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 Varkonias 3 ring vault, to Mirs 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 more advanced "megavaults" were pioneered by the nation of FAGT in Civcraft 2.0. Such advanced vaults were thought to be unbreakable until the fall of Nox after a long seige 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 optimised 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.
Standing Vaults
Mir
Mir's vault is fully entrenched and has 25 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.
Hallow
A large vault near North West World border of roughly 12-15 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.
Falstadt North
Falstadt has a main vault around 3000, 9000, considered to be the single greatest concentration of wealth on the server. It is fully entrenched and is said to have 8 rings.
Falstadt South
Located around South world border in Falstadt 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.
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 ⒹⒶ ⓋⒶⓊⓁⓉ.
Varkonia
Currently has 3 rings with trenches fully dug and trench IRO being installed.
Rhodesia
A vault named "Heaven's Gate" hidden by a massive trenched in city, sitting at the South West world corner, rumored to be large and very wealthy. 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.
Columbia
A medium sized, 5 ring vault. Its name is Sempiternal Vault.
Other Vaults
Anguish (Destroyed)
Anguish's vault was located 1000 blocks north of the east world border, close to the Mir Vault. It followed the Ruin school of vault design. 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 also followed the Ruin school of vault design, although some of the weaknesses were fixed. It was broken by SATO/Mir at the end of the Somber War, in the Fall of Lexington. It had 8 rings.
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 Ashnwil using ParkerTehPwners group permissions. It had 4 rings.
Commonwealth (Abandoned)
Left to decay by the nation, located south of MTA. Abandoned after several attacks from Bewsiej and other Lexington members. It has 5 rings and is currently broken bastionless after an alt raid from a banned player.
Vítelia (Destroyed)
A 4 ring vault in a large hole, destroyed by Mir/SATO coalition on January 8th, 2019 after it had been abandoned.
Characteristics of a vault
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 only major innovation since was to outline the bastion field perfectly with the ring wall. This was realised independently by Mir and Tealnerd during 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 Ruin/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.
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.
Sky Bunker
A form of vault defense in the form of a bastioned obsidian bunker typically above the vault pyramid itself. They often have built-in archer platforms 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 passthrough 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.