Walls are your number one line of defense in Going Medieval. You will inevitably be attacked, though the scale of the attacks grows in accordance with the size of your settlement. The more settlers you have, as well as the number of resources you've gathered, determine how large the attacks will be.

Walls provide an entire perimeter defense for your Medieval homestead. You can start out with basic wooden walls and upgrade them at a later date. This guide covers everything you need to know about how to build walls in Going Medieval.

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Updated June 23rd by Harry Alston: Going Medieval has been out for a while now and there's a better understanding of the best defenses for your new settlement, including wall designs that are effective against late-game sieges from trebuchets.

We've updated this guide to include a few more details about what to expect when you reach a high level of regional influence. Defending against swarms of trebuchets is sometimes a bit more involved than just building a big wall.

How To Defend Your Base In Going Medieval

archers on top of wall defenses going medieval

Defending your base becomes very important in Going Medieval, especially as your regional influence grows to a point that you're being attacked by a number of enemies that can easily overwhelm your seven or eight settlers. You will need walls and well-crafted defensive positions to survive.

Hills, Ramps, And Traps

Sometimes the best defense isn't a wall. If you're playing on a map that has a natural height difference, like on a mountainous map, then you have a great opportunity to use the natural lay of the land to your advantage. Ramps, staircases, and traps work brilliantly to funnel enemies through a small chokepoint.

Tips For Base Defences

  • The AI will target your settlers. Although it might seem like they go straight for objects you've built, there is a way around this. If you send a single villager out towards the raiders you can basically direct where the enemies will attack. This means you can funnel enemies into your kill zone.
  • For this kiting method to work, you need to wall off all your workstations and other crafted objects. If you don't, the AI will target those exposed objects in an attempt to draw out your defenders.
  • Height is key. Archers perform much better when placed on raised walkways and towers. It's a good idea to keep your base compact and walled off, with a separate tower area for your soldiers to inhabit while being attacked.
  • You can build a defensive fort with raised walkways. Connect different buildings with beams and place flooring over the beams. This will let your archers move around freely above so that they can always get a line of sight on attacking raiders. Place merlons in specific areas to provide cover for your archers when raiders bring ranged weapons of their own.

How To Deal With Trebuchets In Going Medieval

Trebuchets will destroy everything if left to their own devices. They're the trickiest attackers to deal with as they will sit back from the other raiders and slowly chunk away at your base.

The only real way to deal with Trebuchets is to charge them with your settlers. Once you get close the attackers will drop the siege weapons, protecting your base from further damage.

The Best Wall Design In Going Medieval

wall with merlons going medieval

At the very start of the game, building a wooden wall is your primary defense against attackers. You should construct a perimeter wall fairly early on. This will require quite a lot of wood, so you should cut down all nearby trees and set up a Birch Tree farm for a consistent amount of wood at a later date.

How To Build The Best Wooden Wall Using Merlons

There are two reasons to build a wall: to funnel your enemies to a small entrance laden with traps and to provide a height advantage for your archers.

You can build a wall and then place wooden flooring on top and to the side of the wall. This provides room for your archers to move around. Merlons along the wall provide cover for your archers. Merlons do not act as a wall themselves: enemies will walk right through them.

All you need then is a staircase leading up to the walls. You can position your archers in a good position whenever you are attacked.

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Use Traps To Your Advantage

villagers defending a gate with traps

The simple Wooden Traps and the more advanced Metal Traps will not damage your villagers. You can place them around the entrance to your fortified village, basically funneling your enemies through a small kill-zone.

Traps can be reset after they've been activated. You just need to toggle "Allowed" over the trap to let your citizens reset them. This action also falls under the Steward role, so it will need to be set to fairly high priority or it will never get done (it's very to the right of the priority list, hence it is prioritized less than roles before it.)

Ideally, you want to space out your traps so that multiple enemies will fall foul of them. They are very useful in choke points or surrounding the walls, ramps, and staircases that lead into your base. Traps need to be reset after being triggered, this is done by your Steward, so make sure to set that priority high after an attack.

Upgrading Your Walls To Withstand Trebuchet Attacks

castle in going medieval with banners and ramps

For the time being, siege weaponry is a part of Going Medieval, but according to the game's Discord, it is something that will undergo changes. Currently, Trebuchets will spawn when you reach a large raid size. These can be quite deadly and will destroy buildings with ease. They hang back very far from your base and take long-range shots that destroy buildings and walls.

That being said, you can still construct larger stone walls. These look awesome but at the time of writing have no real other purposes beyond aesthetics. Trebuchets can still tear through them quite easily, even if limestone walls are technically more effective than wooden walls. More utility will likely be added for bigger and better walls as the game undergoes further updates.

In the meantime, Trebuchets tend to attack when enemy soldiers cannot path directly to some sort of your construction. You may need to leave a hole in the wall or a door open. This will mean enemies are funneled towards your defensive position while you send out a small attacking party to defeat the Trebuchets separately.

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