Citystate II
Don’t buy.
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Unfinished game
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Bugs
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The “realistic economics” in this game leaves a lot to be desired and calling it realistic is laughable.
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The dev has been MIA since early October (within weeks of release).
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Developer is either a huckster or lacks any sense of professionalism.
The misrepresentation that you are buying a finished game on the store page and the fact that the developer just disappeared makes me feel as if I’ve been had. The excuse on discord by some person who is not the dev is that he has a family and he takes long breaks. Make of that what you will, but I will not buy another product from this developer.
– Real player with 65.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Economy Sandbox Games.
You simply can’t play more extreme ideologies anymore (Left & Right) which Is kinda where alot of the fun came from. Everything needs to be balanced. It’s okay but at some point you’ll run into bugs that remove zones not just buildings and tank everything. Tbh it gets boring after it happens a few times. Oh and after many hrs my political leaning instantly went from 47-53 to 100-0 to the left which sent everyone into a riot and the whole city was destroyed. That right there is a game breaking bug. I’d honestly say buy the first one. I’m not hating btw, I actually really wanted to like it.
– Real player with 25.3 hrs in game
Plutocracy
This is a truly excellent business tycoon game with great historical flavour. It’s early access, but they seem to have fixed crashes with the last update (no crashes for me in last 15 hours of play).
Developers have a big design vision with lots of features still to come, but there is LOADS already there -
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Dozens of companies, hundreds of individual characters, all with ambitions, weaknesses, and investment strategy
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Nice little research tree, set in the ‘library’ of your mansion. Gaining knowledge in Bookkeeping reduces your tax, but also increases your ‘economics’ relative to opponents.
– Real player with 173.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Economy Indie Games.
It’s a fun game, but in the current state it’s not worth the asking price. It would classify this as a wait for sale title.
The good, the bad and the ugly:
The Good
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Wheeling and dealing your way to wealth is in it’s core a fun gameplay.
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Lots of promise with as yet not implemented features.
The Bad
- Frequent crashes. For example, if you try to merge 2 companies who both have strike going on = instant win because of a NaN error, so your wealth becomes NaN and apparently that makes you the richest man in the USA.
– Real player with 119.3 hrs in game
ELECTRONIC STOCK TRADING SYSTEM
FINALLY a stock trading game that actually works. I have tried a dozen of these types of games and this is the only one that works correctly. That is why I had post here. I have been playing it for over a month now and I have had no problems with it. Most like real world game so far. A great learning tool. I did have an issue when I tried to start the game for the first time, but support got it working for me pretty quick and easy. The instructions to resolve the issue were integrated into the game! Top notch game and customer support.
– Real player with 64.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Economy Grand Strategy Games.
Thumbs up for fast and extremely helpful support. If the game starts with an error they will give you a quick fix.
The game is relatively simple. You choose your start amount, look through some stocks conveniently named in similar fashion to real companies and read the scrolling news as you “end your turn” and continue to buy and sell accordingly. No tutorial so navigating the beginning portions may take a 5-10 minutes to look through all the options. With only 20 mins played I haven’t gotten into the subtleties just yet. However I was very impressed by the customer service!
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Mango Cart
A nice indie trading game. You control a company that trades fruits between 2 countries. Every year a new cycle begins where you buy the fruit from the producing country and need to deliver and then sell your products to the destination country, all of this while the world economy and politics is constantly changing and affecting your company.
PROS
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clear and functional UI
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you can feel the impact of your trading decisions e.g. if you try to be cheap on the shipment you could end up losing a full year profit
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
The game could be pretty fun (albeit extremely short), but unfortunately the socialists can take over your country randomly at any time, which ends your game regardless of how well your company may be doing.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Power & Revolution
I wanted to and tried to like this game and I found much to like. Firstly it is probably my favourite genre (modern geo-politics) and there is alot unique and cool about it. That said there is just too many things that are either tedious, too ill-explained (even with the GodsNspy addon) or just don’t work like they should either by design or not. Lastly there are some things that just should be available to everyone and not as DLC. The modding tool paid DLC is inadequete considering it cost money. Furthermore, given the inept explanitions of game mechanics, the GodNspy addon should also be part of the package, aswell as offer more information.
– Real player with 243.6 hrs in game
This is a very difficult game to evaluate. First - it’s very deep and complex. They aren’t kidding when they say “Geo-Political Simulator”. It goes much deeper into politics and economic simulation than even paradox games. This game will only be of interest to you if you’re interested in politics, and know at least a little bit about macroeconomics. This isn’t Tropico, Democracy or Hearts of Iron. All of those games are great, but they simply don’t compare to this by sheer depth.
This game doesn’t pussy-foot around, it treats you like an adult. There are hundreds of different laws and taxes you can change, thosuands of characters you can interact with, and enough graphs to satisfy even the stingiest statistics professor. You can play as any nation in the world (besides a handful of micronations like the Vatican), as opposition political parties, or even as an illegal groupр, such as the Kurds in Syria or the rebels in Donbass (although the meat of the game is when you play as a head of state). Your actions affect not just your popularity and budget, but also many macroeconomic factors. Factors such as inflation, unemployment and crime are all inter-related, and you’ll often times find yourself trying to reach a happy compromise. There really isn’t any other game like this. This is due to the fact that Eversim is a company that creates simulation games for intl' organizations and their mindset is very clear with even their consumer-level products, such as P&R.
– Real player with 167.8 hrs in game
Victoria 3
SHAPE A GRAND TOMORROW
Paradox Development Studio invites you to build your ideal society in the tumult of the exciting and transformative 19th century. Balance the competing interests in your society and earn your place in the sun in Victoria 3, one of the most anticipated games in Paradox’s history.
THE ULTIMATE SOCIETY SIMULATOR
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Lead dozens of world nations from 1836-1936. Agrarian or Industrial, Traditional or Radical, Peaceful or Expansionist… the choice is yours.
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Detailed population groups with their own economic needs and political desires.
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Reform your government and constitution to take advantage of new social innovations, or preserve the stability of your nation by holding fast to tradition in the face of revolutionaries.
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Research transformative new technology or ideas to improve your national situation.
DEEP ECONOMIC SYSTEM
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Expand your industry to take advantage of lucrative goods, taxing the profits to improve national prosperity.
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Import cheap raw materials to cover your basic needs while finding new markets for your finished goods.
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Secure vital goods to fuel your advanced economy and control the fate of empires.
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Balance employing available labor force with the needs for new types of workers.
PLAY ON A GRAND STAGE
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Use your diplomatic wiles to weave a tangled global web of pacts, relations, alliances, and rivalries to secure your diplomatic position on the world stage.
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Employ threats, military prowess and bluffs to persuade enemies to back down in conflicts.
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Increase your economic and military strength at the expense of rivals.
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Accumulate prestige and the respect of your rivals as you build an industrial giant at home or an empire abroad.
Masters of the World - Geopolitical Simulator 3
I highly recommend this game for anyone who is a political geek.
The game is extremely in-depth. It goes from well-known laws like freedom of speech/demonstration/religion to tiny aspects you’d never see in a geopolitical simulator; blood toxicity level, driving age, maximum age for school, and speed limits on trunk roads, city roads, and highways. It also has a very realistic atmosphere to it. Setting aside the fact the map and characters look like 90s era games, it gives the game a feel no other geopolitical simulator has given me; realism. It goes from setting meetings with political figures and world leaders, to having small talk and influencing well-known figures in your country to vote for you or support your bill publicly. When a law doesn’t pass through, a reform can be made. Adding laws into this reform that is bipartisan will increase the chances of it being passed. More features include asking nations for authorization to build a pipeline through their territory, building pipelines for oil or gas, detailed trade agreements that allow you to set the price, quantity, and duration of the agreement (Example: Russia’s Natural Gas Agreement with China that will last for 20 years), the game also allows the construction of various buildings or transportations like oil and gas pipelines, high-speed trains, nuclear power plants, oil rigs, gas and oil fields, and even increasing the number of hospitals, homes, schools, or solar fields. The game also has a very complicated economic system. I have been having trouble with it, but I did have some success as Jordan earlier. Continuing on, the game is very recent. It isn’t like SuperPower 2 where it was created just before the NATO expansion or the break-up of Serbia and Montenegro, but it was released in 2013, meaning it has the world’s youngest country, South Sudan. The game features terrorist groups in every country, ranging from the Mafia to Total Jihad groups (Al-Quaeda). You have the options to infiltrate the groups if they live in your territory, to funding them with weapons, money, and 2 semi-trucks with rockets and explosives if they are in other countries to help them take down that country’s government. But if you do this, you have the chance to be caught red-handed. And this will transfer into the news, and Parliment will impeach you. I suffered that while playing as Russia and funding New Zealand terrorists. The game offers so much detail to their options, like adding more medical staff and adding more police staff. You can also investigate politicians and well-known citizens to reveal a scandal to use against them, to spying on heads-of-state or countries to find evidence that will gain the approval of the United Nations Security Council and allow military action against the country. Which brings me to the Organizations of the game.
– Real player with 385.6 hrs in game
Despite of a few bugs Geopolitical Simulator 3 is an exceptionally clever and entertaining game! Of course strategic gaming must be your thing in order to fully appreciate MOW. It has more body than for example Civilization (which in itself is also a good game). It is very interesting to see what influence your various decisions have in the field of domestic or foreign policy, financial health, economic growth or social aspects. Also the causal relations between investing/cutting in a particular sector, creating contracts, growth, unemployment, production, trade balance, budget deficit, privitization etc..etc.. is very realistic, interesting and entertaining. Fun to read the newspaper on which impact your various decisions have, how it is presented and how well it is received by public opinion. One of the things I have learned is that you certainly can’t satisfy all of the people and organizations in a country. And most of the time it is a real challenge just to keep your head above the water. But all the more satisfying it is when you do manage to create a contract, see that the invested tax payer dollars create economic growth an jobs etc..etc..
– Real player with 150.2 hrs in game
No Place for the Dissident
While I am recommending this, I would highly suggest you wait for a sale or until the price lowers. It’s not a bad game and has some cool mechanics, but it isn’t something that’s worth $20 unless you really think It’ll scratch a niche you have. While sometimes fun, it needs more polish to be worth the price it’s asking for, at least in my opinion. Here’s a bullet point review:
The Good:
- Ideology spreads through points on the map that interact with each other instead of having each country just be a tap made up of abstract numbers. They even have different population densities. Looking at waves of orange overflow a country is somewhat neat to look at.
– Real player with 17.0 hrs in game
It’s okay. It will be better if they add more features and streamline the actions for smaller countries. Otherwise it will remain more tedious than fun.
It could be really cool if they keep updating it.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
Power & Revolution 2019 Edition
The Game Works, For a While, Then it Just Doesn’t
I’ve been playing the game for a couple of months, and I have also been making a few mods. Recently, I’ve noticed that the game now freezes around June of 2020. I’ve only been playing mods recently, but I don’t think that’s an excuse for this. I think I’ll simply stop playing until this issue is fixed. It’s just not fun anymore when the game irredeemably freezes on me every ten minutes
UPDATE
This Game is STILL Broken!!!
I’m really getting sick of the broken state of this game. I mostly play mods, but they either glitch to the point of being broken to not even loading correctly. I cannot create custom characters or groups because if I do, they won’t render in the game anyway. Or if they do, they’ll have the wrong voice. A male character with a female voice and visa versa. Another issue I’m having is that I’ll play a game for one day, and the next day, the space research section completely disappears!!! If I change a nation’s regime type, say for example, make Somalia a Federal Republic with a Presidential government type, it’ll show up in mod creation and in mod editing, but if I try to play this mod, it’ll still be an Authoritarian Military regime in the new game menu! I downloaded the game’s recent update, and it worked for one day! I DO NOT recommend this game due to these very frustrating glitches! I’m losing faith in this company’s ability to fix this game.
– Real player with 727.9 hrs in game
If this game went for U$D 20 and it was the studio’s first foray into the genre, it’d be acceptable. Not good, but understandably troubled.
For a $50 DLC (That was released as a standalone) by a studio that has been making this very same game for years, it’s unacceptable.
It is not buggy: It is a writhing, cynical mess of broken mechanics that push against one another to see which will break your game first. The developers don’t care as long as their 17 cultists buy their game anew. I am in the Power and Revolutions Discord server. The crowd has a powerful blend of cultist vibe and “Pol Pot just needed more time” delirium.
– Real player with 201.0 hrs in game
Rogue State
This is by far one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played in a while. You’re the chosen leader of an intermediary government attempting to rebuild the country of Basenji after the overthrow of a monarch. As you rebuild your infastructure and balance relations between the various factions of your society, you must keep an eye out on foreign leaders looking to exploit your vulnerable country. On top of all this, your brother is constantly seeking an opportunity to plot a coup deta against you. You have to keep a healthy relationship with the armed forces and your cabinet if you plan to keep your power in office.
– Real player with 40.3 hrs in game
Rogue State is a government management role playing game set after an Arab Spring type event. Each year is divided into several turns. Given the topical nature of the game and limited but repayable scenario I recommend it for those who want to experience a fairly standard government game with unique flavor. The graphics and sound are functional and some of the touches, like having the U.S. ambassador answer the phone and meet you, are cute touches but one wonders if the time would have been better spent elsewhere.
– Real player with 35.4 hrs in game