8.3 KiB
DESCENSUS — Addendum 1
Cost Structure and Exploit Closure
Status: Canonical. Do not alter without project owner instruction.
Date: 2026-05-02
Extends: docs/DESCENSUS-genesis.md
Purpose of This Addendum
The genesis document establishes what DESCENSUS is and how the epoch filter operates. This addendum closes the exploit loops that code cannot close alone. Each principle here describes a cost structure that is not enforced by rules — it is enforced by the honest operation of the simulation's physical and social reality.
Where code fails to implement these principles completely, this document is the authority. Implementation catches up to the document, not the reverse.
Principle 1 — Distance Is Elapsed Time
Movement between locations costs simulation days. Those days cannot be recovered, compressed, or prepaid. There is no fast travel. There is no preparation that eliminates the cost of distance.
A participant who identifies an attack target must travel to reach it. That travel consumes elapsed simulation days — days not spent producing, building relationships, or developing the clan. The cost is paid before the outcome is known.
A participant who wishes to return must travel again. The distance does not decrease because the route is now known. Familiarity reduces uncertainty, not cost.
Exploit closed: A participant cannot accumulate strength and then deploy it instantly across distance. Every application of force requires elapsed time proportional to distance. The cost of projection is built into the geometry of the world.
Principle 2 — Intelligence Decays
Knowledge of another participant's state is accurate at the moment of acquisition. It begins aging immediately.
A participant who reaches a target location learns what is there at that moment. By the time they return — having paid the travel cost twice — the target's state has changed. The intelligence paid for in elapsed time is now historical. The participant acts on a record, not a current reading.
The longer the return journey, the more the intelligence has aged. A distant target that required thirty simulated days to reach has changed for thirty simulated days by the time the attacker returns.
Exploit closed: A participant cannot acquire perfect intelligence and act on it without cost. The act of acquiring intelligence consumes the time during which the intelligence remains current. Planning and execution cannot be separated from the cost of the interval between them.
Principle 3 — Temporal State Resolution at Minimum Elapsed Time
When two participants occupy the same H3 cell, the encounter is resolved at the minimum elapsed simulation time of the two participants.
A participant at day 100 who encounters a participant at day 10 does not bring their day-100 strength to the encounter. The encounter resolves at day 10. The stronger participant's state is evaluated as it was at their own day-10 equivalent — including losses, weaknesses, and resource constraints that existed at that point in their history.
The elapsed simulation time of each participant is not visible to others. It is not a number on a display. It is inferred from observable signals: camp size, tool quality, apparent health of clansmen, the wear on structures, the size of food stores. A participant who reads these signals carefully can estimate depth. They cannot know it.
The elapsed time of any participant is also in flux. A participant who has been active for 100 days but suffered significant losses at day 60 does not present as a day-100 participant. They present as whatever their current state reflects — which may be weaker than a participant at day 40 who suffered no losses.
Exploit closed: A participant cannot prepare at depth and deploy that preparation against a shallower participant. The encounter resolves honestly at the point of contact, not at the point of planning. Stockpiling Mesolithic weapons for a future DESCENSUS encounter is evaluated at the elapsed time of the encounter, not at the elapsed time of the stockpile.
Principle 4 — Aggression Is Self-Limiting
A successful attack produces bounded loot, reduced defence, reduced production, and reduced reputation for the attacker.
Loot is bounded. The target has what the epoch permits and what their elapsed simulation time has produced. There is no surplus beyond what exists. The attacker cannot extract more than was there.
Attrition compounds asymmetrically. The target loses defence and production capacity. The attacker loses elapsed time, potential clan losses, and reputation. The attacker's cost is paid regardless of outcome. The target's loss is recoverable over subsequent elapsed days. Repeated aggression against the same target yields diminishing returns as the target's loot base depletes and the attacker's reputation deteriorates.
Reputation is a social parameter with real consequences. In Mesolithic social reality, reputation is not an abstract score. It is the substrate of alliance, trade, mate exchange, and mutual defence. A participant recognised as a marauder by other participants loses access to the cooperative structures that make large clans viable. Food sharing, territorial agreements, knowledge exchange — all of these require a reputation that aggression erodes.
The simulation does not punish aggression by decree. It allows Mesolithic social mechanics to operate honestly. A marauder clan reaches a natural ceiling imposed by isolation, travel cost, and the carrying capacity of territory it must hold alone.
Exploit closed: There is no dominant strategy built on aggression. Every gain from aggression is offset by costs that compound over elapsed time. A participant who attempts to optimise for domination will find that domination is self-limiting before it becomes simulation-breaking.
Principle 5 — Abandoned Settlements Are Finite
When a participant quits the simulation, their settlement enters a static state. It does not grow, defend itself, or replenish.
A static settlement can be reached, observed, and raided. Its loot is finite and does not regenerate. After extraction it is an empty location. There are no defenders to defeat and no future production to anticipate. It is the least interesting thing a participant can engage with.
The simulation does not prevent interaction with abandoned settlements. It simply makes them structurally uninteresting as a sustained strategy.
Exploit closed: Targeting abandoned settlements is not prohibited. It is simply not productive beyond the single extraction event. A participant who builds their strategy around abandoned settlements is building on a depleting resource base with no renewal.
Principle 6 — The Simulation Does Not Prohibit. It Costs.
There are no forbidden actions in the Simulator. There are only actions whose costs, when honestly calculated, make them self-limiting.
This principle supersedes all game-design instincts to add rules, restrictions, cooldowns, or penalties. Before any restriction is proposed, the question must be asked: does the honest cost structure already make this action self-limiting? If yes, no rule is needed. If no, the cost structure is incomplete and must be corrected before a rule is added.
A rule that overrides the cost structure is a design failure. It means the simulation is not honest about what the action costs. Fix the cost, not the rule.
This principle applies to all future addenda. Each addendum closes a loop by identifying the honest cost that code failed to implement — not by adding a prohibition.
What This Addendum Does Not Cover
- The specific mechanics of DESCENSUS epoch transition (see genesis document)
- The Roman epoch cost structure (to be addressed in a future addendum)
- The Model's role in encounter resolution (to be addressed separately)
- Multi-participant alliance mechanics (to be addressed in a future addendum)
- The compression algorithm and its relationship to elapsed time (covered in OTIVM-IV design documentation)
DESCENSUS — Addendum 1 — 2026-05-02 TheRON — single contributor. AI assistants implement, document, flag — do not direct. Each addendum closes one loop. Addenda accumulate. None supersedes the genesis document. Where this document and code conflict, this document is the authority.