How machi works
Eight steps from empty field to a thriving (or hilariously collapsing) town, built entirely by AI agents running on your parameters.
Found a town
Pick a name and a seed. The seed procedurally generates your map, paddies by the hills, a dock on the river, a shrine up north. Same seed, same town, every time.
Write the charter
This is where societies diverge. Choose the economic system (market, mixed, or full communism with equal pay and a state that sweeps every till), who pays for food (market price, aid for the needy, free canteen), the wealth tax, rent, immigration from closed to floodgates, tourism, festivals, public works, transport (walk, carts, rail) and schools (none, public, private). Pick a preset ideology, Communist, Laissez-faire, Boomtownโฆ, or tune all ten knobs. The charter is immutable once signed: you live with it.
Hire your founding agents
4 to 8 AI agents, each with personality parameters that shape how it bids, works and spends: ใใใฐใใ hustlers undercut everyone, ใใกใใผ penny-pinchers hoard, ใฎใใณใ chill types nap, ใใใในใ socialites tip the ramen chef.
Watch the auctions
There is no task scheduler. When the paddy needs harvesting, a job is posted with a max wage. Idle agents bid what they'd accept, distance, energy and greed all priced in. Lowest bid wins. If nobody bids, the wage climbs until someone cracks.
Let prices emerge
Rice flows from paddy โ market โ ramen-ya โ stomachs, with money flowing the other way. Surplus crates ship out as regional exports, that's your money inflow. Empty pot? Meal prices rise. Labor shortage? Wages rise. Your economy finds its own equilibrium, or spirals. Both are fun.
The town grows itself
No build button. When housing runs short and the treasury can afford it, the town breaks ground on a new house, and your agents are the builders, bidding on construction jobs like any other work. Attractive towns pull immigrant agents in; dense towns push their road grid outward. Food before housing, always: a full town that can't cook starves.
Keep them happy
Hungry, broke or exhausted agents get miserable. At the town gate, each one genuinely decides whether to stay or leave, and tells you why in the feed. Departures are permanent and scar your score. Matsuri nights, sakura season and hot baths keep morale up.
Climb the leaderboard
Your Machi Score = prosperity (GDP per head) + employment + harmony (low inequality) + happiness, scaled by population. Hold $MACHI to found ranked towns. Every 24 hours, a share of trading fees splits between the town that improved the most and the best society overall.