Institutions have been part of The City of Gold's development story for some time. Our earlier look at the Institution foundation captured the moment these organizations first became a real part of the platform. That article remains part of the record: a snapshot of an important earlier stage.
Since then, the systems around Institutions have matured. Character identity, constitutional governance, Communication, Religions and the Universal Building System now give us much sharper answers about how an organization is founded, who may act for it, how leadership endures and where its power exists in the world.
We have now completed the refined canonical design for Institution V1. Parts of that foundation are already operational on the Website and Backend; other constitutional and world-facing mechanics remain approved design awaiting runtime adoption. This is the current player-facing picture of the system we are building.
More Than a Guild List
An Institution is a durable Character organization. It gives players a formal way to organize around one of three broad purposes:
- Military Institutions organize martial purpose, command and discipline.
- Religious Institutions organize Characters around one eligible Religion.
- Civic Institutions organize public, professional or community purpose.
An Institution is not merely a chat room, an Account group or a temporary party. It is not a House or dynasty, a government, or a Religion itself. It has its own identity, founding constitution, membership, leadership, ranks, delegated authority and history.
That distinction matters because Institutions are intended to endure beyond a single play session. A Character joins an organization with rules and a public identity, not just another contact list.
One Character, One Institution
Institution V1 uses one clear identity rule: one Character may hold one active Institution membership in total.
A Character cannot simultaneously belong to a Military, Civic and Religious Institution. Founding or joining one closes the door to another active Institution until that membership ends. This keeps affiliation legible and makes the choice of organization meaningful without creating overlapping layers of nominal membership.
One Founder Is Enough
An eligible Character may found an Institution alone. There is no required circle of co-founders, signature threshold, minimum membership count, Copper fee, Guild Hall, Mayor approval or Count approval.
The founder becomes the first Leader, and a one-person Institution is valid. Membership and physical holdings may grow later, but the organization's identity does not depend upon already owning a building or persuading a crowd to sign at the same moment.
Founding a Constitution
Creating an Institution means more than registering a name. The current founding flow establishes its category and governance, public name and permanent address, motto, description, headquarters label, banner, Charter and constitutional hierarchy.
The founder designs between two and ten ordered ranks, gives those ranks custom names and descriptions, assigns their permissions and chooses a succession method. The result is an organization whose structure is known from the beginning.
The Website already provides this full creation journey and persists the configured rank constitution. It currently exposes sixteen of the eighteen canonical rank permissions; diplomatic authority and Institution Building Access are now part of the finished catalogue but still await creation-editor and runtime adoption.
Monarchy, Oligarchy or Republic
Every Institution declares one of three governance identities:
- Monarchy, whose default Leader title is Sovereign;
- Oligarchy, whose default Leader title is First Councillor; or
- Republic, whose default Leader title is President.
These labels give the organization a constitutional character, but they do not magically decide every leadership rule. A Republic does not automatically mean one particular election cycle, and a Monarchy does not silently create hereditary succession. The separately configured constitution determines how leadership is meant to continue.
Build Your Own Hierarchy
Institutions use two to ten ordered ranks. Position one is always the unique Leader rank; every other position sits below it in a clear numeric hierarchy.
The names belong to the Institution. One organization might use Sovereign, High Council, Captains, Veterans and Members. Another might choose an entirely different vocabulary. There is no mandatory Officer, Diplomat or Building Steward rank.
Authority comes from configured permissions, not from a dramatic title. Calling a rank “High Council” grants nothing by itself. Giving that rank the authority to review applications, publish announcements or manage future diplomacy is what makes it powerful.
Ranks Carry Real Authority
The complete Institution V1 catalogue contains eighteen configurable capabilities. Together they cover general administration, public information and visual identity, constitutional governance, invitations and applications, ordinary member removal, promotion and demotion, discussion and message moderation, warnings and suspension, announcements, events, public pages, diplomacy and Institution Building Access.
This creates room for very different constitutions. A small order may concentrate authority near its Leader. A larger civic body may let one rank review applicants, another maintain its public voice and a high council manage diplomatic relationships. None of those powers needs a fixed legacy role name.
Building Access and diplomacy are full members of this same permission model—not hidden Leader privileges or separate systems. Their workflows remain pending, but the constitutional design already establishes where their future authority belongs.
The Institution System at a Glance
Joining Through Applications
A Character may apply to an eligible Institution. An application is a durable request, not an instant Join button. It remains pending until it is withdrawn or reviewed, and accepting it must recheck the Character's eligibility and the one-Institution limit.
Applications, withdrawal and Leader review are already operational. The refined constitution assigns application review to a configurable rank permission; replacing today's direct Leader authorization with that permission-aware command remains adoption work.
Recruitment Through Invitations
Institutions may also invite one specific eligible Character. The recipient may accept or decline, while the Institution may cancel a still-pending offer through authorized management.
Invitations do not expire in Institution V1. They belong to the Institution rather than becoming the former Leader's private promise, so an ordinary leadership change does not automatically destroy them. Invitation creation, acceptance, decline and Leader cancellation are operational today; permission-aware invitation management remains to be adopted.
Both accepted paths place a new member at the lowest configured rank in the canonical design. The current runtime still projects accepted members through its compatibility Member role because authoritative numeric member-rank assignment and history require their remaining runtime contract.
Promotion, Demotion and Leadership
Configured ranks form a real hierarchy. The canonical model allows a Character with promotion authority to move an ordinary member upward and a Character with demotion authority to move one downward. Custom names never determine direction; the numeric order does.
These rank-assignment commands and the rank-grouped management roster are not yet implemented. Today the member dashboard still uses compatibility role presentation. When adopted, it must show the Institution's actual hierarchy, preserve rank history and authorize each action through the actor's current configured rank.
The Leader position is never an ordinary promotion destination. A manager cannot promote a friend into Sovereign, President or First Councillor, nor demote the current Leader through a member-management control. Leadership follows the Institution's constitutional transition rules.
Leaving and Removing Members
Ordinary members may canonically leave voluntarily without a cooldown or invented financial penalty. Their membership tenure ends, but their place in the Institution's history is not erased.
An Institution may also remove an ordinary member through the configured removal permission. That authority is not inherently Leader-only and cannot remove the current Leader or bypass succession. Both voluntary leaving and permission-based removal remain approved design awaiting command and interface adoption.
Six Ways Leadership Can Continue
At founding, every Institution selects one succession configuration:
- Appointed Successor: the current Leader may later designate an eligible successor.
- Regent: an eligible appointed Regent succeeds when the Leader office becomes vacant.
- Senior Rank: the longest-serving eligible member of the highest populated rank succeeds.
- Council Vote: the highest populated eligible rank below the Leader forms the electorate.
- Full Membership Vote: all eligible active members form the electorate.
- Founder Control: the office remains vacant until the immutable founder can fill it through the approved process.
The creation flow already records this choice. It does not select a successor, appoint a Regent or invent an electorate during founding. Executing succession, appointments and Institution elections remains canonical work that has not yet reached the player-facing runtime.
Regents Are Delegates, Not Second Leaders
A Regent is an eligible active member appointed after founding. The office does not create an unrestricted second Leader.
The constitution records which Leader-rank permissions may be delegated to a Regent. A Regent may exercise only powers that the Leader rank actually holds and that were explicitly marked as delegable. Diplomatic authority and Building Access may eventually participate under the same rule; neither is automatically granted to every Regent.
A Regent cannot rewrite the rank structure, change the succession method, replace the Leader, appoint another Regent or redelegate their temporary authority. Regent appointment and execution remain canonical rather than currently operational.
Electorates and No Confidence
For a Council Vote, the electorate is the highest populated eligible rank below the Leader. If that rank is empty, the system falls downward one configured rank at a time until it finds an eligible group; it does not combine several ranks into one improvised council. A Full Membership Vote instead uses all eligible active members.
Institutions also belong to the wider constitutional Vote of No Confidence design, providing a lawful route for a leadership challenge rather than disguising replacement as a rank edit. The generic governance foundation exists, while Institution-specific election and no-confidence execution remain pending.
Religious Institutions
A Religious Institution is permanently associated with one eligible organized Religion. Its founder and members must satisfy that Religion's follower rules, and eligibility is checked as membership changes.
Religious Institution creation and follower eligibility are already integrated. If the connected Religion becomes Extinct, its Institutions are archived while their identity and history remain preserved. A Religious Institution is therefore an organization serving a faith, not the Religion itself.
Buildings Must Exist in the World
Founding does not conjure a Guild Hall. An Institution may exist without any physical structure, while permanent Guild Halls, Universities, Military Orders, Religious Orders and later Institution buildings require their own crafted Blueprints and the same Universal Building System used everywhere else.
There is also no magical central Guild Bank attached to the Institution record. Institution money and resources must live in physical Institution-controlled Buildings through their Universal Building Inventory and Treasury. The organization does not receive wealth storage merely because its name was registered.
The canonical Building Access permission will let selected ranks use Institution-restricted Buildings under each Building's own access rules. It does not grant Inventory or Treasury management, Workforce or Production control, Maintenance and Repair authority, ownership or transfer rights. Creation configuration and Building-side consumption of that permission are still pending runtime adoption.
Relationships Between Institutions
The refined foundation gives Institutions authoritative relationships with one another: Ally, Enemy, or Neutral / no special relationship.
That relationship is game data, not a color guessed by a client. Future affiliation presentation must distinguish a Character's own Institution, allies, enemies and unrelated organizations, with different visual treatments that also remain understandable without color alone. Exact colors have not yet been chosen.
Diplomacy is not automatically Leader-only. The configurable diplomatic permission lets an Institution decide which ranks may eventually manage approved relationship actions. A council could hold that authority without becoming the Institution Leader, and no mandatory Diplomat rank is required.
The relationship model and permission are canonical; complete Ally, Enemy and Neutral workflows are not yet implemented. Enemy status provides a foundation for future Warfare, but this design does not invent declaration costs, surrender, victory, treaties, siege rights, territorial rewards or alliance obligations. Those systems come later.
Communication and a Public Memory
Institution membership already projects into an Institution General conversation. The Communication system does not decide who belongs; it consumes authoritative membership facts and provides the place where eligible members coordinate.
Institutions also retain public and administrative history. Founding, membership and leadership records are not simply rewritten whenever circumstances change. That persistence is what allows an organization to become part of the world's story rather than a disposable chat group with a banner attached.
What Is Operational Today
The current platform supports Institution creation, identity, category and governance selection, banners and Charters, one active membership per Character, applications, invitations, Religious eligibility, membership history foundations and Institution General communication. The founding flow persists custom ranks, descriptions, its current sixteen exposed permissions, Regent-delegable selections and the chosen succession method.
The remaining adoption work includes exposing diplomatic authority and Building Access as the final two creation permissions; authoritative member rank assignment and grouped hierarchy presentation; permission-aware application and invitation administration; voluntary leaving and removal; Regents, successors, succession, elections and Institution no-confidence; physical Building Access consumption; complete diplomacy; and future Warfare, treaties, federations, mergers and deeper Institution economics.
That separation is deliberate. Institution V1 is Design Complete and Canonical, but design completion does not pretend that every approved mechanic is already playable.
Organizations That Endure
The Institution system has grown from a broad idea about organized power into a precise foundation for player-run organizations. A founder can already give an Institution its identity, banner, Charter and constitutional shape. The refined design explains how members join, how ranks carry authority, how leadership survives, where organizational wealth belongs and how relationships with other Institutions will become visible.
The result is not a generic guild template. It is a framework for military orders, civic bodies, religious organizations and countless player-created structures whose names, hierarchies and ambitions belong to the Characters who build them.
An Institution should be something players can join, shape, serve, challenge and remember. Its power begins with a constitution—and its legacy begins with the people who choose to live by it.