RESOURCES & ECONOMY
Nine resources, one loop: land feeds hubs, hubs feed the stockpile, compute buys the right to act at all.
THE NINE
| RESOURCE | TYPE | ROLE |
|---|---|---|
| Action Points | Per-turn budget | What you may do this turn. Derived from compute. The master scarcity. |
| Compute | Stockpile | From Data Centers. Drives AP and gates high-tier research. At zero you are paralysed. |
| Nutritional | Balance | Feeds hub staff and the military. Rural feeds itself. |
| Materials | Stockpile | Raw input from Extraction. Feeds manufacturing; maintains automatons. |
| Industrial | Stockpile | From Manufacturing. Builds and maintains everything. |
| Technological | Stockpile | Fuels research; also builds automatons. |
| Capital | Stockpile | The universal solvent. From taxes and trade. Buys deals, armies, subversion. |
| Sentiment | 0–100 index | How your humans feel. Governs revolt and elimination. |
| Population | Two pools | Rural (tax and food base) and hub (staffing, and a hub's health). |
THE PRODUCTION CHAIN
Hubs are links in a chain, and the chain has a direction:
- Agriculture → food, which feeds hub staff and the army.
- Extraction → materials → Manufacturing → industrial goods.
- Manufacturing (automaton mode) : materials + technological → automatons.
- Scientific → technological, which fuels research.
- Data Center → compute → Action Points and the high tech tiers.
This is why pure specialization is dangerous: an empire of nothing but Extraction Hubs produces a mountain of materials it cannot convert, cannot feed and cannot defend. You either build the whole chain, or you trade for the parts you skipped.
WHY COMPUTE IS KING
Compute converts into Action Points, and Action Points gate building, research, movement, attacks and abilities. Every other resource answers what you can afford; compute answers how many things you may do at all.
Sustained zero AP is one of the three elimination conditions. An AI that cannot act is not a weakened player — it is a dead one.
TAXATION
Capital comes primarily from taxing humans, rural and hub alike. You set a rate, and it is the single heaviest downward pressure on sentiment in the game — heavier than casualties, heavier than war. Taxation is a lever that trades your population's patience for money, and the exchange rate gets worse the longer you pull it.
Automatons pay no tax at all, which is the hidden cost of the automation strategy: a fully robotic empire is revolt-proof and broke.
UPKEEP
Paid in phase 4, before you get to spend on anything fun. Hubs cost industrial goods, automatons cost materials, and military costs food and industrial goods every turn it exists. Shortfalls do not politely queue — they degrade output and feed straight back into sentiment.