What is this game?

[SpottedPineapple]

Thinking of picking up on the sale but... what is it actually?

Is it a sandbox like cities skylines? Is it more like civ? Are there win conditions? Is it hard (or can be made hard)? I've casually watched a few streams but still unclear on this dimension of the game

[Tazilon]

The sandbox has no victory conditions. The campaign does has goals however it becomes sandbox once you complete the entire thing. It is mostly an in-depth city builder set in the 1800s. You need to expand to new islands and regions or else your AI competitors will leave you in the dust. The biggest hurdle is probably learning how to grow and expand without going bankrupt.

Different islands have different "fertilities" and resources. So, you may have to use foods and resources from one island to support other islands. since each island is an independent economy, you need to provide transport to ship needed items to places they are needed.

You can also trade with the AI players and neutral NPCs.

You can adjust starting conditions to increase the difficulty in various ways, so you can keep a game challenging as you learn how to play better.

[Dregora]

In large it's a logistics simulator where you tier up your villagers and every tier requires more various resources that are harder to make. First tier only needs fish/clothes/market/church for example, once you meet their demands, they can tier up, that tier requires on top of those four, extra additional luxuries like bread, alcohol etc. So things get bigger and more complicated and you can't produce it all on one island so you have to expand/import, where is the logistics. You have to keep up with demand or else they ebcome unhappy, you lose income and workers, etc. And that can create crashes to your islands.

[katzenkrimis]

This video game series is the best economic sim on the planet.

World leaders should be playing them. They might actually learn something.

They also have a military aspect.

They are very detailed, time consuming, and challenging. They require many hours of commitment, and have multiple learning curves.

Highly recommended, but you need to know what you are getting yourself into if you purchase an Anno game.

They are a major time sink. And can be both addictive and frustrating.

[Dregora]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

This video game series is the best economic sim on the planet.

World leaders should be playing them. They might actually learn something.

They also have a military aspect.

They are very detailed, time consuming, and challenging. They require many hours of commitment, and have multiple learning curves.

Highly recommended, but you need to know what you are getting yourself into if you purchase an Anno game.

They are a major time sink. And can be both addictive and frustrating.

Alright look I love the game too lol but don't oversell it. It's a fantastic series but it's by far not the best economic sim on the planet. Unless by best we're saying ''most fun'' even though that's subjective. There are games that focus better on the economic aspect.

[ValhallasAshes]

Originally posted by Dregora:

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

This video game series is the best economic sim on the planet.

World leaders should be playing them. They might actually learn something.

They also have a military aspect.

They are very detailed, time consuming, and challenging. They require many hours of commitment, and have multiple learning curves.

Highly recommended, but you need to know what you are getting yourself into if you purchase an Anno game.

They are a major time sink. And can be both addictive and frustrating.

Alright look I love the game too lol but don't oversell it. It's a fantastic series but it's by far not the best economic sim on the planet. Unless by best we're saying ''most fun'' even though that's subjective. There are games that focus better on the economic aspect.

Yeah honestly, X4 Foundations is a better economic sim in my book. It's just as complex, if not more so, but doesn't simply stop at the "product" supply and demand. But also how that supply and demand translates into currency (buy low / sell high). And you are not just an outside observer, but an actual participant in that universe.

I love the Anno series, but that declaration was a bit of a stretch. Anno 1800 doesn't properly simulate "supply and demand" because there is no real currency beyond the taxes you collect and then spend on building and maintaining more structures. And I would hardly call Anno 1800 properly "supply and demand" because there is no real fluctuation in demand outside of a flat consumption rate that never fluctuates outside of a simplistic "how many pops" do you have. Anno is more "supply and consumption" than it is "supply and demand".

I don't know what the best eco sim is out there. But I know it's not Anno. But neither do I want Anno to be. I love Anno's unique blend and balance of economic mechanics. And I love the unique charm of Anno's world and characters (apart from 2205, that game had no charm). It's a game I play to relax, have fun and not be overburdened with too much complication while still being complex and deep. Something that many eco games fail to find the right balance to. Anno has. It may not be "the best" eco sim out there. But it is one of my favorites.

[Dregora]

Originally posted by ValhallasAshes:

Originally posted by Dregora:

Alright look I love the game too lol but don't oversell it. It's a fantastic series but it's by far not the best economic sim on the planet. Unless by best we're saying ''most fun'' even though that's subjective. There are games that focus better on the economic aspect.

Yeah honestly, X4 Foundations is a better economic sim in my book. It's just as complex, if not more so, but doesn't simply stop at the "product" supply and demand. But also how that supply and demand translates into currency (buy low / sell high). And you are not just an outside observer, but an actual participant in that universe.

I love the Anno series, but that declaration was a bit of a stretch. Anno 1800 doesn't properly simulate "supply and demand" because there is no real currency beyond the taxes you collect and then spend on building and maintaining more structures. And I would hardly call Anno 1800 properly "supply and demand" because there is no real fluctuation in demand outside of a flat consumption rate that never fluctuates outside of a simplistic "how many pops" do you have. Anno is more "supply and consumption" than it is "supply and demand".

I don't know what the best eco sim is out there. But I know it's not Anno. But neither do I want Anno to be. I love Anno's unique blend and balance of economic mechanics. And I love the unique charm of Anno's world and characters (apart from 2205, that game had no charm). It's a game I play to relax, have fun and not be overburdened with too much complication while still being complex and deep. Something that many eco games fail to find the right balance to. Anno has. It may not be "the best" eco sim out there. But it is one of my favorites.

Oh yeah don't get me wrong, amongst all city builder type of games, Anno and Banished are at the top for me.

[Tankfriend]

Originally posted by ValhallasAshes:

Yeah honestly, X4 Foundations is a better economic sim in my book. It's just as complex, if not more so, but doesn't simply stop at the "product" supply and demand.

I wouldn't say it's more complex than Anno. They're on equal footing, but for different reasons.
You see, X4 is a very *wide* economy due to its massive size that no Anno game currently available can hope to match, but it's also a very *shallow* economy.
Consider that there's only few goods as complex as what Anno regularly throws at you, that there's almost no interdependencies between species (unlike the regional interdependencies you get in Anno that keep growing as you go along), that there's only few raw materials that are used to make everything, and that the sole purpose of the entire economy (including population management and food production) is to keep the shipyards running and making new ships.

Now, my entry for complex city builder and eco sim games here would be this:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/

[kubluu]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

This video game series is the best economic sim on the planet.

World leaders should be playing them. They might actually learn something.

While fun, the Anno series is a pretty unrealistic economic simulation.

It does not model a real world economy very well, so you will not be able to learn a lot from it.

It has no free market and demand curve. Money is not a factor between producers and consumers.

The society is more like a command economy. The government assigns citizens to different qadres and gives them a fixed ration of goods. The government is also able to create new citizens wherever there is room.

There is a small amount of land transport where goods are brought to and from a short distance to a warehouse. The majority of goods and all workers are simply teleported to where they are needed.

There are NPC traders with an infinite amount of money, demand and fixed prices.

Trading vessels are half empty during their lifetime. The controls are not sophisticated enough to allow them to be used fully.

Elictricity is infinite within a certain radius.

Production buildings have only a fixed cost, not a variable cost depending on workers or production rate.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

[KitheBard]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

This video game series is the best economic sim on the planet.

World leaders should be playing them. They might actually learn something.

They also have a military aspect.

They are very detailed, time consuming, and challenging. They require many hours of commitment, and have multiple learning curves.

Highly recommended, but you need to know what you are getting yourself into if you purchase an Anno game.

They are a major time sink. And can be both addictive and frustrating.

Absolutely a major time sink. The first five play throughs of mine I went bankrupt. The sixth play through got a hundred hours in and went to war loosing everything. Now 250hours in and I’m finally able to handle a handful of islands (6-10) as compared to before. I’m gonna say this once, the copy button is a life saver with blueprinting.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by kubluu:

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

This video game series is the best economic sim on the planet.

World leaders should be playing them. They might actually learn something.

While fun, the Anno series is a pretty unrealistic economic simulation.

It does not model a real world economy very well, so you will not be able to learn a lot from it.

It has no free market and demand curve. Money is not a factor between producers and consumers.

The society is more like a command economy. The government assigns citizens to different qadres and gives them a fixed ration of goods. The government is also able to create new citizens wherever there is room.

There is a small amount of land transport where goods are brought to and from a short distance to a warehouse. The majority of goods and all workers are simply teleported to where they are needed.

There are NPC traders with an infinite amount of money, demand and fixed prices.

Trading vessels are half empty during their lifetime. The controls are not sophisticated enough to allow them to be used fully.

Elictricity is infinite within a certain radius.

Production buildings have only a fixed cost, not a variable cost depending on workers or production rate.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

It's normal for games to abstract real-world mechanics for the sake of practical gameplay and I won't dismiss a game based on realism if there are practical considerations.

I'm curious to know if there's such a city builder as you've described. Besides Anno, other city builders I've played are Tropico, Frostpunk, Timberborn and Oxygen Not Included. All abstract mechanics in one way or another. Of these, ONI isn't exactly a city builder but it comes close in terms of pop and room management and tries to simulate real-world physics where possible.

Even then, I didn't have the patience to play ONI a lot because it's too technical for my expectations in a game and it appeals only to a very niche group of hardcore realism fans although it's not 100% realistic. While games may simulate reality to some extent for immersion, there's a certain point when pushing too much for realism would either make gameplay impractical or so technical that it would only appeal to a niche player base.

[Chaosium]

Last message was from 2023, dunno why this was necro'd all of a sudden

[kubluu]

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

I'm curious to know if there's such a city builder as you've described.

Workers and Resources probably. But it's ugly as sin, so I will never play it myself.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by kubluu:

Originally posted by ElPrezCBF:

I'm curious to know if there's such a city builder as you've described.

Workers and Resources probably. But it's ugly as sin, so I will never play it myself.

Never played that game, but still, I'd say how much realism should be in the game is subjective depending on your personal preference, preferred genre and gameplay practicality. ONI would probably be more to your liking if you don't mind a space setting with lots of realistic technical mechanics.

[FPStewy]

Now, my entry for complex city builder and eco sim games here would be this:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/

I would tend to agree, playing WRSR on hard mode will break you mentally. I mean this is a game where I had to sell human manure at the border because my sewer system overflowed.