My ecosystem has token sinks but I’m unsure if they offset emissions. Simulate 6 monthly supply cycles and evaluate net inflation.Model the resource economy of a cooperative colony-management board game. Time is structured as **generations**, each containing **4 seasons** (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter). Use one simulation step per season, with every 4th step triggering end-of-generation effects.
## Resources (pools)
- **Meeples** — the colony's population and its only labor. Starting value: adjustable register, default 5.
- **Food tokens** — produced by farms, consumed at end of generation.
- **Crops** — intermediate state: planted in Spring, converted to Food in Fall.
- **Farms** — buildings that enable the crop cycle. Built by meeple actions.
- **Revealed tiles** — explored territory; caps how many buildings/farms can exist.
- **Prayer points** — generated by exhausting a meeple; feeds the victory track (gods in the pantheon).
- **Horses** — optional resource spent for extra movement (minor; can be omitted from the first model).
## Action economy (the central constraint)
Each meeple provides **1 action per season**, then is exhausted; all meeples refresh at the start of the next season. So actions per season = current Meeples. Every action is spent on exactly one of:
- **Farm (plant)** — Spring only: convert 1 action + 1 available Farm into 1 Crop.
- **Farm (harvest)** — Fall only: convert 1 action + 1 Crop into **{1}** Food (harvest ratio register, default 1:1).
- **Build** — convert 1 action (+ optionally a resource cost register) into 1 Farm, limited by Revealed tiles.
- **Explore** — convert 1 action into **{1–3}** Revealed tiles (register).
- **Pray** — convert 1 action into 1 Prayer point.
Model the allocation of actions with weighted gates so the split between farming, building, exploring, and praying is adjustable — the interesting question is how much slack remains after survival needs.
## End-of-generation population loop (every 4th step)
1. Compare Meeples to Food.
2. **Starvation:** if Meeples > Food, destroy (Meeples − Food) Meeples.
3. **Births:** for every **{2}** Food remaining in excess of Meeples (register), create 1 new Meeple.
4. Drain all remaining Food (or make food carryover a register: 0–100%).
## Season events (drain pressure)
At the start of each season, a random event fires (random gate). Events should drain Food, Meeples, or Crops, or block an action type for the season. Make average event severity an adjustable register — this represents hardship cards and, implicitly, traitor sabotage eating the colony's slack.
## Feedback loops to expose
- **Reinforcing:** Meeples → actions → Crops → Food → births → more Meeples.
- **Balancing:** Meeples → higher Food requirement → starvation.
- **Enabling:** actions → Explore → tiles → Build → Farms → higher Food ceiling.
- **Diverting:** every Prayer/Build/Explore action is a Farm action not taken — the tension knob.
## What to chart
Run 100+ Monte Carlo runs over 10 generations and chart: Meeples over time, Food produced vs. required per generation, and Prayer points accumulated. I'm looking for the parameter ranges where population neither collapses (starvation spiral) nor explodes (runaway growth), and for how much action slack survives event pressure — that slack is the design budget for the game's competitive layer.
