part like “I’ll only use it for a few hours then it’s all yours” didn’t help communication either. So in order to get anything done I had to work some strange hours (like 4pm to 10:30pm).

Anyhow all in all it was a good experience, I got what I came for (almost), people who weren’t in competition with me for the machine have been very helpful and hospitable and I thank them for their collaboration. They know who they are but I doubt it they read my blog or even know or care that I have one.

Birmingham University Landmarks

So, onto the free time, didn’t have much of that since my schedule was so chaotic and the few pictures I took aren’t that great. You can get around Birmingham with either train or bus or plain walking. Unfortunately the University hotel refused to lodge me for the whole period as they said that for the last night I would have been their only guest and with too high operating costs in such difficult economic times they couldn’t afford to keep me. So instead of searching a hotel for just one night I chose another hotel for the duration, some 35 minutes away from the university (on foot or bus/train combo, time remained the same). Hotels name was the Edgbaston Palace on Hagley rd, it’s proper, room was double even though I asked for single, kind of cold in the room but as soon as you get under the blanket everything is nice and cozy. And since I only slept there room wasn’t really an issue. Small TV in the room, large one at the bar, wireless internet only near the bar not in the room, this didn’t put me off frankly, I might have a 17”, 8 pounds laptop but it also packs an 8 cell battery pack so for some evening browsing it was alright. However if I ever come back to Birmingham I hope they would have fixed this. Breakfast was big: cereals, yoghurt, croissants, full English breakfast (also had a vegetarian option), good coffee. Eating at 8 am kept me satisfied until 4-5 pm. This was quite a change from my usual “eat nothing in the morning & lunch at 11.30-12pm” but I survived.

I truly hate Marmite

As mentioned didn’t get to see much of Birmingham did some shopping in the malls around the central train stations and that’s about it, also I was close to the Botanical gardens but since I like walking alone in botanical gardens just as much as dining alone in restaurants I thought I’d pass on that. Also my main evening food supply was sandwiches. Subway is nice although I feel it smells of hobos inside.

Daily Train

I’m tired now more impressions and pix to follow.

Someone described fable 2 as the perfect casual gamers game. I will be the first to confirm that. It’s an RPG but not a very impressive one at that, you have the choice between good or evil, you have some nice spells but all in all it brings nothing new to the RPG world. It’s charm resides more in the side-quests, in the fact that you have a dog that begins to grow on you, in the fact that you can buy houses, have multiple families etc. The biggest downside I could find was the fact that the hero never speaks. He can make faces in order to get people to like or dislike him, but it’s somehow annoying in the main story where everyone either tells you what to do or they already know what you’re going to say. Makes you feel that little bit dumb and I can’t find any logic behind the main hero not having a voice.

Otherwise graphics are nice, game is quite responsive on the Xbox 360. I didn’t mention the fact that you never really die in the game so you’re never really scared. Well maybe scared is a too strong word but you know that certain jumpiness. This also means you’ll never do the same mission twice, because no matter how bad you suck at it you’ll always finish it. You can also have sex protected or not, you can get married and have children, do boring chores for little money, trade items, buy real-estate and just enjoy the simple life. This is pleasant and you can really take the time to enjoy the great work done by the graphics team. But it gets boring quickly.

The genius idea behind this game was the dog, I know fans knew about it before the launch and it also has been presented as the highlight of the game.

“Hey a new RPG is coming out. It’s called Fable 2, you’re a hero in a magical distant land and you save the world”

“Yeah, same old, same old”

“But no, it’s much more than that, you have a DOG”

There basically two comics I really like: wulffmorgenthaler.com and xkcd.com.

The first one is kinda pervy, often S&M like, always trying to shock but every so often, funny.

The other one is more for the geek inside, references quite often math and programming and it talks quite alot about social inadequacy.

There a other sites as well from garfield to mordantorange, but none of those hooked me yet.

One comic that I really like is comic 29 from xkcd because I find myself quite often expressing inappropriate ideas in public forgetting people might not share my kind of humor. Ok not as extreme as the one in the comic but still enough to let some uncomfortable silence creep in

Winter holidays are over and I’m back at work. I’ve spent my holidays with my family in my hometown in Romania. It’s been quite pleasant, except for losing all my papers (lost or stolen still not sure) and coming a week late to work. As it stands apparently I won’t be getting much sleep this year anyhow so i suppose a couple of days here or there don’t really matter. It’s my last year of PhD with still plenty of experimental work to be done, writing and three conferences on top of that. Still it’s the path I chose so I can’t really complain .

We spent New Years Eve in a Club in down-town Timisoara and we were five: Rodi (my wife & friend), Radu (high school friend), Doria (Radu’s wife, friend) and Vale (high school friend). On the upside it was quite cheap (around 23 euros with unlimited drinks & some food), music was good and we had a good time, on the downside we didn’t really meet anybody, new or old, and got bored and tired around 3.30 a.m. and went home.

Unfortunately no pics to show off since Radu had his camera I’ve left mine in the car.  Radu had some ulterior mishap with his camera so in short no pics. I do have some pics of other outings in the pubs of Timisoara during this holiday so i may post those when I find them.

This is about it on a personal level. On teh blog level new home banner that Rodi designed for me which I find more pleasing the the first one while still no real about page but I’ll be getting to that.

It’s been exactly one hundred fifty two days ten hours and 46 minutes since my last post on this blog which coincides with the spare time I’ve had during this past five months. What happened was this: I entered the second half of my PhD thesis on wet granulation of cohesive powders and deadlines started to crowd themselves onto an ever-shrinking calendar while being hassled by some minor health issues so the website activity had become a luxury I couldn’t really afford.

A lot of stuff has happened in the last five months but I say out with the old in with the new, the new being a Simpleviewer gallery of some of my pictures that you can also find on deviantart and this new theme I have adjusted more to my liking and for which I must thank Julien De Luca (whose designs can be found on www.jide.fr).

I did not find the time to put anything in the About section yet as I’m not really sure what should go in there: a short CV is kind of impersonal and useless since I’m not applying for a job, some background story about who I am, maybe, but that demands time …

I guess I could also explain the title of the blog, Stolzes Herz, stands for proud heart and is a song by a German goth rock band called Lacrimosa. I happen to like the song and the lyrics a lot and their views on humanity in that song not so far from my own. I also think I have a certain positive pride about me and my way of doing things so when deciding on a title this one really stood out.

Each day some blogs die out while others are born so let’s consider today the 31^st December 2008 the birth day of this new blog, I will certainly try to post more often and you can expect more posts in the following days, until then: Happy New Year to anybody celebrating this day, I know I am.

Estoy trabajando en esta puta de blog, volver más tarde.

I don’t really speak spanish so what i really ment was: F*ck off, i’m just starting this blog, please come back later!