Sugarscape models an artificial society in which agents move over a 50 by 50 cell grid. Agents have to consume sugar in order to survive. If they harvest more sugar than they need immediately, they can save it and eat it later or, in more complex variants of the model, can trade it with other agents. If their sugar level ever drops to zero, they die.
New agents replace the dead ones with a random initial allocation of sugar.
However, even successful agents die after they have achieved their maximum lifespan, set according to a uniform random distribution. Epstein and Axtell present a series of elaborations of this basic model in order to illustrate a variety of features of societies. This is because a few, relatively well-endowed agents are able to accumulate more and more sugar, while the majority only barely survive or die. Such simple agents exhibit few of the features of agents described earlier. The agents in Sugarscape become more interesting when the model is augmented to simulate inter-agent trade.