Buildings

Walls

Walls are the one building that gathers the defensive side of a city. They cost more than all three income buildings (Farm, Workshop, Market).

Its effects

• City HP +10
• City defense +3
• City vision +1
• Turn-start city repair +2

A city's defense power is base 3 plus the Walls' contribution, plus the Defensive line dynasty's contribution if you picked it (under that dynasty a Citadel is built in place of the Walls); its HP is 15 + 2 × population plus the Walls' contribution (Cities and population).

The vision effect is an increment: a city sees 2 steps on its own, and 3 with Walls.

Repair: the Walls' time dimension

The other three effects are static numbers — the city is harder to take, and that is all. The repair contribution gives Walls a dimension of time: once a walled city drives off a siege it recovers 4 HP per turn, against 2 for an unwalled one.

The practical difference: a walled city that survives two sieges genuinely heals in the turns between them, while an unwalled one meets the second wave at roughly the same low HP. No city repairs while under siege — Walls do not change that rule, only the speed at which it takes effect once the siege lifts (Cities and population).

When to build it

• In border cities and in your capital.
• When you see a rival producing Siege — Walls lengthen the siege and buy you the turns you need to answer.
• In a city you expect to be besieged more than once in the match: the repair contribution pays for itself between sieges.

Walls do not grow a region

When the game moved to a hex grid, the Walls' old "extends the region into the corners" effect was removed: a square grid had two kinds of adjacency (orthogonal and diagonal), a hex has one — so that effect had nothing left to mean, and Walls were gathered on the defensive side.

Regions grow by other means, none of them a building: population (the threshold is 3), buying tiles with gold, and founding another city (Territory and score). Production spent on Walls buys not the reach of your border but its durability.

Under the Defensive line: Citadel

When a seat of the Defensive line dynasty goes to build Walls, the Citadel enters the queue. The Citadel carries all four of the Walls' effects and its HP and repair are higher. A city cannot hold both; the Walls in a city that comes with a conquest stay as they are.

The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.