This has happened a couple of times and I didn’t think anything of it, but I’m now noticing something related which is messing up my current game.
When I log in from a saved game, all the guards are reassigned as active to towers and barracks. This is even if I’ve throttled them down previously prior to having saved/logged out. It creates a run for weapons, etc. and also the monthly bill that comes with it.
Now here’s where it got interesting, tonight I had about 40 guards and 12 soldiers. All of which were decommissioned (I do this right after a raid to amp up builders/laborers for 1-2 seasons). I decommission them by clicking the minus and they go about their business on to being a laborer or solidier – however, tonight, the monthly bill is still applying and I wasn’t expecting that and didn’t plan for it accordingly w/ the trading center earlier in the year. No matter what I do, it isn’t remembering that they weren’t garrisoned and keeps putting them back in towers and barracks when I log in.
The only ones you can do that without having to pay are the soldiers. Guards charge is per tower. Doesnt matter if you have 1 or 2 inside or even if you free them, u still pay tax for the idle tower.
Sorry, what I meant to say is that the services budget stayed on every month, even when I toggled all of the roles that cost gold. I was confusing two things here, my bad. But I only noticed it because I had turned off the guards, etc. along with it and then noticed this was still charging me across everything even when nothing was turned on.
Like Maciel said though, “guards” in the people UI are a combined group of both watch tower and barracks guards. Those assigned to the watch towers will not free up gold if you release them because it is the tower itself that is charging you, not their individual salaries. So you pay the same for 0 guards as you would pay for 1 or 2. You still get the added labor force if you need it, but you are not saving any money here. The guards in the barracks however, charge you individually for their services. I like to use the barracks in places where I can either funnel raiders into or in distant locations where I know they seem to already be clustered when they arrive as it might be close to their spawn point. The barracks can hold a lot more guards and each streams their own unlimited supply of arrows. Guards in the towers also have unlimited arrows while in the tower but you can’t have more than 2 in a tower anyway.
Here’s a money making strategy I discovered and sharing it will likely cause changes if they consider this to be an exploit, but take a careful look at your markets and the kinds of buildings they can service. They receive the same gold for each building they service (green highlight) regardless of the size of the footprint for that building. Hunter shacks and harvester buildings use 6 squares while houses use 9 squares. In early game, this can be helpful to pack in more revenue from a market, but later when your houses can be upgraded high enough, they produce their own tax so you’ll likely want to start replacing those smaller buildings with houses. You don’t have to have people working in them to get paid by the market.