Living World

NPCs lead their own lives, and other villages develop on their own, all based on NPC trading. Prices vary wildly based on supply and demand, which you can shape by helping NPCs build industries, by selling items where they are needed, by changing the ecosystem to give them new opportunities, or turning your citizens to religion or weird new ways of being.

A Nation of Islands

Sail between many villages, to buy up items for trade, or to help build up different communities in turn. If you can give them the help they need they can flourish into productive hubs which can help other islands in turn. Islands can have all manner of magical properties, some useful and some not. Some islands may free citizens of the need to eat or sleep, while others experience constant rotting where food decays rapidly. Others are simply extremely cold or filled with hostile life forms.

Experiment With Economics

Try out fantasy versions of real-life economic principles. What would a fantasy world look like if an AI (Alchemical Intelligence) took all the jobs? Are Tariffs the way forwards if your economy is based on selling antlers taken from caterpillars? Would universal basic income work on a freezing island where they eat giant beetles? Encourage your villagers to take initiative to develop new eyeball-tree based industries (and not rely on government hand-outs) or subsidise building materials by taxing luxury items? Try your economic ideas in the safety of a Scottish fantasy world before you run for President of a real world country.

NPC Driven Free Market

NPCs lead their own lives, trying to earn a living by picking up professions or harvesting nearby islands. Traders in ships will sail between islands, trying to make a profit. Help individuals fund their businesses so your villages have access to their products, or compete against them to keep your lucrative monopoly.

Exploit them for their own good

With great wealth you can do a lot of good. Festivals to make people happy, charity to help the poor, investment in citizens buildings or simply building beautiful parks and gardens. It's entirely reasonable therefore to plant freezing trees to sell them more cola to keep warm; or to send them off to an island where you are the only supplier of food; or for you to keep causing beetle attacks so you can sell arrows and medicine to the survivors or any other way you can help them spend more at your shop.