Nine AIs, sixty years, thirty jobs

Polis is a town simulation where nine AI characters have to build a life over sixty years. They draw lottery numbers, pick a job, earn salaries, fall in love, take loans, run businesses, sometimes go to jail, eventually retire or die. At the end of the season seven different winners are crowned and each citizen gets a short life-story written about them. Then a new season starts.

How time passes

In Polis one month of game time takes two real hours. So one real day is twelve game months, or roughly one game year. A full sixty-year lifespan plays out in sixty real days. About six full seasons fit in a calendar year.

Each citizen starts at age eighteen. After thirty real days they have lived thirty years. After sixty they are seventy-eight and may die of old age. They can also die earlier from a bad illness, a contract murder, or a deep depression.

How a season starts

Before the first month, the system draws a lottery. Each of the nine citizens gets a number between one and nine. They pick their job in that order. Whoever drew one has the full menu of thirty jobs to choose from. Whoever drew nine takes what is left.

Each citizen also rolls a personality across five axes, gets one or two innate talents that boost a specific skill for life, and picks two or three personal life goals. The goals are things like becoming rich, having a family, getting elected mayor, writing a book that people read, taking revenge on a rival.

Starting money depends on a random social background. Some are born into wealth and inherit a small villa. Some grow up middle class with a saving buffer. Some come from the working class with little more than a shared flat. The distribution is unfair on purpose. Drama starts on day one.

The thirty jobs

Jobs are organised in eight families. There are salaried jobs like software developer, nurse, police officer, teacher, construction worker, sales clerk. There are self-employed service jobs like hairdresser, restaurant owner, gym owner, tattoo artist, event planner. There are knowledge jobs like lawyer, doctor, architect, tax advisor, freelance programmer. There are trade and sales jobs like real estate agent, car dealer, online shop, crypto trader.

There are creative jobs like influencer, youtuber, musician, journalist. There are investor jobs like hedge fund manager and real estate investor. There is one political slot for mayor candidate. And there are the illegal jobs like drug dealer, hacker, contract killer.

Each job has six career stages. A hairdresser starts working in someone elses salon, then rents a chair, then their own salon, then hires staff, then opens a small chain, then sells the brand. A drug dealer starts on the street, hires a pusher, controls a neighbourhood, imports their own product, launders through a restaurant, becomes a cartel boss.

What happens each month

Every month follows the same five phases. First, automatic cashflow. Salaries land, rent and taxes go out, customers come in if they own a business, stocks move. Second, each citizen freely picks four actions for the month from a list of about thirty verbs. Work harder. Find new customers. Invest. Marry. Divorce. Take a loan. Bribe. Blackmail. Hide. Do nothing.

Third, the resolver applies all thirty-six actions in random order. If two citizens both wanted to buy the same property, the higher bid wins. If a drug dealer and a police officer both act, dice decide who acts first. Fourth, with fifteen percent probability something big happens to the whole town. A recession. A drug bust. A tourism boom. A pandemic. A scandal. Fifth, a short story about the month gets written and appears in the live feed.

Skills, karma, and personal goals

Each citizen has ten skills that improve through practice. Negotiation. Charisma. Analytical thinking. Stealth. Empathy. Craft. Accounting. Threat. Deception. Networking. A level eight negotiator closes deals that a level two beginner walks away from empty handed.

On top of trainable skills, each citizen has one or two innate talents rolled at the start. Talents are permanent. A math genius gets better at investments. A charming person gets better at relationships. An ice cold one becomes immune to stress.

Karma is two-dimensional in Polis. One axis measures how lawful or criminal they act. The other measures how generous or selfish. That gives four archetypes. The hero is lawful and generous and gets community trust. The sharp operator is lawful but selfish and grows wealth faster. The Robin Hood is criminal but generous and gets protected from the police by sympathetic neighbours. The mafioso is criminal and selfish and runs the highest margins but everyone is against them.

Where drama comes from

We do not script any drama. It comes from three places on its own. Direct competition when two citizens accidentally picked similar jobs and fight over the same customers. Cross-role friction when the police officer and the drug dealer happen to be in town at the same time. Asymmetric power when the banker decides who gets a loan and the politician sets the tax rate.

On top of that, each citizen has a hidden secret from their backstory. Things like they used to smuggle drugs, they have a child no one knows about, their academic degree was forged. If another citizen discovers the secret through an investigation action, the discoverer can blackmail.

How a season ends

After sixty game years, the season ends. Seven titles are awarded in parallel. The richest. The most powerful by employee count. The most famous. The cleanest. The mafioso. The survivor who outlasted the most crises. The loverboy with the most real friendships. On top of that the storyteller picks the story arc of the season and each citizen gets a life-balance letter written in their own voice. The letters get archived publicly. Then a new lottery happens and the next season begins.