Just played a raid, manned my towers, and they didn’t do anything. Checked the towers and the occupants were baking, gathering greens, resting, visiting neighbours, etc, anything but garrisoning. This has happened before but it was individual towers, not the whole lot. I’m at T3, 21 turns into the game.
Can you take a picture of that moment?
When you place the order in the watchtower, the villagers are ordered to find bows and swords. If the distance is too far, it is normal for them not to reach the watchtower before the raider arrives
If you man a tower, the guy who will man it, needs to get his sword/bow first before he will actually man the tower. So it doesn´t work to build a tower, get a guard, unman it and than just man it again just short before an attack.
When the tower is turned on (activated) the villager assigned, regardless of distance, is “seeking weapons” the “garrisoning” even as they are still on the ground and moving towards the tower. (I mentioned this once before, I wanted to have the description read ‘moving to garrison’, same as it reads ‘moving to destination.’) In this instance no one moved to the towers and no one manned them. Fortunately it was a small raid and they went directly for the town centre, which did arm up when the alarm was rung.
Better to just leave them in there full time. I’ve never had problems since they patched them to stop going out to stock it and meet needs
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I started a new game, this time I’m not using a 3x3 wall but a 5x5 wall around the towers, maybe that will work. I don’t know what the orientation arrow is useful for since from the image guards climb up from underneath, not the “front or back.”
Also early in the game I don’t have enough gold to keep the towers manned so it’s on/off in suspected raid years.
Until 0.9.7, that may be difficult as there’s a bug that causes buildings that normally don’t require maintenance to require them so the walls that don’t have direct access by Builders will eventually fall apart.
For most of my game, I only have up to 4 towers and a Barracks around my Town Centre bloc. 2 towers on opposite sides of each other are the bare minimum to cover any direction in the earlier game, so my hunters can pick raiders off. It’s been a bit more difficult recently as raids at that time are far more likely to try to hit the Market or cause trouble in other areas.
If you are not using it, you can turn off (stop) the watchtower. This does not cost gold
Note: it takes time for villagers to get weapons and time to move to the watchtower. You need to turn the watchtower back on as soon as you see the raid flag appear on the minimap.
What year are you in and what is your population?
After year 100, the invaders are very strong.
There was a time when 500 of them attacked my settlement of 2000 people. They destroyed 5 fortresses, about 30 watchtowers.
After that, I had to move my defenses to a higher place (+18 bonus). Be ready to activate relics that increase armor, health and damage if they are too strong.
In my current game in Arid Highlands, year 90. Hit the 1k pop cap a while ago (I dare not start games for higher pops until I upgrade my PC), and I think that I’m past the peak of the long-stored Smoked Meat wave. Got to change the 15% slower hunger relic to Boar Tusk about an hour of play ago as I was at 11 months of food.
Latr in the game you need to start getting the guards in the tower before the year changes, some of them are still seeking weapons when the raid hits. I keep track with pen and paper but the game can still catch you out, you’re either unprepared or there’s not enough gold to keep them there.
Before a raid I switch to the Eye of the Hunter and Markhovians Shard, afterwards I dismiss the guards and switch Hunter to Gildar’s Purse before creating my army. I usually don’t play beyond T4 so I have only the two relic slots.
I can get to T4 before 50 turns, I don’t play beyond that, my population seems to get to 500 or so.