Hearth and Hamlet Defense: Soldiers, Guards & Walls
Hearth and Hamlet defense turns your economy into a military. See how to recruit soldiers, train guards, research upgrades, and build walls before raids hit.
Hearth and Hamlet defense is a logistics problem, not a separate battle mode. You recruit soldiers, train guards, research military upgrades, and raise walls using the same workers, Food, Gold, and Iron that would otherwise grow your town, and every coin you spend on protection is a coin not spent on production. The official Steam page makes this explicit: it invites you to “Recruit soldiers as your realm expands to protect what you’ve built,” and its policy list names “city guard drafts to protect your population.” A town can look rich on paper and still be helpless the moment a raid timer starts.
The short answer
- Defense is economic — soldiers, guards, and walls draw on workers, Food, Gold, and Iron
- Recruit and train units through the Town Guards screen
- The Town Guard building has five tiers; only the first, Watchman’s Post, is enabled in build 0.80
- Walls come in north and south halves that must both be built for their bonus to apply
- Demo v1.0.46 officially rebalanced combat, so pre-June numbers may be stale
- Losing a raid costs resources and applies a temporary penalty; the exact release outcome is not fully documented
Defense is an economic system
The cleanest way to read Hearth and Hamlet defense is as a tax on growth. Recruiting soldiers removes people from your civilian workforce, and each military building or upgrade competes with housing, production, and research for the same stockpiles. A player who over-invests in walls while Food runs negative has not improved their safety; they have simply opened two crises at once.
The official description groups defense under the same management umbrella as taxation and morale. “City guard drafts” sit alongside “rules for workers that keep morale high,” which signals that conscription is meant to be weighed against happiness rather than done automatically. That trade-off is the heart of the system.
The Town Guards screen
The Town Guards screen is where recruitment, training, armour, and unit strength come together. Recruiting draws from your own population, so conscription carries a real social cost. Demo footage shows happiness dropping once a player passes a certain soldier count, though the exact threshold is a demo observation, not a confirmed rule.
Units also carry upkeep. Demo play shows soldiers consuming Food and Iron while they train, and later research layers Gold and Food upkeep on top for each soldier. Pulling too many people into the military therefore drags on both the jobs they leave behind and the stockpiles that feed them. Keep those numbers in view before every recruitment decision.
Town Guard building tiers
The community game database records five tiers for the Town Guard building, sourced from build 0.80 (Steam build 23713558). Only the first tier is enabled; the rest are later-game entries rather than final numbers. Each tier speeds up training and, from tier two onward, unlocks military research.
| Level | Building | Status | Cost | Reward |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Watchman’s Post | Build enabled | 8,000 wood · 2,000 stone · 8,000 food · 2,000 iron | Unlocks the military button for recruiting soldiers |
| 2 | Sentry Hall | Later-game | 24,500 wood · 24,500 stone · 7,000 gold · 14,000 iron | Faster training, unlocks military research |
| 3 | Guard’s Barracks | Later-game | 48,000 wood · 48,000 stone · 24,000 gold · 40,000 iron | Faster training, unlocks military research (1 advanced blueprint) |
| 4 | Town Garrison | Later-game | 54,000 wood · 180,000 stone · 36,000 gold · 90,000 iron | Faster training, unlocks military research |
| 5 | Royal Bastion | Later-game | 121,500 wood · 405,000 stone · 121,500 gold · 162,000 iron | Faster training, unlocks military research |
The first tier matters early because it unlocks the military button. Everything above it is a build 0.80 preview rather than a confirmed launch curve.
Military research upgrades
Fifteen research upgrades are attached to the Town Guard in the same data, spread across the three soldier stats: weapons, armour, and training. They are named entries from static data, not a confirmed launch list.
- Weapons: Basic, Quality, Premium, Sturdy, and Superior Weapons
- Armour: Leather, Quality, Premium, Sturdy, and Superior Armour
- Training: Basic, Advanced, Elite, Martial, and Specialised Training
The naming suggests a straightforward ladder, from basic gear to premium and training into elite, martial, and specialised paths. Demo play shows even the first steps of this ladder adding upkeep per soldier, so every upgrade is a spending decision as much as a power gain. See the research tree for how these sit inside the wider tech system.
Walls and fortifications
Walls are the static half of defense. The Northern Wall and its Southern mirror each have five tiers running from a wooden palisade up to a stone wall and finally a moat, and the two halves must be built together for any bonus to apply. None of these tiers are enabled in build 0.80 — they are embedded later-game data, so treat the costs below as a structural preview.
| Level | Wall | Cost (per half) | Key effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wooden Palisade I | 96,000 wood · 32,000 food · 32,000 gold · 32,000 iron | +10% defense, defenders get first strike |
| 2 | Wooden Palisade II | 64,000 wood · 32,000 food · 32,000 gold · 32,000 iron | Defenders get 2× first strike |
| 3 | Stone Wall I | 36,000 wood · 126,000 stone · 72,000 food · 54,000 gold · 72,000 iron | +10% defense, defenders get 3× first strike |
| 4 | Stone Wall II | 36,000 wood · 126,000 stone · 72,000 food · 54,000 gold · 72,000 iron | Defenders get 4× first strike |
| 5 | Moat | 324,000 stone · 243,000 food · 162,000 gold · 81,000 iron | −10% enemy attack damage, defenders get 5× first strike |
First strike means your defenders act before the attackers, and each tier adds more of those opening hits. The moat is the exception: instead of another strike, it shaves enemy attack damage. The southern wall mirrors this structure with only minor cost differences at the top tier, so budget for both halves at once.
Military Camp and placeholders
A separate Military Camp also appears in the build 0.80 data with five tiers, but every one of them is an embedded later-game entry with no resource cost and no defined reward yet. Treat it as placeholder content rather than a build plan. For the civilian buildings that gate all of this, see buildings.
Preparing for a raid
Read the build in front of you before the warning arrives. Watch the timer, the cost of recruiting or maintaining defenders, the direction of Food, your spare workers, and what you have already committed to nonessential upgrades.
- Read the warning and timer every time; do not guess
- Keep Food positive before recruiting — hungry soldiers solve nothing
- Reserve the resources a defensive step needs before starting it
- Free workers from the least urgent line, not the whole economy
- Finish one defensive step and confirm it is staffed before starting the next
- Keep a recovery margin so winning the fight does not starve the town
See raids for how raids trigger and resolve.
What happens if you lose
Older demo discussion describes defeat as a setback — resource loss plus a temporary penalty — rather than the end of the save. Demo footage shows a lost battle stealing resources, applying a production and happiness debuff, and costing population. The exact release consequence is not fully documented. After a loss, restore Food and baseline production first, then rebuild military strength rather than replacing every lost resource at once.
Demo v1.0.46 vs build 0.80 data
Two sources matter. Demo v1.0.46 is the version you can actually play, and it rebalanced combat for Steam Next Fest in June 2026, which makes older cost and stat advice unreliable. Build 0.80 is newer static data that marks most military buildings, walls, and research as later-game content. Use the demo for what is reachable now and build 0.80 as a preview of the direction.
For the loop that gets you to your first guardhouse, start with the beginner guide, then check workers and mechanics when you plan a defense. The enemies reference lists every threat you are defending against.
Sources: Steam store page · Hearth and Hamlet game database — town guard · game database — military camp · game database — northern wall