270 | Two Seventy US Election
So, at first I only picked this up as it was free on the PC but i’m so glad I did!
If you’re looking for deep political strategy, this is not the game for you. If you’re looking for a colorful, fun and competitive game with a political theme then this is a great game for you. It’s easy to learn and a relatively quick play.
You start with a number of available characters, enough to learn the gameplay. Play against the AI and you will get a good feel for the strategies (hint: focus on those state groups boosted by your character’s stats). Essentially you are raising and spending money to buy influence that gives you electoral college votes. Reach 270 by the time of a ballot and you win.
– Real player with 637.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy Political Games.
I rarely review games but feel compelled to review this in the hope the Devs at least read the reviews. I have played this for 80 hours and in the beginning it was an amazing game and the basic mechanics are solid, the whole budget and campaigning system is cool and you can apply some pretty involved strategy to get you to the oval office. However, it does get repetitive and the Devs seem hell bent on churning out more and more ridiculous candidates (Kanye West etc.) which cost more and more money, and the game has basically become a pay to win greedy scam. Even having a VP costs money if you are playing online multi player you have no chance without spending money. Time and time again we see games ruined by greed and this is a classic example. If the Devs spent more time adding some variety to the mechanics such as adding the effects of social media, newspaper and tv campaigns etc and included all the candidates in the core game, I would happily pay £10+ for this game, I would even pay a further one off £5+ for a DLC with a bunch of new candidates and content as say an annual update, but as it is its just become too annoying to play without spending repeatedly and for that reason I am saying dont touch it!
– Real player with 80.4 hrs in game
CAPITALISM The action board game for one player
‘CAPITALISM The action board game for one player’ is a real-time board game/ card game hybrid where your goal is to become a millionaire. Build your property empire, compete for cash prizes in high stakes mini-games, and (hopefully) earn more than you spend.
A compelling mix of strategy and action, with minigames spanning a wide variety of genres. A mix of arcade classics, platforming, bullet hell and more.
Put down your copy of Microsoft Paint, ‘CAPITALISM The action board game for one player’ features a character creator that lets you design literally anything you can think of. Easily save, load and share characters with friends using a special code format.
Strategically place cards around the board to optimise revenue. Will you be able to offset your lavish spending habits with a healthy income stream?
Crush your rivals. Pay your debts. Can you master the art of generating capital? What will you spend your £1,000,000 on?
Read More: Best Strategy Satire Games.
Democracy 4
Solid 7/10 overall. Just don’t base your own politics on it. I’d say this game shines in its core mechanics and falls down in the accuracy of the policies/objectivity of the developer.
The only mechanical issue is that GDP is not generated by population but is in stead seemingly separate. So growing the population of a prosperous country does not correspondingly grow GDP.
Certain policies (cough college tuition cough) are way off in terms of cost versus performance and seem more like a policy ad from the dev than balanced game elements.
– Real player with 174.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy Political Sim Games.
Good game, more polished than the predecessor. Don’t be afraid of early access. It would be suitable as a finished game.
Would be nice to have some scenarios or what not to spice it up.
– Real player with 16.9 hrs in game
Pax Ruthenia
Great Game, easy to grasp especially after they added the tutorial. Only complaint is that when you start finishing up the tree, your game crashes constantly.
– Real player with 13.0 hrs in game
The game bears considerable resemblance to titles such as “Crisis in the Kremlin”, though I’d say it still isn’t as deep. With that said, it explores an extremely interesting and often overlooked period of political history - the 2014 events in Ukraine. The game takes place in the immediate prelude to the Euromaidan movement, as the player is placed at the head of Ukraine in the run-up to the signing of the EU association treaty, the rejection of which by former Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovich triggred the start of the movement.
– Real player with 1.0 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
Realpolitiks
I have owned Realpolitks for a week now, so far I love it. It is a very good Grand Strategy Game, many people don’t like it and I see why, however here are the pros and cons in my opinion.
PROS
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You can play as every country in the world, minus a few very small countries (e.g Figi).
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You can start in the years 2020, 2050 and 2222, which all have different countries and starting points.
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Very good starter game for anyone wishing to get into the Grand Strategy Genre, not to many aspects to learn, quite minimal.
– Real player with 215.7 hrs in game
Realpolitiks Review
Nostalgia Goggles Factor: None
Crash Factor: Crashless
Bug Factor: High
A Polish-made Grand Strategy game set in our Information age. Starting in 2020.
The Good
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3 starting dates; 2020, being similar to our world today, 2050, a post-apocalyptic setting and 2222, where nearly every province is it’s own country.
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Play as any country.
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Every start date has it’s own time limit, 2020 ends in 2100, for example. When the end date is reached, the country with the highest score will be the winner. However, it can be much more fun to simply ignore the score game and just play it like a sandbox, setting your own goals. You can play past the end date.
– Real player with 152.9 hrs in game
Retaliation Path of Rome
Retaliation Path of Rome is a very complex game, with several unique features
MISSIONS
About 100 different missions, with either single or multiple objectives, like:
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reach a population target (a minimum number of patricians and/or plebs)
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reach a target happyness
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earn a certain amount of money
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complete the mission in a given time
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win a certain number of battles
5 difficulty levels, from very easy to very hard: with different world resources, starting money, initial reputation…
Every mission is created parametrically to offer an ever changing challenge, each time a mission is re-played.
STRUCTURES
The player has the possibility to build more than 50 structures to complete the missions. Some example structures:
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Slaves' quarters
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Plebs' houses
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Patrician villas
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Wheat field
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Olive grove
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Vineyard
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Farm
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Fishing house
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Market
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Stables
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Workshop
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Dirt road
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Paved street
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Archers' barracks
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Ballistaari' barracks
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Equites' barracks
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Legionary barracks
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Velites' barracks
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Defence tower
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Signaling tower
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Watch tower
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Wooden wall
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Wooden gate
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Stone wall
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Stone gate
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Forum
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Theatre
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Amphitheatre (arena)
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Gladiator ludus
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Stadium (chariot races)
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Gardens
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Groves
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Fountain
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Well
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Butcher
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Olive maker
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Wine maker
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Lumber mill
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Clay pit
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Iron mine
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Stone quarry
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Marble quarry
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Gold mine
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Potter workshop
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Blacksmith
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Academy
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Library
..
Each structure needs specific resources in order to be built.
And of course each structure has different function and features, and some structures have to be properly positioned in order to yield the desired result: for wine production it is necessary to create both vineyard (to get the grapes) and a winemaker (to get the wine).
CITY AI
In each city there will be some AI controlled competitors: other patricians whose goal is to increase their riches and extend their influence. They will be vying with the player, acquiring resources and building structures, trying to get to the best spots before the player.
The competitors appear in advanced levels, and each has a different strategy: some concentrate in the real estate market, others in trade or in resource production.
DESIRABILITY
When new structures get built, these can differ in desirability. Usually this depends on what is present (or built) around them. For example a patrician villa has higher desirability (and hence higher market value) if nearby there are gardens, fountains, other villas, theatres.. It instead loses value if nearby there are stables, farms, wheat fields… Residents will at first go to dwell or work in the structures with higher desirability, avoiding those of little value.
For production structures, for example a wheat field, the value depends on the amount of the produced resource is available in the nearby city and in the global market. If the market needs grains, the value of the field will rise. Conversely, the field would become less desirable and its value decrease.
DAMAGE
In time, structures deteriorate. Every week mainteance works are done to keep them operative and pleasant. If there are not enough money for the basic upkeep or if extraordinary work is needed, the player will need to acquire the necessary funds and repair it as soon as possible (or see its profitability vanish and possibly even arrive to the point when the whole structure eventually collapses).
CITY BUILDING
The city management part of the game depends chiefly on money, people’s satisfaction and resources available.
Dealing with these three amounts, the player needs to complete the missions.
Careful and efficient exploitation of the resources allows to save money and gain with the trade. A wheat field created in a fertile area will yield much more and hence cover its operation costs and bring profit.
It is best to plan the city growth in order to efficiently exploit the resources and reduce the expenses. It is important that cities be self-sufficient: for example a global event like a drought could push prices of imported goods to very high levels.
It is also fundamental to avoid discontent in the populace. If discontent is too high there could be revolts that would seriously compromise the possibility to successfully complete a given mission.
HAPPYNESS
To be happy, people needs to have their basic needs satisfied: food, dwelling, work, water, protection from enemies.
Increasing the people’s life conditions will also generate new needs. In particular the patricians will start to require luxury goods (good wine, gold, silk, refined pottery, statues…).
Entertainment is another fundamental need: populous cities will require stadiums and arenas (and famous people competing inside those structures..)
When happyness is low, the city structures become less productive and hence less profitable.
WORKERS
All structures need a certain amount of workers or worktime, even for the simple upkeep/maintenance.
All productive structures are tightly bound to the number of workers available in the city: with not enough available workers the production would decrease or even become null. Structures with the highest desirability will be the first ones to attract the workers, leaving the others without.
Different structures will require different amounts and different type of workers. For some jobs only slaves will be requested. Plebs are needed for crafts and trade.
Unemployment will cause collapse of happyness and increased risk of revolts.
PATRICIANS / PLEBS / SLAVES
Patricians are the wealthiest citizens, they have expensive needs and cannot accept to see their needs not satisfied. Their weight over city happyness is very relevant.
They also expect to be given high prestige jobs: army generals, high clerics, administrators, politicians, proprietors.
Plebs are mostly involved in crafts and trade. They are fundamental for the management of the city but they don’t have much political weight.
Their class gives the major turnout in tax income.
Slaves are the major work force. Satisfying their primary needs (food, lodging, water) is important as they deal with the production and resource gathering of the city. Correct management of the slaves is fundamental to make the city desirable to the other classes.
RESOURCES:
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Gold
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Wood
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Stone
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Marble
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Iron
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Clay
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Wheat
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Meat
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Fish
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Grape
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Olive
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Wine
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Oil
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Pottery
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Jewelry
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Leather
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Cloth
These are the resources that can be traded, produced or transformed.
TRADE
To evolve the city it is mandatory to correctly manage the trade of all goods: selling the city production to obtain the resources needed for the evolution and improvement of the city.
Prices of resources are managed at two distinct levels: local and global.
Locally: they depend on the city demand and the amount of that type of good that has been bought or sold (selling a lot of wheat will make its price decrease).
Globally: the entire nation’s demand is evaluated and several other factors also influence the price (e.g. events like plagues, droughts, wars..). For example the global price of wheat could be much higher than the local one because of scarcity due to droughts in several areas of the nation.
So if there is a global crisis, even if your city sells a lot of wheat, its price could still be increasing instead of decreasing. But when the trend changes (for example the drought ends) its price could suddenly crash.
AUTOMATIC TRADE
To simplify the game and avoid micromanagement, it is possible to automate trade setting some “limit orders”.
E.g. “buy if there is less than .. %”
The automatic system won’t consider the price, but the quantity set as requirement.
STRUCTURES' MARKET
In Path of Rome it is possible to buy or sell the structures (with the exclusion of those like walls, streets, barracks) according to its market value.
Once the building of a structure is complete, the player has the possibility of selling it, to the value defined by its desirability and the kind of resources it produces.
Selling a structure gives an immediate income, but could be disadvantageous in the long term:
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no money will be collected for rent of properties or sale of production
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resources produced by sold structures will not be managed by the player
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and hence those resources won’t be available to build other structures
Nevertheless a good sale would still benefit because of immediate cash flow…
DANGER AND ENTRENCH
Every structure you build makes your city more appealing to enemies who could invade or pillage it, according to the kind of structure: a patrician villa, a thriving market or a golden mine would increase the risk of enemy incursion much more than a new wheat field or a stone quarry.
To compensate, it is better to spend some money and time on defending the city, creating walls, towers and military units.
Defensive structure will also contribute to raise the desirability and hence the values of the other structures of the cities, whose occupants will feel safer.
All choices in the game are two pronged, bringing both advantages and problems.
For example, continuing on the topic of city defense: if there are few or no defensive structures, there will be many enemy incursions, but very light (small bands of brigands mostly).
Conversely, excellent defensive structures won’t guarantee that the city becomes untouchable, will deter and block small offensives but will attract the organized war sieges of big enemy armies: a city so well defended MUST be rich and full of bounty!
BATTLES
Retaliation Path of Rome is a hybrid RTS/TBS, a combination which makes the game very tactical. You’ll need to plan how to move the troops, how to arrange them and expecially what kind of army units to train. Different movement ability (velites, with barely no armour, are much faster than full armoured princeps) and different attack types and attack speeds make unit types (and how you’ll use them in battle) very different.
Each battle is managed by a parametric AI system with almost endless combinations and possible states and developments.
COHORTS
Units are arranged in groups, which are commanded by officers, controlling the movement and formation of the groups.
Each group can have a different formation: for example you’ll probably be depolying the archers in a long line (or in two/three lines), rather than massed as a square.
The commanding officer will also decide the state for the group: defensive, aggressive, berserk…
Continuously changing the state, formation, movement or attack orders of a group when the battle is already started may seed confusion on some members of the group, which may then fail to follow some of the orders and in the worst cases a total confusion could even provoke the disbandment of the group.
GENERALS
The army general will give commands to the officers and these will command the groups under their command.
The closer a general is to a certain group, the faster the issued orders will be received and carried out correctly. If the general is far away, the group for which the order is meant will react more slowly to the new commands.
If your general dies during the battle you can still command the army, but in a much slower and less coordinated way, with a high risk of confusion and messy coordination. Furthermore, the loss of the general will take a huge toll on the army’s morale, and could cause the whole army to flee the battlefield.
COHORTS AI vs SINGLES AI
Control AI will be managing separately groups and single soldiers.
Each group is treated as a single autonomous entity and orders given to the group will take priority over orders and states of the single soldiers. Nevertheless if the group disbands, its officer dies or the army general dies, then single soldiers will not be bound by group cohesion and will follow a behaviour dictated by their last orders, mediated by their own particular demeanor, state and parameters (called " stats").
SOLDIERS
Each soldier has more than 20 “stats”, parameters defining the single unit, similarly to many RPGs (like strength, intelligence, agility, accuracy, movement speed, orientation ability, luck, tactical acumen, battle experience… ).
Every cohort will include units with very different characteristics, which will affect their performance on the battlefield.
For example: a very strong archer will shoot very fast and very far, possibly inflicting more damage when hitting… but the same archer could have a very bad aim and rarely hit the intended target.
Unit types:
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General
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Legionary (heavy infantry)
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Velities (light infantry)
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Ballistarii (siege and field artillery operators)
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Sagittarii (archers)
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Equites (cavalry)
TRAINING
All cohorts can undergo specific and additional training (up to 5 levels) to become more efficient and to improve the stats of the individual members of the cohort.
Training will improve things like speed of execution of orders, combat ability, manouvering, aim… but no amnount of training, obviously, will affect such things as individual soldiers' intelligence or natural agility.
Supreme Ruler 2020 Gold
I know it says I’ve played 250+ hours of this game, and I’ve certainly played quite a few, but probably half of that is letting the game run on its own while I was asleep, or having fallen asleep playing it.
The concept behind the game is really great, and I wish it had been implemented in a way that made it fun to play, but it wasn’t.
I did play the original (SR2010) and it is certainly an improvement over that version - less buggy, better controls. But the core problems with the franchise remain.
– Real player with 827.1 hrs in game
Absolute gold, one of a kind game that was arguably the peak of what Supreme Ruler or any strategy games to date ought to be. If you want a more arcady experience or more historical titles buy the Ultimate edition and play the 2020 or Global Crisis scenario instead. But for me, there’s just something about this cruder original version of the game that is lost on the new ones.
Key changes between this and Ultimate:
Positive
-World Markets make sense, prices go from 10-1000% the baseline and are independent of your production cost. And trade MUST happen between players, resources do not materialize out of the blue.
– Real player with 680.9 hrs in game
Urban Empire
Don’t buy this game. Avoid.
It’s not worth the asking price, whatsoever. If you must get it, I recommend you pay as little as possible.
Keep in mind, this is a political simulator masked as a city building game, with an incomplete feel. If this interests you, then keep reading. I wanted to like this game and played it over 100 hours, but I strongly dislike it.
Here is why I strongly dislike it:
- Entirely imbalanced game mechanics at all stages; early-, mid-, and late-game. At best, consider this game at midway Beta-level test development, requiring a significant rebalance, not ready for prime time. It’s abandoned by the development team, and therefore they’ll never fix its problems.
– Real player with 131.5 hrs in game
Wonder why so many people hate this game? There’s a long winding answer.
Urban Empires was origonally marketed as having the following game play niches.
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It it was a decent city-building strategy game.
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It had a political aspect: you would have to manipulate the political parties and make deals to pass key legislation.
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It would have a branching plot over multiple generations that would tell the story of both your family and the city.
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Your choices would effect how the story plays out.
– Real player with 64.1 hrs in game
Evil Democracy: 1932
Did it keep my engagement? Yes. Was it cool playing as different parties and trying to change the outcomes of historical elections? Also yes. Is this game worth its price? No. Does it feel like it’s properly out of early access? Also no.
If you’re interested, definitely get it on sale. I don’t feel like I wasted my money, but I might feel that if I got it at full price.
I would hope there’s more to come for this game. The concept is genuinely interesting, but I want to do more than sitting around hiring people and firing people, releasing a new newspaper every six… whatever turns are. The time in this game feels entirely out of sync with reality. Like each turn moves you to an alternate version of the same moment, and that’s not good. I mean, I can form a coalition government with some other parties when elections roll around, but it actually does nothing for my party. What’s the point of being chancellor if it doesn’t do anything down the road? The turn passes and there you are where you were a turn prior. You’ve presumably become the leader of the country, but because you didn’t occupy enough positions in the cabinet you’re just back out on the campaign trail.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Introduction
Those five minutes are up and the average voter has made a very convincing case against democracy. We’ll get back to Churchill quotes in a moment, for now I must bring to the attention of my fellow gamers (and potential historians & political scientists) a title that manages to think outside the ballot box in spite of the inherent rigidity of its topics and simulated era. Evil Democracy: 1932 is the recent creation of the prolific developer and self-publisher, Hamsters Gaming. It’s their second project showcasing the word “evil”, after 2018’s Evil Bank Manager. You know what profession is despised almost as much as the “banksters”? Politicians.
– Real player with 9.2 hrs in game