Vice Chancellor — Complete Guide

What you are doing

Your 50-Year Tenure

You are the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The year is 2025. Seven vice markets exist — tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, Class A/B/C drugs, gambling, MDMA, and psilocybin. They are already being consumed. Your only choice is how to govern them over the next fifty years across ten budget periods of five years each.

🗞️

Breaking News

A Westminster Gazette event fires — shifting the landscape before you set policy

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Red Box

Set regimes, duty rates, harm reduction, NHS investment, and macro parameters

⚙️

Simulate

Five years run through the bond-graph engine. Cabinet advisors analyse the results

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Year Reveal

Step through each year watching revenue, health costs, and welfare delta emerge

💷

Allocate Surplus

Any period surplus can be invested in NHS, harm reduction, education, or enforcement

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Next Period

Health state, cohort lags, and political capital carry forward. Your choices compound

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The Fundamental Insight

The question is not whether people will consume these substances. They will. The question is whether the state shapes those markets — collecting duty, enforcing product safety, funding treatment — or abandons them to criminal supply chains and then spends the savings on enforcement that doesn't work. The bond-graph ledger makes both outcomes visible.

What You're Maximising

Your Green Book score is a composite of welfare NPV (did your policies generate net social value vs doing nothing?), NHI (is the nation healthier at the end than at the start?), revenue (is the Treasury generating excise income?), and political survival (did you maintain the mandate to govern?). These objectives conflict constantly.

What Makes This Hard

Every decision compounds. Harm multipliers degrade or improve with each period. Youth consumption today becomes senior health burden in two periods. Political capital spent on radical reform isn't recovered for three periods. The optimal Year 1 policy is rarely the optimal Year 50 policy — you're managing trajectories, not snapshots.

How welfare is calculated

The Simulation Engine

The core engine runs every time you submit a budget. It is a bond-graph welfare accounting system: all costs are conserved — they cannot simply disappear. Prohibition doesn't eliminate health costs, it moves them from the duty revenue column to the crime and enforcement column while making harm multipliers worse.

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Policy Inputs

Regimes, duty rates, MUP, HR scale, diversion rate

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Price Formation

Base price + duty × pass-through + 20% risk premium if illegal

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Logit Demand

Budget allocation across 7 markets via share model

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Welfare Ledger

Revenue, health sink, crime, consumer surplus, externalities

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NPV / ΔW

Discounted welfare delta vs do-nothing baseline

Demand Model — Logit Shares

shares = logitShares(prices, tastes, η) // Each substance gets a budget share based on: // - its price (higher price → lower share) // - consumer taste parameter (0.03–0.55) // - price sensitivity η (default 1.20) // - cross-price effects from σ parameter q_substance = (share × budget) / price // Quantity = budget share / unit price // Total budget grows with population and GDP shock g

The η (eta) parameter controls overall price sensitivity. At η=1.2, a 10% price increase causes roughly a 12% reduction in that substance's share. Cross-price elasticity (crossSigma) means taxing one substance shifts demand to others.

Welfare Calculation — The Ledger

ΔW = ΔCS + revenue_transfer + health_benefit - crime_cost - external_cost // ΔCS: consumer surplus change (utility loss from price rise) // revenue: goes to Treasury (a transfer, not net welfare loss) // health_benefit: harm reduction × harm multiplier // crime_cost: illegal market enforcement burden // external_cost: third-party harms netWelfare = revenue − healthSink − crimeCost // The number you see each year on the reveal screen // Positive = the Treasury made more than it spent // Negative = costs exceed the revenue dividend

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The 20% Risk Premium

Every illegal substance gets a 20% price premium above its base price. This models the black market markup — criminal supply chains charge more for the same product. This makes illegal markets more expensive for consumers but generates zero duty revenue and higher harm costs due to no product safety regulation. The risk premium is why prohibition fails the welfare test even when consumption falls.

Cannabis–Tobacco Coupling (k₀)

The k₀ parameter models the tobacco mixed into hand-rolled cannabis joints. Effective cannabis price = cannabis price + k₀ × tobacco price. This means cannabis regulation and tobacco duty are not independent levers — taxing tobacco hard raises the effective cost of cannabis consumption. The k₀ coupling decays as edibles and vapes take over, and collapses to zero in EDIBLES_VAPES mode.

Dynamic Regulation Transition

When dynamics are ON, changing a regime doesn't flip overnight. The regulated market share transitions via exponential decay toward the target value, with a half-life of 1.5 years. So legalising cannabis in Period 3 means the black market share is still ~30% at the end of that period — full transition takes several years. Plan accordingly.

MUP Floor (Alcohol)

The Minimum Unit Price lever sets a price floor per alcohol unit. The model applies max(market_price, MUP_floor). At low MUP levels this has no effect on standard drinks — it only bites the cheapest products. This asymmetry is realistic: MUP primarily affects super-strength, low-cost products consumed disproportionately by dependent drinkers.

The markets you govern

Seven Vice Markets

Each substance has a starting regime, a set of health and crime cost parameters, and its own harm multiplier that evolves between periods based on your policy choices. Below are the key characteristics and cross-dependencies for each.

Substance	Start State	Health Weight (NHI)	Key Cross-Dependency	Regime Options
🚬 Tobacco	REGULATED	25% — highest weight	k₀ coupling to cannabis price. Vaping boom event reduces duty by 8%	REGULATED / ILLEGAL
🍺 Alcohol	REGULATED	22% — second highest	MUP floor lever operates only on alcohol. Cross-substitution with cannabis strongest here	REGULATED / ILLEGAL
🌿 Cannabis	ILLEGAL	10%	Coupled to tobacco via k₀. Youth cohort index strongly driven by cannabis quantities. Affects Home Secretary advisor sentiment	ILLEGAL / REGULATED
💊 Class A/B/C	ILLEGAL	20% — high crime weight	Fentanyl crisis event hits this market hardest. Portugal model event improves both this and MDMA. Cohort driven partly by ABC quantities	ILLEGAL / REGULATED
🎰 Gambling	REGULATED	8%	Gambling scandal event drains capital AND raises harm mult. Senior cohort burden compounds into gambling harms over time	REGULATED / ILLEGAL
✨ MDMA	ILLEGAL	10%	Has the most nuanced regime ladder. Harm reduction investment via allocator specifically targets MDMA, ABC, psilocybin. Portugal model improves it	ILLEGAL / DECRIM / VENUE / PRESCRIBED
🍄 Psilocybin	ILLEGAL	5% — lowest weight	Psilocybin trial event gives a large −20% harm multiplier improvement. The easiest substance to improve NHI on. Most options on regime ladder	ILLEGAL / DECRIM / THERAPEUTIC / RETAIL

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The NHI Weighting System

The Nation Health Index is not a simple average. Tobacco (25%) and alcohol (22%) dominate because they affect the most people and carry the highest disease burden. Class A/B/C (20%) punches above its weight because of the crime cost component. This means regulating tobacco and alcohol generates the biggest long-run NHI dividend, even though both are already regulated at game start — the question is how well you regulate them.

What you control each period

All Policy Levers Explained

Every slider in the Red Box affects the simulation in specific, documented ways. Most levers interact with each other and with the V2 systems. Here is the complete picture.

Per-Substance Levers

Regime

ILLEGAL / REGULATED (+ sub-types)

The most consequential lever. REGULATED = duty can be collected, harm multiplier improves at −2%/yr. ILLEGAL = 20% risk premium, harm multiplier deteriorates at +1.5%/yr, crime costs apply.

Feeds into: harm multiplier trajectory, duty revenue, political capital cost, Cabinet Advisor sentiment, crime costs

Duty Rate (£ per unit)

0 – varies by substance

Tax per unit, passed through to consumer price via the pass-through parameter (default 100%). Higher duty raises price → lower quantity demanded via logit shares → lower health sink, but also lower consumer surplus.

Feeds into: price formation, logit demand shares, revenue, Treasury PPS advisor, consumer surplus ΔCS

Harm Reduction Scale

0.0 – 1.0

Scales the harm reduction infrastructure (needle exchanges, supervised use sites, safe supply programmes). At 1.0, the full harm reduction benefit is applied, reducing the effective health cost per unit consumed.

Feeds into: health sink calculation, NHI improvement rate, CMO advisor sentiment, Harm Dividend achievement

Diversion Rate

0.0 – 1.0

The fraction of enforcement activity diverted toward treatment and rehabilitation rather than prosecution. At 1.0, all enforcement budget funds treatment. This is the Portugal model lever — reducing criminalisation stigma.

Feeds into: treatment effectiveness multiplier, crime cost reduction, Home Secretary advisor sentiment

MUP Floor (Alcohol only)

£0.00 – £1.50 per unit

Sets a minimum price floor per alcohol unit. Only affects products priced below the floor — typically the cheapest high-strength products consumed most heavily by dependent drinkers. Has no effect on standard pub drinks at low levels.

Feeds into: effective alcohol price, demand quantity, alcohol harm multiplier trajectory, CMO advisor

NHS Investment Toggle

Via healthCap parameter

Controlled via the Budget Allocator (not a direct Red Box lever). When surplus is invested in NHS capacity, the healthCap ceiling rises — meaning the penalty for exceeding capacity is reduced in future periods.

Feeds into: NHS capacity ceiling, health cost penalty cap, Prudent Investor achievement

Macro & Cross-Market Levers

k₀ — Tobacco–Cannabis Coupling

The fraction of cannabis rolled with tobacco. At k₀=0.5, half of cannabis consumption is blended. Effective cannabis price = cannabis_price + k₀ × tobacco_price. As dynamics evolve (edibles/vapes take over), k₀ decays. Setting CANNABIS_MODE to EDIBLES_VAPES forces k₀=0 immediately.

η (eta) — Price Sensitivity

Controls how elastic total demand is to prices across all markets. At η=1.20 (default), a 10% price rise across the board reduces that substance's share by ~12%. Higher η = more elastic consumers = taxes work better at reducing consumption but generate less revenue per unit.

crossSigma / crossWeight

Cross-price substitution parameters. If you tax alcohol heavily, consumers shift spending toward cannabis, gambling, or other available substitutes. crossSigma controls the strength of this substitution. crossMdma specifically controls MDMA–cannabis substitution for young adult consumers.

Population Growth (popGrowth)

Annual percentage growth of the consuming population. At 1% growth, budget B₀ grows by 1% per year within each period. This means even holding policy constant, revenue and health costs grow slightly each year. Over 50 years, this compounds significantly.

GDP Shock (g₀)

An exogenous economic shock applied to consumer budget. Positive g₀ = economic growth → more spending → higher quantities across all markets. Negative g₀ = recession → lower spending → lower revenue AND lower health costs. In dynamic mode this interacts with the macro model.

tasteScale

Scales all consumer taste parameters uniformly. At 1.0 (default), taste parameters reflect baseline preferences. Increasing tasteScale shifts demand upward across all substances — a proxy for loosening social norms. Decreasing it models a culture shift toward sobriety.

The interconnected layer

Six Systems That
Wrap the Engine

The V2 systems sit outside the core simulation engine and interact with it via hooks before and after each period runs. None of them modify the bond-graph calculation — they shape the conditions the engine runs in.

System 1 — Nation Health Index (NHI) & Harm Multipliers

Each substance has a harm multiplier that starts at 1.0 and evolves between periods. It directly scales health cost parameters before the simulation runs — so a multiplier of 0.80 means that substance's health costs are 20% lower than baseline.

If regulated share ≥ 0.5: mult[k] *= (1 - 0.02)^5 // -9.6% per period If regulated share < 0.5: mult[k] *= (1 + 0.015)^5 // +7.8% per period Bounds: clamp(mult, 0.30, 1.80) // Can never drop below 30% or rise above 180% NHI = 50 + Σ weight[k] × (1 - mult[k]) × 50 // Weighted across 7 substances. 50=baseline. // Higher NHI = lower multipliers = healthier nation.

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The Long Game Dividend

If you regulate tobacco (25% weight) from Period 1, by Period 10 the multiplier is ~0.63 (37% reduction). If you prohibit it, by Period 10 it's ~1.45 (45% increase). That's a 2.3× swing in tobacco's health costs between best-case and worst-case governance — over £20,000 per period in health savings at late game. Early decisions have compounding consequences.

NHS Capacity Ceiling

If health costs exceed the NHS capacity ceiling (set via NHS investment), a penalty multiplier is applied. Running sustained surpluses and investing them in NHS capacity via the Budget Allocator raises this ceiling permanently. Running deficits lowers it. The capacity ceiling is the most durable long-term investment in the game.

System 2 — Political Capital

Political capital starts at 100 and represents your mandate to govern. Every regime change costs capital based on how radical the shift is. Capital regenerates each period based on your welfare performance.

Regime Change	Capital Cost
Tobacco: ILLEGAL→REGULATED	-8
Cannabis: ILLEGAL→REGULATED	-18
Alcohol: REGULATED→ILLEGAL	-20
Class A: ILLEGAL→REGULATED	-30
MDMA: ILLEGAL→PRESCRIBED	-25
Psilocybin: ILLEGAL→RETAIL	-22
Any change (default)	-10

// Regeneration each period: base_regen = +10 if welfare > £1,000: regen += 5 if welfare < -£2,000: regen -= 5 // Events can additionally drain: Gambling scandal: -10 Backbench revolt: -20 // Capital display: ≥ 60: green ≥ 30: amber < 30: red (critical)

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Capital Depletion Warning

Dropping below 30 triggers urgent warnings from the Independent Expert advisor. You cannot regulate all seven substances in a single period without draining capital to near-zero. Plan your reform sequence — the most politically costly changes are Class A/B/C and MDMA legalisation.

System 3 — Cabinet Advisors

🩺 Chief Medical Officer

Focuses on NHI and health costs as a fraction of revenue. Goes red when NHI drops below 42. Goes yellow when health costs exceed 80% of revenue. Recommends harm reduction and regulation. The CMO represents the public health imperative — reducing disease burden regardless of political cost.

🚔 Home Secretary

Focuses on crime costs. Goes red when crime costs exceed 50% of revenue. Goes yellow when full criminalisation is failing. Recommends diversion over enforcement when crime is high. Represents the law enforcement perspective — often in direct conflict with the Independent Expert on decriminalisation.

💷 Treasury PPS

Laser-focused on revenue and welfare balance. Goes red when period revenue drops below £5,000. Goes yellow when welfare delta is negative. The PPS represents fiscal conservatism — they want duty rates high, markets regulated, and the ledger in the black. They distrust radical reform that risks revenue.

📊 Independent Expert

MacPherson-aligned. Evaluates the revenue-to-cost ratio. Goes green when ratio > 1.5 (revenue covers costs with headroom). Goes red when political capital is critically low. Gives nuanced, evidence-based advice and is the only advisor who explicitly tracks the welfare ledger position against the do-nothing baseline.

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The Advisor Conflict Is Intentional

Your advisors will almost never all agree. The CMO wants regulation for health reasons. The Home Secretary wants enforcement. The Treasury wants revenue. The Expert wants evidence-based reform. Balancing their concerns — rather than optimising for one — is the core decision-making challenge. A game where all advisors are green is an easy game.

System 4 — Budget Surplus Allocator

After the final year reveal of each period, if your period surplus exceeds £500, the Budget Allocator modal appears. You can split the surplus across four investment categories — any unallocated surplus is lost.

🏥 NHS Capacity Investment

Allocated amount × 1.5 bonus multiplier is added to cumulativeSurplusInvested. This raises the NHS capacity ceiling permanently, reducing the penalty for excess health demand in all future periods. This is the highest-leverage long-term investment in the game. The 1.5× bonus means every £100 you invest acts like £150 in capacity terms.

💉 Harm Reduction Research

Reduces harm multipliers for MDMA, psilocybin, and Class A/B/C by 3% × intensity × 5. Targets the three highest-risk, lowest-regulation substances. Provides an immediate multiplier reduction in addition to the per-period trajectory improvement from regulation. Stacks with regulation benefits.

📚 Prevention & Education

Reduces the youth cohort index by 12% × intensity × 3. This directly shrinks the lagged health burden that will arrive in two periods. Best used when your youth index is elevated (above 115) — it's the only way to reduce a bad cohort trajectory once it's already in the lag queue. Works synergistically with the mental health crisis event if you've been hit by it.

🚔 Enforcement Efficiency

Sets a crime cost multiplier of 1 − (0.05 × intensity × 3) for the next period only. The effect does not persist beyond one period. Useful for short-term crime cost management when the Home Secretary is going red, but it's the lowest long-term value investment. Don't sacrifice NHS capacity for one period of lower crime costs.

System 5 — Generational Cohort System

Youth consumption today becomes adult health burden in 1 period and senior health burden in 2 periods. The lag queue tracks this pipeline. Youth consumption is proxied from cannabis and Class A quantities in each period's final year.

youthProxy = (q_cannabis + q_abc × 0.5) / 20 youthIndex = prev × 0.85 + youthProxy × 15 + baseline × 0.15 // Weighted blend of momentum, policy, and mean-reversion // Bounded: clamp(youthIndex, 50, 180) lagQueue = [2-periods-ago, 1-period-ago, current] seniorBurden = lagQueue.shift() // oldest exits if seniorEffect > 0.05: mult[tob, alc, gam] *= (1 + seniorEffect × 0.05) // High past youth consumption raises ADULT substance costs // Specifically tobacco, alcohol, gambling — the long-term diseases

👶

The Two-Period Lag

If your youth index spikes to 140 in Period 3 (a fentanyl crisis + high cannabis quantities), that cohort becomes the adult health burden in Period 4 and the senior burden in Period 5. You will feel the consequences of Period 3 policy in Period 5 regardless of what you do in between. The prevention investment in the Budget Allocator is the only way to interrupt this pipeline.

Reading the Cohort Panel

The dashboard panel shows three bars: 👶 Youth (current period), 🧑 Adults (1 period lag), 👴 Seniors (2 period lag). Green = below 95 (better than baseline). Yellow = 95–115 (manageable). Red = above 115 (elevated burden). Watch the adult and senior bars — they're the ones currently affecting your health costs.

Exogenous shocks

The 15 Events

At the start of every period, the Westminster Gazette may land on your desk. Periods 1, 4, 7, and 10 always receive an event. All others have a 70% chance. The game avoids repeating the same event twice in succession.

🏥

NHS Staff Strike Threatens Service Delivery

All harm multipliers +8% this period

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Landmark Study Links Cannabis Regulation to Crime Reduction

Cannabis & ABC crime multipliers −10%

⚠️

Fentanyl Contamination Sparks Overdose Surge

Class A/B/C harm multiplier +15%

🎰

Online Gambling Giants Targeting Vulnerable Adults

Gambling harm +12% · Political Capital −10

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Big Tobacco Lobbies Against Duty Increase; Memo Leaked

Tobacco harm multiplier −5% (compliance pressure)

🌍

Portugal Drug Policy Heralded as Global Template

ABC & MDMA harm multipliers −8%

🍺

Record Liver Disease Admissions Overwhelm Hospitals

Alcohol harm multiplier +10%

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Mental Health Crisis Among Young Adults Linked to Substance Use

Youth cohort index +15% (2-period health lag)

💨

Vaping Sales Triple as Youth Nicotine Market Shifts

Tobacco duty revenue reduced 8% via shift

🍄

NHS Psilocybin Therapy Shows "Remarkable" Depression Results

Psilocybin harm multiplier −20%

🔫

County Lines Network Linked to Surge in Violent Crime

ABC crime cost multiplier +15% next period

📈

OBR Upgrades Fiscal Forecast; Surplus Larger Than Expected

+£5,000 bonus surplus added to allocator

🏛️

Backbench Revolt Threatens Chancellor Over Vice Reform

Political Capital −20

💉

Needle Exchange Programmes Save 10,000 Lives

All harm multipliers −5% (harm reduction boost)

📚

School Drug Education Shows 30% Reduction in Teen Use

Youth cohort index −10% (reduced future burden)

🎲

Event Timing Strategy

Because events fire before you set policy that period, you have one chance to respond. If the Fentanyl Crisis hits, consider increasing harm reduction investment or allocating more surplus to harm reduction research the following period. The Backbench Revolt draining 20 capital is particularly dangerous in early periods when you're planning major regime changes — it can force you to delay reform by a full period to recover.

The complete interconnection map

How Everything Feeds
Into Everything Else

This is the complete picture of every major cross-system dependency in Vice Chancellor. Understanding these flows is the difference between reactive play and strategic play.

Complete Dependency Architecture

🎛️ Policy Choices (Regimes + Duty + MUP)

🗞️ Random Events

💷 Budget Allocator

↓ ↓ ↓

All three modify the conditions before/during simulation

💰 Price Formation

🦠 Harm Multipliers

🏥 NHS Capacity

💰 Political Capital

↓ ↓ ↓

These feed into the core simulation engine

📊 Logit Demand Shares → Quantities

⚖️ Bond-Graph Welfare Ledger

📐 5-Year NPV + ΔW

↓ ↓ ↓

Outputs of each period's simulation

🫀 NHI Update (multiplier trajectories)

👶 Cohort System (lag queue shift)

🏛️ Capital Regen (welfare-dependent)

📊 Cabinet Advisors (result-driven text)

↓ ↓ ↓

These carry forward to shape the NEXT period's conditions

📜 Running Score + Green Book Report

🏆 Achievement Unlocks

📈 Demand & Cohort Charts

Critical Cross-Dependencies Explained

Regime → Harm Multiplier → NHI → Score

Your regime choice this period determines whether the harm multiplier improves (regulated, −2%/yr) or deteriorates (illegal, +1.5%/yr) over the next five years. That multiplier then feeds into NHI. NHI feeds directly into your running score (+/−10 points). A Chancellor who regulates early earns a compounding NHI advantage worth 8–15 score points by Period 10.

Quantities → Youth Cohort → Harm Multipliers

Cannabis + ABC quantities from the simulation feed into the youth index this period. The youth index enters a 2-period lag queue. Two periods later, high youth consumption raises tobacco, alcohol, and gambling harm multipliers. You cannot break this dependency after the lag is set — only education investment can attenuate it.

Welfare → Capital Regen → Reform Capacity

Good welfare performance (+£1,000+) gives you a +5 bonus on capital regeneration. Bad performance (−£2,000) gives a −5 penalty. Capital is what enables regime changes next period. A downward spiral is possible: bad policy → low welfare → low capital regen → can't reform → continues bad policy.

Event → Harm Multiplier → NHS Costs → Score

A fentanyl crisis hits ABC multiplier +15%. That multiplier scales the health cost parameters the engine reads. Higher health costs reduce net welfare. Lower welfare reduces your running score and capital regen. The event's effect therefore echoes through to your capital, your advisor sentiment, and your long-run score. Events have fourth-order consequences.

Surplus → Allocator → NHS Capacity → Health Costs

Revenue surplus → allocator investment in NHS → raised capacity ceiling → reduced health cost penalties in future periods. This is the principal positive feedback loop in the game. High revenue periods invested back into capacity make high-cost events less damaging in later periods. Running deficits removes this buffer entirely.

k₀ → Cannabis Price → Cross-Substitution → Alcohol

When k₀ is high and tobacco is taxed heavily, effective cannabis price rises. The logit model then shifts demand away from cannabis toward the next cheapest alternative — often alcohol. Taxing tobacco to reduce smoking can inadvertently increase alcohol consumption if cannabis remains illegal and k₀ is non-zero. The coupling decays over time as vapes/edibles take over.

Duty Rate → Price → Consumer Surplus → ΔW

Higher duty raises consumer prices. Higher prices reduce quantities consumed (good for health). But higher prices also reduce consumer surplus — the welfare loss from reduced choice and higher spending. The welfare delta ΔW is the net of these: health benefits minus surplus loss. Very high duty on already-expensive Class A drugs may harm welfare because the surplus loss outweighs the small health gain.

Capital → Regime Change → Multiplier → Advisor

Low capital prevents radical regime changes (implicitly — you can still change regime but drain yourself dangerously). Each change costs capital before the simulation runs. Then the regime determines multiplier trajectory. Then the multiplier affects NHI. Then NHI drives CMO advisor text. Then low capital drives Independent Expert text. The political and health systems are fully coupled.

The Three Feedback Loops

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The Virtuous Loop

Regulate → lower harm multipliers → lower health costs → higher net welfare → more surplus → NHS investment → higher capacity → lower cost penalties → more surplus → repeat. The game rewards early, sustained regulation with compounding dividends.

🔁

The Vicious Loop

Prohibit → high harm multipliers → high health costs → negative welfare → low capital regen → can't reform → prohibition continues → multipliers deteriorate further. This loop accelerates after Period 5 and becomes very difficult to break without a surplus event (OBR upgrade).

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The Disruption Loop

A bad event (fentanyl crisis, backbench revolt) → harm spike + capital drain → forced delay on reform → multipliers deteriorate → next event hits a weakened state. Events compound on top of existing trajectories. A fentanyl crisis when you're already at low capital is far more damaging than when you have 80+ capital and a NHS buffer.

How your tenure is judged

The Green Book Score

Your running score is a composite of four components, updated after every period. The final score determines your chancellor grade in the closing report.

±25 pts

Welfare NPV

50 × tanh(totalNPV / £80,000). Positive welfare vs do-nothing baseline gives up to +25 pts. Running sustained deficits drives this to −25.

±15 pts

Health Outcomes

15 − 15 × tanh(avg health cost / £30,000). Keeping average health costs low earns up to +15 pts. High, persistent health costs cost you up to −15.

±10 pts

Fiscal Revenue

10 × tanh(avg revenue / £8,000). Revenue generation earns up to +10 pts. Markets that are all illegal generate little duty and lose points here.

±10 pts

Nation Health Index

10 × tanh((NHI − 50) / 20). Improving population health above the 50 baseline earns up to +10. NHI below 50 costs points — the long-run dividend is real.

Score = 50 // baseline + 25 × tanh(totalNPV / 80000) // welfare + 15 − 15 × tanh(avgHealth/30000) // health + 10 × tanh(avgRevenue / 8000) // revenue + 10 × tanh((NHI − 50) / 20) // NHI Clamped to: [2, 98] // you can't score 0 or 100

Chancellor Grades

Score Range	Grade	What It Means
88 – 98	🏆 Chancellor of the Century	Welfare positive, NHI above 70, revenue strong, no major deficits. All four components near maximum. Extremely rare.
75 – 87	🌟 Distinguished Service	Strong welfare and health outcomes. Minor fiscal weaknesses or a few bad events weathered well.
62 – 74	⚖️ Competent Stewardship	Mixed record — positive welfare but health or revenue lagging. The most common outcome for experienced players.
48 – 61	📋 Mixed Legacy	Some markets regulated, some not. Missed the compounding dividend. Welfare roughly neutral vs baseline.
35 – 47	⚠️ Troubled Tenure	Prohibition-heavy approach with high crime and health costs. Welfare negative. Significant opportunity cost vs do-nothing.
2 – 34	💀 Economic Catastrophe	All markets illegal, maximum harm multipliers, NHS capacity exhausted, sustained deficits. Rare — requires consistent active misgovernance.

Achievements

📋

First Budget

Submit your first period budget. Unlocks immediately.

⚖️

In the Black

Achieve positive welfare Δ in any single period.

🫀

Healthy Nation

Raise the NHI above 60. Requires sustained regulation.

🌿

Green Market

Set cannabis to REGULATED while submitting. Costs 18 capital.

📅

Full Decade

Complete 2 periods (10 years). Basic longevity achievement.

💷

Revenue Machine

Generate over £10,000 duty revenue in a single period.

🚔

Law & Order

Crime costs below £2,000 in a period. Requires heavy regulation or diversion.

💉

Harm Dividend

Any substance harm multiplier below 0.70. Requires 3+ periods of consistent regulation.

🏛️

Full Tenure

Complete all 10 periods. See the 50-year final report.

⚖️

MacPherson Award

End with NHI above 60 AND positive NPV welfare. The hardest dual condition.

🏆

Political Survivor

Maintain capital above 80 for 3 consecutive periods. Avoid radical reforms until stable.

🏥

Prudent Investor

Use the Budget Allocator in any period. Requires a surplus above £500.

🎯

The MacPherson Award — Why It's Hard

NHI above 60 requires sustained regulation across multiple high-weight substances (tobacco 25%, alcohol 22%, ABC 20%) over at least 5–6 periods. Positive NPV welfare requires your revenue to consistently exceed your health and crime costs. These objectives pull in the same direction — both reward regulation — but the NHI requirement means you can't just run high-revenue extraction without genuinely improving health outcomes. Reaching both by Period 10 is the canonical "excellent Chancellor" test.

Strategic Principles

1. Reform Sequence Matters More Than Reform Speed

Class A/B/C legalisation costs 30 capital. Cannabis costs 18. Psilocybin retail costs 22. If you do all three in Period 1, you start Period 2 with near-zero capital and no ability to respond to a backbench revolt or gambling scandal. Instead: cannabis first (biggest NHI dividend per capital spent), then psilocybin (cheapest relative to NHI gain), then build capital before tackling Class A.

2. NHS Investment Has Compounding Returns

The 1.5× bonus on NHS capacity investment means a £1,000 surplus invested in Period 2 acts like £1,500 of capacity in all subsequent periods. If you can generate positive surpluses in Periods 2–4 and invest them entirely in NHS, you build a buffer that makes Periods 7–10 (when event damage compounds) significantly more survivable.

3. Tobacco and Alcohol First, Always

They start regulated but you can still improve their harm trajectories via high duty rates and harm reduction investment. Their NHI weights (25% and 22%) mean a 10% improvement in their multipliers is worth roughly the same score impact as fully legalising cannabis. The substances you already control are underrated.

4. Watch the Cohort Panel From Period 3

The senior bar (red, 2-period lag) is affecting your current health costs right now. The adult bar (gold, 1-period lag) will hit next period. The youth bar (blue, current) will arrive in two periods. If your adult bar is above 120, that's already in the system — but allocating surplus to education can attenuate the youth bar before it matures.

VICECHANCELLOR

Your 50-Year Tenure

The Simulation Engine

Demand Model — Logit Shares

Welfare Calculation — The Ledger

Seven Vice Markets

All Policy Levers Explained

Per-Substance Levers

Macro & Cross-Market Levers

Six Systems ThatWrap the Engine

System 1 — Nation Health Index (NHI) & Harm Multipliers

System 2 — Political Capital

System 3 — Cabinet Advisors

System 4 — Budget Surplus Allocator

System 5 — Generational Cohort System

The 15 Events

How Everything FeedsInto Everything Else

Critical Cross-Dependencies Explained

The Three Feedback Loops

The Green Book Score

Chancellor Grades

Achievements

Strategic Principles

VICE
CHANCELLOR

Six Systems That
Wrap the Engine

How Everything Feeds
Into Everything Else