How to run the room
You start with 8 rice and play 7 days. Everyone you hire takes a seat in turn.
Who you can hire
| Who | Skill | Power | Rice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scholar | Letters | 2 | 3 |
| Tutor | Letters | 4 | 7 |
| Peddler | Sums | 2 | 3 |
| Head merchant | Sums | 4 | 7 |
| Entertainer | Talk | 2 | 3 |
| Interpreter | Talk | 4 | 7 |
Seats rotate in order
Up to 3 people sit each day, in the order you hired them. There is no draw. You can see who sits today, and a lost run cannot be blamed on luck.
Only matching skills add power. A writing job counts only Letters people. So stacking one skill means you miss every other kind of job.
How much order matters
While building this we ran several strategies for real. Over a week:
- Hire nobody and you finish nothing.
- Collect only cheap people and you stop at one or two jobs. Too little power for the big ones.
- Read the coming jobs and hire to match and you finish three or four. Count what is coming most often first.
A perfect week is rare. Rice is limited, so you cannot cover everything. Choosing what to give up is the game.
Missing a job costs nothing
Miss a day's job and you move on with nothing lost. No streaks, and skipping yesterday does not hurt you.
Only matching skills count
Every job has a skill attached. For a writing job, only Letters people add power. Three people in your hand do nothing if their skills do not match.
Spread across all three skills and you match something most days but never have enough power. Go all in on one and you clear that job big, then miss every other day. Where you sit between those is the game.
Small hires and big hires
Each skill has two people. The small one is power 2 for 3 rice and the big one is power 4 for 7 rice. On price alone the small one wins.
But only three people sit at a time. The more you hire, the less often the one you want comes up, so high power per seat gains value. Once your rice builds up, trading up to the big hires is usually right.
Jobs get harder later in the week
The bar rises a little each day. Day one takes two or three, and the last day needs more than double. In return, harder jobs pay more.
So hiring early can beat clearing the easy early jobs, since the big jobs later are worth more. Hold your rice back to win the early ones and you run short of power at the end.
No luck of the draw
Your hires rotate in the order you added them. They are never shuffled. If three sat down today, the next three sit tomorrow. So when someone will sit down is visible from the start.
The week's jobs are shown up front too. You know what comes and who sits when, so a lost run is a bad order, not a bad hand.
One run a day, the same for everyone
The week's jobs come from the date. Everyone who plays on the same day gets the same jobs, so you can compare how many you finished and how much rice you kept.
Missing a job loses nothing but that day's pay. It all runs in your browser and there is no sign-up.