Battle Nations Housing

In Battle Nations, you can build several types of Housing.  This is important to increase your population so that you have people to work in your other construction.  You can also collect taxes from your Housing.  You will be asked to build Shelter, Camp, Hovel and Bunkhouse housing as part of the campaign, but you can tear them all down after the mission and build whatever you like.  Note that the tax rate for each type of housing varies widely:

 

You'll notice that Shelters have the highest gold return per person per hour.  The per person metric is important because you will always be lvl limited for population, i.e., the game will limit how much population you can have based on your current level.  For example, a Hovel generates 75 gold every 4 hours, but a Shelter will generate up to 240 gold every 4 hours.  Even if you only check your Shelter twice an hour, you'll still get 120 gold over 4 hours.  Three Hovels costs 2,400 gold and 3 hours to build, is 15 population and generates 225 gold every 4 hours.  Five Shelters costs 250 gold and 25 seconds to build, is also 15 population and generates 600-1,200 gold over 4 hours.