How to Play: Genesis

You build a research model, and that model is your only source of income. You spend what it earns two ways: on the Lab, to make the model smarter and earn more, and on the Nation, to build homes, schools, hospitals, parks, and power for your people.

Why both matter

• The Lab and the Nation depend on each other. A better model attracts more citizens, and happy, educated citizens make your model even smarter.
• Grow them together and you climb. Neglect either one and you stall, there's no way to win on one alone.

Income comes only from your model. There are no taxes and no other revenue, so everything you build is funded by what your research brings in.

What this means

• Your model's earning power is the engine behind the whole game, the smarter and more in-demand it is, the more you can spend.
• Because there's a single income source, the key tension is always how to split that money between earning more now and growing for later.

In the Lab, a slider splits your compute between two jobs: serving (earning cash now) and training (raising your benchmark, which is how smart the model is). Balancing the two is the core decision of the whole game.

Which way to lean

• Lean toward serve when you need cash to fund upgrades and projects right now.
• Lean toward train when you want to climb, a higher benchmark makes the model stronger and unlocks more growth.
• There's no permanent right answer, the best split shifts as your nation and model grow, so revisit it often.

Every dollar your model earns goes into one of two buckets. The art is keeping both moving so neither becomes the bottleneck.

Lab upgrades

• More compute, better training, higher efficiency, and a bigger market, all of which raise how much your model can earn and learn.

Nation projects

• Housing, health, leisure, schools, and energy, the services that attract citizens and keep them happy and educated.

Happiness is set by your weakest service, not your average. Pour everything into one area and a neglected one will still drag your whole nation down.

How to keep happiness up

• Build evenly across housing, health, leisure, and energy rather than over-investing in a single service.
• Only workers produce talent, and talent (boosted by education and happiness) is a major driver of your benchmark.
• Ignore the city and your model stops improving, a miserable nation quietly caps how far your research can go.

More research and more people both demand more power. Energy is the quiet constraint that can throttle everything else if you let it fall behind.

The energy balance

• If energy demand outgrows your capacity, both revenue and happiness take a hit.
• Build energy projects to keep capacity ahead of demand as your model and population grow.

Every couple of hours a Cycle presents 3 situations to judge. Pick the answers that fit. A perfect score boosts your model; a poor one sets you back.

How cycles work

• While a cycle is waiting, the game pauses until you decide, so you never miss one by being away.
• There are no hints, read each situation carefully and choose the response that best fits.
• Cycles are the main lever for nudging your benchmark up (or down), so they're worth slowing down for.

Your rank is your Civilization Score, which combines how strong your model is and how big, happy, and educated your nation is. You're judged on both at once.

What it rewards

• A brilliant model with a miserable nation won't top the board.
• A happy nation with a weak model won't either.
• The highest scores come from growing intelligence and a thriving population side by side.

Other research labs are racing you, and they keep accelerating. Standing still means falling behind.

Keeping tabs

• Check the Civilization Board to see where you stand against your rivals.
• Tap any rival to inspect their model and see what you're up against.
• Because rivals never stop pushing, steady, balanced growth beats short bursts that leave gaps behind.

The game never ends and never "game-overs." If things go wrong, your model stalls and your income shrinks toward a floor, but you can always rebuild.

Recovering

• Fix your services and balance, lift your weakest service, sort out energy, and rebalance the compute slider to climb back out.
• If you fall too far behind to catch up, Reboot: you and every rival restart from zero in a fresh race.
• Your best score is yours to beat, so a reboot is a clean run at a higher target, not a loss.

Genesis is meant to be slow and steady, a decision every couple of hours and a nation that grows over days. The further you get, the harder it is to keep everything balanced.

What makes it harder over time

• More people cost more to support.
• Growth dilutes education, so schools have to keep up.
• Rivals never stop pushing, so your lead is never safe.