Dune/docs/ECAZ_ALLIANCE_IMPLEMENTATION.md

Ecaz Ambassador alliance formation

Development checkpoint, 9 September 2026. The reusable Ecaz Ambassador now has an alliance offer and consent flow alongside direct Duke acquisition. Full Ecaz and expansion starts remain gated. The optional Duke loan remains unavailable pending a ruling on its origin, tenure and return destination.

Publisher evidence and unresolved loan questions and the runtime review define this boundary.

Runtime and controls

An actual eligible arrival opens the existing Ecaz-owned Ambassador decision. When Ecaz and the entrant are both unallied, Ecaz can offer an alliance. Choosing the offer returns the reusable token to supply immediately without changing the five random tokens. The entrant alone then accepts or refuses. Acceptance forms the reciprocal pair, records the current turn, clears obsolete proposals to or from either participant, and resets Ready. Refusal forms no alliance and grants no replacement Duke effect. Both outcomes resume the original entrant’s remaining actions; a worm rider continues its original remaining-ride sequence.

Alliance eligibility uses only public seated identities and alliance links. It is independent of Duke availability, including the separate Advanced Harkonnen acquisition gate. The engine does not alter Duke, native leaders, private cards, spice or committed shipment counters when resolving this alliance. The ordinary Nexus action retains its phase restriction; the new permission belongs only to the current Ambassador event.

A pure quote in game/ecaz-alliance.ts validates the public roster and produces the reciprocal links and cleaned offer record. Engine integration binds the entry’s owner, entrant, turn, phase, returned physical token and reply owner. The existing arrival-continuation validator also protects worm provenance. Action, view and automatic-recovery entry points reject orphaned or corrupted controls. Supported Nullentropy Box and other card suspensions preserve the reply until their own decisions finish. Room version checks allow only one competing acceptance/refusal to commit.

The owner sees separate Duke and alliance choices, each with its own availability reason. The entrant sees explicit accept/refuse controls. Other seats see who must act. All four AI profiles prefer an available alliance offer, otherwise use the existing Duke/decline path, and accept valid owned replies. The chronicle explains token return, consent and continuation; successful formation emits the existing configurable house-colored automatic notice.

Coverage checklist

Area	Evidence	Remaining
Implementation	Public quote, actual arrival, token commitment, consent, reciprocal links, continuation and saved-control integrity	Optional Duke loan; full faction and module combinations
Player controls	Independent blocked reasons, owner offer, entrant accept/refuse, public decision ownership	Full multi-human mobile faction journey
AI	All four levels propose/accept via their own projected state; existing Duke fallback tested	Relative negotiation strength and complete expansion games
Documentation	Internal Ambassador guide and five-area checklist, source contract, runtime and implementation reports	Loan ruling and complete expansion guidance
Verification	8 pure, 18 engine and 4 production-room SQLite tests; mobile keyboard proposal, real AI acceptance and refresh	Loan lifecycle, full Advanced/expansion acceptance

The engine tests cover Basic/Advanced actual shipment, either already-allied participant, unavailable Duke, valid Moritani and BG fighter entrants, BG advisor exclusion, refusal, private prediction independence, worm continuation, all four AI levels, genuine paid Box suspension and invalid live/suspended receipts. SQLite tests use production migrations, authentication and room code. Duplicate and opposing accept/refuse requests race at the actual compare-and-swap; exactly one wins. Reload preserves seats and private data, while stale, duplicate and corrupted commands reject before a write. Unrelated rooms are preserved.

Browser evidence

Isolated QA room 8S3MRDEK was backed up at version 126. A staged Advanced position retained the three authenticated QA seats and used an actual engine shipment to create version 127’s Ambassador offer. Duke was deliberately in the Tanks and an Advanced Harkonnen seat was present, so his acquisition remained unavailable while the alliance action remained enabled.

At 390×844, the browser displayed the distinct actions and availability text, with visible keyboard focus and no clipped action text. Keyboard Enter submitted the offer. The Medium AI entrant accepted and made its remaining movement. Version 132 retained reciprocal Ecaz/Emperor links, the same dead Duke, unchanged spice, an unchanged random Ambassador cohort and the reusable token in supply. Refresh restored the alliance. The chronicle contains one offer, one acceptance and subsequent movement. The normal viewport was restored. This verifies the owner’s browser flow and AI reply; human reply behavior is covered by engine and SQL tests, not claimed as a separate authenticated browser session.

All 2,586 pre-existing non-QA room versions and state hashes remained unchanged before the new HTTP test fixtures. QA snapshots and evidence are local under /tmp/dune-ecaz-alliance-qa-*.json and /tmp/dune-ecaz-alliance-browser-evidence.json.

Validation status

npm run check passed typecheck, lint and 3,058 offline tests, including all 30 new alliance cases. npm run build passed. npm run test:integration passed 40 tests against the local development server. The independent review found no remaining concrete defect in the implemented consent flow.

Twenty public-start Basic AI games across two through six players and all four levels completed 12,186 accepted actions and 545 JSON round trips with zero rejected candidates, stalls or invariant failures. Seed: 20261025. Game-source fingerprints stayed unchanged throughout. These homogeneous-level Basic games check shared-engine regressions; they neither exercise gated Ecaz starts nor measure relative AI strength.

Logs: /tmp/dune-ecaz-alliance-check-final.log, /tmp/dune-ecaz-alliance-build-final.log, /tmp/dune-ecaz-alliance-http-final.log, and /tmp/dune-ecaz-alliance-fullgames.json.

The full goal remains active. No Advanced, expansion or optional-module start gate was opened. The removed maintenance automation was not recreated.