How to play TideForge

TideForge is a cap-and-trade trade game for 3–4 players (or you against three islanders). Gullwick is rebuilding its coast, and every workshop you raise is a bet: rebuild fast with kilns and gamble on the water, or build slowly and clean and hope the fast builders don't flood you out. Here is a full game in six ideas:

• 🔥 Fire a kiln — fast, but it raises the Tide — A kiln rebuilds the most coast per turn (+3) and it is cheap — but each one lifts the shared Tide by 2, and you need a kiln permit to run one. Kilns are the temptation: they get you ahead fastest, and they are exactly what puts the coast at risk.
• ⚙️ Build a tide-mill — slower, but it eases the water — A tide-mill rebuilds less per turn (+2), costs more coins, and needs no permit — and it LOWERS the Tide by 1. Mills are the discipline: they hold the coast, at the price of falling behind the kiln-burners.
• 🎟️ Trade permits — cap-and-trade is the deal — There are fewer kiln permits than players (the cap), and they are TRADABLE. If you hold one, you can sell it to an islander who wants to burn — and you must say the trade is FOR a kiln (the Ask Rule). Deciding who gets to pollute, and for what price, IS the negotiation.
• 🌊 The flood line — a shared cost you cannot dodge alone — When the Tide reaches the flood line, the outer coast washes out. Everyone loses rebuilt structures — but kiln-owners lose the most (their coast is the most exposed), and each flood erodes a little more than the last. The player who tips it hurts everyone, including themselves.
• 🏆 Rebuild the most by the end of the season — After eight rounds, the islander who has rebuilt the most has done the best for Gullwick. There is no points-to-chase meter and no clock — just eight turns each, and the choice you keep making: rebuild fast, or hold the water back.
• 🤔 There is no right answer — When floods stay rare, the boldest kiln-burner often wins. When kilns tip the coast again and again, the patient mill-builder pulls ahead. TideForge does not tell you which to be — it hands you the dilemma real communities face and lets you argue it out at the table.

Why the permit trade is the point

The kiln permits are capped on purpose — fewer than there are players. So someone always wants to burn and can't, and someone else is sitting on a permit they might rather sell. That negotiation — who is allowed to raise the Tide, and at what price — is the whole argument of cap-and-trade, made small enough to play in forty minutes. The Ask Rule makes every trade name what it is for, so the deal is always honest about its cost.

Honest note: TideForge is a model of a commons dilemma, not a policy prescription — it makes no claim that one strategy is right or that playing it changes a real-world outcome. Everything is computed by a small, exact, deterministic engine (pinned by automated tests) on your device; nothing about your play leaves it.

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