An example of a Hammer
Hammer is a fan-created word which is very commonly used by Travian players on forum, in-game messages, chat, etc. Hammer refers to a very large attacking army which is built in a single village and whose sole purpose is to attack, break the defense and destroy the enemy.
Characteristics of a hammer[]
- Hammer should consist of only attacking units.
- Hammer usually has siege weapons (rams and catapults) to break defenders' walls and buildings and possibly chief to conquer the enemy's villages.
- Hammer must be built in a single village.
- To maximize its attack power, a hammer usually has the best attackers of the tribe and has full blacksmith upgrade. For T4 players, a Smithy at level 20 with improved level 20 units grants both Attack and Defense +34.6855% ([troop attack power] * 1.015^x, "x" being the level of the Smithy. Therefore, 1.015^20 = 1.346855) per unit.
Reasons for hammers to be build in a single village[]
- Due to the game's mechanism, a large, single, concentrated attacking wave is much more effective than several small waves.
- In Travian, an army must be sent from their producing village. Therefore, that single large attacking wave must be built from a single village.
- Since blacksmith upgrades are village-wise, producing armies in fewer villages will require less cost and time to upgrade them.
- It is more manageable to send attacks from a single village. It is more difficult to synchronize attack waves from different villages than those from a single village.
Requirements to build hammers[]
Since hammers could only be built in a single village and the production capability of a single village is limited, hammers should be built soon and in a long duration. To start building hammers, players usually need to:
- Have abundant resources: Hammers demand huge amount of resources to build. It usually means the player needs to have a few villages.
- Have large crop production: Hammers are big armies (the size could range from 5k-500k troops) which takes long time to build. Therefore, it requires lots of crop to maintain them. It usually means the player needs to have a good cropper (preferred as capital).
- Decide which village to build the hammer. The two main options are to build at the cropper capital (so that the large crop production could be used to support the army directly) or to build at another village (so that the village could build Great Barracks and Great Stable). (It is an advanced topic, interested readers could search for some guides about this).
- The selected village needs to have strong production capability (Barracks, Stable and Workshop high level and preferably Great Barracks and Great Stable) with adequate Academy upgrades.
Measurement to consider which types of troops to build[]
Two basic measurement to select which types of troops to build in a hammer are:
- Attack per crop consumption: Due to its large maintenance cost, crop is a limiting factor for the size of hammer.
- Attack per training time: Since hammer is built in a single village, time is a limiting factor for the size of hammer.
When building hammers, most players disregard the building cost since when hammers are built, all resources except crop are abundant.
With this measurement, the chosen troops of each tribe are:
- Romans: Imperian, Equites Imperatoris and Equites Caesaris
- Gauls: Swordsman and Haeduan
- Teutons: Clubswinger, Axeman and Teutonic Knight