Design History

Sovereign’s history has two arcs. First a balance arc (v0.2 → v0.10): a nine-version push from “Treasury crushes everything” to “three viable economic paths,” every change driven by deterministic simulation evidence — 100-game or 400-game batches against fixed seed sequences, never guesswork. Then a feature arc (v1.1 → v1.5): the structural and experiential build-out that turned a balanced simulator into a deep, honest, history-teaching game, while keeping the proven mechanics byte-identical.

The two artifact streams

Sovereign exists as two artifacts:

1. The printable board game — a 34-sheet edition with the original Hamilton-system mechanics, stable at v0.2 until human-table playtest evidence exists.
2. The solo / digital game — a self-contained HTML game that runs the same rules locally with deterministic AI opponents, now at v1.5.0 beta.

The digital mode runs ahead because simulation is cheaper than reprinting. Its balance was frozen at v0.10; everything after v1.0.0 is the feature arc layered on top of those frozen mechanics.

Phase-by-phase build (Solo / Digital)

Phase	What it added	Audit
Phase 1	Concept doc: state model, 8 surfaces, 3 solo modes, 4 opponent profiles spec	—
Phase 2	Static clickable prototype proving the 8 surfaces and the 11-step turn loop	—
Phase 3	Local state machine: real reducer, full 7-lap game, all 40 spaces, all 24 cards, all 7 Acts, scoring from rules	3 bugs found + fixed
Phase 4	Scripted opponents: players[] array, two MVP profiles, auction mechanic, multiplayer rent, vote tallying	6 bugs found + fixed; Act-vote orchestration maintenance patch
Phase 5	Narration library, save / load with hash integrity, replay scrubber	PASS, no fixes
Phase 6	Local balance telemetry, batch simulation, Manufacturer profile	1 bug found + fixed (card-choice phase leak)
Phase 6.1	Telemetry hygiene: slot-indexed attribution, rentNet split, asset bucket cleanup	byte-identical to Phase 6

Every phase is fully additive: the reducer body, action set, scoring formula, opponent decision functions, and v0.2 anchors all remain byte-identical from one phase to the next. Phase 7 is “no new code, just data” — the architecture supports new telemetry without touching gameplay.

Balance arc

Version	Change	CANONICAL split (T / Mc / Mfg)
v0.2	Board-game baseline	81 / 18 / 1 — Treasury runaway
v0.3	NF Credit nerf · Manufactures capital event · Capacity ≥ 8 payment +50%	76 / 22 / 2 — Mfg cash-starved
v0.4	Capacity ≥ 10 milestone · industrial set bonuses	73 / 21 / 6 — Mfg gets scoring potential but Capacity track stays cold
v0.5	Capacity +1 on first industrial purchase	73 / 21 / 6 — Capacity moves in MFG-MIRROR, not CANONICAL
v0.6	Manufacturer set-completion gate relaxed	73 / 22 / 5 — profile fix didn’t move the needle
v0.7	Telemetry only. Acquisition funnel diagnostic	Same — but reveals slot 2 lands on industrial spaces less due to dice geometry
v0.8	Manufacturer Industrial Charter (starting Textile Works at setup)	68 / 21 / 11 — Mfg enters the 10–25% target band for the first time
v0.9	Telemetry only. Scoring decomposition + counterfactual	Same — but reveals cashIP is what’s keeping Treasury at 68%
v0.10	Cash scoring 1 IP per 200 TN → 1 IP per 400 TN	59 / 25 / 16 — all three profiles in target band · FROZEN

What the evidence taught

1. Don’t trust the obvious cause. v0.6’s hypothesis — that Manufacturer’s set-completion gate was suppressing buys — didn’t survive evidence. The gate was real, but not load-bearing. Real cause was slot-geometry (v0.7 diagnostic).

2. Telemetry hygiene matters. Phase 6’s first batch reported industrial buys per player: Treasury 0.65 / Merchant 0.59 / Manufacturer 0.40. That was a measurement artifact — name-keyed attribution failed in mirror batches. Phase 6.1 fixed it. Slot-indexed attribution revealed Mfg captures all the industrial assets it lands on; the limit is reaching them.

3. The right lever is sometimes a level lower. v0.4 added scoring rules for Capacity ≥ 8 and ≥ 10 thinking that would tip Mfg over. It didn’t — because the Capacity track wasn’t reaching those thresholds. The actual fix was v0.5 (Capacity +1 on purchase), v0.8 (Industrial Charter), and a track that climbs as industry is bought.

4. Treasury was never about NF Credit. The v0.3 NF Credit nerf was philosophically clean but mechanically minor. The v0.9 counterfactual showed cashIP (the generic “cash held” Influence source) was the load-bearing line for Treasury, not the Hamilton-thesis scoring. v0.10 nerfed cashIP and Treasury fell into band.

5. Don’t chase 33 / 33 / 33. Treasury is supposed to be the strongest profile. That matches the historical thesis: public credit + federal finance were Hamilton’s dominant lever. The target was Treasury 45–65, not Treasury 33. Treasury at 59% at v0.10 with two other viable paths met that target — and the feature arc below kept the band intact (Treasury 48% at v1.5.0) while making the other paths richer.

Hard invariants preserved across all 9 versions

• 17-action reducer shape (Phase 3’s 16 + Phase 4’s AUCTION_BID).
• mulberry32(state.rngSeed) as sole RNG.
• Same seed + same human decisions = byte-identical ledger.
• No fetch, no XMLHttpRequest, no WebSocket, no sendBeacon, no postMessage to external origins.
• route ladder 25 / 50 / 100 / 150, Coinage Act effect, Revolutionary Debt bases (Continental 4 / Soldier Pay 6), Capacity ≥ 6 payment threshold (+25%) — all locked.

The feature arc (v1.1 → v1.5)

With balance frozen at v0.10 and v1.0.0 shipped (full-treatment: npm, Sigstore provenance, landing page, this handbook, seven translations), the work turned to depth and experience. The discipline held throughout: no reducer mechanic or scoring formula changed. Every layer below wraps the frozen v0.18 engine.

Version	What it added	Why
v1.1.0 → v1.1.1	Human-playability rebuild after v1.1.0 failed first cold play: action rail above the board, positions / portfolio strips, real dice overlay, Acts explain before the vote. A 12-round + mandate-victory model.	Simulation-passing ≠ human-playable. The first cold walk found gaps audit couldn’t.
v1.1.2	Circuit victory replaces the round-cap-with-mandate ending. The game now ends when a player completes their fourth circuit; median jumps to ~23 rounds. Human-voice copy throughout. Trigger ≠ winner (only ~33% of games).	The mandate ending felt arbitrary — it ended by clock, not by winning the Republic. Carrying your faction across the line is a better story; rewarding the heaviest ledger keeps it about economic depth.
v1.2 (internal)	Strategic depth: profile-locked Special Actions, six timed HAND cards (hand cap 2), the Reform recovery action, multi-stage Public Credit pressure (Doubt / Crisis / Panic / Default) wrapping the v0.18 hierarchy.	Give the human levers the AI doesn’t fully exploit — decisions to make, not just rolls to take.
v1.3 (internal)	Strategic arc: eight Federal Era events from round 8, three Profile Visions (+3 IP). “Late Republic” → “Federal Era” (the accurate, non-Roman-decline period name). Late-game empty windows cut from 8/100 to 2/100.	The late game was empty once the Acts stopped. Events and Visions give rounds 8+ stakes.
v1.4.0 (beta)	The Chronicler: a named third-person historical narrator, 14 event-bound banners, sourced from a verified pack of 27 real quotes (Hamilton / Madison / Jefferson / Adams / Gallatin / Maclay / Freneau) traceable to founders.archives.gov, Wikisource, and the Library of Congress. Failed Acts narrated as counterfactuals to real history. Zero fabricated attributions.	The game teaches the founding of US public credit; the history should be present, accurate, and honest about where your Republic diverged from the real one.
v1.5.0 (beta)	The “make it fun” arc, driven by a dogfood swarm (see below).	Turn a correct, deep simulator into a game people enjoy playing — without breaking determinism or the balance band.

v1.5.0 — the dogfood swarm

v1.5.0 was produced by a multi-agent dogfood swarm: a health pass (the auction soft-lock and seven other findings fixed), a study-swarm of ~40 sourced findings on game-feel, then parallel feature work, each layer gated by a live-DOM playability harness and a balance re-validation. What shipped:

• The Credit Spiral — the keystone. Failure was decorative (Default / Rebellion fired 0/400 at v0.10); now falling out of the Stable band charges a compounding debt-servicing cash levy, telegraphed every round by an always-visible forecast gauge, that self-accelerates toward Default if neglected but pauses the round after any Reform or credit-up. It is felt, compounding, visible, and recoverable, and it carries the civic thesis: this is why public credit was worth fighting for. Re-validated CANONICAL × 100 — Public Doubt 77/100, Credit Crisis 29/100, ~41% of crisis games recover.
• Rival presence — Influence standings and opponent posture, to kill the “parallel solitaire” dead air.
• Juice + sound — presentation-only choreography and audio, with a SPEED setting (Cinematic / Normal / Instant) and an INSTANT mode that bypasses all of it. Strictly render-layer; the harness asserts INSTANT-safety.
• The Chronicler’s informative layer (Tier B) — Learn More popovers, the searchable Chronicler’s Ledger encyclopedia, and glossary tooltips. Just-in-time depth that never blocks play.
• Swift-Start onboarding — a non-blocking guided opening (the 1790 Funding Debate) that tracks real play, plus a “hide nothing” action telegraph on every affordance.

The balance band held: live CANONICAL × 100 measures Treasury 48% / Merchant 34% / Manufacturer 18%, median 22 rounds, 100/100 circuit-end, and the tolerance gate passes.

What’s deferred / honest caveats

• v1.5.0 is a beta. Each layer was structurally audited and gated by the playability harness and balance re-validation, but the full stack has not been cold-walked end-to-end by a fresh human player.
• The AI does not yet adapt to the v1.2–v1.5 layers. Opponents run the proven v0.18-era decision functions — they don’t race for the Vision, time HAND cards, or steward against the Credit Spiral the way a human will. Real human play will diverge from the CANONICAL × 100 numbers.
• Panic / Default / Rebellion remain rare. The Credit Spiral made Public Doubt and Credit Crisis common and felt, but the deepest tiers still seldom fire (Panic ~1/100, Default ~0/100). That is by design — the spiral is meant to bite and be climbed back from, not to routinely end the Republic.
• Opportunist / Cash profile (the 4th concept-doc profile) is still deferred. The competitive set is three.
• Human playtest. Balance and feel are simulation- and harness-tested; sustained human play against the scripted opponents may shift these rates.

Next

• Security — threat model and data handling.