Introduction

Outside the Wall is an area where you can build your Rural Buildings. This Guide explains the function of these buildings and gives some considerations and tips to determine how many to build of each building.

Unlocking More Rural Areas

When you start playing the initial area for your Rural buildings outside the Wall is quite small. You can unlock more areas. One additional area can be unlocked immediately, and 3 other areas become available at Stronghold levels 5, 10 and 15. Each time you need to pay some resources to unlock them. As you unlock each additional area the maximum allowed of each building type also increases. You can click on the forest to see which area can be unlocked.

In addition there are single extra Rural Slots to be unlocked with Master Axes. At this time there is an ongoing Stronghold Upgrade event that gives you some, but in general they are hard to come by, and you probably need to purchase some packs to get sufficient to open several plots. Be aware that unlocking these is done one by one and the costs in Master Axes is increasing (so far I only know it is 100 for the first and 500 for the second).

Resource Production Buildings

There are a total of 4 resource production buildings, Farms for Food, Sawmills for Wood, and Iron and Silver Mines. The Iron Mine is only available once your Stronghold reaches level 10 and the Silver Mine when your Stronghold reaches level 15.

Each extra building and level increase the Production Rate and the Storage Capacity of that resource. The buildings keep producing until the Storage Capacity is reached. When you swipe over the buildings the resources are moved to your city stock and the resource buildings continue producing.

The Storage Capacity is at each level for each building 10 times the Hourly Production Rate, meaning you can leave the game for 10 hours and you will still be producing. But note that, although mosts boosts seem to increase Storage Capacity and Production Rate with the same percentage, the Boost Items to increase the production of one resource building only increase the production rate, meaning you have to check back to harvest your resource buildings.

It is best to harvest the buildings more frequently, because the resources are unsafe, meaning if you are attacked, irrespective of your Storage House level, the unharvested resources at the resource production buildings can always be taken. Only with food you might consider harvesting it only when needed, because above storehouse capacity food will be eaten by your troops.

There the boost items to increase the production rate of individual buildings, there are also Research Projects, Lord Skills and Lord Equipment that increase the Production Rate and Storage Capacity of specific resources.

Military Tent

The Military Tent increases the Training Capacity and Troop Training Speed for training troops in the Barracks, Range, Stables and Siege Workshop. The more of these buildings you have and the higher the level is, the more troops you can train at the same time, and the faster the training speed is.

Note that there are also Lord Skills to increasing the Training Capacity, gear that increases the Training Capacity with a percentage, and Lord Skills and Research Projects that increase the Troop Training Speed, and heroes that increase troop training capacity and speed.

Hospital

In case you lose your troops while defending your own city, while reinforcing an alliance member, while in Garrison in an Alliance building or when gathering on a tile, or attacking a resource tile, they end up in the Hospital instead of being killed, if you have enough hospital capacity.

The more hospitals you have and the higher their level, the more Hospital Capacity you have.

Healing Troops costs only half of the resources compared to training troops, while the time required is a lot shorter.

If you have more casualties than your Hospital Capacity, you troops will first go to the Alliance Hospital. If there is also no place for them there, they are killed.

Note that there are Research Projects and Lord Skills that increase the absolute Hospital Capacity, while there are VIP levels and Lord Equipment that increase the Hospital Capacity with a percentage. Furthermore there are Research Projects, Lord Skills and Lord Equipment that increase the Healing Speed, and Lord Equipment that decreases the Healing Cost.

Considerations and Tips for Setup

Although every Rural Building has its own importance, I find the Hospital the most important. If you are in a kingdom with a lot of aggression (and in my experience eventually almost all kingdoms will have a lot of random aggression, also outside of kill events), it is going to be important you can recover from being attacked fast. A large Hospital Capacity makes sure of this, and makes sure your cost to recover is limited. For me this means I am planning to have a Hospital Capacity that supports my troops as long as possible, and as my army grows I might tear down other buildings to make place for more Hospitals. I currently have 7 and that amount will likely increase soon.

The Military Tents are least important to me. I am not training troops 24/7 and I am online a lot, so I don't mind starting several batches of troop trainings if I find that necessary. This might be different for you if you are a different type of player (if you want to build a huge army fast, or if you are only online a very limited time and it is important you can give order to train a large amount of troops). I currently have three, but I likely tear one down to be replaced by a hospital.

For the resource buildings the Farms take a special place, since Food is consumed by your Troops. I have written a special guide on Food Production and Upkeep, read it if you haven't already. For now I have maxed out my amount of Farms, since I want to have the gap between Upkeep and Food Production as small as possible. I do this because otherwise I feel it is too difficult to save up food for larger building upgrades and research projects, but there is a downside, as the food production itself does not add anything. At a certain moment I might just give up on Food Production and tear down all my farms. This makes things a bit tricky, as saving up food becomes a lot more troublesome, but also has the benefits as you can have a lot more of the other buildings. Currently I have 10 Farms.

For the other resource buildings, I currently have 9 Sawmills, 4 Iron Mines and 3 Silver Mines. At my Stronghold level (18) this still seems to be too many Silver Mines, but I imagine I need more later. I have most difficulty filling my Iron needs, and a 8 Sawmills, 6 Iron Mines, 2 Silver Mines might be a better setup for my level, I have been too lazy to change it. At higher Stronghold levels it might be better to increase the amount of Iron and Silver Mines.

Conclusion

I hope this helps in understanding the function of the various Rural Buildings and helps you decide how many to build of each.