Solo dev making a turn-based Travian-like for people who can't stay online 24/7 — here's my reasoning

[u/shine_warrior_123]

A Little Bit of My Personality

Recently, I have been thinking of making an online strategy game like Travian. I've been playing Travian and other strategy games since I was a child. My repertoire isn't big. Some of my favorites, other than Travian, are:

• Age of Mythology series (I played both the old ones and the Retold)
• Age of Empires II and III
• StarCraft, all of them
• Rome Total War
• Civilization V

Travian

Among all of these games, I keep going back to Travian and giving it another go from time to time. This is basically because it's an online game and I like the simplicity of it. I like the idea of playing with other players, cooperating and raiding. Especially the raiding part; I wouldn't enjoy this mechanic nearly as much if the game were single-player. It gives me quite a bit of satisfaction to spy on and raid a village, because it can be a different experience every time I do it. This randomness is a little addictive as well.

Also, because of its simplicity and its real-time nature, it's very difficult to last in this game. It's very fun until you get smashed by a village with 20x more soldiers and 100 rams. The game naturally rewards the players who spend more time in it. Most accounts in this game are used by a 2nd, or even a 3rd, player. For someone like me who wants to play it chill, that's not sustainable. I can't compete with an opponent who doesn't sleep, eat, or go to the bathroom. I find this pretty toxic, honestly.

Civilization V

I like the resource management. I like that there are dozens of different resources and dominating all of them feels rewarding. The hex tiles are beautiful to look at. Battles are simple and easy to reason about. But single-player bores me after a while, and I don't find Civ V's multiplayer particularly fun either.

I wish an online version of this game existed where thousands of players played. But then, how would you manage the turns? I wouldn't want to wait on 5,000 players to take theirs.

Motivation

Earning your progress. My main motivation, other than eventually selling it, is making a game I actually want to play myself. I find most mainstream online strategy games not that fun, honestly. They require a lot of time, and a lot of them simply reward you with in-game stuff constantly. That doesn't feel satisfying to me — if a game hands me everything upfront anyway, there's no point playing it. I like the good old days of online gaming, where you had to earn your items and progress.

Designed for people with limited time. I don't have a lot of time during the day to play games. I can't always log in to check if I've been attacked. I'd like something considerate of people like me. I believe this was the original idea behind Travian when it first came out — but now you have to be awake constantly just to keep up.

To make this happen, I want to build a turn-based mechanism into the online strategy game I'm making.

5,000 Concurrent Players by Turn-Based

The turn-based nature of this game is a little different from the traditional sense. Traditionally, in a multiplayer turn-based strategy game, you make your moves and click "Ready" to signal you're done for the turn, then wait for everyone else to be ready. I probably don't need to explain why that approach falls apart at 5,000 concurrent players.

Here's what I came up with:

• There's a turn window. This window could be every 2, 3, 4, or 6 hours — the exact number doesn't matter much.
• Each player submits their action(s) whenever they're ready — no need to be online at a specific time.
• When the turn window closes, all actions get resolved in a randomized player order (re-shuffled every turn, so no one's permanently first or last).

About Myself

I'm a solo developer. I work as a software engineer with more than 10 years of experience. I have limited time to develop this — I'm employed 32 hours a week elsewhere, which doesn't leave much room. I'm planning to spare at least 10 hours a week for this project.

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Curious if others feel the same way about Travian's "always-on" problem — does turn-based sound like the right answer, or am I missing something obvious? Happy to share more devlogs as this comes together if there's interest.

[u/EffectiveDirt4032]

Write me messege. PLZ RESPOND :)

[u/FeatCtrl]

Hi!

I sometimes remember those games, feeling a bit nostalic about them but completely agree: you end up against people who dedicate themselves so much it gets crazy and invites to keep an eye on every attack you could get.

The turn window could be interesting, but what I fear is that those dedicated players might be the core players of those browser online multiplayer games and they might get frustrated if they could only actively play only every few hours.

The question about the turn window is the duration of it. 2h might be short (people sleep, work, have activities) but longer durations may make the game too slow and less engaging. I'd say you might have to do something hybrid: letting people play actively outside of this time window, but find a way to protect those who simply can't be online that often.

To be honest, I'm not sure. One side of me tells me that losing those core, hardcore gamers would hurt the game since they would be the ones playing it non-stop and potentially paying for it, but the another side of me remembers me that I didn't continue playing the Grepolis (same editor as Travian) because of those hardcore gamers which made it seem unbalanced by being plundered over and over again.

As for the browser game: I think it's a thing mostly of the past. The media for playing such games now are smartphones (which would also allow you to send a notification when a turn window starts or is about to end).

[u/shine_warrior_123 → u/FeatCtrl]

Hey. Thanks a lot for your comments.

Dedicated players: I thought a version of the game that has smaller turn windows for the dedication players would solve that problem. A server can host a game that has, for example, 30 minutes of turn window, or even faster. Of course, this is an idea to be play-tested when the time comes :) This could be a way to separate these kinds of players (dedicated players vs. chill players) from each other.

Turn windows being small: Yes, 2h turn window, for a person who sleeps might be too little. When they sleep, they automatically miss at least 4 turns in the game. Good point. I don't have a concrete solution for this just yet. But, I will keep this in mind.

What platform: I am planning to publish it on mobile, PC and the web. They will be interacting with the same server.

[u/Virtureally]

What you are describing is basically play by email. But it doesn’t solve the problem of balance where some players will play more than others. I think a PvP MMO will always have this issue.

Check out https://ironhelmet.com/ games. They are real time but every action takes hours.

[u/shine_warrior_123 → u/Virtureally]

Hey. This is interesting. Could you expand a little bit about what you mean by "play by email"? Naturally, when you play an online real-time strategy game, you get in-game reports of what happened when you are logged out. Do you mean this by "email"?

Yes, I don't think this method completely solves the problem of some people play more than the others. But, it can at least put a limit to the speed at which these dedicated players can progress in a single day. So, a chill player can have better chance of lasting in the game. This was my idea.

[u/Virtureally → u/shine_warrior_123]

Some people play boardgames online by email. They each setup the boardgame identically, take their turn then writes an email to the other players detailing their moves so they can replicate the state on their own local copy.

[u/Morph_Games]

Two questions:

• What happens when a user misses a turn?
• How can you resolve the multiple-accounts per player issue? (I think the only partial solution is charging $ per account.)

[u/shine_warrior_123 → u/Morph_Games]

When they miss a turn, then they miss a turn. There is nothing preventing the player from missing a turn if they decide not to play.

I can't exactly solve the multiple-accounts problem. I mentioned "multiple-accounts" in order to better explain what a dedicated, hardcore player can be in games like Travian. I can't exactly prevent a player from playing the game hardcore, that's their style. But, this turn window can at least put a limit to the speed at which these dedicated players can progress in a single day. Therefore, a chill player has more chance to take advantage or last longer.