Should I be placing things outside my walls

[kale_star]

Like wood cutter buildings and granaries? granary outside of walls a bad idea?

[Sunday Driver]

Don't put the granary out there as it's too important. Other stuff that is less important is fine. If you put your woodcutter out there and it gets torched by invaders you can rebuild it easy and it is cheap. So pick and choose what is vital and what isn't if you're trying to fit things in a limited space.

Also if you put something out of the way they're less likely to go for it first, they might hit the castle and its defences before your outside structures that are way off in a corner somewhere.

[MadArtillery]

Absolutely, consider woodcutters entirely expendable. They are halfway decent combatants (almost 1-1 with spearman), cheap, and walking to and from trees 3 times is a lot more time spent then the walk to the stockpile. A lot of things should actually be outside the walls, hunting posts are a biggy and should be dotted along the outside of your wall as a form of defence as if the hunter is near their post they will actively defend it as an archer. They are only slightly worse then an actual archer without the production line or gold and are actually necessary a lot of the time on higher difficulties. You probably want 1 wheat farm inside walls but most farms can be outside as well as they simply take too much space. Though this is very map dependant as you less need a castle and more need a hill or choke point.

Granary is too important outside the wall and should be inside with your bakers and stockpile. You'll often end up at similar population numbers of about 80-110 population most missions so once you get a feel for how much room you may need you can place it with your baker block in mind.

[kale_star]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

Absolutely, consider woodcutters entirely expendable. They are halfway decent combatants (almost 1-1 with spearman), cheap, and walking to and from trees 3 times is a lot more time spent then the walk to the stockpile. A lot of things should actually be outside the walls, hunting posts are a biggy and should be dotted along the outside of your wall as a form of defence as if the hunter is near their post they will actively defend it as an archer. They are only slightly worse then an actual archer without the production line or gold and are actually necessary a lot of the time on higher difficulties. You probably want 1 wheat farm inside walls but most farms can be outside as well as they simply take too much space. Though this is very map dependant as you less need a castle and more need a hill or choke point.

Granary is too important outside the wall and should be inside with your bakers and stockpile. You'll often end up at similar population numbers of about 80-110 population most missions so once you get a feel for how much room you may need you can place it with your baker block in mind.

Originally posted by Sunday Driver:

Don't put the granary out there as it's too important. Other stuff that is less important is fine. If you put your woodcutter out there and it gets torched by invaders you can rebuild it easy and it is cheap. So pick and choose what is vital and what isn't if you're trying to fit things in a limited space.

Also if you put something out of the way they're less likely to go for it first, they might hit the castle and its defences before your outside structures that are way off in a corner somewhere.

Thanks so much!!

[Sunday Driver]

I also place hunters outside walls happily for same reason, especially as they do an okay job of defending themselves. It saves room to have the cheap and expendable things outside walls.

[Sextilidan]

The woodcutters work routine is go to tree -> chop log -> return to hut -> go to tree ->chop log -> return to hut -> saw plank -> take plank to stockpile.
So it's better to put woodcutter next to trees because for every one trip to stockpile he needs to make 2 trips to a tree.

[Sunday Driver]

Originally posted by Sextilidan:

The woodcutters work routine is go to tree -> chop log -> return to hut -> go to tree ->chop log -> return to hut -> saw plank -> take plank to stockpile.
So it's better to put woodcutter next to trees because for every one trip to stockpile he needs to make 2 trips to a tree.

IIRC the game suggests to do the same in the tutorial stages or tips.

[Judeo-communism]

Generally speaking you need to decide on a per-mission basis where the walls will actually be. You rarely will build a "castle" with 4 walls like you see in all the trailers. You pretty much build a single wall with a small gatehouse to attract the enemies to and slaughter them with archers, crossbowen, ballista and some portable shields on towers next to the gatehouse. You then wall off all the rest of the other areas that enemies could reach the rest of your map with so the AI just goes for the gatehouse.

On the very few instances you do actually build a proper castle, Woodcutters are extremely expendable and you really need to place them where most of the trees are, particularly if there's a good clump of them next to the Stockpile. Having them close to the trees greatly increases their efficiency so you get more Wood for your time because they'll spend less time walking between their hut and the trees carrying logs. This means yes, you will almost definitely place them outside a proper castle's walls.

The Granary is extremely important to defend, but so is efficiency. Every food producer will have to travel from their building to the Granary, so there are a few instances where you want to place it closer to the farm land if you aren't producing Bread. Generally, those instances have maps where you "wall off" the Signpost so you'd be fine to do so. When it comes to producing Bread, I keep my Granary right next to my Keep on the left side so Stockpile is on the right and Granary is on the left. This makes it easy to defend, and the Bakeries can be efficient by being close both to the Stockpile and the Granary.

On the maps you're building a proper castle, it's basically impossible to keep your farms inside the walls. You need to use that inside wall space for more valuable things like weapon/armor producers, Windmills and Bakeries. Stables are also very valuable because they cost 400 gold each to make. Quarries, Ox Tethers, Iron Mines and Pitch Rigs are also impossible to keep inside walls most of the time.

The Marketplace and Hovels are also fine to keep well outside the walls. I usually place them extremely far away in the corner of the map where enemies often won't bother to go to. This also cuts back a little bit on all the annoying children wandering around the castle and getting in the way of you trying to build stuff, and maximizes your space for building more important things. But you'll want to use a corner away from where the Signposts are.

So to summarize:

- Place Woodcutters where you plan to clear most of your trees, even if it's outside walls
- Place Granary close to keep where it's easier to defend, unless you plan to not produce Bread and instead placing it closer to your farms
- Try to build walls and a single gatehouse where you want to choke point the enemy away from your buildings when possible. Wall off any flank routes. Only build a "proper" castle when necessary.
- The most important buildings to defend are the Granary and high cost buildings like Stables and weapons/armor producers.