There are over 600 communities in the Savage Frontier. Each community is located in its own hexagon. Over 60 communities are known to all realms (these show up on the map) but are owned by no player at the start of each campaign. The remaining communities must be found by exploration. The following paragraphs list the characteristics of communities. These characteristics vary according to the type of the community.

Gold Production: Depending on its size, each of your realm's communities contribute a certain amount of gold to your realm's treasury each game turn. This gold can be used on the next turn to help build new units, craft items, etc. (or it can be saved for use on a later turn). One of the orders you can give (Invest) increases the gold production of a community, to the maximum possible for that type of the community.

Builds Per Turn: Each community is capable of building certain units and items each turn, assuming your realm has the gold to pay for them. Your Status Report lists which units and items can be built at each of your communities. The list of community types states how many items and how many units can normally be produced each turn in a community. Summoning an Avatar uses up all of a community's production for that turn.

Each time you build a unit at a community, you lower the gold production of the community by 1. This loss can be recovered by reinvesting. If a community tries to exceed its monthly limit for building units, each unit above the limit lowers the community's gold production by even more. The first unit over the limit, the community's gold production is lowered by 2, the second unit over the limit lowers it by 3, and so on. If building a unit would lower the gold production of a community below 0 (zero), the order fails.

Though a community must have at least 1 gold production to craft an item, crafting items does not lower the community's gold production. If a community tries to exceed its monthly limit for crafting items, no additional items will be crafted.

Order Bonus: Each community adds a certain number of orders to the base of 10 orders that each realm receives. The number of orders a community adds depends on its size. Fractions of half or more are always rounded up. For example, each village adds a bonus of 1/2 order. Therefore a player who has five villages gets to issue 13 orders (10 plus 2 1/2, rounded up) in a game month.

Information Radius: The people of communities tend to notice forces that reside nearby. The owner of a community will be informed of any armies that reside within the community's information radius at the end of the turn. The community's information radius also helps sight a pursued enemy unit.

Race: Communities contain only one race that is available to be mustered into the military forces of your realm. While many races may dwell at a particular community, only one race is listed on your turn reports for that community, and you can build units of only that race. Certain races hold deep hatreds for other races and cannot be placed together in the same group. Dwarves and orcs, for example, never work together; they usually attack each other on sight.

Defense: Communities have no defense of their own. To protect a community, you must either place an army in the community's hexagon or build garrison units in the community. A community without an army or garrison protecting it is taken over by the first unallied army to enter its hexagon. All communities of town size or above grant bonuses to the combat abilities of the armies and garrisons that guard them; the larger the community, the greater the bonuses.

Builds per Turn Example: The Destiny Shields player wants to build up fast. At the village of Yellow Stones, he conscripts four skirmisher units: C201 CONSCRIPT UT93. Since a village's unit production limit is two, he's exceeded that limit. Yellow Stones starts out with a gold production of 8. The first two units produced reduce Yellow Stones' monthly gold production by 1 each (it's now down to 6). The third unit (the first one over the limit) reduces Yellow Stones' production by 2 (it's now down to 4). The fourth unit produced reduces the village's production by 3 (it's now down to 1).

Realizing that he's really crippled the economy of Yellow Stones, the Destiny Shields player uses the Invest order to build it partially back up: C201 INVEST 15. He invests 15 gold in Yellow Stones, adding 3 to its gold production, so it will produce 4 gold at the end of the turn for his treasury. Even though this is only half of the village's starting production, the Destiny Shields player figures that he needs the units now, and he can rebuild Yellow Stones' economy over the next couple of turns.