Combolands Walls, Terrain & Plateaus
Terrain pieces and their placement counts
Placement counts are how many of each piece a single card gives you. All the numbers below come from Next Fest demo patch notes in April and June 2026 — the developers have not restated them since the 1.0 progression overhaul, so treat them as the last published values rather than as current gospel.
| Piece | Placements (last published) | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Wall | 5 → 6 (demo v8) | The enclosure piece. Community guide coverage stresses that walls only pay off when the area they surround is properly closed — a gap is not a smaller bonus, it is no bonus. |
| Palisade | 7 → 9 (demo v8) | The cheaper, more plentiful enclosure piece — nearly twice as many placements as walls. |
| Plateau | 3 → 4 (demo v6), 4 → 5 (demo v8) | Raised terrain. Since v1.0.4 you cannot build plateaus on plateaus. Stockpile scores from Plateau correctly as of the same patch, and removing a Watch Tower creates trees on plateaus as of v1.0.6. |
| Railway / Rail | 2 → 3 (demo v6), 3 → 4 (demo v8) | Connection piece. Its card says anything connected to one part of the railway is connected to all of it; what that means for range effects has not been authoritatively answered. |
| Scaffolding | — | Its text mentions a mult bonus for buildings placed on top of it, but a launch-week player reports being unable to place anything on it. Unconfirmed. |
The tile types
| Tile | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Grass | The default buildable surface, and most of a generated island. |
| Sand | The beach ring. Citizens spawn on sand tiles as well as from Martial buildings, as of demo v9. |
| Rock | Mine must be built adjacent to rock, which is what makes the Industrial chain map-dependent. |
| Shallow water | The pale band around the island. Part of the Maritime guild’s buildable area. |
| Deep sea | The rest of the map. Also Maritime’s territory — every building in that guild is water-only. |
| Plateau | Raised ground you create. Cannot be stacked on itself since v1.0.4. |
Why the island shape decides your run
Maps have been procedurally generated since the second demo, and demo v9 explicitly improved the generator "to make bigger islands". That makes terrain a constraint you draft around rather than a fixed layout you memorise:
- Maritime can only build on sea and shallow water, so an island with a long coastline is worth far more to it than a fat one.
- Industrial needs rock adjacency for Mine, so a rockless island cuts the front of its production chain.
- Pairing Maritime with a land guild means the two halves of your build barely compete for tiles — one of the reasons players describe Maritime as consistent "no matter what partner".
Removal is a terrain tool too
Because Martial scores off removals and gives consistent demolish access, knocking down your own buildings is a normal part of shaping the board rather than a mistake. Removing a Watch Tower even puts trees back on plateaus. The scoring page covers which buildings pay you for that.
Terrain data re-checked: