To get your second village you have to build either a Residence or a Palace to level 10. The Residence is cheaper to build then the Palace, and in your first village, you will be very low on resources, so in your first village build a level 10 Residence. While the cheapest and fastest option is to always build a residence level 10 in each of your villages and build settlers, just keep in mind that life in Travian is not always about taking taking the cheapest and easiest route! And when choosing to build either a Residence or a Palace, its important to be able to plan ahead.
Some players tend to settle all the villages they want to as quickly as possible without worrying about expansion slots. They might build a level 10 residence and start the next village. While this is the fastest and cheapest way to sim villages, it means that to then free up the expansion slots later, they will have to capture their own villages.
Explanation of the expansion slots.
Each village has up to three expansion slots. These are not tied to the palace or residence, however the Residence will only allow you to use up the first two of the available expansion slots, while the Palace will allow you to use up all of the three available expansion slots.
These expansion slots might not seem important when you start, but they set a limit to just how many villages that your village can either settle or capture. It can be beneficial to your game if you can try to leave some of your villages with all three expansion slots open.
If you build a residence 20, this will let you settle only two villages. If you settle two villages, you CAN settle a third from that village, but only if you knock down and build a level 20 Palace instead! Not ideal. Knocking down a Residence or a Palace wont free up an expansion slot. Additionally, if you capture a village that has used up all of its expansion slots then you cannot settle from that village.
The only way to free up a village expansion slot is to :
These expansion slots might not seem important when you start, but they set a limit to just how many villages that your village can either settle or capture. It can be beneficial to your game if you can try to leave some of your villages with all three expansion slots open.
If you build a residence 20, this will let you settle only two villages. If you settle two villages, you CAN settle a third from that village, but only if you knock down and build a level 20 Palace instead! Not ideal. Knocking down a Residence or a Palace wont free up an expansion slot. Additionally, if you capture a village that has used up all of its expansion slots then you cannot settle from that village.
The only way to free up a village expansion slot is to :
- have the village it settled captured by a different village (yours or your enemy)
- or you have to have the village destroyed.
At the game start, the fastest way to get a lot of villages is to build a level 10 residence in each village, and just start the next village and keep going. But later in your game you might regret this strategy, and it will be highly costly for you to try to fix this error later.
How to view the used expansion slots
If you click on either your residence or your palace, and then click on the tab "expansion"
In this image, we can see that the village i am in, is the parent of 1 village. This means that this village has 2 more available expansion slots. A level 20 residence will only let us use the second expansion slot. A level 15 palace, and subsequent level 20 will enable us to use the 2 remain expansion slots. If the village listed in the image is destroyed or captured, it will vanish from the tab under expansion, meaning that we would then have 3 expansion slots open.
How to keep your expansion slots open
In your first village, build a level 10 residence, and settle village two. In village two, build a palace level 10, and settle village three. Try to choose a good strong village, such as a village with 15 croptiles and that is in range of good crop oasis, (or in the very least find a village with 9 croptiles that is in reach of good crop oasis).
Now in village three, - lets keep all those expansion slots open. Build a level 1 residence in village three (for the village protection only) and then in village two, upgrade the Palace from level 10 to level 15. Then from village two, build settlers and settle village four. From village four onwards you could just build a level 10 residence and start village 5.
After you have 5 villages, you could easily build either level 10 residences in each subsequent village that you build, or you can go back to village 1 and upgrade the Residence from level 10 to level 20 → doing this will allow you to have 2 villages with all expansion slots open.
And finally, when you are ready (and I mean really ready) to build chieftains in your 3rd village, you simply demolish* the Palace that you built in your 2nd village, and rebuild it in your 3rd village. And doing this will allow you to build up to three chieftains in your 3rd village.
Now in village three, - lets keep all those expansion slots open. Build a level 1 residence in village three (for the village protection only) and then in village two, upgrade the Palace from level 10 to level 15. Then from village two, build settlers and settle village four. From village four onwards you could just build a level 10 residence and start village 5.
After you have 5 villages, you could easily build either level 10 residences in each subsequent village that you build, or you can go back to village 1 and upgrade the Residence from level 10 to level 20 → doing this will allow you to have 2 villages with all expansion slots open.
And finally, when you are ready (and I mean really ready) to build chieftains in your 3rd village, you simply demolish* the Palace that you built in your 2nd village, and rebuild it in your 3rd village. And doing this will allow you to build up to three chieftains in your 3rd village.
*(Keep in mind that any village that is not your capital MUST have a level 1 residence or higher for defense.)
How does this help you in game
Once you have several villages, you should be able to start capturing villages from other players. Having 3 chieftains from a single village with your main army can drop the village loyalty very very quickly. (approx 70% loyalty drop). However, this is not enough to capture a village in one go. Villages have 100% loyalty by default (in Travian 4 this can be boosted up to 125% loyalty) So to capture a village instantly will require you to have at least 3 villages with all expansion slots open. But dont worry too much about this at this stage. Simply having one village (your most powerful village) to have all available expansion slots open will be enough for the time being.
What the pro players do
The more experienced players will almost always settle a 15 croptile village as their second village. The easiest way to keep all their expansion slots open in the second village is to build a level 10 palace in the first village, and then after settling the second village, upgrade the palace to level 15 to start the third village.
However, when you are racing to settle your second village, the residence is faster and cheaper so some players will opt to build this instead, but the downside is that they then need to build a level 20 residence in their first village. Pro players know the beniefits and costs of both, and can often raid enough to justify either strategy.
Capturing villages to free up expansion slots
If a village creates another village, or captures another village, the parent village will have used up one expansion slot. If the created / captured village gets captured by a different village, the village that captured it becomes the new 'parent village'. The former parent village will no longer be the parent, and will therefore have the expansion slot back! So you can build chiefts or settlers again.
BUT, if you if you capture a village, even if it is your own village, all of the troops that were created in that village will still die.
Capturing villages and expansion slots
If you capture a village from another player, and if that village has used up all of its expansion slots, then you will not be able to create any villages at all until the child villages are either destroyed or captured.
