WORLD

The Sunken Arcology

The Arcology is an instanced climb. You take commanders in, fight up through 20 floors, and every floor you clear costs you the troops it cost, permanently, for the rest of the run.

An instance lasts 1 hour.

Attrition is the whole design

Your squads are not restored between floors. Casualties stay lost until you leave, so the question on every floor is not "can I win this" but "can I win this and still have an army four floors from now".

Retrying a floor fights it again with whatever survived the last attempt. It is not a free re-roll.

Choice floors

Floors 3, 8, 13, 18 offer a choice of route. One side is safer, the other pays better and hits harder. A choice you take applies a run modifier that buffs exactly one unit element, the element of the enemy that offered it, so a modifier is only worth taking if your squad can actually use it.

Milestones

Floors 5, 10, 15, 20 pay a cache. Those are the floors worth pushing to even on a bad run, and the reason stopping one floor short of a milestone stings more than the floor itself cost.

Leaving

You can exit at any time and keep what you have earned. Exiting credits the floor you just cleared, so finishing a fight before you leave is never wasted.