How Many Soldiers You Need in Hearth and Hamlet

Last verified: August 20, 2026 — Hearth and Hamlet full release on Steam (app 4315040, launched August 19, 2026). Demo numbers are not treated as live data.

There is still no published “N soldiers at hour X” spreadsheet. The usable method is: read the strength label, unlock scouting, and never hire so many guards that food collapses.

Full-release runs did show hard numbers for the hire button: 600 food + 100 iron per soldier, with food/iron (later gold) upkeep. The first military quest is build a Guard House and train 5 guards around 200 population. A later story beat asked for 120 soldiers before fighting Ashenhold, then 200 in the diplomacy arc. Those are quest gates, not a universal ratio.

A method instead of a fake number

Step	Check	If it fails
1	Is the next raid Trivial / Low?	Keep current army; spend on food
2	Do you have scouting?	Buy Hunting scouting before hiring blindly
3	Is the raid High or Extreme?	Hire or draft, then recheck food
4	Did the last fight make people leave?	Rebuild food first, not the next Keep upgrade

Official store: recruit soldiers as the realm expands; policies include city guard drafts. Live screenshots show a left-side army panel with unit counts. Those counts are real. A universal ratio is not.

One Challenging 100% player had only two defeats in about 10.5 hours and wished they had started on Insane. That tells you Challenging is beatable without min-maxing a viral army number. It does not tell you Insane’s required count.

From Community Gameplay

• Hire cost on the military panel: 600 food and 100 iron each. Upkeep is listed per soldier. Guards are not taken from the worker pool. (Campfire Kingdom, 42:09; K full start, 57:25)
• First quest: after ~200 population, “Build a guard house and train five guards.” First raid is a small goblin group. Trivial if you actually trained the five. (Campfire Kingdom, 37:18)
• Conscription slider. Raising the % of population drafted applies a happiness penalty (about −10% at one mid-game setting). Drop it after the wave if food is hurting. (Campfire Kingdom, 1:34:27)
• Ashenhold fight: one late run recruited 120 before the set-piece, then later 200 plus Town Guards level 5 for the Iron Rand quest. (Kingdom Part 2, 1:02:47 / 3:12:20)
• Call to Arms doubles training speed at double resource cost. Panic button, not a default.

Drafts versus hired soldiers

Policies can draft city guards. That is official. Whether a draft is cheaper than buildings, and whether drafted guards eat the same food as professional soldiers, is not yet confirmed. If gold wages already hurt — one endgame player said trade wages were so high it was better not to trade — do not assume a draft is free. See Best Policies and Tax Rate.

During the Cathedral zombie window, extra soldiers are not always the right spend. The developer said losing fights reduces later zombie spawns. Read What to Do After Cathedral before you bankrupt the hamlet for one Extreme wave.

After you can see attack and defense

Advanced Scouting is the first time a numeric comparison exists. Until a player logs those numbers against outcomes, this page will not invent “1.5× their attack.” Log your own fights: label, your count, win/loss, leavers. That log will beat any demo raid page.

Sources

• Official Steam store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4315040/
• Steam Community hub: https://steamcommunity.com/app/4315040/discussions/
• Enemy Strength thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/4315040/discussions/0/588435430711597783/
• Guard House / hire cost footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQqbBSyw6-w
• 120-soldier Ashenhold fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZbX2_stA1I

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