The Living World
The autonomous simulation isn’t your backdrop — it’s your opportunity surface. It runs a coherent history with or without any player. Every system becomes terrain you read.
One model, two (now three) tempos
Section titled “One model, two (now three) tempos”The same engine and the same entity schema run:
- an offline historical simulation (centuries compressed) to seed a believable starting world,
- a live single-world simulation, and
- live multiplayer, with many players acting at once.
The unified data model is the constraint everything bends around. (How abstract statistical resolution stays faithful to concrete real-time execution is a key technical question, deferred to the Design Status “circle back” pass.)
The opportunity surface
Section titled “The opportunity surface”| The world does this on its own… | …which you read as |
|---|---|
| Emergent demand & prices | Where the money is — and where it’s about to be |
| Knowledge geography (who knows what, what’s makeable where) | What a region can’t yet make — and what you could be first to bring or invent |
| The five tiers of prosperity | The ladder of your own rise, and the shape of everyone’s wants |
| Conviction & doctrine conflict | Cultural fault lines to navigate, broker, or exploit |
”On rails” — clarified
Section titled “”On rails” — clarified”The autonomous sim is a coherent, self-sustaining baseline — that’s what “on rails” means. It does not mean unchangeable. Players are the primary, un-railed historical agents who act faster, bolder, and at larger scale than NPCs ever do. The world is the stage; the play runs without you; you walk on and change the scene anyway.
→ The canvas is made of three meme-driven facets: the Economy, Culture, and Politics.