VilloNanny Beginner Manual

The VilloNanny executable is packaged into the “VilloNanny.xxx.bin.zip” file (where xxx is the version number) that can be found on the download page.

If you want to modify or study the program you can also download the source files, packaged into the “VilloNanny.xxx.src.zip” archive or downloaded from the sourceforge CVS repository.

To run VilloNanny you need the following:

• A computer. Any computer will do, really. It could be an old slow “386” Windows box or a quick Mac Pro… or even a Solaris server! Anything will do as long as it can run the Java platform (see below). Most people will use a Windows XP, Windows Vista or Linux machine. You don't strictly need a graphical display (the PC monitor) as long as you can access the computer remotely, like with a “telnet” or “ssh” session (don't bother if you don't know what I'm talking about). Keep in mind that VilloNanny has only been tested on Windows and Linux though, so it might need some tweaking to run on other platforms. If you're stuck, seek for help in the forums.
• An internet connection, possibly with a flat subscription. The computer running VilloNanny will have to stay online on your behalf, and if you want to perform well in the Travian game you need to leave it running day and night. You can of course run it for just a few hours a day if you prefer so.
• The Java platform. VilloNanny is written in the Java language and it needs the Java platform installed on your computer. The minimum version is Java 5. Many internet sites use Java so you might already have it. To check the version of java you have (if any) you can do one of the following (easiest first):
  • Just don't bother checking and go ahead downloading Java. The Java site should guide you properly even if you have the latest version installed already
  • Go to the Java site and let it check for you. You can start at http://www.java.com and look for a link named “Do I have Java?”, or you can try this direct link if it still works
  • Open a “shell” or “command prompt” on your computer and type “java -version” (without quotes). If you get an error you don't have Java. To open a “command prompt” in Windows XP click on the Start menu and select “Run…”, then type “cmd” (without quotes) in the box

If you don't have Java installed, go to the Java site and click on the big download button.

Uncompress the VilloNanny archive you downloaded. You can put it on your desktop, in “My Documents”, or anywhere you prefer. You should end up with a “VilloNanny” directory containing some files and folders.

That's all!

On some platforms the program doesn't start if the path of VilloNanny contains spaces, like “c:\my stuff\VilloNanny”. If you can't run it, try moving it to a path without spaces, like “c:\mystuff\VilloNanny”.

There are three different startup files you can use: the one ending with ”.bat” is for Windows and the ones ending with ”.sh” are for linux / unix and mac.

The first time you run VilloNanny you will enter the “autoconfigurator wizard”: answer just a few basic questions and you will end up with a properly configured nanny. The information you enter about your account (username and password) will only be used for Travian login and never sent to anyone.

After the configuration has been created, run VilloNanny again and relax.

Initial configuration performs some very basic tasks. You will want to edit your configuration.xml file to fine-tune your strategies.

If you are on windows, you currently have one option: startVilloNanny.bat. By double-clicking on this file you will run VilloNanny. If everything is fine, you will see a black window with some text in it. Read what it says.

There are currently two startup scripts for linux/unix: startVilloNanny.sh will just run VilloNanny, while startVilloNanny_screen.sh will start VilloNanny in a “screen” session named “VilloNanny”: this will allow you to log off the system leaving the process running and to reattach to the session later. To detach from the screen session, type CTRL-A CTRL-D; to reattach to the screen session, just run the script again. See the “screen” documentation for more details (“screen” is a unix command, not a computer monitor…).

We don't have a Mac so we don't know what we are talking about, but VilloNanny should work on a mac as well. You might encounter some initial setup problems though. If you can't run it, please read the Forum and eventually ask for help there.

Since version 2.0.0, VilloNanny has an autoconfiguration feature: if you don't have a configuration file already, when you run VilloNanny you will be asked a few questions and the configuration file will be generated for you.

The generated file is called

configuration.xml

located in the “config” directory. You might need to edit this file to use VilloNanny fully. The initially generated file contains only the default strategies, but you might want to add more. This is a basic example of configuration.xml:

 <configuration>
     <proxy enabled="false">
        <hostName>localhost</hostName>
        <hostPort>3128</hostPort>
     </proxy>
     <server desc="Travian comx" enabled="true" language="en" 
             tribe="romans" version="v35c">
        <loginUrl>http://speed.travian.com</loginUrl>
        <user>myuser</user>
        <password>mypassword</password>
        <village desc="my village" enabled="true" uid="v2342">
            <url>http://speed.travian.com/dorf1.php</url>
            <strategy class="FieldGrowth" desc="Grow Cheapest" enabled="true" uid="s8757"/>
            <strategy class="GrowItem" desc="Grow Main Building" enabled="true" uid="s1122">
                <item desc="Main Building" id="26" maxLevel="10"/>
            </strategy>
        </village>
    </server>
</configuration>

The following will try to explain the tags you might want to modify in the default configuration file.

This tag enables the use of a proxy server for internet access. If you don't know what it is then you probably don't need it and should leave it disabled (enabled=“false”). A fully-configured proxy might look like the following:

	<proxy enabled="true">
		<hostName>proxy.mycompany.com</hostName>
		<hostPort>8080</hostPort>
		<proxyUser>e680016</proxyUser>
		<proxyPassword>sdfsdasf</proxyPassword>
		<!-- N.B. if you don't use NTLM please remove the following 2 lines -->
		<NTHost>myhost</NTHost>
		<NTDomain>mydomain</NTDomain>
	</proxy>

The configuration can contain many “server” tags, one for each Travian account you are using. The server tag has the following attributes:

• desc = the server description, can be anything you want
• language = the server language code, can be “en” for american english, “it” for italian and “bz” for brazilian portuguese
• enabled = the server on-off switch, “true” to enable this server or “false” to skip it
• version = the “codename” of the server version. Once in a while the Travian developers create a new version of the game, and VilloNanny must be told which version it should expect. At the time of writing, the most common version is “v35c”
• tribe = the account tribe, in the language of the server

Inside the server tag there are other nested tags:

loginUrl: the address of the server login page

user: the username you need to login

password: the password to login. If you don't write it here, you will be prompted to type it at each start

village: there should be one “village” tag for each village in this account. The “desc” and “enabled” attributes are similar to the ones defined on the server. The “uid” attribute is a “Unique IDentifier” that is needed to identify the village node in the configuration. It can be any alphanumeric string and it must be unique, so there shouldn't be another village with the same uid. See Strategies for a better description.

Inside each village tag there are other nested tags:

url: this is the internet address of the village. You must copy this value from the browser “address” box after displaying the village initial page, the one showing all fields (see example). If you have more than one village, the address should have a number at the end, like: http://speed.travian.com/dorf1.php?newdid=148361

strategy: each village can contain one or more strategy tags. Each strategy has a different set of configuration options, so you should check the strategy documentation. The first default strategy “FieldGrowth” will make your fields grow evenly. It doesn't need to be configured further. The second default strategy “GrowItem” will grow the main building to level 10. You can add more “item” tags inside the GrowItem strategy.

When VilloNanny is running, you can edit any part of the configuration and after a while the program will pick up your changes without the need to restart.

If the black window closes too quickly to see the messages in it, check the log file “log.txt” in the “logs” directory.

For further help, go to the forums.