The player
Levers · What the player reads · What the player never does · Where the levers stand today ·
Levers
- Fiscal: tax rate, tariffs, treasury spending, public works, the grain reserve.
- Legal: building codes (a fire code that bans thatch), schooling, conservation orders, whether density is allowed.
- Martial: garrison, walls, tribute, alliance.
- Relief: grain reserve, hospital, fire brigade, poor relief.
And one deliberately expensive lever: compulsory purchase. You can order something demolished. It costs money and legitimacy, the people in it are displaced, and the footings stay in the ground. It is the only direct edit and it is meant to feel like one.
What the player reads
A map-first interface with a guided first session, clickable places and council decisions. The Town journal reveals one detailed report at a time, with the existing keys: the city, the works, the people, the ground, the sky, the economy, the world outside, learning, the chronicle, the peoples. Lenses over the ground for territories, cultures, water, traffic, fertility, snow, and the era that laid every voxel. A launcher that holds every starting setting and keeps what you chose.
What the player never does
Place a building. Command a citizen. Click a technology. Save-scum a flood: the world is deterministic from its seed, so the same valley under the same policy floods on the same day, and the only way to a different outcome is a different decision.
Where the levers stand today
The policy struct, its edicts and its friction exist and the simulation reads them; the browser’s Council exposes fiscal and legal policies; the native Council exposes schooling, the fire code, conservation, flood works and street commissioning. The report panels remain read-only. See open questions.
← Tone and aesthetic Success criteria →
This chapter is docs/design/10-the-player.md in the repository; the site renders the file as it is.