Worked Example Worlds

_{World Truths · Design document §5 — Worked Examples: The First Worlds}

These worlds were designed first and remain the clearest illustrations of the Geological (Removal) and Historical (Enabling) families, together with the Impossible value of the Fusion frontier (FQ2). Each is a specific value on a Truth axis, described narratively.

The No-Gunpowder World

World Truth: GUNPOWDER_ABSENT (Removal, ~15% of games)

• WA10 (Gunpowder) does not exist here (a Removal Truth, §1.2). MI08 (Saltpeter) still exists — a preservative, and a fertiliser: it feeds Nitrate Fertiliser (FA16) with no musket competing for it.
• Repeating Crossbow (WA17) dominant ranged unit through Medieval/Early Modern
• Pneumatic weaponry (WA18) silent alternative ranged path
• Chemical explosives (CH08) still arrive in Modern era for mining/rocketry — different chemistry, not dependent on gunpowder
• Railguns (WA19) become the long-term ranged solution
• Armor and fortification remain dominant longer; cavalry tactics have extended strategic relevance
• Naval warfare shifts toward ramming, fire ships, and boarding actions far longer than in our history
• Cannons (WA22) do not exist either, so medieval fortifications remain viable into the Modern era

The No-Fusion World

World Truth: FQ2 (Fusion Practicality) = Impossible — legacy name FUSION_ABSENT, ~25% of games

• NP04 (Nuclear Fusion) never validates: its dependents (NP06, RK10, RK14, ES08) dead-end. (In the softer Marginal value of FQ2, ~15% of games, NP04 works but ES08 underperforms — the deep fission chain stays competitive rather than mandatory.)
• Competing Solutions. Advanced Fuel Cycles (NP-F01) and Advanced Fission (ES14) are the alternatives whose primaries — Nuclear Fusion and the Fusion Reactor — dead-end here, so they lose their detour margin and can never be locked out (§1.2):
  • the deep fission chain (NP-F01 to NP-F04) becomes the primary advanced energy path
  • Advanced Fission approaches fusion output through refinement
  • Micro-fission reactors (NP-F02): miniaturisation advantage fusion civs never develop
  • Fission fragment propulsion (NP-F03): comparable to fusion drives with superior endurance
• Renewables, geothermal, and solar get more investment out of necessity; energy scarcity is a strategic factor
• Thermonuclear weapons (NP06) dead-end — fission weapons only, limiting the destructive ceiling
• The Fusion Drive (RK10) and Bussard Ramjet (RK14) dead-end on their atomic route; fission propulsion and ion drives must suffice. (In elemental worlds fusion is moot — there are no nuclei — and these drives run on the Re-Tempering Reactor instead.)

The No-Fossil-Fuels World

World Truth: FOSSIL_FUELS_ABSENT (Removal, ~10% of games)

The model

This world's forests never became coal and its seas never became oil. A real — and contested — hypothesis holds that coal formation in our own world slowed once white-rot fungi evolved the enzymes that digest lignin; here they evolved first, so the great forests rotted where they fell. Nor did its seas bury their plankton in the stagnant basins that cook oil, so there is no oil, no gas and no bitumen. Everything a layman sees is unchanged except what is missing — the forests, farms, winds and rivers are the same — and because decay needs air, waterlogged bogs still lay down peat.

What is removed

Coal and Oil deposits: the Removal Truth gives both resources ⟨Doesn't generate naturally⟩ — the world's geology, expressed as data, which the map generator honours. With no seams or wells there is nothing for Coal Discovery (MI06) or Petroleum Discovery (MI07) to find, so they do not exist here, and neither do the breakthroughs that need them — the coke Blast Furnace, the Internal Combustion Engine, Petrochemistry, and the Coal and Oil Power Plants. That is the ordinary absence of §1.2 — a breakthrough whose premise is false in this world — not a rule that works differently. A Substance civilisation can still transmute Coal and Oil lodes once it knows the fuels by the charcoal and alcohol roads (CH20): its fungibility at its most valuable.

Nothing else works differently

The Coal and Oil resources still exist, and every building and unit that needs them needs them here as everywhere: the Factory and the Ironclad burn Coal; tanks, battleships and aircraft burn Oil. Only the source of the fuel changes — and the sources are the same technologies, with the same costs, that a coal-poor civilisation in any world could develop. They are the Competing Solutions whose primaries this world lacks, so each loses its detour margin, takes its primary's tier and can never be locked out (§1.2):

• Coal is charcoal. A Charcoal Kiln (ME08) provides 1 Coal while its city works three fuel tiles — forest, jungle or a Peat Cutting — at −10% Production.
• Oil is grown. A Distillery Fuel Depot (MC09) provides 1 Oil while its city works three Farms, at −20% growth.
• Engines. The Landship and Tank follow either the internal combustion or the alcohol engine.

In a world with coal and oil these are outclassed by any seam or well, and most civilisations never develop them; here they are how industry happens.

The strategic experience

Energy is never solved the way coal and oil solve it: woods and bogs become coal, farms become oil, and the same land must feed people. Industry is smaller — a kiln-fed Factory is worth its flat +4, never its percentage, and fuel caps at one kiln and one depot per city. Hydro, geothermal, tidal and solar power matter more, and nuclear power feels like liberation when it arrives. Location: fuel oil comes from farms, which every civilisation has; solid fuel needs three worked woodland or bog tiles, which are far commoner than coal seams, and charcoal trades like any Coal — so a fossil-free world is less unequal than a coal world, not more. In a Caloric world the Caloric Plant is a fuel-free grid plant running on banked heat. Unique advantage: no coal or oil smoke — each such plant costs a point of happiness elsewhere — so fossil-free cities run happier.

The Early Steam World

World Truth: AEOLIPILE_VIABLE (Enabling, ~15% of games)

• Hero's Aeolipile (MC07) is RARE in every world; in this one it is UNCOMMON. It unlocks the Thermodynamics focus centuries early, with the Steam Temple.
• Early steam is atmospheric. Pressure steam needs cylinders bored true, boilers that hold, and standardised parts — none of which exist before the industrial era. Vacuum steam needs none of them: the steam condenses and the air does the work. So the chain it seeds is The Weight of the Air (TH13, Classical) and the Atmospheric Engine (TH14, Medieval), each priced for its own era, which gives the early focus something it can afford.
• Steam's one pre-industrial job is moving water: fountains and town water first, then drained mines and mills away from the river. Nothing moves under its own power, and no factory runs on it; that waits for the Steam Engine, which the Atmospheric Engine supersedes. An Engine House is then converted rather than scrapped, as many Newcomen engines were refitted with Watt's condenser: a Steam Works goes up twice as fast in its city and retires it.
• The head start is real but modest. The Weight of the Air makes every Thermodynamics breakthrough ×0.9 for its holder — the field it has explored longest — and the Atmospheric Engine halves the Steam Engine's cost, since Watt's condenser began as a repair to a Newcomen model.

The Enhanced Springs World

World Truth: ENHANCED_SPRINGS (Enabling, ~15% of games)

• Mainspring Energy Storage (MC15) is UNCOMMON instead of RARE, and opens the Clockwork chain: the Clockwork Automaton (MC16), a worker that needs no pay; Spring-Powered Vehicles (MC17), which here rival early steam and need no fuel at all; and, with the Babbage engine, the Clockwork Analytical Engine (MC18), which opens Computing with no electrical prerequisite.
• A clockwork civilisation industrialises and computes in brass and steel, without coal or electricity; it will want both eventually, but the path buys it an early industrial era no one else can copy. With No Fossil Fuels (about 1.5% of games) it becomes a true clockpunk civilisation — spring-wound industry, clockwork computing and alcohol-fuelled chemistry, without a lump of coal.

The Antikythera Tradition

World Truth: ANTIKYTHERA_TRADITION (Enabling, ~20% of games)

• The Antikythera-Style Mechanism (O10) is UNCOMMON here, and seeds its chain: the Mechanical Ephemeris (O13), the Tide Computing Engine (O14) and the Mechanical Weather Predictor (O15). Each is useful in itself, at sea or on the farm, and any of them halves the cost of the Babbage engine (MC14).
• With Enhanced Springs (about 3% of games) the two traditions meet: mechanical general-purpose computing can arrive in the Early Modern era, bypassing the electrical spine altogether. A player who finds O10 early should ask what kind of world this is.