Farthest Frontier: How I Hit 500 Population with No Walls
By goukijones —
October 7, 2026
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blog
farthest-frontier
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It took about 50 days. A guy came into chat and asked what day I was on. I told him 75. He asked what difficulty. I said the middle one, Normal, because I was still learning and literally my first playthru. His last message was “Garbage” and then he left.
That was my introduction to the game. A few days later I found out there was a challenge for reaching 500 population without building walls. It sounded like something I could pull off.
The thing that actually carries a run is the trading post. You sell what you can make and buy what you need. A lot of production is locked until you buy the first stock of something from a merchant. Once you own it, you can make it yourself, and life gets easier for the village. There are a few humps on the way there, like you need 2 horses to breed 1. After you buy the items you need the first time, the town mostly runs itself.
Early on, search your map and look for deep resource nodes, especially gold. The rest depends on the map and what your town is short on. Gold is the one you always need. It pays the upkeep on soldiers and towers. If you can’t mine gold, then sell items for gold.
Build plenty of lookout towers, and keep them tight around the town center. When a raid gets bad, that building is the last line. Garrison it and fight from there. Villagers take time to arm up and reach their posts, so the moment you see an attack coming, put people in the towers and in the town center.
You’ll want a barracks later, but you don’t need soldiers sitting in it all the time. They cost gold every day. Fill it when an attack is on the way. Cavalry works the same way. Build the cavalry building, then a horse farm. The first two horses come from trade, so watch the merchants for them. They start breeding right away. When you assign cavalry as bandits show up, the villagers still have to grab a horse and weapons, so don’t wait until the ram is at the door. They’re useful for scouting the rest of the map, and best for killing battering rams and trebuchets.
Once the defense is in place, the rest is housing. Keep building shelters, upgrade the town center, then upgrade the houses. All of that is doable by or around day 50.
If a raid is about to overwhelm you, select the whole town and send them straight at the enemy. You will lose people. That’s still better than bandits stealing your gold and burning buildings. Rebuild the population and keep going.
Here’s the video of my achievement.
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