Vault



A vault is a structure used to store prisonpearls and exilepearls. A vault, in it's most basic form, is typically an obsidian pyramid, as this is the hardest structure to destroy. To protect this pyramid, other fortifications may be built around it, such as rings of obsidian walls, cobwebs and bastions, sometimes referred to as "nerd rings". A bunker or tower is often constructed above the vault, where supplies for fighters are stored. A large, ringed vault is often referred to as a "megavault". These vaults range in size greatly, from Varkonia's 3 ring vault, to Mir's 25 ring megavault.

History
Vaults have existed since Civcraft 1.0 after PrisonPearl was added. Vaults were effectively big obsidian pyramids that would take hours to break. As time went on vaults got more and more complex. The first ring vaults claim to have been built by a few people or groups, FAGT, Peter and Clone. However, the first ring vault to be tested in combat was Clone's vault which had two rings, the outer a conventional web ring that did not follow bastion fields and the inner, a lava ring designed to drown attackers. The Titan vault was the logical conclusion of Clone's vault - the web rings were devastating and led to the pearling of the person who later designed the Titan vault, the lava ring was useless. Later, the more advanced "megavaults" were pioneered by the world police, during and after Titan, specifically players like Diet Cola, Tealnerd and Bonkill in Civcraft 2.0. Such advanced vaults were thought to be unbreakable until the fall of Nox after a long siege towards the end of 2.0.

There was a schism in vault doctrine during and after 3.0. Diet_Cola pioneered what are now known as Cola Cubes, while others took existing nerd rings and optimized them far beyond 2.0 standards. Cola cube type vaults function as an array of bastion squares while nerd rings have overlapping bastions in an octagonal shape. The exception to this schism was Mir that continued to build linear rings optimized for space and respecting bastions in but 1 dimension rather than the two dimensional cola cubes. See the section on ring design for a deeper analysis.

Mir
Mir's vault is fully entrenched and has a modest 30+ rings, however, despite being scouted the main feature of the vault was, apparently, missed. It is surrounded by another entrenched city with all farms required for advanced XP production.

Mir's Second Mega Vault
Mir's second mega vault is fully entrenched and has a modest 10 rings and sky defences. Labelled a Folly by most Mirians due to it's proximity to the larger Mirian Hyper Vault.

Mir's Third Mega Vault
Mir's third mega vault is fully entrenched and has a modest 10 rings and sky defences. Labelled a Folly by most Mirians due to it's proximity to the larger Mirian Hyper Vault.

Hallow
A large vault near North West World border of roughly 10-12 rings. A wide trench is currently being dug around the vault. The Trench is some distance from the vault allowing for room to expand. Hallow's vault's distinguishing feature is its snitch curtain. The curtain is densely packed for redundancy.

HJE
Located at west world border, and thus named the Best Western Hotel. It has 9 rings. An evolution of Lexington's vault design.

Hjaltland
Hjaltland has their main vault around 3000, 9000, considered to be the single greatest concentration of wealth on the server. It is fully entrenched and has 12 rings. Construction began launch week of CivClassic, making it the oldest known existent vault on the server. Known as the "HjaltVault".

Hjaltland South
Located at the south pole in Hjaltland land, unknown vault size in a 500 by 200 block hole in the ground. By vault hole area, it is the largest on the server. Known as "Eternity".

New Yoahtl City
A large 6 ring vault in the sea east of NYC, located a few hundred blocks East of NYC.

Coventhia
A large 9 ring fully trenched vault approximately 500 blocks west of Frostrock Valley, known as the "Ice Box", "FrostVault", or simply ⒹⒶ ⓋⒶⓊⓁⓉ.

Columbia
Sempiternal Vault is a medium 4 ring vault, built in the style of nerd rings. It consists currently of a ground bunker, sky bunker, and 3 external rings, as well as a partially complete snitch curtain. It is currently disabled and abandoned, though not destroyed, after the events of The Second Siege of Sempiternal. More images of Columbia vault before the war can be found here

Anguish (Destroyed)
Anguish's vault was located 1000 blocks north of the east world border, close to the Mir Vault. It used the same square nerd rings old Aegis are fond of and copied Ruin's (of Devoted) archer rings. Fell to Mir and WA early on in the Somber war.

Lexington (Destroyed)
Lexington's vault was located at North world border, has a 300 block radius trench surrounding it. This vault was the collective effort of a few Lexington players, but mostly taking influence from Aegis designers (most notably the ring layout). It was broken by SATO/Mir at the end of the Somber War, in the Fall of Lexington. It had 8 rings and two separate snitch curtains.

Admin Dsclouse took an album of screenshots of the vault attack, showcasing angles of an attack not normally player accessible.

USA North (Destroyed)
Nicknamed the TeaCup, it was broken by Hjaltland and Mir one week after Lexington's in an act of vigilante justice from fake leaks, currently occupied by the Chanseatic State. It had 4 rings.

USA South (Abandoned)
Abandoned and deconstructed to build the USA North Vault by Poortea and PowKitty. Stolen by ashnwill using parkertehpwner's group permissions. It had 4 rings.

Commonwealth/Hexcorp (Abandoned)
A private venture, left to decay after Hexcorp CEO SerQwaez was pearled defending it. Located south of what is now MTA. Abandoned after several attacks from Bewsiej and other Lexington members. It has 5 rings/layers of cubes and is currently broken and bastionless after an alt raid from a banned player. Known as the "Iron Bank".

Vítelia (Destroyed)
A 4 ring vault in a large hole, destroyed by Mir/SATO coalition on January 8th, 2019 after it had been abandoned.

Rhodesia (Destroyed)
Was a vault named "Heaven's Gate" hidden by a massive trench, alongside a city, sitting at the South West world corner. Map data indicates it has 8-10 rings, with the outer rings in varying states of construction. The vault sits diagonally along world border. To the north and east cardinal there is a large skybunker before the trench. Similarly the corner of the trench has the same skybunker positioned just within. Disabled and destroyed by Mir/HJ/SATO coalition during the Mir-NATO war.

Hotel California (Destroyed)
Was a vault being made by ashnwill as part of the Latvian Soccer Dogs (LSD) alliance. This was destroyed and a nearby town raided by a joint force of Entente and SATO fighters on the 7th of September 2019 after ashnwill had quit without adding other LSD members to the vault groups, causing them to be unable to defend.

Characteristics of a vault
A three part DevotedMC series, though somewhat outdated, offers a video explanation of foundational vault mechanics.

Pyramid
The diamond reinforced obsidian blocks surrounding the chest to hold pearls. Pyramids/tall pyramids are the best way to store pearls as it can take quite some time to break through the blocks to reach the chest.

Rings
Rings prevent a player from walking over to a pyramid by being a physical wall they cannot break through easily. Ideally a player cannot place blocks to pillar over these rings due to bastion blocks.

The most complete original ring vault was Titan where the bastion fields didn't follow the ring walls (or perhaps it was built incorrectly). The most important innovation since was to outline the bastion field perfectly with the ring wall. This was realised independently by Mir and Tealnerd during the aftermath of the Titan war. All subsequent vaults have followed this concept. It is effective as it means attackers have to be inside the ring, standing over the edge of the ring, or placing through an IRO hole they've broken in order to break the bastion all of which are either exceedingly dangerous or easy to counter.

Around Civcraft 3.0 bastion fields were changed from an approximation of a circle to a simple square. This caused some change in ring shape. Diet_Cola theorised Cola Cubes - fully walled bastion fields on all four faces with various traps within. Mir applied the simplest change - which was to have a square vault. Other groups, usually from the Aegis/Anguish school of vault building maintained the curved design of the rings despite having square bastions. Briefly the advantages are discussed below:

Cola Cubes - These are bastion efficient and excellent defence against a ground attack. They are very space inefficient. Few vaults use them now, however.

Mir Linear Rings - These are bastion efficient from the outside but are vulnerable to ring skipping. They are space optimised.

Curved Rings - These are neither bastion efficient or fully space optimised. It depends on the particular implementation. The advantage they do have is they provide an awkwardly shaped field for a skybridge to break. However, it is possible to determine the exact placement of the minimum number of bastions as each corner in the curve must be the corner of a bastion field. Effectively the classic nerd ring shape created by Diet_Cola during Civcraft 2.0.

Vaults outside the Lexington/Anguish/FRIENDS sphere of influence tend to use some take on linear rings. See: Coventhia, Yoahtl, etc.

Sky Bunker
A form of vault defense in the form of a floating obsidian bunker with bastions stacked below, typically situated above the vault pyramid itself. They often have built-in archer positions to help defend against an attack, and are a means of wealth storage as they are typically very difficult to get to, and break.

Ground Bunker
A bunker built around the DRO pyramid in the centre of the vault, used to store wealth and potion materials needed for defense. In most cases archer platforms are built into these bunkers and hold minecart elevators allowing people to get up into the sky bunker.

Trench
A trench is much like a moat, combined with a vault ring. They are typically the first means of defense against attackers, and ideally are large enough to prevent scouts from getting close enough to the vault itself to prevent spying and world downloading. Some well developed moats would include the former Lexington vault trench, which featured archer platforms and a very large size.

Snitch curtain
A snitch curtain, or snitch grid, is a series of snitches surrounding a vault that make it impossible for someone to pass through without hitting a snitch and notifying the vault owners of an attackers presence. These should ideally be surrounded in Stone reinforced obsidian, to prevent the snitches from being broken by a TNT cannon.

Resources
A thread containing vault pictures from Civclassic and prior to Civclassic can be found here