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Worlds / Resources
Resource Model
Resource modeling asks where useful material comes from, how reliably it moves, where it is buffered, and who can capture the resulting surplus. Deposits matter, but dependency, throughput, and substitution matter more.
ScarcityTransportStorageSurplus capture
Operational lenses currently organizing this world layer.
Curated stages that turn this world layer into a usable sequence.
Entries currently surfaced as the reading base for this layer.
Program And Scale
Browse this layer by program branch and operating scale.
This world layer now exposes program branches and scale lanes directly, so layer-level browse stays compatible with the same taxonomy used across the wider graph.
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 · 4World Scale · 2Cross-Scale · 1
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 · 2Regional Scale · 2Cross-Scale · 1
Urban and Regional Coupling
Explain how cities work as filters, gateways, relays, conversion surfaces, and regional control machines.
Start with the urban logistics surface, step into gateway and throughput models, compare a port or capital study, then run a city-region worksheet.
Cross-Scale · 2Urban Scale · 1
Show scale lanes
Regional Scale
Use this scale when the region is the main leverage unit for settlement, extraction, governance, or conflict.
Cross-Scale
Use this scale when the strongest explanation depends on several levels staying visible together.
Network Scale
Use this scale when routes, relays, buffers, and linked nodes matter more than territorial bulk.
World Scale
Use this scale when the whole world model or planetary constraint pattern should stay visible at once.
What It Governs
This layer decides what the rest of the world can plausibly inherit.
Resources become structural only when extraction, transport, storage, transformation, and redistribution behave like one connected system.
Deposit To Flow
Start with where value enters the system, then model the routes, relay points, and bottlenecks that keep it moving.
Buffer And Delay
Storage determines whether scarcity turns into temporary inconvenience, seasonal pressure, or political crisis.
Capture Ladder
Ask how diffuse surplus becomes measurable, taxable, storable, and deployable by institutions instead of assuming wealth automatically produces power.
Substitution Risk
The most decisive resource sites are often the hardest to replace, not merely the richest on paper.
Featured Reading
Editorial starting points inside this layer.
Use these entries when you want the clearest current examples before following the full reading path.
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
study
Featured2 chokepoint classes
Mountain Basin Civilization
A sample systems study showing how basin agriculture, defensive ridges, and narrow passes produce a dense but brittle civilization pattern.
Cross ModuleWorld FoundationsRegionalgeographycivilizationresources
Curated Reading
Readings for substrate, circulation, and surplus control
This path moves from intake and water continuity to throughput and finally to the institutional capture of durable surplus.
01
Reading Stage
Stage 1: Anchor value in substrate continuity
First place food, fuel, water, and fertile belts inside a terrain-defined regional frame.
Outcome
Resources stop floating as isolated lore facts and become embedded in replenishment logic and space.
World Foundations currently leads this stage with 6 supporting entries.
World Foundations · 6
Regional Scale currently anchors this stage with 3 supporting entries.
Regional Scale · 3World Scale · 2
framework
5 constraint layers
World Constraint Stack
A framework for reading a world from climate rhythm, terrain friction, habitability, circulation, and settlement thresholds before higher-order institutions are added.
WorldsWorld FoundationsWorldgeographyresourcesevolution
framework
4 continuity layers
Material Continuity Framework
A framework for reading how food, water, health, and maintenance cycles must keep reproducing beneath settlement, surplus, and political order.
WorldsWorld FoundationsCross Scaleresourcessystemsevolution
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
4 recurring windows
Climate Rhythm Model
A model for how repeating weather and seasonal windows structure labor, harvest timing, travel reliability, and crisis pacing across a world.
WorldsWorld FoundationsWorldgeographyresourcesevolution
model
4 intake layers
Food Energy Base Model
A model for tracing how staples, fuel, fodder, labor conversion, and storage create the recurring intake that makes density and surplus possible.
WorldsWorld FoundationsRegionalresourcessystemsgeography
model
4 water functions
Hydrology Settlement Coupling
A model for how potable water, irrigation, flood control, drainage, and navigability bind settlement density to water management burden.
WorldsWorld FoundationsRegionalgeographyresourcessystems
Applied Validation
Validate resources inside complete worlds.
Do not stop at the model alone. Use these assembled examples and applied studies to see whether resources still behaves coherently once the rest of the world stack is present.
Open one complete case after the model is clear.
Treat these entries as structural proof, not bonus reading. The question is whether this world layer still explains behavior when the full setting comes online.
Use examples and studies for different validation jobs.
Examples show assembled worldbuilding from the inside. Studies give you comparison cases with different route, pressure, and institutional conditions.
Come back with one concrete revision target.
After one proof read, identify whether the next fix belongs in substrate, routes, resources, institutions, or history, then reopen that layer directly.
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
1 protected gateway chain
Venice Maritime Corridor System
A structural study of how lagoon defense, convoy routes, warehouse depth, and gateway coordination turned Venice into a durable maritime corridor power.
WorldsFlow And LogisticsNetworkgeographyresourcessystems
Design Checklist
Use these prompts to keep the model operational.
Open this only when you are actively revising a world layer instead of browsing for orientation.
Open the design checklist
- List strategic deposits, fertile zones, fisheries, forests, and energy sites together with the terrain that makes them usable or costly.
- Note which resources are concentrated, diffuse, seasonal, or vulnerable to route disruption.
- Differentiate between resource presence and resource accessibility.
- Define how goods travel from origin to buffer to transformation to final user.
- Identify which steps depend on rivers, roads, ports, warehouses, relay towns, or protected convoy windows.
- Test which interruption creates the fastest cascade: extraction loss, transport delay, storage failure, or redistribution breakdown.
- Show who counts, taxes, guards, prices, or rations the surplus.
- Track where capture becomes visible as garrisons, public works, patronage, or coercive dependency.
- Explain why some choke sites produce merchant wealth while others produce militarized or bureaucratic power.
Cross-model Handoff
Move resource logic into other world systems
Resource structure clarifies geography, ecology, and systemic pressure. Use these handoffs when material flow needs a wider frame.
Route backbone
Geography Model
Return to route hierarchy and chokepoints when extraction exists but movement logic is weak.
Living dependenceEcology Model
Reconnect surplus to carrying capacity, food webs, and disturbance when living systems feel detached from material flow.
Dynamic systemsOpen Systems
Switch from world substrate to loops, incentives, and institutional escalation once resource pressure becomes behavioral.
Case studiesOpen Studies
Inspect applied cases where basins, ports, and capture ladders become visible in a complete setting.
Resource modeling matters because scarcity only shapes a world when movement, storage, and capture make that scarcity governable.