Part of the Troops Series:
- Troops and Combat Hub: Understand your army.
- Settlement Protection: Prevent another loss while recovering.
Quick Answer
Start with the battle report. Lightly wounded, hospitalized, enlisted and permanently lost troops are different outcomes. Hospital healing handles hospitalized troops; the Enlistment Office handles only qualifying losses. It does not return a fixed percentage of every soldier who disappears from your marching army.
The standard Enlistment rule describes recovery of 70% of eligible Hospital-overflow losses, subject to available Enlistment capacity. That is not a promise to restore 70% of all attack casualties. Research such as Potent Healing can improve recovery-related benefits, so check your own displayed rate and limits. Event-specific revival systems have their own eligibility and deadlines.
Find Where Your Troops Went
Before training replacements, reconcile these locations:
| What you see | Where to look | Next action |
|---|---|---|
| A march has not returned | March list, gathering and reinforcements | Recall it if appropriate and wait for arrival |
| Lightly wounded in a report | The returning march | These recover automatically when it returns |
| Wounded or heavily wounded | Hospital | Heal the listed troops |
| Eligible losses beyond Hospital room | Enlistment Office | Check recruits, capacity and Duty |
| An event revival allocation | That event's recovery screen | Follow its recovery rules before its deadline |
| Killed troops with no eligible recovery | Report and relevant event rules | Plan replacements; Hospital healing cannot restore them |
Compare the same troop types and tiers. A total-power drop is not itself a count of permanently dead soldiers: absent or wounded troops can affect what you see. Record the report before beginning recovery if you need to explain a discrepancy to support.
Why the Enlistment Office Can Be Empty
Three checks resolve much of the confusion:
- Battle type: attacking another player's settlement can produce permanent deaths that do not qualify for ordinary Enlistment.
- Hospital overflow: eligible casualties that fit in the Hospital belong there first. An empty Enlistment list can mean they are waiting for healing.
- Available capacity: recovery is limited by the room available in the relevant system when losses occur.
Here is an illustrative calculation. Suppose a qualifying defensive battle produces 10,000 overflow losses after Hospital space is used, the standard 70% rule applies, and Enlistment has sufficient room. That would mean 7,000 eligible recruits, not 70% of the whole army or 70% of every casualty in the report. If your situation differs, that calculation cannot predict your result.
Avoid applying one rule to Capital fights, settlement attacks and every event battlefield. Read the mode's injury rules before committing troops. The SvS guide and Reservoir Raid guide cover different battle environments.
If the totals do not reconcile, use the battle report walkthrough to separate survivors, light wounds, hospitalization and killed troops. An eligible recovery allocation can be a subset of losses already counted; adding it as another independent casualty category double-counts those troops.
Recovering Through Duty
The Enlistment Office becomes available through early HQ progression, historically at HQ 10. Eligible enlisted troops are recovered using Duty. Its capacity is connected to Hospital capacity and applicable bonuses; do not treat one old maximum-capacity screenshot as your account's limit.
Duty accumulates while there are recruits to recover, and additional Duty can come through daily reward crates and resource gathering. The accumulation rate is affected by the recovery situation: a fuller Hospital and more unspent Duty can slow it, while the number awaiting recruitment also matters.
Use a practical recovery loop:
- Claim the troops you can already recruit.
- Heal hospitalized troops to free room and reduce the backlog.
- Complete normal daily activities and claim their rewards.
- Gather when it is safe and useful for your recovery resources.
- Return to the Enlistment screen and spend available Duty before assuming the rate is stuck.
A lower hourly Duty number near the end of recovery does not automatically indicate a bug. Compare remaining recruits, hospitalized troops and stored Duty with your earlier screenshot.
Healing With Alliance Help
An active alliance can make small healing batches practical. The right batch size depends on your healing speed, troop tier, applicable buffs and how many members are pressing Help at that moment.
Start with a small test batch and request help. If it finishes promptly through alliance assistance, repeat at a comfortable size. If helpers have logged off and the queue is barely moving, change your plan. A batch copied from a stronger account's video may leave your Hospital occupied for much longer.
During a fight, appoint someone to watch hospital room and call pauses. You need space for the next attack, not just enough resources eventually to clear the current queue. Stop joining when you cannot absorb another plausible casualty wave. The resource management guide helps budget recovery without opening every resource item at once.
What to Prioritize After Being Zeroed
First establish protection appropriate to your location and current restrictions. Repeated attacks can turn a manageable recovery into a larger loss. Then heal enough troops to restore your essential daily marches and useful alliance participation.
Do not immediately retrain a large army while leaving recoverable high-tier troops unclaimed. Compare the actual resources and time for healing, Enlistment recovery and new training. Keep a reserve for another Hospital queue rather than spending the entire inventory on replacement power.
If a revival event is active, write down its deadline and eligible loss pool separately. A high recovery percentage advertised for that event does not change ordinary Enlistment rules everywhere else.
The Chief Talents guide explains Instant Healing and Emergency Dressing. Emergency Dressing is a partial conversion with a Hospital-space requirement, not a guarantee against every death.
FAQ
Do troops in the normal Hospital die if I leave them there? Ordinary hospitalized troops wait for healing; they do not have a normal countdown to death. The danger is reduced room for later casualties. Separate event recovery offers can expire.
Why did healing not restore my original troop count? Check marches, reinforcements, the Enlistment Office and the report's killed count. Healing resolves the Hospital queue only.
Does Enlistment recover 70% of every attack loss? No. The standard percentage applies to eligible overflow losses with sufficient capacity. Settlement-attack deaths are an important exception.
What is the best healing batch size? Test against the help your alliance is actually supplying. There is no single troop count that fits every tier, account and attendance level.
Key Takeaways
- Read casualty categories before deciding how many troops need replacing.
- Check eligibility and available room before using a recovery percentage.
- Heal and recruit steadily, with protection and the next battle in mind.