Buildings
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This page introduces all the buildings in the game and includes some basic strategies and knowledge on how they work.
Some of the range information is from siedler-welt.de.
Table of contents
The table below has the buildings presented in the in-game order. Order on this page is different as the buildings are grouped by type as presented in the table of contents.
And also: Headquarters
Construction economy
These buildings are the most crucial element that you must get running: the game is about constructing buildings and thus construction materials should never run out! However the game has limited natural resources on the map and you can easily run out of stones if you are not making sure you get to have enough of them.
Woodcutter
They cut trees.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Collects from nature | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 2 ×  | Woodcutter | 7 | Tree | Log |
Tool required to hire worker as a woodcutter: axe.
Strategy
Notable consideration is to remove trees to make space for farms, mines, and other buildings. You will also need a few woodcutters being provided with new trees by foresters to ensure you don’t run out of wood.
All trees can be cut except for pine apples. Also trees that are located on water, snow, lava, swamp, or ice floes cannot be accessed.
Sawmill
They turn logs into boards for consumption of your buildings construction.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 2 × 2 ×  | Carpenter | Log | Board |
Tool required to hire worker as a carpenter: saw.
Strategy
The less you have early resources the more crucial it is to build multiple sawmills early. Also if you are very low on resources you can’t spam buildings right away and instead may need to time them so that you get enough basics running so that you avoid running out of boards.
Depending on a map you may need at least four sawmills, and it can make sense to build a new one near each storehouse.
In addition to construction of buildings boards are also needed by metalworkers and shipwrights.
Forester
They plant trees.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Gives to nature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × | Forester | 7 | Tree |
Tool required to hire worker as a forester: shovel.
Strategy
Roughly five woodcutters can be employed at 100% by two foresters.
You should avoid placing a forester too close to a farm as you rather see crops around your farms than forests. But if you do place a forester near a farm you can place a woodcutter between them.
Foresters can also be used to build a defensive forest wall against the direction your opponents are coming from. Having a dense forest will greatly slow down your opponents ability to spread to your lands even if the succeed in conquering some of your military buildings. This can buy you time to get your economy running, for example to guarantee weapons production or minting of gold coins.
Stonemason
They provide stone.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Collects from nature | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × | Stonemason | 7 | Granite | Stone |
Tool required to hire worker as a stonemason: pick-axe.
Strategy
Often you should guarantee you get stone in the early game. If you lack stone in the early game you should start expanding, using lookout towers, and/or sending scouts until you find stone. You should also expand with only barracks especially as barracks do not require stone to be built. However on some maps this may make you vulnerable to attacks which also makes it important to get the stone so you can build larger military buildings.
Granite mine
They also provide stone.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 4 × | Miner | 2 | Food | Stone |
Tool required to hire worker as a miner: pick-axe.
Strategy
In case there is no stone above the ground it might instead be hidden in the mountains! On some maps you may find your earliest stone under the ground so send out geologists.
You may also need to adjust food distribution to guarantee that your granite miners stay fed, as by default granite mines have the lowest food priority. You can adjust them back to lower priority once you have a safe amount of stone in your inventory.
Food economy
Miners need food. Keep them fed! Also fresh soldier recruits need beer. Keep them drunk!
Fisher
Provides fish.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Collects from nature | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × | Fisher | 7 | Fish | Fish |
Tool required to hire worker as a fisher: rod and line.
Strategy
An issue with fish is that they will run out. Once the fish are gone, they are gone. On contested areas you may want to build multiple fishers to collect the fish before your enemies (or allies).
Sometimes you may have a fisher at 0% but have not received a message of fish running out. There are two possibilities: there is a granite deposit still on the coast that blocks the fisher. Or alternatively the map is a buggy one and has generated fish into an impossible location that is within range of the fisher, but out of reach as fisher can’t walk there.
Hunter
Provides ham.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Collects from nature | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × | Fisher | 25 | Animal | Ham |
Tool required to hire worker as a hunter: bow.
Strategy
Animals appear in forests that are outside player territories. Thus you might want to place foresters to otherwise worthless edge territory of your lands and create a forest there. This should be enought to keep a hunter at 100%. Results may vary depending on a map. Also Return to the Roots is much more likely to generate animals.
Well
Provides fresh water.
| Type | To build | Houses | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × | Worker | Fresh water |
Strategy
Have one for each: bakery, brewery, donkey breeder, or pig farm. Keep close to those buildings or a storehouse.
Farm
Provides grain.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 3 × 3 × | Farmer | 2 | Grain |
Tool required to hire worker as a farmer: scythe.
Strategy
Farms require a lot of space and should not be placed too close to each other! And they require fertile land as well: one does get crops from sand, mountains, snow or lava.
An optimal farm can have up to 6 fields around it, however 4 or 5 is sufficient to have 100% production. However you need a lot of farms to cover the needs of all the other buildings that depend on grain!
Mill
Provides flour.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 2 × | Miller | Grain | Flour |
Strategy
Needed by bakeries so make one for each bakery. You can have one extra to guarantee 100% production – assuming you produce enough grain from your farms!
Bakery
Provides bread.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 2 × | Baker | Flour Fresh water | Bread |
Tool required to hire worker as a baker: rolling pin.
Strategy
Place close to mines or a storehouse. Keep the deserving miners fed.
Pig farm
Provides pigs.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 × 3 × | Pig breeder | Grain Fresh water | Pig (meat) |
Strategy
There is an issue with pig farms: compared to mill and bakery it takes a lot of space and fights for the same resources. It is more space efficient to bake bread.
For overall game strategy you don’t really ever need a pig farm. Unless you want to grow happy pigs who never meet a butcher! Then by all means go ahead.
Slaughterhouse
Provides ham.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 2 × | Butcher | Pig (meat) | Ham |
Tool required to hire worker as a butcher: cleaver.
Strategy
How dare you kill pigs!
Honestly you don’t really need pigs to have a working food economy with mines at 100%. All the other means are more efficient for food production. Even the hunter forest trick can be more beneficial as you can use the forest as a source of wood as well.
Brewery
Provides beer.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 2 × | Brewer | Grain Fresh water | Beer |
Anyone can become a brewer.
Strategy
Build this close to an armory or a storehouse. Beer is required to recruit your brave inhabitants as soldiers! They need deserve the extra encouragement.
Goods production
Buildings that relate to production of tools, weapons, and money.
Coal mine
Mines coal.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 × | Miner | 2 | Food | Coal |
Tool required to hire worker as a miner: pick-axe.
Strategy
Mostly you prefer to have more than two coal mines per iron mine, and one coal mine for each gold mine. That keeps up balanced production of weapons and soldier promotions on the long term.
Gold mine
Mines gold.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 × | Miner | 2 | Food | Gold |
Tool required to hire worker as a miner: pick-axe.
Strategy
It is a tragedy if you have no gold and others have it. Unless you have lots of iron ore and others lack it.
Mint
Creates gold coins.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 2 × | Minter | Coal Gold | Gold coin |
Tool required to hire worker as a minter: crucible.
Strategy
Gold coins are required for soldier promotions. You should direct gold coins to your largest military buildings and keep a rotation of moving your best promoted soldiers away and replace them with unpromoted soldiers.
Iron mine
Mines iron ore.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 × | Miner | 2 | Food | Iron ore |
Tool required to hire worker as a miner: pick-axe.
Strategy
Iron ore is very vital for your success! It is needed for weapons and tools, but needs to be first processed to iron in the iron smelter.
Iron smelter
Casts iron from iron ore.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 2 × | Iron founder | Coal Iron ore | Iron |
Tool required to hire worker as an iron founder: crucible.
Strategy
You need one of these for each metalworks or armory in order to keep everything running smoothly at 100%.
Metalworks
Creates tools from boards and iron.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 2 × | Metalworker | Board Iron | Various tools |
Tool required to hire worker as a metalworker: tongs.
Strategy
Tool priorities are everything! You should have a look in your general stock to see which tools you are missing, and also to check out which types of workers you are lacking. After checking these out you should change tool priorities to match the needs. Otherwise you may end up seeing newly built houses with nobody able to work in them, because they miss their tool!
Armory
Creates weapons from iron.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 2 × | Armorer | Coal Iron | Shield Sword |
Tool required to hire worker as an armorer: hammer.
Strategy
You want to have this building close to your headquarters and storehouses, as well as accompany each with a brewery as well.
A soldier is recruited each time there is a beer, sword, a shield, and a worker available within a single storehouse. Thus most of your work is to ensure that these resources will pile up in the same place. Remember that it is possible to stop taking in new resources and also take out the extra ones which lets you to focus hiring of new soldiers into a desired storehouse!
RttR: Charburner
Provides coal by burning wood and grain. Available as a separate add-on in Return to the Roots only.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 × 3 × | Charburner | 3 | 3 × Log 2 × Grain | 2 × Coal |
Tool required to hire worker as a charburner: shovel.
Strategy
This is an inefficient way to get more coal as you are trading five resources – and a lot of time! – to gain only two coals. Generally you want to avoid charburner as coal mines are much more efficient sources of coal.
Charburner needs space for two charpiles around it, having the second biggest requirement for space after farm. One charpile requires more space than a single farm field.
Storage and transportation
All storehouses generate workers up to 100. They also function as a recruitment place for soldiers. To recruit a soldier you need four things: beer, sword, shield, and workers with a setting that allows recruits to be done. By default the setting is already maxed out so you will always generate soldiers as fast as you have a beer + a sword + a shield available.
Headquarters
Your first building, a storehouse able to defend itself, and with a region spread.
| Type | Spread |
|---|---|
| 9 |
Strategy
A headquarters cannot be conquered and is destroyed after a successful attack. This means you should keep a suitable reserve of soldiers to protect your HQ especially if enemy is close.
Storehouse
Storage for more resources, a headquarters without defence or region spread capabilities.
| Type | To build |
|---|---|
| 4 × 3 × |
Strategy
You should build storehouses to guarantee faster distribution of your goods. Finding a balance of good distance can be challenging and can depend on a map as well. If you had no storehouses your transportation times would increase, and you might even find some of your distant buildings never getting constructed due to a too long transportation route.
Generally it makes sense to accompany a storehouse with a sawmill so you can construct buildings faster in the general location of the storehouse.
You may also consider relocating your soldiers to your storehouses that are closer to the action. However storehouses cannot defend (or be attacked), but moving your soldiers there makes storehouses a valuable target to your enemy and opens up an opportunity to mess up with your play. Thus protecting your storehouses with appropriate military buildings is important!
Harbor
Provides storage and some region spread, but like storehouse has no military reserve. When ships are available will also provide connection with other harbors and the ability to do expeditions.
| Type | To build | Spread |
|---|---|---|
 | 4 × 6 × | 8 |
Strategy
Main focus of harbors is to provide access to other land areas that would be otherwise inaccessible, such as islands or other continents. To do this you need to launch expeditions. This will then start a project to gather all the necessary resources. Once it is completed and you have a ship available for the harbor you will get a message that an expedition is ready to go. You may then give general direction for the ship to travel to.
In the original game harbors can be troublesome which is one reason they were disabled in unlimited play mode and were unused in World Campaign. In Return to the Roots they are usable and there are more features available such as sea attacks. For RttR you might find this Youtube video by Snowwie useful!
The following is a summary of some of the issues harbors have in the original game:
- You should only start connecting roads to a harbor once it is finished. Otherwise you may notice that workers never come to transport goods. You should also remove a road only after it has a worker.
- When you have called a geologist or scout to do a work on a specific flag you should not disconnect or remove that flag while they are at work. Otherwise you will lose those geologists and scouts permanently.
- When you have abundance of donkeys they will become one of the favorite goods of shipping. The game bugs out and will keep moving the donkeys back and forth for no good reason.
- Disconnecting military buildings from a harbor road system is also troublesome and likely results into a situation where soldiers will start ignoring all attempts to control the number of soldiers in the military building once it has been disconnected from a harbor. Reconnecting does not fix the issue.
- Stopping storage of any goods can cause unexpected side effects (would be nice to document what they are). However at least beer, swords, and shields can always be safely blocked from harbor storage.
- Starting an expedition is not a good idea unless you have the necessary resources available! You will at least need 4 boards, 6 stones, and a builder. These must be available when expedition order is given.
- You should always connect islands by boats if possible as this will help with logistics issues, and prevents some of the bugs above from having effect.
- Tools should be primarily available in headquarters and storehouses, not harbors. Harbors occasionally seem to bug out with hiring workers despite having the necessary tool available.
- Food instead should be primarily available in harbors if your remote locations have mines. But it depends on a map whether this makes sense.
Finally: if you give an order it will be queued and remembered! However it can take a very long time for the order to be completed. You should avoid queueing lots of orders in locations that are only accessible via harbor. Order = for example adding a new building construction site, calling in a geologist or a scout.
Shipyard
Provides boats or ships. In original game however ships are only available in the Roman Campaign.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 3 × | Shipwright | ❓ | Boards | Boats Ships |
Tool required to hire worker as a shipwright: hammer.
Strategy
Should be constructed near the shore when you desire to build ships. Ships require multiple sets of boards to complete (how many?).
In the original game you should avoid building excess amounts of ships. Three should be enough. More than that is likely to increase the amount of issues with harbors.
Donkey breeder
Provides donkeys to help out in the busiest roads.
| Type | To build | Houses | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 × 3 × | Donkey breeder (worker) | Grain Fresh water | Donkey |
Strategy
Build when you need more transportation capacity and you don’t have any more donkeys available. You can go adjust consumption priority of grain and water to increase the likelyhood that a donkey breeder gets the resources it needs. By default donkey breeder is the least likely building to get the grain and water it needs.
You have no control over when a road requires a donkey or not. It is purely based on how much goods have been transported through the road. Also once a road has been marked worthy of a donkey it will not reset back even if donkey is really no longer required later on.
Military buildings
Intel is everything when it comes to war! And it doesn’t harm to have a big military to guarantee the safety of your inhabitants. Scout the fog-of-war, find weaknesses of your enemies, build up your strength, and strike when the time is right!
Lookout tower
Provides visibility and early warning.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 × | 1 × scout | 15 | Visibility Warning messages |
Strategy
Upon need of intel build to the edge of your lands. The scout provides early warnings of enemy attacks but this can get to be useless message spam so you might only keep the building for decorative purposes.
Barracks
Provides some military housing and region spread.
| Type | To build | Houses | Spread | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × | 2 × soldier | 7 | Gold coin | Soldier promotion |
Strategy
This building is best fit to spreading in the early game if you’re low on resources, especially stone. You may find it useful on expanding to directions where you know there is no enemy. It is also the fastest military building to build.
This building is not ideal for soldier promotions and you should disable gold coins.
Guardhouse
Provides decent military housing and region spread.
| Type | To build | Houses | Spread | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × 3 × | 3 × soldier | 8 | Gold coin | Soldier promotion |
Strategy
This building provides a notably better protection than the barracks – unless you’re being attacked by more than three soldiers or by better quality soldiers, in which case it is likely you will lose the building. It also takes a lot more time to construct this building as it consumes 5 resources instead of just 2. So when entering a building speed competition with a neighboring enemy it is very likely that barracks will win and manage to destroy a guardhouse if it is within the barracks’ spread range.
This building is not ideal for soldier promotions and you should disable gold coins.
Watchtower
Provides good military housing and region spread.
| Type | To build | Houses | Spread | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 × 4 × | 6 × soldier | 9 | Gold coin | Soldier promotion |
Strategy
This building doubles the number of soldiers while costing only two more resources compared to a guardhouse. Thus purely from protection value vs resource value perspective this building is always the one to prefer over guardhouse. However it does require a more spacious building plot, and it is a desirable target for enemy to conquer so ideally you’d need to ensure it is always protected well enough from surprise attacks deep into your lands.
This building is also nice for promoting your soldiers although if you desire for optimal min-max of a gold coin value you really need to keep a close eye on when the promotions occur so that you can get the promoted soldier away and new a rookie in a timely fashion. A fortress gives you more time flexibility for gold coin min-max.
Fortress
Provides great military housing and region spread.
| Type | To build | Houses | Spread | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 × 7 × | 9 × soldier | 10 | Gold coin | Soldier promotion |
Strategy
This is the most desirable military building to have, but has the downside of taking a long time to construct due to requiring 11 resources for completion. A thing to note about requiring so many resources to build is that it not only takes long time to construct but it also takes time for all the resources to arrive to the construction site.
Once complete a fortress is the most useful military building to have as it provides the best defence and offence options, and is the ideal building for soldier promotions as well.
Catapult
Provides defence.
| Type | To build | Houses | Range | Consumes | Produces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 × 3 × | 1 × worker | 10 | 4 × | Random death |
Strategy
A catapult shoots stones to any enemy military building that is close enough. Upon hit the best soldier in that building will die. If no soldiers remain the building is destroyed. However not all shots will strike so there is an element of randomness.
Catapults consume a lot of your resources: with the construction cost of 7 resources and then an initial need of 4 stones for ammo it can be considered to be even more expensive than a fortress! Pay attention to this cost.
Catapult is a good defensive weapon and is the only equalizer available if you have worse soldier promotions than your enemy. The downside of a catapult is that if your lands are conquered and catapult is within that region it will be destroyed as well.
While primary use of catapults is defensive you can also use them as offensive weapons. However this requires time and an ideal location for the catapult. For example if a catapult can only reach two barracks it is likely the catapult is a waste of your resources. The only way a catapult might be worthy in that situation is if enemy storehouse is close enough to fill the barracks with new soldiers before it gets destroyed in which case you get to trade a few stones for each enemy life lost.
Next page: Road and waterway construction tips