Discovery States

_{Design document §1.4}

Real technological progress has two modes. Before mature theory, discovery is serendipitous — nobody set out to invent the stirrup or stumble into distillation. After theory, a second mode appears: prediction followed by pursuit. Fission was understood in 1938; the reactor was engineering. Fusion has been a visible target since the 1950s. The surprise mode never disappears — the transistor's inventors did not foresee the smartphone — but it stops being the only mode. This system models both.

Every breakthrough, per civilisation, is in one of three states:

UNKNOWN — The default. Invisible: not on any screen, not hinted at. The civilisation does not know this thing is possible. Discovery from Unknown works through ideas occurring and being studied (Section 1.2) — a surprise when it completes.

REVEALED — The civilisation knows this is possible but has not achieved it. The breakthrough appears on the research screen as a named goal with a speculative description ("our physicists believe the atom's energy could be harnessed"). Revelation is itself an event with fanfare. A Revealed breakthrough is still found the ordinary way once its idea occurs, and it can be pursued as a Grand Endeavour (Section 1.5) whether or not its idea has occurred.

DISCOVERED — Achieved. Grants its effects.

Revelation triggers

1. Theoretical revelation. Theory-heavy breakthroughs carry a Reveals list: their direct applications. Discovering Atomic Model (NP02) reveals Nuclear Fission and Nuclear Weapons as concepts. Oxygen Theory (CH05) reveals the Steam Engine. Electromagnetism (EL03) reveals the Telegraph and the Generator (with its motor). Before Scientific Method (PH04), theoretical revelation is rare; after PH04, theoretical CORE/STANDARD breakthroughs reveal their applications as the norm. The game's texture therefore shifts across eras from mostly-surprise to mostly-directed — which is what happened in real history. RARE and UNIQUE breakthroughs are almost never revealed by theory: the surprises remain surprises.

2. Proximity revelation. Each turn a discoverable idea fails to occur, there is a chance it is glimpsed instead: the concept is Revealed without the idea itself — your scholars glimpse what they are circling (10% a turn for STANDARD ideas and 3% for UNCOMMON, both provisional; never RARE or UNIQUE; Section 1.2).

3. Observational revelation. Seeing another civilisation's breakthrough in effect — their steamships in your harbour, their cannon at your walls — reveals it to you. Not granted; revealed. Knowing a thing is possible is half the problem (the Soviet bomb, Meiji industrialisation). This is the first stage of Knowledge Diffusion.

4. Espionage. Spies can steal a concept (revelation) far more easily than a working breakthrough.

The One-Step Horizon rule

Revelation only ever reaches one step past the civilisation's frontier: a breakthrough can be Revealed only if all of its prerequisite breakthroughs are already Discovered or Revealed, and theory reveals only its direct applications, never transitive descendants. You can reveal mechanical computation; you cannot reveal what lies three steps beyond it. Nobody in 1950, however well-funded, glimpses the smartphone. The horizon recedes as you advance, and the far side is always dark. This rule is what preserves "seventy years ago nobody knew" for the entire game, no matter how experienced the player.

CORE breakthroughs reveal themselves

A CORE breakthrough becomes Revealed automatically the moment all its prerequisite breakthroughs are Discovered and its environmental prerequisites are met — the furthest reach the One-Step Horizon permits, and the one exception to the rule that revelation is rare before the Scientific Method. It gives the player back the agency to aim: a civilisation that knows Writing and Formal Logic sees the University waiting in Philosophy and the Arts, and can choose to fund it. It costs little surprise, since funding and the era premium still decide when it arrives, and serendipity lives in the STANDARD, UNCOMMON and RARE tiers. Because CORE now means visible and aimable, the tier is reserved for what a civilisation genuinely cannot do without (see the tier review, v3.59).

Serendipitous accidents

Ideas occur in every focus, funded or not, and the spread studies them (Section 1.2), so discoveries keep arriving in fields the civilisation is not directing. Penicillin was not the funded programme; it was the mess on the bench.

The Paths Not Taken

When a Revealed alternative in a Competing Solutions group is locked out before it is discovered (its primary arrives first — see Competing Solutions, §1.2), it remains visible as a faded entry — a thing your civilisation glimpsed and let slip. At game's end, a codex lists everything Revealed but never Discovered. The Antikythera mechanism sat at the bottom of the sea for two thousand years; that melancholy is part of the design.