SIEGE
Citadel siege
The Citadel is the centre of the map and the only permanently contested ground. It never stops. There is no lobby and no sign-up: there is a rotation, and it is always somewhere in it.
The rotation
Districts one to three each open for 3 hours. The Throne stage runs 4 hours. When the last stage closes, the rotation starts again.
5 minutes before the next district opens, every player gets a warning naming it, so your alliance has time to gather squads.
Winning a stage
Attackers queue against the district's holder. Battles resolve in order, one at a time, and the queue keeps going until one side has nothing left to send. Hold the district to the end of the stage and you keep it; take it and you hold it into the next rotation.
Capture and defence are the same result as far as scoring goes. A stage resolution pays its winner whether they took the district or held it.
Overtime. At 99% capture with enemies still fighting, the stage goes to overtime: the capturing alliance must clear the attacker queue and hold the district uncontested for 60 seconds to finish.
Squads and the lockout
One squad each. Every player may have 1 squad on the Citadel at a time, marching or queued, attack or garrison. Armory level 5 unlocks a second.
The junk lockout. An alliance that loses 12 junk battles inside 15 minutes cannot send new raids or garrisons to the Citadel for 15 minutes. Squads already in the queue keep fighting.
A junk battle is a loss by a squad using under 10% of the average leadership squads field at the Citadel over the same 15 minutes, both sides of every player battle counted. The bar moves with the fight: when big armies are out, it is higher, but one huge squad cannot lift it on its own, and a squad with 10,000 leadership or more is never junk. It is measured in leadership, not power, so a full squad of lower-tier troops is never junk. A squad is judged at the size it was sent with, so one worn down by a run of wins is not junk when it finally falls.
- Losing a real fight never counts, however many you lose. An alliance on the wrong end of a long, even war is never locked out.
- Tiny squads and alt accounts sent to soak hits, strip first strike or stall the queue are what it counts. Sending one more unit does not get under it, because the bar is set by the armies on the field, not by a fixed size.
- It applies to attackers and garrisons alike.
The Throne
Unifying districts one to three opens the Throne. It is a one-off unlock: it opens for a challenger who newly holds all three, not repeatedly for whoever is already king.
What it pays
District control pays the holding alliance continuously, and Citadel results are exactly what the Alliance Cup scores.
While a district is held, every member of the holding alliance gets its bonus:
- Outer Walls: +25% Defense
- Market Square: AMM Fee Rewards
- Power Plant: +100% Refining Speed (every refinery and Datacenter mining)
- Ashen Throne: 2x All Bonuses