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Troop Training & Army Economics
Quick answers
- Is Iron Realms free to play?
- Yes. Iron Realms is free to play in any browser with no download and no account required. Every building, troop tier and Seat of Power is reachable without spending money — purchases buy speed and cosmetics, never a higher ceiling.
- Does spending money make you stronger in Iron Realms?
- No. Nothing purchasable raises your power ceiling. A charter audit runs on every build and fails it if any offer would sell power. During the pre-alpha nothing is for sale at all — better than that, the store gives its goods away: everything in it is free to take, once a day per item, while the realm is being built. When payments do open, spending will compress time only: it clears timers, it never raises the summit.
- How long does it take to max a keep in Iron Realms?
- Keeps cap at level 45 and troops at tier 13 — the same summit for everyone, and it is a campaign of many months at half an hour a day. We are not quoting a month count right now: the 2026 economy rebalance moved production, training and research costs, and the Fair Play ledger inside the game reads the current figures straight out of the shipped constants.
The single most misunderstood system in the game, because for a long time it was almost free. It is not any more. Here is exactly what a host costs to raise and to keep.
Throughput: the yard is the army
Training runs at 0.2 + 0.1 × yard level troops per second, and a tier-t troop takes 1 + (t−1) × 0.2 times as long as a tier-1 one. Put together, the time for an order is:
seconds = count × (1 + (tier−1) × 0.2) ÷ (0.2 + yardLevel × 0.1)
| Yard level | Rate | 1,000 tier-1 troops | 1,000 tier-4 troops |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.3/sec | ~55 min | ~1 h 39 m |
| 5 | 0.7/sec | ~24 min | ~43 min |
| 10 | 1.2/sec | ~14 min | ~25 min |
| 20 | 2.2/sec | ~8 min | ~14 min |
Cost: 15 food and 9 iron a head, times the tier
Every troop costs 15 food and 9 iron, multiplied by 1.35tier−1. A tier-1 thousand is 15,000 food and 9,000 iron; a tier-4 thousand is about 37,000 food and 22,000 iron; a tier-8 thousand is roughly 122,000 food and 73,000 iron.
Read that against your production — a farm pays 1.2 per level per second — and the shape of the mid-game becomes obvious: an army is a project, not a purchase. Budget for it the way you budget for a keep upgrade.
Upkeep: a host eats
Your standing army draws about 0.5 food per second per thousand troops, continuously. Ten thousand swords is 5 food a second off your harvest — which, at a modest farm, is most of it. The Food Ledger in your keep shows production, upkeep and net side by side; if the net line reads zero, your stores will never grow no matter how many farms you raise.
Winter makes both halves worse: the harvest thins and upkeep climbs. Lay in stores in autumn, and consider whether a host you are not currently using is worth feeding through the cold.
What actually speeds training
- The Training Yard's level — the divisor above, and by far the largest lever.
- VIP — +2% per level, to +30% at VIP 15, earned by logging in.
- Research — the military line's training studies.
- Your War Council — a seated commander carrying a train-speed talent (Stannis's Drillmaster, the star skill "The Mannis") now applies it. Seat them as Lord Marshal for the +15% well-suited bonus on top.
- Court titles — Master of Whisperers pays +10% training to whoever the King has named to it.
- Faith, the shrine, High Heart, world events — the Muster event is +25% on the whole category.
These add, they do not multiply, and they divide the raw seconds — so stacking a few modest ones is worth more than chasing one large one.
The practical order
- Yard level first, always. It is the divisor.
- Train the tier you can feed, not the highest one unlocked. A tier-8 host you cannot supply is a worse army than a tier-5 host you can.
- Keep an eye on the Food Ledger's net line before every large order.
- Time big musters into a Muster world event window.