The Knowledge Web
Insight's only sink. Each type-unlock node opens one construct role across every age — buy Forestry once and you know the wood harvester of the Stone, Bronze, Medieval, Renaissance, Victorian, and Modern ages, forever. Efficiency leaves each tune one sim choke point — the three Phase-2 leaves (Fertile Ground, Deep Stores, Big Families) are live and buyable; the two urbanism leaves stay reserved.
How unlocking works
- Buy once, know forever.
World.Unlock(nodeId)checks: node exists → not already owned → not reserved → all prerequisites owned →Insight ≥ Cost. On success Insight drops by exactly the cost and the node joins the owned set — which survives every Upheaval and every run (account-level union on load). - The free root. Hearthcraft costs 0 and anchors the prerequisite tree. The free starter set (seed + staple harvester + basic dwelling per age) is hard-free — always buildable even with an empty web.
- Reserved nodes are declared but unbuyable, for two different reasons. Husbandry and Masonry await content — the second construct tier per age doesn't exist yet. The two urbanism leaves (Surveying, City Planning) await activation: their modifiers are declared on the node, but no sim system reads them. Either way a reserved node can never enter an owned set, so its modifier provably never fires.
- The three Phase-2 efficiency leaves are live (2026-07-17): Fertile Ground (+1 staple to each grass harvester, in the tick's produce fold), Deep Stores (store cap boosts ×1.25 — the boost, never the base cap; standing caps rise the moment you buy), Big Families (+1 starting population in every new valley, carried by the owned set).
The two urbanism leaves (declared 2026-07-15, reserved + inert).
Surveying (8, after Stoneworking) would widen the frontier's ChainRadius by 1 — tendrils
reach one cell farther per placement. City Planning (10, after Shelter) would halve the
spatial unrest floor — the Medieval, Victorian, and Modern layout
penalties would cost half as much at the Upheaval. Neither does anything today.
Nothing in urbanism is Knowledge-gated, on purpose: adjacency rules and the frontier are
always live because the progression contract insists the free construct set works at
zero owned nodes. These leaves may only ever soften that system for a player who
invests — never be the thing that makes it survivable. Declaring them now keeps the data model
final and the promise legible; switching them on is a balance pass of its own.
The web, interactive
Click a node for details. Toggle nodes as owned and set an Insight budget to see what a player in that position could buy next (amber outline = affordable now) and what their build tray would hold.