Economic Simulation Games

Dysplastic wrote:

Try The Settlers series.
Settlers 2 (1996) is often considered the best, if you can handle a bit dated graphics.

At least the classic ones are fun . I tried Settlers 5 and didn't like it( and got 15$ poorer in the process). I used to play the first one with my brother with two mice on 1 machine ;). The two mice option was a cool feature at that time.

The games I liked in the economic field are Europa 1400:The Guild and Transport Tycoon Deluxe (can be very addictive) .

Kelric wrote:

You crossed the Ubisoft lines? Ugh. To each their own...

I agree. I'm personally scared of their new DRM. I havenothing personal against Ubi ;It's just fear. I avoided trying R.U.S.E for the same reason.

much2much wrote:

Settlers II has been remade with 3d graphics. Same game but new graphics. I wish they did this with a whole bunch of old games!

Yeah, this is the "Settlers II: 10th Anniversary Edition."

Multiplayer is a bit trickier. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (the last in the Impressions city-builder series) had some multiplayer modes, although it was more about managing separate cities and just trading with each other. Well, or invading each other, if you were playing competitively.

Huh! I must've confused this thread with another one, because I thought I'd suggested Tropico 3 and yet it's not here.

So, Tropico 3. You're a Caribbean island dictator. You tell the people what to build but the people decide what jobs they want (assuming they have the education for the position). Like in Dwarf Fortress, the builders will take breaks for sleeping, eating, relaxing, so it isn't just a matter of slapping down the buildings. As you're starting out, there will probably be a lot of combat because your people are unhappy and rebel against you. You have no control over combat, other than making sure you have enough soldiers and some minimal direction over your avatar's participation.

Island industry usually begins with agriculture, logging, mining, and fishing. As you can afford it (and have the population to staff them) you can construct industry buildings to refine base materials into products -- such as turning logs into lumber, tobacco into cigars, pineapples into canned pineapples, gold into jewelry. You can also put up tourism buildings to either supplement your industry or do tourism whole hog.

As for goal progression, the main game is a series of scenarios. In each scenario you play on a different island, starting basically from scratch, and there's a different set of win criteria that you must achieve before a specified end date. There's also a sandbox mode where you can set up the play parameters and the only real goal is to not get overthrown.

More here: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/4...

Alien13z wrote:

Railroad Tycoon II.

Any particular reason you pushed Railroad Tycoon II instead of the third one? I thought the third one was an improvement in many ways, the fact that the goods would travel across the map themselves (very slowly depending on the terrain) made it feel much more organic to me.

Yonder wrote:
Alien13z wrote:

Railroad Tycoon II.

Any particular reason you pushed Railroad Tycoon II instead of the third one? I thought the third one was an improvement in many ways, the fact that the goods would travel across the map themselves (very slowly depending on the terrain) made it feel much more organic to me.

That and you could use that information to figure out where to drop a profitable little stop to collect natural resources and move them to a town where they'd be processed in a nice railroad-owned facility.

I played a ton of Railroad Tycoon II and a good chunk of 3. For some reason 2 just sits better with me. I'm not really sure why. One issue nowadays is that the scroll rate is very fast on modern hardware.

A bit of an economy "lite" game, but Vermeer 2 (aka "The Great Art Race" in North America) has some interesting elements in it. Set up plantations around the world, hire workers, set wages, ship things back and forth, then use your funds to get more resource producing structures or go to the auction-house to bid on paintings (the primary goal is to complete your deathly ill uncle's collection - hence the Vermeer title - while competing against other greedy relatives). Other things that can be done is invest in foreign currencies, play the stock market, and bid on horses.

All of this takes place during World War I, although in the cities you won't notice much of it besides news bulletins and effects on prices (no ruined buildings, etc...). I honestly don't know how easy it is to find this game in North America (a 2004 release), but if you know German, it can be ordered from amazon.de for not too much plus shipping.

Probably not quite what you're looking for, but I play SimExchange. It's a mock stock market that trades in video games sales figures.

It's free to play, and tickles my inner Excel-junkie.

Distant Worlds was featured on RPS yesterday. Sounds like it's very much a sci-fi, macro-level simulation of governmental trade, development, diplomacy and military exploration/conquest.

Thanks for the Widelands suggestion. This looks like something I can fall in love with.

Rise of Nations has five or six resources, and a wide range of victory conditions, some of which are peaceful. Worth a look.

Coldstream wrote:

Distant Worlds was featured on RPS yesterday. Sounds like it's very much a sci-fi, macro-level simulation of governmental trade, development, diplomacy and military exploration/conquest.

Two things...

One. We are talking a little bit of Distant Worlds here & I saw some here as well. (Edit: and here )
Two. I still enjoy Industrial Giant II. It's even sold over at Gamers Gate. If you like supply chains, check it out.

The new Civilization V* game seems to have some more options regarding economics, etc. Personally, I can't wait for it to come out. That's if you're looking for a desktop game.

Regarding online games: Miniconomy* (Wikipedia*) is my absolute favorite browser-based games. Yes, it's pretty standard and sober, but the possibilities you have within the game are countless. Although the learning curve could be a bit steep, I think it's something you might be interested in.

*Edit: For some reason the URL tags don't work, so here are the links:
http://www.civilization5.com
http://www.miniconomy.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniconomy

Tee Es wrote:

*Edit: For some reason the URL tags don't work...

You're too new. You'll have linking privileges in a short while.

Also, welcome.

What's with all the necros in the last week or two? Just coincidence?

Robear wrote:

What's with all the necros in the last week or two? Just coincidence?

It's "Blast from the Past" week.

Robear wrote:

What's with all the necros in the last week or two? Just coincidence?

Am I a necro? Lol

Spaniards are white...

Sorry, it's an English slang term for an "undead" thread, not a misspelling for "negro".

Well played sirs. That exchange just made my morning

Welcome Tee-Es. We say a thread has "Necro'd" when someone posts on an inactive thread, something noone has posted in for months or years. In essence, they bring that thread back to life.

Here's a quirky little series: Europa 1400: The Guild and The Guild 2. The premise of this series is that you sim out what it's like to live in a Medieval/Pre-Rennaisance town, but in reality it is a small business simulator - the fact that all of this occurs in a medieval town is incidental, since they could have placed this model anywhere.

The small business scale of the game made it very approachable: Borrow money from a moneylender, you hire better workers, repair your carts, improve your home, your workshop, train your skills, buy up other businesses, etc. The pace was welcomingly slow (but could be sped up) and had some minor RPG elements, in addition to managing a family. There were a lot of other aspects of this too, like you could run for office, be falsely accused of a crime by a rival and thrown into a dungeon, die and continue playing as one of your offspring, the plague could kill your apprentices, etc. No aspect of the game was too hardcore, but it all worked together to create a fun title that in the end had "buy low sell high" at it's core.

Definitely a hidden gem I would recommend picking up on sale. Usually gamersgate has one of them on the cheap.

I've had this itch too, lately (and a google for Economic Games brought this thread up). Detroit was a decent one for simulating the car business, but the UI is just too outdated. Going to look through the suggestions above and see if anything works for me

There's this... Recettear - An Item Shop's Tale. Not released yet (due september-ish) Might be worth a look.

It's a good deal simpler (and crazier) than some of these other games but it's pretty fun. Also it has a bit of a rogue-like component to it as well where you hire adventurers and accompany them into dungeons for loot to sell in your shop.

Are there any more games like Recettear? I'm really looking forward to it after having played the demo, and have decided that this blend of atmosphere, action, and shopkeepery goodness is just what I need. I can't wait until september 10th... But while I do, are there any other games that do shopkeepering, like Recettear does?

...still alive...
Anyone try Freight Tycoon Inc? It's on sale over at impulse. I have a hard time saying no to supply chain management and cargo transportation.

It's a 1C game, but I can't figure out how to start all the explosions...

clever id wrote:

...still alive...
Anyone try Freight Tycoon Inc? It's on sale over at impulse. I have a hard time saying no to supply chain management and cargo transportation.

I've kinda been getting the desire to play Railroad Tycoon 3 again, maybe I'll try this out instead.

clever id wrote:

...still alive...
Anyone try Freight Tycoon Inc? It's on sale over at impulse. I have a hard time saying no to supply chain management and cargo transportation.

The first games of the series in 90ies were basically trucker sims. As in - you were the driver of the truck, tuned your truck as if it was a race car, tried to make the runs faster than dynamic competition etc.
This one looks like much more zoomed-out and strategic version.

a good economy simulation game is Ars Regendi, but it's not from a companies' view. You have to manage the budget of a virtual state by deciding upon economical and political issues

Unkas72 wrote:

a good economy simulation game is Ars Regendi, but it's not from a companies' view. You have to manage the budget of a virtual state by deciding upon economical and political issues :)

Has Hidden Agenda been mentioned? It's a ye olde game from around '88 where you simulate running a banana republic, and have to balance out US, Soviet and local interests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_...(computer_game)

Tanglebones wrote:
Unkas72 wrote:

a good economy simulation game is Ars Regendi, but it's not from a companies' view. You have to manage the budget of a virtual state by deciding upon economical and political issues :)

Has Hidden Agenda been mentioned? It's a ye olde game from around '88 where you simulate running a banana republic, and have to balance out US, Soviet and local interests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_...(computer_game)

Huh, sounds like Tropico 3.

There have been new developments in the world of Capitalism ... specifically, Capitalism Lab. This is still Capitalism 2, but with quite a few updates. I plan on picking it up and giving it a whirl soon. I was never very good at the Capitalism games, but still managed to enjoy them.