Funny thing - How Soviet Republic become my favourite City Builder game?

[Jack Greedy]

Hello, im rather experienced gamer , been around since late 80's, near my 40's with all that stuff like wife, children, work, house etc. call me playing grandpa :) with hundreds of titles still waiting to play on .
Here is simple tought i get during morning coffe that i wish to share with You .
I remember first Sim City well, Caesar and dozen of other "building" games included.

For last few years i was under impression when Paradox delivered us Cities:Skylines , just after fail of Sim CIty 2013 , that nothing better could happen to us, city builidng fans.
Yesterday i launched Cities again, with all dlc's dozen of mods etc.

I played near half hour and get totally bored, no reason to think deeper, no challenge , just plop next building or simply plan city streets or styles in other way - thats all . And guess what i felt empty, i felt urgent need to get back to play Workers&Resources:Soviet Republic. I know it's early access but , i never felt that playing this game is boring.
What i don't like in Cities Skylines is same thing that hit Planet Coaster, they are great games, but to hell they play themselves and player is needed only to design layout / look of the city plus insert 3d models - what the hell - where is whole economy / management theme?!!!
There is NO CHALLENGE in these games beyond first 1 hour when you learn basics.

And here we have Soviet Republic:
This game is constant intelectual challenge and ammount of freedom in economy and planning is just breathtaking. Plus that small historical flavour for any people like me who remeber times of 80's or earlier rather well , when it comes we lived in soviet republics by ourselves.

Author of Soviet Republic gives us work of genius, its a first city building game in history so flexible in terms of planning, way of design your city and its economy. Im just impressed, and wish to share my feeling becouse no matter what other similar title i launched last month, be it Tropico 6, Cities:Skylines, etc. i always get back to Soviet Republic as it is only one which provide challenge and something more than simple plopping another models on map.

[forzion]

Well said. My experience is that even with "unlimited" cash you can face great challenges when building new towns and facilities from your own resources with your own people and mechanisms. Then the railroad building in full railway traffic is a challenge on its own. For me this is a great puzzle with many problems to solve one by one.

If you do not use instabuild everything takes a while and you need to find a way how to do it faster but the mechanics limit you to certain extent. You need to care about the order how you build things because if you would do it carelessly your traffic can got stuck or something else happens.

Then you finish your building and spend hours optimizing output bz setting new bus lines logistics etc. And as your population grows you need to optimize further. And then you look at your setups and find some bugs or inefectiveness and you try to solve those for hours letting the rest of map doing it's work because it works well there you just need to check it here and there.

This game has a great design despite all the bugs but even those bugs add certain level of challenge so you can be busy at times when you would usually be waiting sitting on your hands if everything goes as intended. Because it is surprising how things are connected to each other sometimes such ones you would not expect any relationship between them.

[jaykray]

Yeah I'm in the same boat. My favorite logistics game of all time is an obscure OpenTTD-ish game called Simutrans; W&R is the first game I've seen that I think may replace it.

I like logistics games that need patience and planning with a constant threat of bankruptcy; my main issue with W&R at the moment is that it's too easy to make money, even in hard mode. But a couple adjustable settings and some map/border/trade variety would easily fix that.

If the developer keeps development going and makes the game more varied & difficult, it will probably end up being my favorite game.

[forzion]

I think difficulty levels are adjustable in later stages of developement. Now we need to test mechanics and debug the game as much as possible. It would be quite frustrating to be bancrupted because of annoying bugs. But it can happen.

IMO it is much about self-discipline. If you deny auto purchase for yourself you have the hardest possible difficulty. Later it can be an optional setting. That alone can cause you lot's of problems. The citizen difficulty is good as I experience at hardest setting. It is hard to multiply them if you do not care about their needs. Fires are good too because you need to care about them as I got some really annoying accidents.

Then there can be maybe some adjustment in settings to make price fluctuation higher. That can cause some issues for you if you export too much of something because even now the price drops if you do it in excessive way and if you import something in excessive way the price rises. So if you continue to make something from imported materials for a longer extent of time your margin shrinks and in the end your are going lose money if you would continue to do that.

But I am fine with getting profits from your homemade materials. Even though if there is enough inflation and price drop you can end up with stuck finances later when only option would be stop exporting too much to allow prices to rise again and change your export mix.

So in this case there is a room for difficulty adjustment without any complicated mechanic implementations just doing some number adjustments in current system.

[Jack Greedy]

This game greatness lays in freedom for way of play you want, it can be city builder or even a better game than best train railorad manager, and once is best we may leave money alone and build, create everything by ourselves living as self sufficent state :) . Hence we can manage to have many cities on one map !

[forzion]

Автор сообщения: Cyrawn

This game greatness lays in freedom for way of play you want, it can be city builder or even a better game than best train railorad manager, and once is best we may leave money alone and build, create everything by ourselves living as self sufficent state :) . Hence we can manage to have many cities on one map !

I just do not count my wealth in money. I count it in amount of resources I can produce to supply my expansion on the map.

And in the way I manage to build my towns and facilities each one takes at least 2-4 years in-game time to finish all buildings. That is 15-30 hours of real playtime without speeding it up. That is a lot of fun to have over one or more weeks for average player. For me it is usually one full weekend of playtime as I do not have lot of responsibilities connected with a family or a woman not having my own and I have freedom to play more thus.

[Jack Greedy]

Yes agree it is great style for playing and brings most satisfaction here!

[ryantheskinny]

Oh yeah the building mechanic (love planning out a project and watching it go up) and transportation (which needs some roadside bus stations and a bus route mechanic, which are comming per the roadmap) is awesome and makes this a very unique yet fun society sim.

[moodster3137]

I play a variety of city building tycoon games such as transport fever, City skylines, Tropico. This one is very promising, taking a mix of them all & going deeper with it.

[Geronomofo]

I really enjoy watching trains roll across the republic ive modernised, on the rail network that was built entirely with labor and resources from within. Like looking at a garden once youve got through all the hard work.

[ryantheskinny]

Автор сообщения: Geronomofo

I really enjoy watching trains roll across the republic ive modernised, on the rail network that was built entirely with labor and resources from within. Like looking at a garden once youve got through all the hard work.

+1