Grand Circuit

1. Abstract

Grand Circuit is a forty-space city. Pawns buy lots, raise rent, and keep moving. The product is not a sitting that throws you out when cash hits zero. It is a city that keeps its citizens — including the computers — on the same clock.

Two deployments share one ruleset. Computer City is the in-app picture you can play today: computers act per epoch, instantly, so the window is only waiting on you. Live City is the upcoming real game: a persistent instance with 6-hour epochs, many human seats, the same land NFTs, and the same computer policy so a machine citizen can never stall six hours of everyone else.

Land is the NFT (GC-XX). Houses are traits on that NFT, not a second token you can peel off. Selling the land sells the houses. Broke is a lien and a jail stay, not elimination. A join fee and a 5% rent skim fund a civic treasury. Passing GO grants Marks, not a cash salary.

This paper does not describe a chain, a ticker, or a launch window. It describes the city. If a later ledger holds the deeds, it holds these objects — not a different game.

2. Meaning — what this is for

Sequential board games assume a table. One pawn rolls, everyone watches, the next pawn rolls. That is Table Circuit, and it is still here: a sitting with a winner. It is the wrong shape for a city that is supposed to stay open.

A city is simultaneous. Rent is earned while you are elsewhere. Neighbours build on their own clock. A computer that “takes a turn” for six hours is not a citizen — it is a locked door. Grand Circuit’s meaning is that the city is the unit of time, not the player.

• Scarcity sits on the map. Forty lots on the core loop. Eight colour rows. Four lines. Two utilities. After epoch 100 the city adds Lantern row and Beacon Grid past Crown Point — extra lots, not a rewrite of Ivory Lane. Utilities never sit between a colour row.
• Ownership is one object. The deed is the lot. Improvements live on it. A market can list it. A bank can salvage it. Nobody keeps a house after selling the dirt.
• Time is a window. Everyone submits an intent. Computers submit at open. Humans submit before close. The city settles once. Then it opens again.
• Absence is not death. Miss an epoch and you rest. Go broke and you sit in jail with a lien while your lots still collect. The city stays populated.

Computer City exists so that loop is playable without waiting six hours and without asking a chain to exist first. Live City is that loop with the clock turned to its real length and the table opened to many humans.

3. The problem

If computers take sequential turns on a 6-hour window, a four-seat city spends most of its life waiting on Ada. Humans cannot plan. Rent cannot clear. The city is a queue pretending to be a place.

If computers were allowed to “think” until the window was about to close, they would snipe. They would see every human landing, then buy, build, or rest with perfect information. That is not a citizen. That is a last-mover exploit.

So the design forbids both:

1. Computers never own the window. They cannot delay close. They cannot extend it.
2. Computers seal their intent at epoch open — dice, buy flag, queued houses — before any human dice are known. They move later, in seat order, but they do not get to change their mind.

Humans get the whole window because they are the ones who might be asleep, at work, or on another device. Computers do not need that courtesy. They are ready at T+0, every epoch, forever.

4. Two cities, one ruleset

Table Circuit is a third thing on purpose: a finite 1v-computers match with a cash GO salary, a first bankruptcy, and a net-worth ranking. It is the sitting. Epoch City (Computer and Live) is the place.

5. The board

One loop, forty spaces, clockwise from GO. Colour rows sit in pairs and triples. Names are original to this city — Ivory Lane, Harbor Row, Foundry Street, Crown Point — not a reskin of someone else’s map.

• Corners. GO (0), Jail (10), Civic Park (20), Go to Jail (30).
• Colour rows. Ivory, Harbor, Market, Foundry, Arcade, Hill, Grove, Crown. Lantern row unlocks after epoch 100.
• Transit. North, East, South, West Line. Rent $25 / $50 / $100 / $200 by how many you hold. No houses.
• Utilities. Power Plant and Water Works on the core loop. Beacon Grid unlocks after epoch 100, after Lantern Yard — never between colour lots. Rent is 4× the dice, 10× if you hold two, 16× if you hold all three. No houses.
• Taxes. City Levy $200 and Luxury Tax $100 fill Civic Park, a separate pot from the treasury. Land on Park to take it.
• Cards. Fortune and Chance. Table Circuit draws from the full decks. Epoch City uses a simplified cash swing so simultaneous settlement does not need a locked shared deck (see §12).

Every purchasable space has a printed price and a base rent. Completing a colour row doubles that base before houses apply. Full prices live in §21.

6. Who sits

A Computer City sitting is one human and two or three computer tycoons. Tokens are ivory (you), rust (Ada), steel (Holt), pine (Vesper). Seat order is fixed at join: you, then Ada, then Holt, then Vesper. Settlement walks that order. It is not shuffled each epoch.

Live City adds human seats to the same order. Join order is seat order. Computers fill empty chairs so a thin city still has rent, rivalry, and someone to land on. A computer seat is a full citizen: cash, deeds, Marks, liens, jail. It is not a dealer and it is not a house account.

Starting bankroll is $1500. Epoch join takes $200 off the top into the treasury, so you begin on GO with $1300. Table Circuit does not take a join fee; you keep the full $1500 and collect a GO salary instead.

7. Computer City — how it plays now

This is the in-app simulation of how the real game looks. There is no wallet, no gas, no listing book, and no public ledger. The objects are the same ones Live City will use.

1. You name yourself, pick two or three computers, choose Easy or Hard, and enter. Join fees mint the treasury. Difficulty is Computer City only — not Live City protocol.
2. Epoch 1 opens. Ada, Holt, and Vesper submit immediately (dice, claim flag, offer answers, house queues). Hard computers complete rows, block yours, keep a cash reserve, and will not sell a monopoly cheap. The banner says they are ready. The clock is waiting on you.
3. You may queue a house on a completed colour row, salvage a deed back to the city, claim unowned land from last epoch, answer offers, then Roll or Rest. Landing never auto-mints — you decide next epoch.
4. Commit closes the window early. The city settles every seat, then opens epoch 2 with computers already sealed again. If you let the 40s run out, that is a rest. Computers still resolve.
5. There is no winner screen. You leave when you leave. Net worth is a standing, not a finish line. Broke sends you to jail with a lien; your lots keep collecting.

Keyboard: space or R rolls the epoch. The board shows house pips on improved lots and the deed id when you inspect a space. Salvage confirms, because houses leave with the land.

8. How computers work

Computers are not “AI taking a turn.” They are epoch agents. One function runs at open, writes an intent, and stops. Nothing they do can pause the window. If a computer is broke in jail, its intent is rest. The epoch still closes on human commit or on the timer.

8.1 Policy (exact)

Each computer, at epoch open, does this and only this:

1. Default intent: roll, two dice in 1–6, claim only if they landed on unowned land last epoch and still have a $100 cash buffer, no houses queued.
2. If in jail with a lien and cash less than the lien → idle (rest). No dice. Lots still collect. This is the only time a computer declines to roll.
3. If in jail with cash ≥ lien → still roll. Settlement will clear the lien first, then move. They do not skip a turn they can pay for.
4. Then, for each owned colour lot, in ownership order: skip transit and utilities; skip incomplete rows; skip hotels; skip if cash minus house cost would fall under $140 (a solvency buffer); skip 55% of the time (they do not max-build every epoch); otherwise queue that lot. Stop at two queued houses.

They do not bargain. They do not salvage. They do not target a specific rival. They do not look at the human’s uncommitted intent. Dice are rolled into the intent at open, so they cannot choose a move after seeing where you landed.

8.2 What they can still “see”

Because settlement is seat order and you sit first, a computer’s predetermined dice may land on a lot you minted earlier in the same epoch. That is rent, not sniping: they did not change the dice. They simply move after you. Live City keeps this. Changing it would require simultaneous movement (all teleport, then all landings), which breaks “who is standing on the lot when rent is due.” Seat order is the honest rule.

8.3 What they must never do

• Hold the epoch open.
• Resubmit after a human commits.
• Read another seat’s sealed dice before those dice are revealed at settlement.
• Be skipped in settlement because they are a computer. They pay tax. They take liens. They collect.

If a design needs six hours “for the computers to think,” it is the wrong design. Computers think at T+0. The six hours are for humans.

9. Live City — how the upcoming real one goes

Live City is Computer City with the demo shortcuts removed. Same board. Same NFT model. Same computer policy. Different clock, population, and persistence.

9.1 Opening a city

A city instance is created once. Computers are seated at genesis so the map is never empty. Humans join when an epoch is open or in the gap after settlement. Join pays $200 to that city’s treasury — not to a player, not back to you on exit. You spawn on GO with $1300, 0 Marks, no deeds. You do not inherit Ada’s lots. You do not reset the epoch counter.

9.2 The 6-hour window

Each epoch is open for 6 hours. Computers seal at second zero. Humans may submit, replace their own intent, queue or unqueue houses, and salvage (or list) until close. Replacing your intent is allowed until the window seals; you cannot replace anyone else’s. Close happens at the timer, or earlier if every human seat has a non-idle intent. Computer seats do not count toward that wait — they are already in.

9.3 Sealed intents

Live City should hide dice and buy flags until settlement. Computer City already avoids showing computer dice on the board before close. The live rule is stronger: treat intents as sealed so humans cannot snipe each other the way we refused to let computers snipe humans. At close, intents open, then §12 runs.

9.4 Missing the window

No commit → rest. You stay on your space. You do not pass GO. You do not pay rent. You also do not collect new land. Your existing lots still collect from whoever does land. This is how a city survives time zones and sleep. Kick-for-AFK would empty the map.

9.5 Persistence

Your seat, cash, Marks, lien, jail flag, position, and deed titles survive disconnect. Table Circuit already saves a sitting to a signed-in account; Live City should save the city the same way, scoped to the instance plus your user, not a guest blob on one device. Guests can still play Computer City without an account.

9.6 Market

A listing is one NFT: GC-24 with however many houses are on it. The buyer receives the lot and the rent curve. The seller receives cash (minus any later listing fee to treasury). There is no “keep the hotel, sell the dirt” ticket. Salvage remains the city’s 70% buyback if nobody bids.

9.7 Milestone districts

Computer City — the in-app preview — may keep adding one computer every 10 epochs and one unique colour row plus a utility every 100 epochs, through epoch 5000. Those extra lots sit on a prepared outer rail so the forty-space square never shrinks or overlays. Easy and Hard computers exist only in that preview. None of this 5000-epoch ceiling, the outer rail, or difficulty is Live City / testnet / mainnet protocol. Live City still uses the published clock: one new seat every 10 epochs, and Lantern row plus Beacon Grid after epoch 100, on the edge past Crown Point, utilities outside colour rows.

9.8 What Live City is not (yet)

It is not a requirement that deeds sit on a public chain. It is not a promise of a transferable coin, a yield token, or airdrop math. Marks are not cash. Treasury is not a dividend. If a ledger is used later, it is a persistence layer for these same records.

10. Epochs and time

An epoch has two phases: open (intents accepted) and settling (intents frozen, city resolving). Players never act during settling. In Computer City settling is instant. In Live City it should also be short — a clear, then the next open.

The demo timer is a teaching clock. Rules do not change when the number becomes hours. If a future client offers a “fast city” and a “live city,” they should share this paper and differ only in duration and who is allowed to sit.

11. Intents

One intent per seat per epoch. Fields:

kind

roll · pass (committed rest) · idle (no commit yet). Timeout promotes idle to pass. Computers use idle only when jailed without cash.

dice

A pair of 1–6, or null. Required for roll. Rolled by computers at open. Rolled by you when you press Roll. Not rerolled at settlement.

claim

If you landed on unowned land last epoch, mint it this epoch, or pass and leave it unowned. Nothing auto-buys.

offerResponses

Accept or decline each ripe offer (created last epoch). The owner answers next epoch. Houses travel with the deed.

builds

A list of space ids to improve, resolved before the move, one house each, skipping unaffordable or illegal ids. Queueing the same id twice in one epoch still builds once.

You may toggle builds while the window is open. You may salvage a deed while the window is open; that is not an intent, it is an immediate city action (the lot is unowned before settlement). Live listings should be immediate too, or they race settlement — do not leave a listed deed moving under two owners in one epoch.

12. Settlement — the exact order

When the window closes, the city clones state and walks seats from first to last.

1. Offers. Ripe offers (created last epoch) are answered. Accept transfers the whole deed plus houses. Decline leaves it with the holder.
2. Claims. If you landed on unowned land last epoch and flagged claim, mint GC-XX now. Otherwise the lot stays unowned. Nothing auto-mints on landing.
3. Lien. If in jail with a lien and cash ≥ lien, pay it in full, clear jail, continue. If cash is less than the lien, apply builds only, skip the move, go to the next seat. Existing lots still collect when other seats land on them later in this same epoch.
4. Builds. For each unique queued id: must own it, must own the whole colour row, must be a property (not transit/utility), houses below 5, cash at least house cost. Cash is spent. houses increments by one. Hotel is houses = 5.
5. Move. If kind is roll and dice exist: steps = d1 + d2. Destination = (position + steps) mod loop size (40 on the core square; Computer City may extend the loop on the outer rail). If destination wraps past GO, grant 15 Marks (no cash). Then resolve the landing.
6. Landing.
   • Unowned property / transit / utility → open a claim for next epoch. No auto-mint.
   • Own lot → visit, no rent.
   • Rival lot → pay rent (see §18). You may offer to buy; they answer next epoch. Shortfall → lien + jail (space 10). Tax skim on the amount actually paid.
   • City Levy / Luxury Tax → pay into Civic Park. Shortfall → lien + jail.
   • Civic Park → take the whole jackpot (may be $0).
   • Go to Jail → jail, space 10, no lien, no GO Marks.
   • Fortune / Chance in Epoch City → +$80 or −$40 (fair coin), cash floored at $0, no lien from the card. Table Circuit uses the named decks instead.
   • GO, Jail (visiting), and empty corners → nothing extra.

After every seat: epoch number increments. Every 10 epochs one new computer may join. Every 100 epochs Live City opens Lantern row and Beacon Grid on the edge. Computer City may keep opening outer rows through epoch 5000 — preview flavour only, not chain protocol. Phase returns to open, intents reset to idle, computers fill again, timer starts. Deeds, cash, Marks, liens, positions, treasury, and Civic Park carry forward.

Go-to-Jail without a lien is a one-epoch hold. Next epoch you may roll out from Jail like a visitor — no doubles required. A lien is the thing that actually traps you. Table Circuit is stricter ($50 fine, card, or doubles) because it is a sitting, not a city.

13. Land as an NFT

A purchasable space is not “owned” as a flag. It is minted as a deed:

• tokenId — GC-XX with XX the space index, two digits. Ivory Lane is GC-01. North Line is GC-05. Crown Point is GC-39. The id never changes.
• spaceId — which lot on the forty-space loop.
• ownerId — the seat that holds it.
• houses — 0–5. This is the improvement trait.

Unowned land has not been minted. First purchase mints. Salvage (or a later burn-on-buyback) returns the space to unowned; a later pawn mints the same id again. There is one living deed per lot at a time. You cannot fractionalize GC-24 in this ruleset. You cannot move a house from GC-24 onto GC-23.

In Computer City the deed is a city record. In Live City it is the NFT you would hold, list, and transfer. The fields do not change. Metadata for a listing is “GC-24 · Grand Arcade · 3 houses · Arcade row complete / incomplete.” Rent is computed from those fields, never stored as a separate payable token.

14. Houses on the deed — the better model

Houses raise rent. They cost cash. They are scarce per lot (max 5, the last is a hotel). It is tempting to mint each house as its own NFT. That model is rejected.

14.1 Why not detachable house tokens

• Sell the land, keep the houses: the hotel floats on a lot you no longer own. Rent has two landlords.
• Every market listing becomes an atomic bundle. Miss one house id and the city forks.
• A house token needs a rule for “where it sits.” That rule is the land NFT. So the extra token is a shadow of the deed.
• Liens, salvage, and milestone math all have to chase two inventories instead of one.

The better model: houses are traits on the land NFT. Building spends cash and increments houses. After attach they are not a separate tradable. Conceptually they are still NFTs — scarce, valuable, visible — but they are expressed as metadata, not as wanderable tokens.

14.2 Build rules

• Only colour property. Never transit. Never utilities.
• You must own every lot in that colour row.
• One house per queued id per epoch (you may queue two different lots).
• Cost = max($40, round(price × 0.45)). Ivory Lane costs $40 to improve (the floor). Crown Point costs $180.
• Even a jailed pawn may build if they still have cash and a complete row — builds run before the skip-move.

14.3 Rent curve

Property rent = base × 2 (if the row is complete) × house multiplier. Multipliers for 0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / hotel: 1 / 3 / 6 / 10 / 16 / 25. You cannot build without the row, so in practice houses always sit on the doubled base.

Ivory Lane (base $16, full Ivory row): unimproved $32; 1 house $96; 2 $192; 3 $320; 4 $512; hotel $800. The hotel is still GC-01. Crown Point (base $200, full Crown row): unimproved $400; hotel $10,000. That is why liens exist. A city that eliminated on a Crown hotel would empty itself.

15. Sale, salvage, and the market

Transfer always moves the whole deed. Houses travel. Live City’s marketplace is a book of those deeds. Computer City lets you offer a holder a price; they answer next epoch. Salvage remains the city’s buyback.

Salvage pays 70% of (printed land price + houses × current house cost), rounded. The deed is removed. The space is unowned. Improvements are gone. Example: Ivory Lane with one house → ($60 + $40) × 0.7 = $70. Crown Point hotel → ($1300) × 0.7, paid in cash, lot vacant.

16. Treasury, Marks, tax, Civic Park

Four pots, four jobs. Do not mix them.

Cash

Your spendable bankroll. Starts at $1300 in Epoch City. Buys land, houses, liens.

Treasury

Civic pool. Genesis: $200 × seats. Then 5% of every rent payment that actually clears (rounded). It does not pay you a dividend in this ruleset. Later it can fund milestone lots or season rewards. It is not Ada’s pocket.

Civic Park jackpot

Filled by City Levy and Luxury Tax only. Taken entire by whoever lands on Civic Park. Independent of treasury. If you cannot pay a levy, you still fill Park with what you have, then take a lien for the rest.

Marks

15 on every GO wrap in Epoch City. Not cash. Not rent. A continuation record. This simulation does not spend them. Live City may use them as season standing, access to a milestone district, or cosmetics. They must never alter printed rent.

Rent skim is civic, not a fine on the landlord. If $100 rent is due and $100 is paid, treasury takes 5, the owner receives the rest. If only $10 can be paid, the skim is on $10, and the $90 shortfall becomes the payer’s lien. The owner is not billed for the missing piece.

Table Circuit has no join fee, no Marks, and no rent skim. GO pays $200 minus $35 upkeep per deed, because a sitting needs cash moving or it never ends.

17. Jail, liens, persistence

Epoch City does not eliminate. That is the civic rule. A Crown hotel should hurt. It should not delete you from the map and hand your row to nobody.

• Rent or tax shortfall. Pay what you have. Missing amount is added to lien. You are moved to Jail (10). Your deeds stay yours. Later seats this epoch still pay you rent (minus skim) if they land on you.
• Go to Jail space. Jail, no lien. Next epoch you can roll out from 10 without doubles.
• Clearing. At the start of your settlement step, if cash ≥ lien, the lien is paid in full and you leave jail, then you build and (if you committed roll) you move. Partial payments are not taken automatically — you need the whole lien. Salvage before commit is how you raise it.
• Computers. Same rule. A broke Ada rests. She does not freeze your 40s, and she will not freeze anyone’s 6 hours.

Table Circuit is the opposite on purpose. First bankruptcy ends the sitting. Leftover cash goes to the creditor. Remaining pawns ranked by net worth (cash + printed deed prices). Someone wins. That is a match, not a city.

18. Rent math

Let B be printed base rent, S = 2 if the owner holds the whole colour row else 1, H the house multiplier.

Property: B × S × H. Transit: 25 × 2^(lines−1). Utility: 4 × dice for one plant, then +6× per extra plant on the current square (10× for two, 16× for three, and so on). Dice total is the mover’s steps this epoch.

Net worth (Epoch) = cash + sum of printed land prices + sum of (houses × house cost). It is a standing, not a payout. Table Circuit’s net worth ignores houses because Table 1.0.1 does not build.

19. Table Circuit — the sitting that remains

Table Circuit is still the full 1v-computers match. Sequential turns. You, then Ada, then Holt, then Vesper. Each pawn starts with $1500. Passing GO pays $200, then charges $35 upkeep per deed so cash cannot inflate forever. Colour rows double rent. Transit and utilities match Epoch. Fortune and Chance use the named decks (advance to GO, Crown Point, jail, street repairs, and the rest).

Jail is the classic hold: pay $50, use a get-out card, or roll doubles. Three doubles in a row send you to jail without collecting GO. The match does not end on a round cap. It ends at the first bankruptcy. Highest remaining net worth wins.

Signed-in players get a cloud save of the active sitting and a short history of finished ones, scoped to the account, not the device. Guests may play; they just cannot resume elsewhere. Email and password, Google, and X are the sign-in methods. This paper does not change that.

20. Economy sheet

21. Lot catalogue

Printed prices and base rents. House cost uses the 45% rule with a $40 floor. Token id is GC-XX for every purchasable row. Corners, cards, and taxes do not mint. GC-40–GC-43 (Lantern row and Beacon Grid) stay locked until epoch 100. Computer City may preview further outer rows through epoch 5000; those extra lots are not Live City protocol.

22. What ships today, what follows

In this build

• Table Circuit 1.0.1 — sequential, bankruptcy ending, net-worth ranking, signed-in saves.
• Computer City — 40s epochs, computers seal at open, land NFTs, houses as traits, salvage bundle, join fee, Marks, 5% rent skim, jail+lien, no elimination.
• This litepaper, in the app, next to the board.

Live City (upcoming, intended)

• 6-hour windows on a persistent instance.
• Many human seats. Computers still fill at T+0 and never delay close.
• Sealed intents until settlement. Claims instead of auto-buy. Offers reviewed next epoch.
• Marketplace listings of one deed NFT (land + houses).
• Account-scoped persistence for the city, the way Table already saves a sitting.
• Marks as season standing. The epoch-10 seat and epoch-100 district already exist in Computer City.
• Named Fortune / Chance decks under a committed draw, if the simplified swing is retired.

None of those items change the loop you can play today. If Live City ever disagrees with this paper, the paper should move — not the meaning in §2.

23. Non-goals and risks

• No sequential six-hour computer turns. That was the original trap. It will not come back.
• No detachable house tokens after attach. Scarcity of improvements is real; a second inventory is not.
• No elimination in Epoch City. A hotel is allowed to bankrupt a sitting at the Table. It is not allowed to delete a citizen from the city.
• No rent-paying coin. Cash is cash. Marks are marks. Treasury is civic. Mixing them would let a later token rewrite the board.
• No claim that a chain is required to play. Computer City is the game. A ledger would be a host.
• Known tension: seat order. First seat moves first, so later seats can land on land minted the same epoch. We accept that over last-mover dice. Live City must publish seat order at join.
• Known tension: claim delay. Landing never auto-mints. You decide next epoch. That is slower than a sitting, and it is the Live City rule Computer City is rehearsing.
• Known tension: card swing. Epoch’s +80/−40 is a settlement convenience. It is weaker flavour than Table’s decks. Live City may restore the decks with a committed seed.

24. Glossary

Computer City

The playable in-app Epoch City. Short window. Fresh instance. Computers included.

Live City

The upcoming persistent Epoch City. 6-hour window. Many humans. Same objects.

Table Circuit

Sequential 1v-computers sitting. Ends on first bankruptcy. Not the city.

Epoch

One simultaneous window. Open, then settle, then open again.

Intent

A seat’s sealed action for the epoch: roll, rest, dice, claim, offer answers, queued houses.

Deed / land NFT

GC-XX. One per lot. Houses are fields on it.

House / hotel

Attached upgrade. Hotel is houses = 5. Travels with the deed.

Marks

15 per GO wrap in Epoch City. Continuation record. Not cash.

Treasury

Civic pool from join fees and the 5% rent skim.

Civic Park

Separate jackpot from levies. Taken on landing.

Lien

Unpaid remainder. Holds you in jail. Does not strip lots.

Salvage

70% buyback of land + house cost. Lot returns to unowned.

Seat order

Join order. Settlement order. Computers do not jump the queue and do not hold it.

Ada, Holt, Vesper

The computer tycoons. Rust, steel, pine. Citizens of the epoch.