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Farthest Frontier: Defense, Walls & Town Protection

Wall engineering from palisade to fortress, tower placement for overlapping coverage, troop composition ratios, disease control protocols, and raider defense strategies.

19 min read4,600 words2026-02-14

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Raiders in Farthest Frontier scale with your population and wealth. A 200-pop town with gold vaults attracts raids of 40+ raiders with battering rams. Without proper walls, towers, and troop management, your colony falls in minutes. This guide covers wall engineering, tower placement, troop management, disease control, and the complete defense progression from wooden palisades to stone fortresses.

🏰 Wall Engineering: Palisade to Fortress

Wall Type	HP	Cost/Tile	Raider Protection	When to Build
Wooden Palisade	200	2 logs	Blocks melee raiders. Archers shoot through gaps. Battering ram breaks in 4 hits.	Year 1-2: 30+ population
Stone Wall	800	3 stone	Blocks all melee. Battering ram needs 16 hits. Immune to fire arrows.	Year 3-4: 80+ population
Fortified Stone Wall	1,500	3 stone + 1 iron	Battering ram needs 30 hits. Trebuchet-resistant. Adds cover bonus for defenders on battlements.	Year 5+: 150+ population
Gate	400-1000	4 planks + 2 iron	Weakest point. Always the first target. Double-gate design: outer gate → 3-tile corridor → inner gate.	Immediately after walls

The Double Gate Kill Corridor

Build: Outer Gate → 3-tile-wide corridor that runs 10 tiles deep → Inner Gate. On both sides of the corridor, build towers at Z+1 with archers. When raiders break the outer gate and flood into the corridor, your archers shoot down from both sides. No raider survives a 10-tile corridor with 6 archers on each side.

🗼 Tower Placement: The Overwatch System

Tower Type	Range	Garrison	Best Placement
Watchtower	40 tiles	3 archers	Every 30 tiles along the outer wall. Provides overlapping coverage — each wall section covered by 2 towers.
Stone Tower	50 tiles	5 archers	Corners of the wall. Covers two wall sections simultaneously. Also flanking the gate corridor.
Fortified Tower	60 tiles	8 soldiers (archers or crossbowmen)	Critical chokepoint coverage. 1 per every 2 stone towers. Place at the gatehouse and at wall corners facing the expected raid direction.

Tower Spacing Rule

Towers must have overlapping fields of fire. If Tower A has range 40 and Tower B has range 40, place them no more than 35 tiles apart. This ensures every raider approaching the wall is in range of at least two towers at all times. Against heavily armored raiders, single-tower DPS is insufficient.

⚔️ Troop Composition & Management

Unit	Equipment	Role	Best Against	Pop Ratio
🏹 Archer	Bow + Leather Armor	Ranged DPS from towers	Light armor, unshielded raiders	1 per 15 pop
🏹 Crossbowman	Crossbow + Chainmail	Heavy ranged, armor-piercing	Heavy armor, shielded raiders, battering ram crews	1 per 25 pop
⚔️ Soldier	Sword + Shield + Plate Armor	Frontline melee	Any raiders that breach the wall	2 per 50 pop (minimum 4)
🛡️ Spearman	Spear + Shield + Chainmail	Anti-cavalry, gate defense	Mounted raiders, battering rams	Situational (see mounted raids)

Garrison Rotation

Keep 50% of archers on towers at all times. The other 50% work as normal (farmers, laborers). When the raid horn sounds, pause, select all garrison-capable colonists, and click "Garrison" on their nearest tower. A 200-pop town should have 13 archers ready within 30 seconds. Practice this drill — the difference between 5 archers and 13 archers on the wall is the difference between repelling a raid and losing the gate.

🦠 Disease Control & Sanitation

Disease	Cause	Mortality	Prevention
Dysentery	Contaminated water. Well within 10 tiles of outhouse or animal pen.	10-30%	Place wells 20+ tiles from waste sources. Upgrade outhouses to latrines by year 2.
Plague	Rat infestation in granaries and root cellars.	30-60%	Build rat catchers near all food storage. Keep 200+ medicine stockpiled. Quarantine infected colonists in hospital.
Scurvy	No fruit/vegetable food group for 2+ months.	5-15%	Diversify food: always have 1 vegetable crop + 1 fruit orchard active. Sauerkraut provides vitamin C.
Tetanus	Untreated wounds. Dirty hospital.	5-10%	Stock medicine (1 per colonist). Build hospital with 2+ beds by year 2. Assign a dedicated doctor (priority 2).

Plague Can Wipe a Colony

Plague is the most dangerous event in Farthest Frontier. It spreads from colonist to colonist through proximity. Immediate protocol: pause game. Build a quarantine hospital (separate building, 15+ tiles from town). Move all infected colonists there. Move all healthy colonists to the opposite side of town. Treat with Medicine. Burn contaminated food. Plague spreads through the food supply — infected food in the market = everyone gets it.

FAQ

When should I build my first wall?+

Year 2, when population hits 50. Start with a wooden palisade enclosing your core buildings (granary, storehouse, market, root cellar). Expand and upgrade to stone by year 4.

How many soldiers do I need?+

10% of population should be garrison-ready. A 200-pop town needs 20 archers/crossbowmen + 4 soldiers. Maintain arms and armor for all of them in the armory — unequipped soldiers are worse than no soldiers.

Best defense against battering rams?+

Crossbowmen on towers flanking the gate. They have armor-piercing bolts — 4 crossbowmen can kill a battering ram crew before the gate breaks. Also: build the gate on a hill — rams move slower uphill, giving your archers 40% more shooting time.