Walls & shields
Defence is permanent — a wall you build stays built. What it is not is free: a wall is SCRIP you chose not to spend on growing, and it wears when it is hit.
Six fronts, all public
Your city has six fronts. SCRIP committed to a front is the wall on that front, and an attacker must beat the wall on the one front they chose — not your total. Spreading thin and stacking one gate are both real strategies.
What happens when a wall is hit
- It holds. The attack breaks. You take 30%of the attacker’s committed force and get 12 hours of quiet.
- It fails. The attacker carries off loot, and the wall takes damage proportional to what was taken rather than a flat amount. A raid that found an empty store barely scratches it.
- You want the SCRIP back. Pulling it out of a wall takes 8 hours to clear. You cannot un-arm in front of an incoming raid.
The protections you do not pay for
Shields
A shield stops raids being declared on you at all. It is bought with USDG — real money, never SCRIP — and it goes to the treasury rather than into the game economy.
| Cover | Price | Cooldown after |
|---|---|---|
| 24 hours | $15 | 3 days |
| 48 hours | $30 | 5 days |
| 7 days | $120 | 20 days |
The cooldowns are why the tiers are not simply priced per hour. Per year of cover the 48-hour and 7-day tiers cost the same; the 24-hour tier is deliberately the expensive one per hour, because it is the one you buy reactively when you see something coming.
What a shield does not do
- It ends the moment you declare a raid yourself. You cannot shelter and attack in the same breath.
- It does not stop a raid already in the air. Buying cover during the 8 hours transit does not recall an attack that is already flying.
- It is not a wall. When it lapses, whatever was on your fronts is all there is.
Sieges, and the melting reserve
While a raid is in the air against you, part of your store is reserved — it is what the attacker is coming for, and you cannot claim it out from under them. That is the point of the warning being long.
If the attacker never opens the raid, it is written off after 24 hours and the whole reserve melts back to you over 6 hours. No abandonment tax, nothing to the treasury. A declared-and-forgotten siege costs the attacker their gas and buys them nothing.
Reading your own exposure
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Safe | No raid inbound, walls standing. |
| Shielded | Paid cover in force. Ends if you attack. |
| Immune | New account, under $1,000. |
| Inbound | An attack lands within 8 hours. Claim, then reinforce. |
| Sealed | Within 15 minutes of impact. Walls can no longer move. |
| Undefended | Nothing on any front. Anyone above the size floor can take the store. |
The dateline in the app carries this state on every screen, and defenceOf exposes it on-chain for anyone who wants to read it directly.