Designing the Hundred-Rank Ladder
On choosing one hundred rungs over ten, and pricing each of them honestly.
One ladder, one alphabet
The rank ladder of Imperium runs from Rank I to Rank C — one hundred rungs, numbered in Roman numerals, modeled on the cursus honorum, the sequence of offices a Roman citizen climbed across a lifetime. We chose that scale deliberately. A ladder of ten ranks tells a player where the server ends; a ladder of one hundred tells a player where they stand, and what stands ahead of them. Every citizen can name the next rung.
All one hundred ranks are climbable today. That distinction matters to us: the ladder is not a promise on a roadmap, it is a contract you can act on the moment you join.
Pricing the climb
Each rank-up costs Denarius, computed by a published polynomial formula rather than a hand-tuned list. The shape of that curve is the design: the opening rungs are cheap enough that a new citizen reaches them within their first session, and the ladder steepens from there. The first ten rungs make the arc concrete. Rank I is free for every player; Rank II costs 64,000 Denarius; Rank X costs 1,600,000 — twenty-five times the second rung.
A polynomial curve also keeps the ladder honest in a way a flat cost never could. When each rung costs more than the last by a predictable law, no rank-up ever arrives as a surprise, and no balance pass can quietly move the finish line.
Costs rise, and so do you
Every rank also raises your global sell multiplier. Across the first ten rungs it climbs from ×1.00 to ×1.14, and it keeps rising beyond them. This pairing is the engine of the whole design: the rungs ahead cost more, but the citizen climbing them earns faster. The curve and the multiplier are tuned against one another so the climb stays demanding without ever stalling into repetition.
And the multiplier cannot be bought. Nothing in the store advances rank or progression speed; money never moves your standing on this ladder. Every one of the hundred rungs is reached the same way — by mining, selling, and ranking up with what you earned.
What stands on each rung
An honest word about content: public-mine content is live through Mine XXV at Rank 25, and expands with every content patch. Players past Rank 25 climb the full ladder today while the mines beyond XXV open in later releases. We would rather state the cap plainly than let a player discover it alone.
At Rank C the ladder does not end; it turns. The prestige eras wait there, and they are a story worth their own dispatch.