What I've learned from Travian

For the last few weeks, I have been playing a browser game called Travian. The nice thing is that you can play it from anywhere as all you need is an Internet browser (ie. Internet Explorer) and an Internet connection. In the game, you choose a specific nationality (Gaul, Teuton or Roman) and play until your alliance builds a World Wonder to a level 100. Sure, it may sound easy, but on your way to building the World Wonder, you encounter a lot of different game dynamics.

I found that I was able to relate almost each game concept to life, so I thought I should share my lessons with you.

Lesson 1 - Everyone is good at something. Figure out what it is that you are good at.

Each nationality in the game has different characteristics. Gauls are very good defensively, Teutons are good for attacking early on in the game, and Romans can build two projects at a time (good multitaskers).

This is true of people in real life. We are all good at something. The trick is that we either forget what we are good at, or feel that we need to do those things that we are not good at. My philosophy now is to trade off or outsource the things that I am not good at, and focus on the things that I am really good (and I enjoy).

Lesson 2 - You need friends! It is better to have a few good friends than a lot of mediocre friends.

In Travian, as you start playing, you will quickly be approached to join an alliance. Players don't win games, alliances do. You allies will be there to help protect you when you are being attacked. They will also provide resources when you are in need. You are also expected to do the same for the benefit of the alliance. Being friendly with members of other alliances helps as you being nice can prevent them from attacking you or may help if you later want to join their alliance.

In life, good friends will be there when you really need friends. Those times don't happen often, but when they do you sure learn who is a good friend and who is not. Good friendships take time to develop and maintain, but they are worth it!

Lesson 3 - Figure out what is important. Do only what is important.

As you play the game, you realize that it is important to have a lot of resources coming in. You increase your resources by developing your wheat fields, clay and iron mines, and a wood chopper. So for the next several days that is all you do. Keep clicking on those buttons until the resources are developed to the level that will support you in building other buildings in your city.

In life, we often do things just because that's what others do. We need to figure out what is important to us right now, and what do we need to do to make that come true. Once we know what needs to be done, all that is left is to do what needs to be done. Just focus on the prize!

Lesson 4 - Conditions change, change with them.

Another reason why Travian kept me playing for so long is that game dynamics change. At the beginning, the main focus is to develop resources in your only city. Then, you try and be fancy by building some military units. As you start getting attacked, you realize that an alliance would be nice. After you join an alliance, you would like to be one of the top dogs in the alliance, so you start building another city. As you develop several cities (and start believing that you are indeed a top dog), you start attacking cities belonging to other alliances. Soon, you attack someone whose army happens to be five time bigger than yours (oops) and you focus on developing stronger military units. And so on...

In real life, this is called change. Change in your workplace, change with your kids, change in the economy. Be aware of the change in our world. We cannot avoid it. We can either go with the change or go against the change. Or even better, we can be part of the change that is happening. The only way to avoid being run over by the change is to go with it and emrace it.

Lesson 5 - Do research before acting.

One of the unit types that you can build is a scout. Scouts enable you to spy on other players cities and find out how many resources and military units are in the city. I have learned to always spy a city with scouts before I attack it, as some players may have incredibly huge armies.

Same thinking should be used in real life. Don't go buying a first stock you hear about, or a deal that was "Avalilable only today." Do your research before going in anything with potential to cost you a lot in the future. Investments, electronics, houses, vacations. It pays to research. But don't research too long. You'll be able to find the best balance of researching just enough that works for you.

Lesson 6 - Use good quality tools.

Being a browser game, Travian does not have a fancy user interface. By downloading a few scripts on the web, you can make Travian look really snazzy, and the whole gameplay becomes easier. There is a script out there that will also help you schedule activities in the future, so that you don't have to be up at 4am to start building an improvement on your warehouse.

To relate this lesson to your life, I like to point out that if you spend your day working on a computer, get a GOOD computer. And not just a good computer, but also a good monitor, mouse, keybord, webcam . The whole deal. Same with other tools. If your livelihood depends on a certain activity, figure out what tools will increase your productivity and make life easier. Then go out and BUY them! Before you buy the tools, make sure to apply what you've learned in Lesson 6. :-)

Lesson 7 - Learn the rules, so that you know how you can break them (legally).

There are a lot of rules in Travian, so read them and learn them. For example, you cannot open two accounts and play them from the same computer EXCEPT if you report them and do some fancy stuff in the settings for each player. You cannot transfer resources to other players in quantity which exceeds one hour's production EXCEPT if you are building a World Wonder. You have to wait 48 hours before you can conquer a city from a player who leaves your alliance.

My point here is to learn whatever the rules are where you are (your work, union, city, country) and then play within, or legally outside those rules. There are grey areas everywhere, just make sure that you don't cross over to the black area.

Lesson 8 - Know when it's enough.

You can play Travian on a normal server and a speed server. The difference between the two is everything happens three times as fast on the speed server. Therefore, the speed server play can take up a sizeable chunk of your real life (especially if you are controlling 6 cities, as I was after a month of playing). After a while (a month), I had to stop playing as I could tell that the gameplay was taking more time than I was willing to invest. My ranking on the server was really good (67th out of 12,000), but in order to keep or increase my ranking, I would need to increase the amount of time I was spending on this game. At this point, I realized that I was putting in more into the game than I was getting from the game. It was time to get out.

In real life, people are often in situations where they stay longer than they should (ie. jobs, relationships, houses). It is important to become a good judge of your happiness, so that you can make timely choices on when to exit/enter different life situations (jobs, relationships, etc.)

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One of the nice things about Travian is that it is available in a lot of different languages. At one time, I simultaneously played on three Travian servers (American, Croatian and Bosnian). This is a good way to develop your language skills as well. Maybe I should get Carla to play Travian on the Croatian server. :-) That would be fun!

http://www.travian.com/ - click if you DARE!

Movie theater experience

I really did not expect to be going to the movies as often as we are! We discovered a brand new movie theater in one of Zagreb's malls with 12 screens. The place is new, spotless and huge.

I love the seating setup, as you have a good seat no matter where you sit. You never have to worry about having a tall guy with a big head sitting in front of you! In Europe, when you buy a movie ticket, you get a seat preassigned. Just like when you go to a concert or a theater performance. You can also book and pay for seats online.


Each theater has about a dozen love-seats strategically spread out throughout the theater. Yes, a love-seat, meaning that there is no arm rest between the two seats. It's pretty cool. We've been using the love-seat 'option' regularly. :-) So far, we've seen Iron Man (10/10), Sex and the City (10/10), Batman: Dark Knight (3/10) and Made of Honor (8/10).

They have a rule here that if the movie is longer than 140 minutes, then there is a 15 minute break in the middle of the movie. It's a great idea, as two hours into the movie with all that water/coke zero in your system, you are just begging for the movie to end so that you can use the washroom! With a short break in the middle of the movie, you can nicely enjoy the ending, without your back teeth floating. :-)

For the last movie we saw, we were the only people in the theater. Now I know how presidents feel like when they go see a movie. :-) Minus the bodyguards, of course.

The price of a movie ticket here is 29 HRK, which is about $6.5, but if you go before 5pm, the price of the ticket is 22 HRK. For example, last time Carla and I went to see a movie, we paid 44 HRk = $10!

Just recently, we found out that the same movie theater chain has another megaplex about five blocks from our place. So for those times that we don't want to drive to the other mall, we can walk to the closer megaplex in 10 minutes. I love living downtown!

Visit to Sarajevo

Carla and I visited Sarajevo (Bosnia) last weekend and had a great stay there. This was the second time that I've been to Sarajevo. The first time was about 20 years ago. Yes, things have changed. :-)

I was first surprised to see that many buildings and houses still had bullet holes on the facade. The war had ended 13 years ago but they still seem to be reliving it. You can see abandoned and burned out buildings throughout the city. Several of them have trees growing inside them. It is surreal.

Our aunt and uncle took us to a nice restaurant overlooking Sarajevo, and I was surprised to see how numerous mosques are in Sarajevo. Muslims make up about 70% of the population, while Croats, Serbs and other minorities make up the the rest. From where we were, over Sarajevo, I could count over twenty mosques, 4 catholic churches, 2 orthodox churches and one synagogue. The people of this city belong to at least four different religions, which was the main problem during the war.


During the war, Sarajevo was under siege for three years. A long time to be hiding from snipers and mortar attacks. That kind of life changes people. People of Sarajevo seem to be longing for the time before the war. They want to take back the time to the days of unity, happiness and innocence that they had before the war. It seems that people are stuck in the past and ignoring the present because they don't like the present and have nothing to look forward in the future.

Carla observed how we did not see a lot of smiling faces or people holding hands. The atmosphere was much different from what we've seen in Zagreb. Sarajevo is still a beautiful city, and I was surprised how developed Ferhadija (the main street) was.


As you walk down Ferhadija, you are enjoying the architecture of the Habsburg era. At the end of Ferhadija, you come to the old town (Bas Carsija) that was built during the time that Ottoman Empire ruled over this region. The transition was so sudden and obvious that it felt like you stepped back in time by 500 years. Short buildings with interesting looking rooves, stone path for a street, and mosques behind big stone walls. Cool!

We had our favourite Bosnian food here: cevapi and burek! Sarajevo cevapi and burek are the best. Much better than the average cevapi store fare in Zagreb (though we know of a few excellent cevapi places in Zagreb). I had so much burek and cevapi that I probably won't be having them again for at least a month.

All in all, it was a great city to visit, and we will definitely do it again.

Shopping experiences

You can tell a lot about a country by the shape and selection in the stores and shopping centres. Last week, I visited quite a few stores (looking for some furniture/paint/etc.) and had a few interesting experiences.

BAUHAUS (German store chain) looks like a complete knock-off of Home Depot, but it looked classier than Home Depot. The store I visited was HUGE! Everything you could buy in Canada (and more) was available here. Two thumbs up!

BAUMAXX is kind of like Canadian Tire and RONA mixed together. They have a good rug selection, but other than that, it's not worth shopping there.

PEVEC (Croatian store chain) was a really confusing store. I think that this store sells everything under the sun. You could find bedding, electronics, groceries, kitchenware, plumbing, tools, tires, building material, and GROCERIES!!! I had a headache after I was done walking through the store as it is HUGE.

SOLIDUM was another interesting shopping experience. This is a mall with about 70 furniture stores. I know, who needs 70 furniture stores in one space, but it did kind of make sense. Each furniture store focused on one thing (or two or three) like chairs, office furniture, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, etc. The styles that I saw here were amazing. Beautiful kitchens and bathrooms. European style really is something different.

There are so many grocery store chains in Croatia, that I find it overwhelming. Most of the grocery stores also sell almost everything else (kind of like a huge Loblaws or the Real Canadian Superstore). Grocery chains available here are Konzum, Mercator, Billa, Kaufland, Interspar, Ipercoop, Getro, Metro, Tommy, Diona, and a few more. A lot of these stores are from Italy and Austria, and expanded into Croatia as soon as Croatia opened to foreign capital. Selection in these stores is excellent (they have four-ply toilet paper scented that smells like a rose - try finding that in North America!). :-)

Shopping experience would not be complete without a trip to McDonalds, which we only make as we needed to use the washroom. Sneaky European McDonalds caught on that it is being used as a public restroom, so now all McDonalds in Croatia have a pin pad (you type in a pin number) to enter. The pin number is conveniently printed on your receipt which you ONLY get if you buy something. Oh well, I just waited for someone to walk in and then I followed them in. If that fails, I can always ask someone for the pin. The lesson here is, there is no point in having security if it is easy to circumvent it.

Learning a foreign language - Part I

After observing Carla in her efforts to learn Croatian, and from my experience in learning several foreign languages, I came up with a foolproof technique to learn a foreign language. Just because it is foolproof it does not mean that it is easy or quick. :-)

The following are the important steps that need to be followed in the process of learning the desired language:
1. Learn how to pronounce sounds of the foreign language.
2. Build a vocabulary of basic verbs and nouns.
3. Learn the basic grammar rules for tenses and genders (genders are more important in some languages than others).
4. Learn the 'connector' words.
5. Read newspapers and magazines in the area in which you would like to be fluent.
6. Listen to conversations in the area in which you would like to be fluent.
7. Start SPEAKING.

Below, I will provide more details about each of the steps.
1. Learn how to pronounce sounds of the foreign language. The main reason that people have problems being understood in a new language is that they are pronouncing foreign letters the 'native-tongue' way. This is the main reason for an appearance of an accent in the new language. For example, why is it that you can differentiate a Slavic person from an East Indian person in English when you talk to them over the phone. You hear an accent. They are both speaking the same language, but are making sounds the way they did in their mother tongue.

So, the trick to be understood is to properly pronounce the 'new' language sounds. This is why language tapes have proven to be very effective in teaching students a foreign language quickly. It does not matter if you 'don't have an ear for foreign languages.' Everyone has an ear for foreign languages, it's just that some take longer than others to perfect the pronunciation. Don't give up!

2. Build a vocabulary of basic verbs and nouns.
Once you've learned how to pronounce the sounds, you need to expand your vocabulary of foreign words. Learn the important words for your topic of interest. If you are in a finance industry, learn the terms for stocks, bonds, interest; if you are into fashion, learn terms for different types of cuts, clothing, etc.

Everyone should learn the essential nouns (numbers, colours, animals, fruit/vegetables, family relations (son/mother/etc), days of the week, directions, etc.) and verbs (eating, sleeping, and anything that you do every day). The basic vocabulary can be anywhere from 200 to 600 words and you would have a very good chance of being understood (or at least shown where the bathroom is) :-) in the new language.

If you are serious about learning the new language, I would recommend that you keep a small notebook of new words that you learn. Keep reading this notebook and quizzing yourself daily. Other ways to speed up learning of new words is to:
-write them out repeatedly
-put them on post-it notes all over your house/office
-make audio tapes of words that you can listen to on your drive to work/gym/shopping or during your walks
Try each of these techniques and do the one that works for you. We all learn in different ways (auditory, visual, kinesthetic) so find the way that works for you.

I realized that this topic will require a lot more writing, so stay tuned for other parts of the "Learning a foreign language" post.