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Systems / Economy
Economy Systems
Economy systems explain how production, movement, storage, pricing, and capture interact over time. An economy is not just a resource list. It is the rule set that determines whether value circulates, pools, leaks, or collapses under pressure.
ProductionCirculationStorageConversion
Operational lenses currently organizing this topic.
Curated stages that turn this topic into a usable sequence.
Entries currently surfaced as the topic's reading base.
Program And Scale
Browse this topic by program branch and operating scale.
This topic now keeps program branches and scale lanes visible inside the module, so local reading paths can stay aligned with the same branch-and-scale language used elsewhere.
Flow and Logistics
Explain how resources, goods, labor, information, and force circulate, stall, buffer, and break.
Start from the resource-flow loop, trace storage and throughput models, compare one logistics study, then run a flow audit worksheet.
Network Scale · 6Regional Scale · 1
Capability Regimes
Explain how technology, magic, infrastructure, communication, and transformation capacity rewrite baseline constraints.
Start with the operating regime, price the capability through diffusion or monopoly models, compare a regime-rewrite case, then run a capability sanity check.
Network Scale · 1Regional Scale · 1
World Foundations
Explain what the world is materially built from before politics, balance, or style are discussed.
Start in Worlds, read the anchor framework, open one regional model, validate with a complete study, then finish with a world assembly guide pass.
Regional Scale · 2
Show scale lanes
Network Scale
Use this scale when routes, relays, buffers, and linked nodes matter more than territorial bulk.
Regional Scale
Use this scale when the region is the main leverage unit for settlement, extraction, governance, or conflict.
What It Governs
This topic gives the module a usable operational frame.
A usable economy model shows where value enters, how it changes form, who captures it, and what breaks first under delay or scarcity.
Production Base
Define what the system can reliably produce, where, and under what seasonal or infrastructural conditions.
Circulation Layer
Track roads, ports, markets, warehouses, customs, and brokers as the rules of motion for value.
Conversion Logic
Ask how raw output becomes military force, urban consumption, legitimacy, or industrial growth.
Fragility Pattern
The economy becomes legible when shortages and booms come from bottlenecks, not arbitrary plot switches.
Featured Reading
Editorial starting points inside this topic.
Use these entries when you want the strongest current examples before opening the full reading path.
Open featured reading
framework
Featured4 structural layers
Regional Systems Matrix
A planning frame for mapping how geography, settlement, resources, and transit form a region's structural identity.
WorldsWorld FoundationsRegionalgeographyresourcessystems
model
Featured5-stage loop
Resource Flow Loop
A model for how extraction, transport, storage, transformation, and redistribution create stability or fragility in a world system.
SystemsFlow And LogisticsNetworkresourcessystemsevolution
framework
Featured4 leverage classes
Frontier Chokepoint Ledger
A framework for tracking which passes, ports, narrows, and crossings decide political leverage at the edge of a system.
Cross ModuleGovernance And PowerRegionalspatial-structurecivilizationsystems
Curated Reading
Readings for flow, capture, and economic exposure
This path follows value from extraction and conversion to circulation, monopoly, and political dependence.
01
Reading Stage
Stage 1: Place economic output in space
Start with the regional frame that locates production, infrastructure, and concentrated leverage.
Outcome
The economy becomes embedded in terrain and route structure.
World Foundations currently leads this stage with 2 supporting entries.
World Foundations · 2
Regional Scale currently anchors this stage with 2 supporting entries.
Regional Scale · 2
framework
Featured4 structural layers
Regional Systems Matrix
A planning frame for mapping how geography, settlement, resources, and transit form a region's structural identity.
WorldsWorld FoundationsRegionalgeographyresourcessystems
framework
4 density bands
Terrain Settlement Gradient
A framework for reading how terrain friction and access gradients shape where settlement density can sustainably accumulate.
WorldsWorld FoundationsRegionalgeographycivilizationresources
Proof Surface
Validate circulation in applied trade and storage systems.
Use studies to test whether value pooling, rerouting, and fragility remain legible once ports, markets, and territorial networks are under pressure.
Read one case after the loop is clear.
Use the studies below to test whether this topic still explains behavior once full settings, institutions, and route pressure are present.
Move into space when the loop changes leverage on the map.
Open the linked Spatial route when adjacency, chokepoints, reach, or scale are now carrying the real consequence of this system.
Come back to the system with a concrete failure mode.
After one proof read, identify what breaks first: throughput, counterplay, coordination, or territorial reach.
study
3 revenue gates
River Port Polity
A systems study of how estuaries, port warehousing, and toll control create a state that is wealthy, connective, and strategically exposed.
Cross ModuleFlow And LogisticsRegionalgeographyresourcessystems
study
4 logistics layers
Song Dynasty River Commerce System
A historical study of how canals, river grain movement, market towns, monetization, and bureaucratic storage turned Song China into a dense commercial-administrative system.
SystemsFlow And LogisticsNetworkresourcescivilizationsystems
study
3 market-security layers
EVE Online Economy System
A systems study of how logistics, sovereignty, industrial specialization, and route security make EVE Online's economy behave like a territorial network rather than a simple market.
SystemsFlow And LogisticsNetworkresourcessystemsspatial-structure
Design Checklist
Use these prompts to keep the page actionable.
Open this when you want to pressure-test the topic instead of browsing for orientation.
Open the topic checklist
- Where does the system create surplus and where does it merely move someone else's?
- Which institutions buffer scarcity and which amplify it through rent-seeking or delay?
- How much of the economy depends on a few corridors, depots, ports, or privileged actors?
- Simulate route disruption, harvest loss, customs drag, or a sudden demand spike.
- Check whether local scarcity can coexist with global abundance because of transport failure or capture.
- Test whether the same system rewards resilience, speculation, or coercion under different conditions.
- Wealth that appears without storage, throughput, or extraction logic.
- Scarcity that never produces rerouting, substitution, or political bargaining.
- Highly integrated trade systems with no obvious chokepoints or delay costs.
Cross-model Handoff
Move economic logic into the rest of the product graph
Economy overlaps heavily with resources, factions, and world-level circulation.
Material base
Resource Model
Return to world resources when the economy lacks an extraction and storage substrate.
Political captureFactions & Power
Open faction modeling when rents, alliances, and governance determine who captures value.
Network viewRegion Graph
Use spatial abstraction when the real issue is network leverage and rerouting capacity.
Strategic layerSLG Design
Move into large-scale strategy when the economy must support long-run territorial play.
Economy systems matter because value only shapes a world or game when production, throughput, and capture behave like one connected rule set.