Travian Gauls Guide

Travian Gauls Guide by Stupidus

Introduction

This guide was made for the purpose of producing something useful for those who wish to take the leap and play Gaul. Gaul is definitely the more “defensive” tribe of the three, and in the late game is an extremely powerful force to be reckoned with. That being said, their offensive capabilities are also very good, so no worries there if you wish to be a top player playing Gaul.

To become successful in Travian (or any game which takes some form of skill, whether it is reflexes, micro, or just plain time-spending on RPGs), you must invest time and be able to access your account multiple times during the day. You need activity to always be able to send out troops, talk to allies, level up fields/buildings, and see if you’re being attacked. If you can’t do it alone, get a friend to dual with you or get some active sitters. Raiding efficiently is also very important early on. Also, to be a “top player”, you may want to invest some money into Gold. You can be fine without Gold too though!

Before you read the Gaul guide

Please, try to understand how this game works before you read the rest of the guide. Some aspects of the game will be confusing if you don’t, and I am not going to go in detail of simple functions in Travian.

This thread here has the appropriate links to learn Travian for a beginner:

Gaul Overview

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In summary, Gauls are masters of versatility. They can play any role and are very easy to adapt with. You are an invaluable asset to an alliance if you are a good Gaul. Their offense is amazing too as said previously. Swordsmen are up to par in relation to Axemen and Imperians, and Gaulish cavalry is amazing when it comes to damage. The Haeduans and Theutates Thunders (TTs) dish out damage easily, and TTs are the best raiding unit in the game next to Macemen. Of course, the point of their “lacking” in damage/defense (which isn’t really true, Gauls are great at both) to other troops is their speed, which is an amazing trade-off. Speed is of utmost importance in times of need. Adapting as a Gaul is very easy to do. You can play defensively and offensively easily. In the Travian manual they state some of the features of playing Gaul, which I will go over in detail:

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* Speed bonus: Fastest units in the game
* Moderate defense bonus from the Palisade
* Merchants can carry 750 resources (speed: 24 fields/hour)
* Double cranny size (raid protection)
* Expensive siege weapons
* Cheap settlers

Speed bonus: Yes, this is definitely true, and is very important in allied efforts. From the glorious Theutates Thunder (fastest unit in the game and arguably the best raider), to the reliant Druid Rider and Haeduan, Gallic cavalry is extremely valuable. Their two infantry units are normal speed for their Teuton and Roman counterparts. Also it should be noted that the Chief for Gauls moves 1 square faster than that of a Teuton’s or Roman’s for faster conquering, not that this should matter if you have to escort catapults to knock down the residence every time though.

Moderate defense bonus from the Palisade: The Gallic Palisade is the middle ground of the Roman City Wall and the Teutonic Earth Wall. What I mean by this is that is is slightly less durable than the Teutonic wall, but still provides more of a defensive bonus (although less than that of a Roman’s). It is a terrific wall when leveled up though. Values of each level and its defensive bonus can be seen at this guide:

Merchants can carry 750 resources (speed: 24 fields/hour): A good Gaul will learn to utilize the marketplace very early on in order to stop warehouse/granary overflow. Once you put your sales onto the market, they will be bought within minutes because of how quickly they can get to people around the map. They are the middle ground for capacity (Roman merchants carry 500, Teutons carry 1000), but are the fastest and are amazing because of this. Low on a resource? Trade off one of excess! It’s that simple. And let’s not forget feeding your expansion villages. Gauls will easily be able to transport resources from one village to another, providing continuous growth to new expansions.

Double cranny size (raid protection): Yes, this is a major turn-off for people attacking you early game simply because they will be wasting time getting zero bounty. Gallic crannies hold an astonishing 2000 resources. One level 10 cranny will ensure your safety of resources from Romans and Gauls. And still, 1333 resources protected from Teutons is fine early game since you can easily spend resources in efforts to prevent your enemies from getting anything.

Expensive siege weapons: By the time it comes for someone to get siege a mere 200 more of a resource per siege unit will not hurt too much. Trebuchets are excellent siege weapons regardless of their cost. They are also more powerful than Teutonic catapults anyways when it comes to demolishing buildings.

Cheap settlers: True, cheap settlers but when you look at the cost for Teutonic and Roman settlers you begin to wonder if this is a huge advantage or not. It is still expensive to get settlers early on! Besides, later in the game game you have to conquer to stay ahead of the pack, and Chiefs are ridiculous in cost and are the worst of the three races at lowering loyalty!
Troop Overview

Phalanx

Being a simple infantry unit, the Phalanx is relatively cheap and quick to produce.

His attack power is minimal, but it is in defense that he proves his worth, being effective against infantry as well as cavalry.

A cheap and effective defender. This is your primary defensive unit. Being able to sustain damage against both cavalry and infantry, they are useful throughout the game. However, they lack attack and should not be used to raid with against those who have units in their villages. Defensively, ever run into a giant wall of Phalanx? It’s not pretty what goes down! These things are beasts in large quantities. Anyways, only use Phalanx to raid early game on inactives, as they are of a decent speed and a handful of them can rake in resources over time.

Swordsman

Swordsmen are more expensive than Phalanx, but they are exceptional attack troops.

As defenders, they are relatively weak, particularly against cavalry.

Swordsmen are stronger than Axemen, but weaker than Imperians. That is fine, since they are amazing attackers for infantry regardless. These swordsmen will easily use up the iron stores Gauls seem to get (probably through a lot of things costing more clay, and TTs/trebs cost a lot of clay) and are your main escort in clearing waves/catapult waves. I would suggest not getting swordsmen until later on however in your first village, as TTs are much better raiders than swordsmen could ever be.

Pathfinder

The Pathfinder is the Gallic scout. He is extremely fast and able to spy on the enemy’s units as well as resources or defenses.

If there are no scouts in the scouted village, their visit will be unnoticed.

The Pathfinder is pretty self-explanatory; they are the scouts for Gauls. You should always have scouts in all of your villages (in oases too if you’re paranoid) to see when you have been sought at for a possible attack on you. Also Pathfinders are fast for quick reconnaissance on your foes. However, at a cost of 2 crop per hour, you should always see how many you actually need because instead of a Pathfinder you could be housing other troops.

Theutates Thunder

The Thunders are the fastest units, with both a powerful attack and an excellent resource carrying capacity.

As defenders, they are mediocre at best.

The TT is an amazing unit and is my personal favourite because of the speed. I am very impatient in Travian and these TTs combined with my Tournament Squares provides me a very open area for targets all over the map. They do very nice damage too and carry a lot of resources, allowing them to be the most notorious of raiders. As a Gaul, try to get these A.S.A.P. If you are lucky, you are now open to a whole new set of targets from your racial counterparts. You can now easily wipe out Macemen from cocky Teutons who still haven’t gotten Spearmen, and can take out Praetorians from Romans going into the defensive and also take on Swordsmen and Imperians with ease. A TT hero early on will allow you to clear many players of troops if you keep it alive, and can allow you to become a superpower in your area if you can get some good hits off. However, early game these things are EXPENSIVE! Watch how you spend these things and ensure they don’t die.

Druidriders

This medium cavalry unit is outfitted for defense. The main purpose of the Druidrider is definitely defense against infantry. His costs and upkeep are relatively expensive, however.

The Druidrider (DR, Dr) is amazing in times of need. They can quickly travel the map to aide others. With a great defense against infantry, the DR is a crowd-pleaser to those who need defensive troops in times of need.

Haeduans

Haeduans are the ultimate weapons in attacking and defense against cavalry. Hardly anyone can rival them in these areas.

Haeduans’ training and equipment is particularly expensive, and at 3 units of wheat/hour, one must always ask himself whether he is prepared to accept these costs.

Haeduans are amazing in two aspects; their high attack damage and defense against cavalry. You will not generally defend against cavalry with these, what a waste of a good offensive unit! Haeduans are your primary clearing cavalry unit along with swordsmen.

Battering Ram

The Battering Ram is a siege weapon used to support the infantry and cavalry. Its role is to destroy the enemy’s wall and make the battle easier for the attackers.

Without defense itself, it does require an escort to be effective.

The Gaul Battering Ram is used to take down walls. It is best used in your clearing wave because its effects on the wall are calculated before the battle (wall level goes down before damage/defense is calculated) starts. Always use rams, why wouldn’t you? They save troops! It hurts me when I see no rams in a losing battle.

Trebuchets

The standard version of Catapults for Gauls. “Expensive” in comparison to Catapults and Fire Catapults. It should be noted that the Trebuchet is also a more powerful weapon when demolishing buildings than Teutonic catapults though. Here is a table showing how many Trebs are required to knock down a level of a field/building:

Chief

Every clan has an honored elder and experienced fighter used to persuade the inhabitants of other villages to join his clan.

Every time he speaks to the inhabitants of a village, their loyalty is lowered until they eventually join your nation.

The fastest of the conquering units, the Chief is also not as effective when it comes to lowering loyalty compared to Teutonic Chieftains. It is also a whopping 45K+ clay to train. On the bright side, the Gaul chief moves at 5 squares/hour instead of 4 like its racial counterparts. This is vital when time is of the essence; most players losing a village are either always trying to rebuild their residence to prevent conquering, or deleting. If they are deleting, the time it takes in between conquer trips is important! That being said, if someone is active they will most likely build up the residence every time and if you’re escorting that chief, you will need cats to clear the residence and speed won’t matter now will it?

Settler

Settlers are courageous and daring citizens of your village, trained to found a new village in your honor.

Because the founding of a village is particularly difficult, three Settlers are necessary. Additionally, they need 750 units of each resource.

Not much to explain here.

Primary army for a Gaul player:

Early on: Phalanx to raid->TTs and scouts.
Later on: Mass TTs to raid and scouts.

Eventually in your cropper/capital:

Mix of Swordsmen, Haeduans, Rams, Trebs. TTs are sometimes used for raiding as well in the cropper or put in place of Haeduans to use for clearing (or mixed in with them), but attack power really counts and although TTs are only slightly worse, most Gauls will take the Haeduans.

All races can make defensive units on their own in supply villages. Mass Phalanx as your prime defensive unit. The other for you is the Druid Rider, which does do more defense than Phalanx for infantry, but it doesn’t fare as well versus cavalry. A mix of both of these units is ideal.
A New Gaul Village

Okay, so you’ve read so far and understood the concepts and functions of all the Gaul units you can make and now it’s time to create a new account. Let’s see what a typical 7×7 centered around this iron oasis is like:

You are bordered in blue in the center, those bordered in black are active players. The others are inactive players/farms. What you need to try to do is become the dominant player of your 7×7. You can try to make friends with some of your neighbours, but with others you need to farm them as well. As a Gaul player I see two things you can do early on; start leveling fields and a cranny and relax with production and then eventually make troops, or take a risk and try and make military right away and start raiding.

If you lose those Phalanx early on though, you’re in trouble so be careful and start raiding inactives only. Go into negative wheat if you have to. Get about 40 of them and then start doing whatever, whether it’s teching to TTs or just starting to build your economy. After a week or so of successful raids and production and maybe some small parties, you will find yourself looking for a second village. Your second village can be a 15-cropper, even though that is most commonly the Teuton route.

The idealistic, perfect 15-cropper is of course 3 50% wheat oases in the 15-c’s 7×7 with some other oases nearby, but these are very rare and would take some time to find, even with a cropfinder (which is illegal by the way!). Unless you’re worried a 9 or 15-c is going to be taken by someone else, try to just get a normal 6-cropper as your second village. A 15-c requires at least 2-3 villages of resources being pushed to it for optimal growth unless you use Gold and use the NPC merchant and/or raid like a maniac. If you think you will not be a heavy raider, make sure your 6-c’s have level 10 fields and their 25% bonus buildings. Patience is key for Romans and Gauls when it comes to raking in resources. Most players will have their villages all relatively close by, forming their “cluster” of villages, as seen in the screenshot below. This allows for quick resource feeding and provides a huge bay of army close together.

Troop-wise, growth is very important. From Phalanx, try to get TTs ASAP. A TT hero is key to start wiping the floor of Teutons. You can start killing them off effortlessly even if they have some spearmen.

Gallic Techniques

Gauls have many things they can do in order to excel in Travian. One of the best early game is of course the Trapper…

Trapper

As you should know already, the trapper is a great tool early game, although it loses its novelty later on. If people raid or attack a Gaul with traps, and the traps outnumber the units attacking, they become trapped. If the attacker chooses to hit you AGAIN, you can do a little trick here to make them more angry. As soon as you see another attack coming in, release his current trapped troops and train more traps. This way he has more of his troops trapped and you can attack his base with units if your troops are faster (best option here is with TTs) or follow his troops home from the trapper and kill them. Leveling up the trapper becomes overkill after level 9 or so. Sure, you can upgrade it more, but it’s best to just rely on your cranny, as you’re burning resources on training traps. Later on, taking 200 units out from a 4K+ units army isn’t going to do much.

Theutates Thunder Raiding

With a level 10+ tournament square, you are open to a lot of the Travian map to attack. Feel free to send many TTs around farming people far away, even if they aren’t anywhere near your territory. Also scout Teutons for macemen. Even if they have some spearmen, TTs easily wipe them out. This gives amazing hero xp early on.

Overnight Raids

What you do is find a spot ~5-6 hours away from you (on a 1-way trip, so 10-12 hours total) and raid them overnight. This way while you aren’t on Travian and someone attacks you, your army isn’t there to get beaten on, thus allowing your troops to fight another day. This is applicable to every race.

Dodging

Dodging and choosing your battles is very important; do not lose troops for no reason! If you see an incoming attack during the early-game of Travian, send your troops out for a bit. The other thing to do if you want to have control of your troops right away again (e.g. dodging a clearing wave and fighting catapult waves) is to send your troops out and time it to cancel and return the second certain attacks come in.

Hero Choice

I see this type of question a lot on the forums so I will try to explain what you should try to think of for a Gaul hero. I would say to just avoid even bothering to get a hero until you can at least get a TT one, let alone a Haeduan. Most Gauls get Haeduans since speed isn’t really an important factor when it comes to clearing waves, and they are stronger attack-wise. However, other Gauls will choose a TT hero because of its speed. Having a TT hero when your villages are spread apart is a great thing for transportation. Attack damage won’t matter late-game as much, but early on it saves troops. This should be your general skill/stat point build unless you are going to just farm oases/macemen for experience:

~15 points into attack, just so you can have a little attack early on with your army/solo troops
~5-10 points into regeneration.
-Rest of your points go into offensive bonus. You greatly improve the attack output of your army by investing points into this. Combined with the Plus attack increase and Blacksmith upgrades, your army is dishing out serious damage. The rest will go into defensive bonus.

Note: At level one, you can still change you skill points around. You can “abuse” this in a sense in order to change your hero stats as you wish. The generic example is swapping your 5 points to “Attack” when you are attacking, and then after the battle you would just put your points into regeneration.

I myself would not choose a defensive hero, but it is an available option if you wish to go on a defensive path. In my opinion, I would say to go with a DR instead of a Haeduan since you will run into more infantry always than cavalry, but the choice is yours. Both are great when it comes to defense. The same sort of build would be used as an offensive one except you would probably have to adjust the points around a bit (i.e. getting defense points, defensive bonus, maybe a bit more regeneration).

Trading/Merchants Credits to Nohbdy on this section.

The Gallic Merchant is the fastest of them all, allowing your sales to appear near the top of the list and giving you extra advertisement to people who do not have he time to look for better trades as well as to people who need resources fast.

The extra advantage makes Gauls the ideal salesmen on the market, especially early on when most trades are in only a few hundreds and all that matters is speed. Here put in your best thinking and buy low and sell high for profit as well as simply sell to get a better balance of resources for what you are doing. Because your resource needs vary (TT need clay but swords need iron), having a good market lets you get this balance flexible as needed.

As the game progresses, merchant capacity matters more and speed is not everything. Most people will look for trades that make best use of their merchants as well as their resources and time. Remember that Teutons trade in 1000, Gauls in 750, and romans in 500. Also Teutons are the most common buyers of wheat, Gauls of clay, and Romans are the buyers of iron. With this, you can try to keep the amounts you want when you sell wood and wheat in multiples of close to 1000, clay in close to 750’s, and iron in close to 500’s. When the game reaches the point where people are trading in 3000, this becomes a lesser issue that almost disappears when people make trade offices.

Catapults/Farm conversion/Conquering

This is a very simple outtake on converting players into farms.

I made a video on how I do it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6xA1KONZvo

1) The clearing wave. This will consist of your hero, many swordsmen, and your TTs/Haeduans. Accompany this wave with your rams and 1 trebuchet to make it go as slow as your catapult waves hitting after this wave. You SHOULD have wiped out all of the player’s troops now, because if you haven’t your next waves are going to be introduced to a world of pain…

2a) Catapult waves. Escort these with some swordsmen (50+ is a reasonable amount). In order to turn someone into a farm, target the following buildings:
-Granary
-Flour Mill
-Bakery
-Wheat Fields
-Main Building
-Marketplace

This should send the village into negative wheat real soon. You have just made a farm, and now he cannot demolish his stuff to get back into positive wheat.

2b) If you choose to conquer, send catapults in with your chieftain or clearing wave and destroy the residence. The loyalty will lower and you will begin assimilating the village to your side. Advanced Travian players will have multiple chiefs on standby. What they would do is synchronize their chiefs from multiple villages to hit in the relatively same time and this will allow a village’s loyalty to drop within a small period of time and be conquered a lot faster. This is especially useful if you know the player you are attacking is deleting or going to attempt to rebuild the residence. If you have allies nearby too with administrators, they can also aide in lowering the loyalty.

Late Game

In the late game, assuming you make it this far, you will control 15+ villages easily. Expect lvl 18+ fields in your capital, and thousands of troops. Have level 20 blacksmith upgrades on your offensive troops, and plenty of catapults too. Prepare to dominate as you become a force to be reckoned with. You will be able to aide allies across the map, and travel all over for dominance. If you are continuously getting stronger and getting a higher population, you will near the top rankings on your server, which should even out from just dominating Teutons to a mix of all three races, as Gauls and Romans have excelled and become good players as well. All then to do is prepare for the Natars arrival.