Land, Map Geometry, and Expansion

Hex map model

Map is a hex grid with immutable coordinates.
Tile seeds drive all deterministic properties and resource namespace behavior.
The seed is generated at placement time, derived from the tile's coordinates. It does not exist until the tile is placed on the map.

Frontier auction mechanics

New tiles are introduced one at a time at the edge of current claimed territory. Auctions run continuously — the moment one closes, the next opens.

Format: popcorn bidding

Any bid resets a 10-minute countdown. The auction closes when 10 full minutes pass without a new bid.
Each bid must exceed the current highest bid by at least 5%.
A new auction opens immediately after the previous one closes, with a reserve price of 70% of the closing price. If the reserve is not met, the reserve drops 30% each subsequent round until a buyer appears.

Bid credits

Bids are paid in USDC and are non-refundable — once you bid, that capital is committed. However, losing bids are not lost: the amount becomes a persistent credit balance usable in any future frontier auction. You cannot place a bid without committing real capital, which prevents price manipulation without risk. A player with a $100 credit can bid up to $100 in any subsequent auction at no additional cost.

This creates a meaningful commitment at every step: no trolling the price, no withdrawal games. Bots and humans compete on equal footing — capital committed is capital at stake.

Genesis price: the very first auction has no prior closing price to derive a reserve from. A protocol-set seed price is required (value TBD).

Disconnected frontier claims: a frontier tile separated from existing claimed territory by up to 2 empty slots can still be claimed, keeping expansion possible through thin corridors.

Tile deeds and placement

Winning a frontier auction awards the buyer an unplaced tile deed — a tradeable token with no coordinates. The deed can be held indefinitely or sold on secondary markets before ever being placed. There is no expiry.

Placement is a separate on-chain transaction. The deed holder specifies a coordinate, and the contract verifies:

The coordinate is unoccupied (no existing tile there)
The coordinate is valid frontier (adjacent to an existing placed tile, or within the 2-empty-slot gap)
The coordinate is either adjacent to a tile controlled by the placing faction, or adjacent to a void seam

On success, the tile is activated at those coordinates and its seed is generated from them. The deed is burned. From this point the tile is a full participant in the game: licensed, minable, ENERGY-producing, and subject to Harberger acquisition claims after the 24-hour provisional custody grace period.

ENERGY and empty slots

Every placed tile has 18 slots. Each empty slot streams 1 ENERGY per day from the tile instance to the tile owner, so a fully empty tile streams 18 ENERGY per day. ENERGY is a global SuperToken and abundant action fuel: movement burns a flat 50 ENERGY, and patent Harberger holding tax is paid in ENERGY.

Mines consume slots and reduce ENERGY output. A common mine occupies 1 slot, an uncommon mine occupies 3, a rare mine occupies 9, and a legendary mine occupies 15. The tradeoff is intentional: empty space produces flexible action fuel, while developed space produces resources.

ENERGY is not a resource-tax substrate. It cannot pay resource taxes, army maintenance, or civic obligations. Those paths remain resource- or settlement-token-denominated. Patent holding tax is the exception: once a patent enters Harberger phase, that tax is paid in ENERGY.

Empty and developed tiles become taxable after the 24-hour post-placement grace period. The grace window protects provisional custody immediately after an auction/placement; it is not a permanent empty-land exemption.

Placement collision: if two players submit placement transactions for the same coordinate in the same block, the contract accepts whichever is ordered first. Standard on-chain ordering applies.

Secondary deed market: unplaced deeds are freely tradeable. A player can speculate on future frontier shape, acquire deeds cheaply early, and place them later when the map has expanded to make a location strategically valuable.

Void seams

Some coordinates are designated void seams.

They can never be built.
They can never be traversed by armies.
In the intended live ruleset they remain empty, preserving neutral fracture lines.

During the current scaffold phase the registry owner can still curate the void-seam set on-chain. That escape hatch exists so the live frontier geometry can be tuned before the ruleset is locked.

Their role is not cosmetic. They are the neutral logistics fractures that keep the frontier from becoming a single-faction choke point.

Frontier crown

Let R be the current maximum occupied ring from the center.

The outer frontier crown is the six corner tiles on ring R:

(R, 0)
(R, -R)
(0, -R)
(-R, 0)
(-R, R)
(0, R)

If a single faction controls all six simultaneously, it enters the winning state and activates the crown stream.

If any tile is placed at radius R + 1, the crown breaks immediately and the six positions are recomputed on the new ring.

Reasoning trace

Faction-adjacent placement makes logistics and alliances matter instead of letting every deed jump freely anywhere on the shell.
Void seams preserve alternative growth lanes so the incumbent frontier owner cannot permanently veto map expansion.
The crown is defined by geometry instead of hand-picked sacred coordinates, so it scales naturally with the living map.

Tile licences

A tile can only have one licensee at any given time. Licensees hold:

maintenance obligation — resource streams paid to earn USDCx yield. The acquisition cost reflects the tile's neighbourhood context: more same-licensee neighbors → higher effectiveDays → more expensive to acquire. More foreign neighbours → lower effectiveDays → cheaper to acquire. See Maintenance for the full formula.
resource production slots
current occupant entities (if military layer is enabled)

Design risks to avoid

Over-expansion without maintenance economics
Edge dead zones that never get reactivated
Monopolization by a single bidder in one turn

Mitigation:

recurring maintenance tied to tile context (frontier position, enemy pressure)
Harberger acquisition mechanism forces turnover if a licence is left unproductive
local trade dependencies to keep space relevant