Design Status
A running map of where the design actually stands. This is the page to check before opening any other.
Status by area
Section titled “Status by area”| Area | Status |
|---|---|
| Vision & player fantasy | ✔ Decided |
| Meme types · relationships · conviction · transmission · authoring rules | ✔ Substantially designed |
| Meme discovery | 🚧 Critical-path gap |
| Economy | ◑ Core designed; recipe quantities & trade agents are gaps |
| Culture · Politics | 🚧 Foundations only |
| Entity model · triplet · tiers · satisfaction · tasks · abstract/concrete | ✔ Designed |
| Lifecycle (birth/death/inheritance) | 🚧 Referenced but not designed |
| All 8 player features | 🚧 To define |
| Worlds & multiplayer | 🚧 New pillar, undocumented |
Agreed build order
Section titled “Agreed build order”- Finish the meme mechanics (the USP — it underpins everything).
- Economic simulation.
- Cultural simulation.
- Political simulation.
- Player mechanics (Navigation, Exploration, Combat, Invention, Administration, …).
- Then server/multiplayer detail.
- Then the “circle back” technical pass.
Critical-path gaps (block the sim from functioning)
Section titled “Critical-path gaps (block the sim from functioning)”- Abstract-resolution contract — abstract statistical resolution must faithfully match concrete execution, or the tempos drift and compound. (abstract/concrete)
- Scale / perf budget — target population, settlement & concrete-entity caps, per-tick cost. Almost every mechanic has a per-capita cost that can’t be validated without this.
- AND/OR prerequisites + recipe quantities — needed before the tree and economy are actually evaluable.
- Discovery logic — without it, knowledge never changes and the meme dynamism is inert.
Smaller open questions (parked)
Section titled “Smaller open questions (parked)”- Succession triggers and what transfers (Survive & Rise).
- Household/settlement decision-making vs. the agency-in-individuals-and-factions rule.
- Social-comparison reference group; satisfaction → discretionary-task choice function.
- Conviction loss should not revoke downstream capabilities (state it explicitly).
- Long-run monetary stability; the target-price function.
- Whether there’s a “win” vs. pure open-endedness.
Deferred to the “circle back” technical pass
Section titled “Deferred to the “circle back” technical pass”Engine subsystems, determinism & save/load, multiplayer load/sharding, numeric calibration, and an emergent-behaviour validation harness (parse checks alone can’t tell you the economy won’t collapse).