Sip coffee, empty mugs, and gain caffeine. Then hire workers to drink for you, then found a cult around it. The cult picks one of four coffee gods, each of which bends the game in a different direction: better sips, faster game speed, cheaper research or a stronger cult.
Influence runs in parallel to mugs and is what the cult actually spends. It is stranger and better written than the coffee premise suggests, and the research tree keeps opening for longer than you expect. An hour or two, and the god you pick genuinely changes the run.