Selected workCase study / System audit

Making a large production economy legible.

A system-by-system analysis of a live 4X economy, translated into a benchmarked design foundation for a title in pre-production.

System coverage12 workstreams

Buildings800level rows

Research263items analyzed

Equipment5,122items audited

Quests18,175tasks repriced

Anonymized reconstruction · Scope and verified counts from the underlying analysis; confidential values redacted.

The challenge

A live economy with years of hand-tuned decisions—and no clean formula to carry forward.

The production data spanned hundreds of source tables, localization keys, and nested reward registries. Before the new title could make confident design decisions, the old one had to become legible.

My role

Own the analysis from source configuration to implementation-ready recommendation.

I decoded the data, rebuilt each major system in documented analytical workbooks, benchmarked 18 competitor titles, quantified structural risks, and designed rebalances for buildings, research, troops, quests, walls, and resource production.

ProgressionFound a 6.5× total-cost jump between troop tiers.

Turned a suspected wall into a measurable design issue with a clear comparison baseline.

ParitySurfaced a 5× efficiency gap inside the research tree.

Made an invisible troop-type disadvantage visible before the system was carried forward.

ImplementationRebalanced 18k+ quest tasks against action cost.

Replaced static rewards with consistent reward-to-cost budgets the team can tune.

Outcome

The team now has a documented economy foundation: comparable systems, traceable assumptions, reusable balancing tools, and fewer expensive surprises waiting after implementation.

Related serviceNext

Economy analysis built around the next decision.

See the audit, balancing, and LiveOps support available for live and pre-launch products.

Game economy consulting