Citadel and Prestige
How a settlement is won or lost, what the difficulty chain adds, and what seals ask for.
Winning and losing
A settlement is won on reputation. It is lost when the Queen's impatience bar fills and the grace period that follows runs out, or when every villager is gone, or when you abandon.
The biome and the difficulty together set both bars at embark and determine how much reputation you need, how much impatience ends you, and how fast impatience accrues. The two are linked, because every point of reputation you gain also pushes the impatience bar back down.
The difficulty chain
The standard difficulties are Settler, Pioneer, Veteran and Viceroy, followed by Prestige I through XX. Blightrot is disabled on Settler and Pioneer and active from Veteran in a normal settlement. Each difficulty has its own reward, experience and score multipliers and modifiers. How far a field sits from the Citadel affects the difficulties available there.
Seals
On a sealed field, victory comes from completing the seal rather than earning reputation. A seal building holds kits, each kit a set of alternative orders: finishing one cancels the rest and pays the kit reward, and the last kit completed wins the seal. You can hold three seal contracts at once.
Between settlements
What you carry between runs lives in the Citadel: upgrades bought with what you bring home, and the goals that unlock them. Cornerstone offers follow the biome’s seasonal reward schedule. Reputation unlocks blueprint choices during the settlement.