The Applied Game Theory series is a public education initiative by Princeton Digital Laboratory. Each session uses a familiar board game as a live laboratory to illustrate core concepts from economic theory, behavioural science, and decision science. Rather than teaching economics abstractly, the series follows a deliberate pedagogical sequence: play first, name later. Participants recognise the dynamics before they can articulate them — which is precisely what makes the insight durable. The goal is not to simplify science, but to make its entry point irresistible.
Carcassonne has been in continuous print for 25 years, across 40 expansions and dozens of digital adaptations. The game’s longevity is not accidental — it conceals, beneath an accessible tile-placement mechanic, a fully functional capital allocation problem. Each meeple is a unit of illiquid capital deployed against a short-, medium-, or long-term return. With only seven per player and no recall mechanism for farmers, every placement is an irreversible investment decision. This session develops the Knightian risk framework introduced in the Barcadia installment — here illustrated with unusual precision by a tile deck whose composition is fully known but whose draw order is not — and adds intertemporal choice theory and liquidity constraint economics. It also examines a competitive dynamic that prior installments had not fully resolved: how a game can feel fiercely adversarial without ever being zero-sum.