The Beancounter Within...

Minion21g on 29/4/2011 at 22:37

Ladies and gents, I DESPERATELY crave an economic-style strategy game that is not Tropico or Anno. Any recommendations please?

demagogue on 29/4/2011 at 23:21

Europa Universalis 3, Victoria, and Hearts of Iron 3 are like Grand History sims where you also run the national economies, but maybe you're thinking of something more centered on just the economic part.

My favorite game Hardwar is like the Elite model set on a Planet, so you buy hangers, set them up as manufacturing plants, buy the raw goods, refine them, then sell it the AIs, that kind of thing; and you can set up a grand commercial empire... But it's played through a flight sim, where you're pirating or trading.

I don't really know any others. I like this genre but don't know many good games for it.

The Unity game I've been working on is meant to be like an political/economy sim set in Paris at the time of the Revolution, so you really get a sense of trying to eek out a living when wheat prices and everything else spike like crazy ... and are pressured to take it into the streets along with everyone else.

Shadowcat on 30/4/2011 at 00:46

Would "The Guild" series fit the bill? I haven't played any of them, but the description seems to match what I recall hearing about them. The current JoWood promotion at GOG.com has one of them for not very much.

Phatose on 30/4/2011 at 04:42

Recettear?

Koki on 30/4/2011 at 19:04

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Building_Series) Like these?

Quote Posted by Phatose

Recettear?

Get the fuck out.

Briareos H on 30/4/2011 at 19:18

Though there's not a lot of city and civilisation building, if what you're looking for is economic management I'd go with Capitalism 2.

demagogue on 30/4/2011 at 20:50

There's the old Tycoon games too ... Power Tycoon, Train Tycoon. I think some of those have freebie homebrew remakes around the web. Somebody posted a link to a Train Tycoon remake around here somewhere (in the Freebie thread maybe).

Edit: (http://www.openttd.org/en/) Open Transport Tycoon

Edit2: Wiki-lists of Tycoon & Business Sim Games (over 100 since 2003):
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tycoon_games)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Business_simulation_games)

Minion21g on 1/5/2011 at 18:10

I never really understood what Recettear was supposed to be, so I can't say for sure.

Also, I apologize for not being specific enough. I was kind of looking for something like the old Settlers II and III games without having to get involved with Ubisoft's newer versions, even so, I ended up grabbing Settlers 7 Gold last night off of Steam. It's okay so far, but not exactly as micromanage-y as I would like.

City building games like the ones Koki linked were what I was looking for. But yeah, there aren't a lot of them around.

dj_ivocha on 2/5/2011 at 03:06

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_and_Merchants:_The_Shattered_Kingdom) Knights and Merchants? Fairly similar to the Settlers series.

The (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronghold_%282001_video_game%29) Stronghold series?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Genius_%28video_game%29) Evil Genius is probably in the same vein but I haven't played it so I can't say for sure. Looks that way at least.

Shakey-Lo on 2/5/2011 at 04:05

cities in motion is fairly recent and looked like a decent update of the transport tycoon genre.

if you're after a Caesar style city builder, Imperium Romanum was not terrible.