I play occasionally, but when I do I’m generally only interested in Real Time Strategy (RTS) titles such as Age of Empires III, Command and Conquer 3, Settlers, Rise of Nations etc

RPG’s are possibly my least favourite games and for this reason I have never got into any kind of MMORPG games like World of Warcraft finding them little more than a huge waste of time. Occasionally I do feel like playing some online games, but all too often what puts me off is the learning curve, the time necessary to become part of the community and the need to spend so much time on them to achieve anything.

Then I found Travian.

I love this game already even after only a few days of playing. It’s a little hard to describe because it’s really quite unique as far as online strategy games go.

Kind of a cross between Age of Empires, Risk and Diplomacy. It’s technically ‘real-time’, but plays so slow it’s more like a board-game or turn-based strategy. For example the building of one woodcutters house takes 20minutes or more.

It sounds bad, but this is one of the greatest things about Travian. It’s a game which is incredibly easy to get into and doesn’t absorb to much time at all. You can just check in for a few minutes a day and see how your village is going, construct a few more buildings and leave again.

The game is supported by ‘Plus’ and ‘Gold’ accounts which provide some really useful benefits if you play the game a lot, they’re also very cheap – just a few dollars for a Plus account for a week.

It’s fun, check it out!

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The common password approach is the one that could give him instant success if the user is really using one of those common passwords for his accounts. His next approach would be to brute force his way in by brute forcing the password on a website that has weak security. Those sites would not react if large amounts of password requests would come in in short time. Most sites however ban IPs at least temporary after several failed attempts, still no problem if you know how to use proxies to attack with different IPs.

But the brute force programs that he suggests are way outdated. Brutus ? wwwHack ? That’s last millennium. Current state of the art bruteforcers for basic authorization and form protected sites are C-Force or Sentry. The brute force approach has one disadvantage. If you do not know the username you have to try username and password combinations and there is no guarantee that you will discover the combination for the user that you want to hack. You could get login details for other users which are absolutely worthless to you. This means, bruteforcing is only an option if you know the username of the user.

There are actually two ways to bruteforce an account. The first would be to use pregenerated lists of usernames and passwords or try combinations to get into an account. The second to try every char combination possible. It should be noted that the second option could very well last several years or even centuries depending on the size of the selected password.

So, bruteforcing is not really an option and he is not explaining how he would get the username of the user in question except mentioning cookies. Cookies are stored on the targets machine which would mean that he needs either access to that machine or an exploit to get them while the user is online. Not very practicable.

So, what can users learn from his analysis ?

• Don’t overuse passwords, it’s more secure to use different passwords. If you only use one password someone who finds this one out gets access to everything else that is protected by that single password
• Don’t use passwords that are easy to guess or common. No names, no sport teams, relatives, pets, work related, hobbies , and so on
• Use numbers and special chars if possible to increase the security of the password. Remember that size matters.
• Write them down locally and put them in a safe or use a software that encrypts them. You could for instance use a True Crypt partition to store a textfile with your passwords in them
• Every password could be important to gain additional information about a user, never choose weak ones

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The original game featured four game modes and the first add-on features three more. It would take to long to describe each possible scenario but I would like to write about one to explain the game mechanics.

In the Claim Jumping scenario players try to bring gold nuggets that they find in the level or steal from the enemies gold mine to their own to receive points. Your units have to defend the own gold mine to prevent the theft of gold nuggets from it and use some units to find or steal gold units and bring them back to the own mine.

Dead units will respawn after some time next to their own base. Bonus items appear from time to time on the map and have several positive effects if a unit walks over them. This could range from healing to bonus cards that do area damage.

Players earn scrip after each scenario which can be exchanged to gold to buy bonus cards or unlock special units. Badges are given out to players when they complete special tasks which can also unlock units or add options to customize the game further.

Bang Howdy requires Java Runtime.

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The attacking aliens become stronger with each wave that they send against your defenses. You are able to counter this by being able to build advanced structures as the game progresses. Different kind of aliens require different strategies. The first aliens that attack your base can be eliminated by simply lifting them into the air and throwing them away.

The game looks pretty good for a freeware game but the most important factor of course is fun. And yes, Base Invaders is fun to play.

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Wesnoth offers a charming fantasy setting full of elves, orcs and magic. You may try the tutorial first which gives you a good understanding of the games basic features and commands. After that I suggest you head right for one of the four campaigns which can be best described as a series of battles.

You begin each battle with a certain amount of troops all with their own distinctive advantages and disadvantages and may recruit new troops if your leader is currently in a castle. Think of the medieval ages and you know the types of troops available. Add to this mixture magic and from the fantasy settings non-human beings and you are set to go. Some units possess special abilities like the Trolls who heal their wounds over time.

Units gain experience by fighting with enemy troops and reach a new level once they have accumulated enough experience points which makes them tougher.

Terrain has influence on battle outcome as well. If your archers are attacked by knights on a plain field they are more likely to loose many hitpoints whereas they might loose less hitpoints if they are attacked while standing in an area with lots of wood.

Another great feature is the multiplayer part of Battle for Wesnoth. Once you got sick of beating the AI you might want to try and beat some human opponents in the multiplayer mode. You may join the official server, host a network or hotseat game or join a game. Multiplayer is were the real fun begins, it is always more awarding to beat a human player than the computer and even if you loose you learn some valuable lessons that the computer can’t teach you at all.

To conclude everything I said. Battle for Wesnoth is a great game. And it’s free, what are you waiting for ?

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