Run 14: reproduction from bonds, and towns anchored to the compass

Children from bonds (Phase B): death no longer auto-spawns a replacement;
bonded, fed, adult pairs conceive, logistic-damped toward a per-town
carrying capacity. Population is now dynamic - births vs deaths, a band
not a fixed count. Towns anchored to their cardinal seeds (build-centroid
70% weighted to the fixed compass point) so settlements stay planted
instead of drifting to map-center - North now founds at ~(388,139) by its
(384,130) seed vs West's prior 100+ cell drift.

Tuning took three passes (logged in FINDINGS): explosion, then die-out,
then a generational-gap bug where founders aged out of fertility before
their children matured. Fix: wide fertility window + generous rate.
Result: births 108 ~= deaths 104, healthy population band, and the
four-town thesis sharpened into demographics - North/South thrive
soul-clean, West shrinks with debris, East collapses to a starving
remnant. Selfishness now literally fails to sustain a population.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

FINDINGS.md

@@ -300,8 +300,39 @@ is hungriest (teaches no one, shares nothing). 99 bonds, 80 deaths — a
 living, pairing, generational population in four distinct societies, all
 from behavior weights. Nothing is scripted; the cultures are emergent.
 
-**Next:** reproduction on top of bonds (Phase B); crisis-recovery
-experiment (North's resilience); save/load; then the player pivot.
+## Run 14 — Reproduction, and towns anchored to the compass
+
+**Built:** children from bonds (Phase B). Death no longer auto-spawns a
+replacement — people die and are gone; bonded, fed, adult pairs conceive
+(logistic-damped toward a per-town carrying capacity, so population is a
+band, not an explosion or a collapse). Population is now genuinely
+dynamic: births vs deaths. Also anchored towns to their cardinal seeds —
+the build-centroid is now 70% weighted to the fixed compass point, so
+settlements stay planted (North founds at ~(388,139) by its (384,130)
+seed) instead of drifting to map-center where foraging paths overlap
+(West had wandered 100+ cells before).
+
+**Tuning story (three failed calibrations, logged as the lesson):**
+first pass exploded (80→211 by day 80 — young founders, nobody dying,
+every couple breeding); over-damped to fix it and the world died out
+(80→6, East extinct); the real bug was a *generational gap* — founders
+aged out of fertility before their children matured and bonded, so
+births stopped even as room opened. Fix: wide fertility window (to 85%
+of life) + generous rate (0.12/couple/day × room). Population dynamics
+are a control loop; the birth rate must track the death rate or the
+system runs away in whichever direction it's biased.
+
+**Result — reproduction sharpens the four-town thesis:** births (108) ≈
+deaths (104), population settled in a healthy band (~68–109). And the
+cultures now diverge in *demographics*, not just soul-state: North (26)
+and South (22) thrive and stay soul-clean; West shrinks (16) with debris
+creeping in; **East collapses to 4, starving (nourishment 0.00), highest
+debris — selfishness now literally fails to sustain a population.** A
+town that won't share or cooperate can't feed its people or raise a next
+generation. The most damning verdict the sim has produced.
+
+**Next:** crisis-recovery experiment (North's resilience); save/load;
+then the player pivot.
 
 ---