The Citadel Must Hold

Build a fortress-city, explore a dangerous wilderness, and hold against increasingly deadly Monster Tides. The Citadel Must Hold is a base-building survival RTS where pausable real-time battles, hero-led exploration, and powerful choices shape every game.

Grow a settlement around the Citadel Heart. Secure resources, expand production, train soldiers, and surround your city with walls, gates, and defense towers. Every expansion makes you stronger, but pushes your borders farther into dangerous territory and gives you more ground to protect.

Send your hero and army into the fog-covered wilderness between Monster Tides. Explore distinct biomes, discover valuable resources, and confront guarded Places of Power.
Places of Power threaten nearby holdings with raiding parties until their guardians are defeated. Venture out, clear the site, stop its raids, and choose a powerful reward.
These rewards can transform a run: recruit monsters such as Griffins and Drakes to fight for you, strengthen your hero, army, buildings or economy, create permanent battlefield effects, or even reshape the map itself by growing forests and mountains where you choose.

Between Monster Tides, build, explore, expand, and deal with raids from uncleared Places of Power. Prepare your defenses while deciding how far you can afford to push into the wilderness before the next Tide arrives.
Then the horns sound and the wilderness descends upon your gates.
Position your hero and soldiers at critical chokepoints, garrison your towers, and reinforce threatened walls. Every Tide is larger and more dangerous than the last. Pause the battle to assess the field, issue orders, and react when monsters break through.
Adapt when your defenses fail, and hold the Citadel against everything the world sends at it.

Begin each game by choosing a Founding Oath that can fundamentally change how you build and fight. Make your hero legendary, but give up the ability to train other units. Empower your army, but abandon walls entirely. Or choose a less restrictive blessing and build around its strengths.
After every Monster Tide you survive, choose a Rally Decree to reinforce your strategy, cover a weakness, or push your forces further toward a specialized build.