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For the next game I'm considering including a shield ability for player towers. The way it would work is that players could use any number of normal actions to reinforce their shield instead of targeting a tile, and each shield would absorb one attack. Towers would start with 0 shields, so if a person had one action and devoted their first two turns to building their shield, they would have 2 shields capable of absorbing 2 attacks...but as a trade-off they wouldn't be exploring the map for those turns and could possibly be missing out on items, artifacts, and the permanent action bonus of eliminating another player.

On the other hand, players would be allowed to use multiple actions on the same turn to target the same tile, which would allow them to drain a tower's shields faster.

I think this would add more variety and depth to the game, and give players more strategic options...they would have a second default action they could take, and defense would no longer rely only on not being found out. If someone had devoted a lot of their resources to shields, they could remain in the game for a decent period of time once discovered, even if they were targeted by all other players.

Any thoughts?

Maybe set a cap on it (e.g. 5 stacks of shields, then you can't build up any more) to prevent people focusing too much on defensive play, but then complement it with an item that lets you raise your maximum shield capacity, or like a consumable that raises 5 stacks of shields immediately.

I'm not sure how I feel about caps, given that there's already a trade-off involved in not exploring the board and missing out on the buffs on there. There may be items in the future that make attacks more effective against shields, or items that buff shields, but at this point I'm still focusing on major additions and changes to the next game.

Well essentially what I'm saying is, from a game design perspective, shields make an attack on someone kind of not worth it - either they build it up at the same rate you tear it down, or other people join in, which puts you at risk of just being the schmuck who's damaging the shields, as opposed to being the guy who gets the actual final killing blow, and the rewards that go with it.
A coordinated alliance can pull it off - but unless you predetermine the order in which attacks land (which is further complicated by some people potentially having multiple attacks), there's nothing stopping two alliances from going at it, leaving 1) one party unhappy, because they won't get the benefits of their attacks, and perhaps more importantly 2) having someone feel like they got dogpiled.