The Contents of the Winning Plan are as follows:

==Summary==
The theme of the game is based around container ships trading between ports around an inland sea.

[[File:Container Draft map.png|thumb]]

Hey, a game about container ships, like the classic board game Container! That seems great, pack it up, job done, no more idea needed. Right?

No more idea needed, right?

===Maybe!===
Because it’s a nomic, we can make it weird.

We don’t have to; it can be a game about setting up routes, building infrastructure, and managing local rivalries. We’ve done that kind of thing before and it works. Fixed-variable turn durations would be my mechanical twist - boats generate their route duration randomly when they’re launched, with the time required being fixed at the point of generation. In that regard it would be more of an idle game, with resource generation and maybe a bit of inventory management playing a more active part.

But it could also be very weird. What if the things being transported weren’t just goods but could also in fact be rules? So say that each player is a City, with some boats and a warehouse, but it also had a Culture - a private ruleset of rules that affected only it and its nearest neighbours. Culture is randomly generated at fixed intervals and through set formats, and can (maybe must) be transported too and from Cities along with cargo.

The Emperor is also a city, and their Culture is the Ruleset. Rules in the Capital’s Culture affect everybody, and a subset of the Captial’s rules can also be piled onto shipping containers and ferried between the various rulesets in the game along with goods.

Rules only apply when they’re not on a boat; when they’re in Ruleset City they apply to everyone, but when they’re in an individual player’s city they only apply to that player and their neighbours.

==Some rules==
===Cities===
Each City is marked on the Map, has a grid reference, and is considered Proximate to any other City that is in the same grid reference square or is in a grid reference square that is orthogonally adjacent to it.

Each City has a Storehouse which can contain Goods. The Goods in each City’s Storehouse is publicly tracked and defaults to blank.

Each City has its own Culture, a document that holds any number of Tenets. For non-Capital Cities, a City’s Culture is held a page in the wiki which is publicly tracked and which is itself gamestate. The Tenets of a Culture are considered ruletext only for the City that owns that Culture and any Cities that are Proximate to it.

The Dynastic Ruleset contains within it a subsection for the Regional Ruleset. The Regional Ruleset is considered to be a Culture for the Capital City according to this rule, except that the rules held in the Regional Ruleset apply to all Cities.

There is also a Culture that holds all rules that are currently loaded onto Boats. All tenets on the Boats’ Culture have no effect, unless otherwise stated.

If a City has no Tenets in its Culture then it must produce one as set out in the rule Tenets before taking any further dynastic actions.

====Tenets====
When a City is required to produce a Tenet, it does so as follows:
‘‘The rest of this rule is purposefully blank, to avoid over-defining the dynasty in advance, but I imagine something a bit madlibs-y - some fill-in-the-blanks sentences and some look-up tables that allow players to Produce, Consume, Build etc.’‘

===Boats===
Each City has one Boat. Each Boat has a type (which defaults to Carrack); a Location, which may be the name of any City or In Transit (x,y) where x is the name of the City of origin and y is the City of destination, defaulting to the name of the City that owns it; and a Manifest, which may contain up to three Goods and one Tenet, or nothing, defaulting to nothing.

At any time a City may Load a Boat that they own that is in any City. Loading a Boat entails moving Goods from the City that the Boat is in to the Boat in question, up to its capacity; whenever a Boat is Loaded it must also take a Tenet from the Culture of the City it is in. When a Goods or a Tenet is loaded into a Boat it ceases to be in the City it was loaded from.

Once a Boat has been Loaded, it is Launched - its Location becomes In Transit (with the City it was just in as its origin and a destination of its owners’ choosing). When a Boat is Launched its arrival time is generated as determined by its type; the arrival times for each Boat that is in transit is publicly tracked. When the arrival time of a Boat that is In Transit passes, its Location it set to the Destination city, its arrival time is blanked, and the Boat’s Owner may elect to move any Goods to the Storehouse of the City they are in; if they do, any Tenets they are carrying are also to the Culture of the City they are in.

As a daily action, the Capital City should post a Manifest to the blog detailing which Boats in transit are due to arrive at which Destinations at which times.

==Iterations==
* Boat upgrades. I imagine that at first a Boat’s travel time is a randomly determined period in a wide range (a specific minute within 1 to 5 days of departure, say) while upgrading shortens the range but allows for some selectivity (a specific minute within 2-3 days randomly selected, plus or minus up to 120 minutes selected by the owner). You could also have more Boats.
* Goods. Goods would be generated by rules (each sub-ruleset could start with ‘x Good is generated on a regular basis’ as a rule - which could of course be stolen). Would they have distinct effects? Would they just be a victory condition? Could they ever be owned by the City that generated them, or do they have to be exported to cease being inert?
* Piracy Rules. Rules that only have an impact when they are on a boat.
* I don’t envisage combat being a part of this, beyond stealing each others’ rules.
* The madlib generation of Tenets can be flexible or rigid. I don’t have a firm view on that.

==Imperial Styles==
Provocateur, because I’ve tried other styles and they never stick.
Libertarian.
Powerhouse, although I don’t see this being a massively Emperor-heavy dynasty.
Scam-neutral.
Oblivious.
Wildcard.
Timekeeper. I am keen that there is no virtue to being online at the exact minute a boat comes in - I’d be happy to consider proposals that allow actions to be prepared and triggered based on predictable occurances.

It was authored by Josh. Note that due to a bug in the victory condition, I believe that Josh has not actually achieved victory from this (I will explain in the comments).