Oven

The Oven is where flour from the Mill is processed into bread for your villagers and, consequently, it determines how many villagers can survive at a time in your village. Increasing the level of the Oven increases the base food supply as well as your village's population limit.

Function
The Oven determines the maximum number of Villagers that can exist in a town, that is its population limit. Unlike resources, Villagers do not go away once used, they get "employed" instead. So it is vital to increase population limit to have access to more Villagers for constructions and the army. The Oven is made available at level 1 when starting with a new account or when a new village is taken over.

First a free tip! Never degrade your Oven. Degrading an over results in reduction of population capacity of your village which in turn may result in auto-degradation of some of your other Village Buildings. And if that isn’t enough, your barrack may also auto-degrade in this process resulting in dismissal of some of your standing troops. Here is an example to help you understand more: let’s say your current oven level is 2 allowing 137 villagers maximum and you’re current free villager count reads as 0 (zero) as all of the 137 have been already employed in buildings and in troops. Now if you degrade your Oven back to level-1 your village’s population capacity reduces to 100. So to compensate for the sudden loss in cap (137-100 = 37) some of your other building levels can be auto degraded. This degradation is done according to the Building priority order.