1. Yes.

2. Minimal. No. See Town Hall Statistics tab / View bonuses for a list.

Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my post. I will let my Order know. We have learned a lot since I first made the post. We have gone on to take control of our Kingdom's Eternal Stronghold. And we are now growing. Our Kingdom is so new that we haven't gotten to participate in an OvO or KvK yet. I can't wait for it to happen though!

KingOfNothing said:

The citadel can be very useful in the KvK and OvO events.  When you transform resources, you can get 35.000/50.000/75.000 points for each unit.  Example: if you transform 20.000.000 food in 2.000 rations, you get 35.000 * 2.000 = 70.000.000 points; the process is 4 weeks long, so you have to carefully plan the transformation.  Also a building upgrading is a source of points: if the factor is 20, a building that increase the citadel's power of 100.000.000 can give you 100.000.000 * 20 = 2.000.000.000 point in the event.

You failed to mention that if your order can do this, you can count on the enemy order order also doing so. And thus if you do not, you will most certainly lose. So if you cannot put in 80M of each RSS into your Citadel on at least a weekly basis, it is arguable that this aspect of the Citadel is useless.

As OvO attempts to mate approximately equal opponents, without a Citadel you are usually pitted against an opponent also without a Citadel, so this waste is avoided. Assumption: you are making good and better use of this RSS to grow yourself, for the day when you do have this excess to give to the Citadel. [i.e. Years.]

You also fail to mention that Citadel building and study upgrades takes many M's of RSS in and of themselves, and most take many weeks to complete. Max. building level is currently 3 (game limitation). Studies often have 10 levels as do one's own, each taking this RSS and weeks to complete. Again, if you haven't maxed out your Citadel, the enemy certainly has or is well on its way to doing so, and being an older kingdom has had more time to do so.

Moral(s):

(1) If you are looking for Arsenal equipment, don't hesitate to jump into a welcoming order that has crafted it, to build what you are looking for. [It can be helpful to have all equipment and material prerequisites in place before you do so. Citadel boosts will help too - return the Order's favour to you by helping boost their Citadel processes.]

(2) Join and amalgamate with the biggest order you can, and encourage the rest of your k to join you, so that collectively you can help each other, and collectively you have excess to complete and grow the Citadel as quickly as possible. For your opponents surely are.

Don't forget that at a lower tier, say an order without a citadel, their event checkpoints are also lower. So the same effort, without a citadel, will net you nearly the same gold and rewards, without the expense of the Citadel. My order has a well developed Level 2 Citadel, so is Second League for OvO, but First League for KvKr. I know of another order of 2 players, without Citadel, which is in the Sixth League. Checkpoint levels are lower in each than First League.

Citadels are too expensive to begin one when any other order in your k already has one - join them and help them build theirs, rather than having to do it entirely yourself. With Citadels at level 3 now, and many orders aggressively pursuing their raising at stupefying expense, only start your own instead after a great deal of discussion and mutual agreement.

I think we have pretty much figured it all out. I have learned A LOT in the short time i have been playing this game. I have been porting the excess Silver that i get from controlling our Eternal Stronghold into the citadel, so we are good on Silver. I also am able to send around 100M of all the other resources to the citadel every other day. That is just me alone. We have done several studies and crafted a few pieces of equipment already, but we have been waiting for this Order War to upgrade the buildings. Reaching the checkpoints in the tournaments are not an issue for my Order. The citadel has helped a bit in gaining points in the Order War, but I think killing apostates and assailiants has been the most beneficial for our Order.

By the way, you do not get points for doing anything with the citadel in Kingdom Wars. I am not sure about Kingdom Wars: Retribution. 

Correct: Only OvO brings points from Citadel activities.

So, immediately after OvO, set transformations going, to complete during the next OvO, just under 1 week later.

As you noted with buildings, so too with studies - once started, if they are going to complete between OvO's, boost them to complete during the prior OvO. This is a very popular strategy, timed to end seconds before OvO end. This is called 'Citadel Bombing'. More than a few times we have fallen victim to this, when the enemy suddenly gained billions of points out of nowhere.

Note that completing technology creation brings no OvO points. Be sure you don't care about points before using citadel boosts on technologies. [Technologies take so long you will have to use boosts.]

Often orders invite players of other orders to join them temporarily to craft technologies they have created. Asking only for a donation to their Citadel (e.g. Silver) as that player can afford. Stronger players of any order in a kingdom make it more likely that KvK/r wil be won, benefiting all.

Looking at my own Citadel, the cost for raising the Town Hall from level 2 to level 3 is 188K Rations, 236K Planks, 80.0K Cast Iron, 236K Marble, 48.0K Tokens, 800 Draftings. That's 94, 118, 40, 118, 24 transformations. At one transformation each per week, it will take more than 2 years before you will have enough. And that's without doing anything else, like studies or technologies.

Note that is K, thousands of each, and those are converted resources. So multiply each by something like 35 to figure out how much input resources will be needed. So, something like 6.5B, 8.3B, 2.8B, 8.3B, 1.7B input rss down the Citadel Drain, just to raise one building one level. Only 9 more buildings to go after that - for each level. Now suppose you used that rss on your own economic studies to improve your production, and send it all to a fellow order member, and they do the same. (Then everyone sends everything to the Citadel, having raised themselves and everyone else to be as strong and successful as possible.)

As said, given the expense, best to group as many players together in the fewest number of citadels, to spread the cost as widely as possible.