28. Production Roadmap & Budget

Figure 11 – Indicative roadmap (months from start); v0.7 adds the AI Governance service, AI citizens and eval harness.

Phase	Months [ASSUMPTION]	Exit criteria
Pre-production	0–3	This GDD approved; nation bibles for all ten and faith bibles for all six; paper and spreadsheet prototypes of elections, plan, favor, referendums, share votes and the ten-currency exchange model; IP review of names, currency names and emblems; first sensitivity read of the faiths.
Tech spike	2–5	Next.js + Clerk skeleton in the Turborepo monorepo; Three.js (React Three Fiber) chunked tile map with 160k+ squares (the 512 × 320 full map) at target frame rate; authoritative game server prototype verifying Clerk JWTs; ledger and timers; SystemTemplate data model; AI decision-pipeline spike (one persona making legal decisions from a digest via two providers) (milestones T0–T3, Section 22.11).
Vertical slice	4–8	One nation, one city, jobs, market, chat – fun in a 20-minute daily loop.
MVP build	7–13	Three nations with AI leaders and AI citizens, all MVP systems; AI Governance service and eval harness (milestone T5a); internal bot simulations.
Closed alpha	12–15	Invite-only shard; one full election cycle; tuning.
Open beta / Early Access	15–20	MVP three nations; monetization live; moderation staffed; second shard if demand.
Wave 2	16–24	Confluence, Hoarvale, Varkand added (→ 6 nations); war v2; congress, coalition and junta modules. Chosen to reuse existing modules: Hoarvale reuses Kindle’s elections, Varkand reuses Aurelle’s coup machine.
Wave 3	22–32	Meridian, Ilmar, Veldwood, Fulmara added (→ 10); referendum engine, weighted ballots, mobile parity, Ages.
1.0 launch	32–36	All ten nations on every public shard; 512 × 320 map; population balancing tools proven in Early Access.

28.1 Budget ranges (all assumptions, not quotes)

Budget path (decided v0.4)

Build lean first: founder (design + code) plus contractors for art, UI, audio, legal and part-time moderation, through the MVP and Early Access. Seeking funding for a small core team is a later option, revisited only if Early Access traction justifies it; the roadmap months above assume the lean path and may stretch accordingly [ASSUMPTION].

Ranges depend heavily on location, salaries, contractor rates and how much the founder builds personally. They are planning placeholders only; obtain real quotes before committing.

Scenario	Team	MVP duration	Indicative range (USD) [ASSUMPTION]
Lean solo + contractors (chosen, v0.4)	Founder (design + code) + contract 3D artist, UI artist, composer, part-time moderator	12–18 months	$60k–$200k (mostly contract art, audio, legal, hosting)
Small core team	Founder/producer + 2 engineers (client, server) + 1 artist + 1 designer/writer + part-time community/moderation	12–15 months	$450k–$1.2M
Ongoing live-ops	Hosting, moderation, payments, verification (SMS), LLM usage (about $100–$750 per full shard per month, Section 22.13), AI-content review, customer support	Monthly after launch	Low thousands per month at MVP scale, scaling with players and shards [VERIFY with provider pricing]
Post-MVP to 1.0 (seven more nations)	Lean: founder + contractors (art kit, UI skin, audio leitmotif, writing and sensitivity read per nation)	~20 months (months 15–36)	Lean: about $100k–$300k · Small core team: about $0.6M–$1.6M (the same monthly run-rate as the MVP, extended) [ASSUMPTION]
Per-nation content (planning unit)	Nation bible, rules configuration, AI persona set, style guide and evals, art kit (buildings, clothing, emblem, leader portraits), UI skin, audio, tutorial, balance pass, sensitivity and IP review	About 2–4 person-months each [ASSUMPTION]	Main driver of the 10-nation cost; reduced by shared modules (Section 22.5)
One-off	IP/trademark search and counsel, privacy policy and terms, age-rating questionnaire, accessibility audit	Pre-launch	Obtain quotes [VERIFY]