Five Wards
Five Wards · Quick start
Your city. Your interests. Their votes.
Five players negotiate five rounds of shared spending. There are no teams. Your Stakes and remaining Favor determine your score.
1. Read your interests
You have four Stakes: one public home Stake and three hidden cards. Together they cover three wards, with two Stakes in one of them. Each is worth its ward's final Prosperity, from 0 to 6. Each unspent Favor is one more point.
Example only: two Docks Stakes, one Market Stake, one Archive Stake. At Prosperity 3 each and Favor 2, your score would be 14.
2. Spend the Treasury
Normally you have 6 Treasury each round. Defense costs 1 per point and cancels that much threat. One Investment costs 2 and adds 1 Prosperity. A Stipend costs 1 for 1 Favor, with at most 2 per motion, never to its own drafter. Unallocated money is lost.
Try a motion against a severity-2 Docks threat. This exercise only includes Defense and Investment.
3. Secure three votes
The Chair drafts A and the Rival drafts B. Other players petition. Negotiation follows, then a response and revision phase. Funding locks Pledges against the final motions. The vote is private until it closes.
A motion needs 3 of the original 5 seats. Identical final motions count as one group. Neither, missing votes and Forfeits never reduce the threshold. If no motion passes, the fixed Default Decree defends the threatened wards and loses the rest of the money.
Neither is a ballot you cast. It supports no motion. A missing ballot is tallied the same way, but it is recorded as missed: two consecutive missed Votes make you permanently Forfeit. Casting Neither never counts as a miss.
4. Choose what you commit
- Request
- Ask for a concrete motion change in exchange for support. It does not spend Favor.
- Claim
- You can bluff about your hidden Stakes. A claim is not proof.
- Disclosure
- Reveal a real card as a server-authenticated fact. It cannot be forged.
- Promise
- Non-binding. The server records whether it was Kept or Broken.
- Offer
- Non-binding. Announce in Negotiation, or in Revision as a reply, that you would pay Favor if something happens. Nothing is reserved or paid automatically, and the Offer expires when Funding begins.
- Pledge
- Binding. Locked during Funding: Favor goes into escrow, then pays automatically if the condition happens or returns if it does not. Pledges refer to frozen motion IDs. An Offer becomes real money only if its author also locks a Pledge.
You choose the semantic act before any optional LLM wording. Votes, motions, Pledges and proven facts use fixed templates. Silent pass is available.
5. Check your understanding
Three questions about the rules people most often mix up. Your answers stay in this page; nothing is saved or sent.
Explain the answer
An Offer is a non-binding announcement made in Negotiation or Revision. It reserves no Favor and expires when Funding begins. A Pledge is locked during Funding against frozen final motions; its Favor is escrowed and pays or returns automatically.
Explain the answer
Claims are player statements and may be false. A disclosure reveals one of your real hidden cards; the server publishes it as an authenticated fact that nobody can forge.
Explain the answer
Both choices support no motion, so the tally is the same. Only the missing ballot is recorded as missed, and two consecutive missed Votes cause permanent Forfeit.
6. Play a practice match
Core rules, four labeled policy bots and normal timers. The bots are scripted opponents. Closing a tab disconnects you; leaving a started match is permanent Forfeit. Missing two consecutive ballots also forfeits. Scores settle over five rounds; the final reveal explains each holding and promise.
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