The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

I think Tropico really cuts a balance in scale/scope that hits the perfect sweet spot for me. I also think the thematic elements are inherently more interesting than most other city builders. The bigger the scale, the more you have to abstract, so in Cities Skylines or large-scale city builders you literally don't have to or need to care about any individuals, nor is there much in the way of meaningful simulation of them. Skylines ultimately devolves into traffic management, since that ends up being the (perhaps realistic) breaking point when you build a large city.

Tropico manages to keep the maps at a scale that they really do build out and look like a city, but the citizens/agents are still represented in a way that makes them matter individually in some cases. The way tourism works as a means to base the economy on is also something pretty unique to Tropico, largely down to the thematic elements.

One thing that really bothers me about a lot of city builders (The Anno games are where this really stuck out to me but a lot of them do this) is the strict adherence to a fixed radius of influence for certain types of buildings. It makes the games feel like a puzzle to be optimized instead of an enjoyable construction set to build a city. It also doesn't make that much sense. If there is only one church in town and you're one house too far away from it, you're probably not going to decide that you won't go to church, right?

I really hope we get more city builders in the near future that allow less rigidly structured building. While you don't have to adhere to a strict grid in most city-builders, you are often giving up so much space that it both doesn't look very nice or sensible since everything that does fill in around the edges is still trying to smash itself in to a grid.

There were times that the Romans auctioned off the right to tax a region. So you’d pay the state some sum and then have the right to extract whatever you can from the population.

I’m sure the whole story is much more nuanced than that outline.

Europa Universalis IV has a bunch of tax stuff:

* https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Tax

There are entire Youtube tutorials on it.

For those unaware: Tropico sits approximately one step higher than "The Sims", and one step lower than "Sim City".

You don't have as many personalities / needs details per citizen as "The Sims". But every single citizen's life is completely simulated (home, walking, work, walking, church, walking, eating, walking, home. Yes, there's a lot of walking: you'll be thinking of transportation / infrastructure to make things better). Citizens also have full life cycles from birth, to children, to adulthood, and finally death.

A "Big" Tropico has maybe 2000 citizens. At this point, you need significant thought into transportation to keep things working (and one transportation hiccup can topple your entire economy). Tropico 6 is a bit better about it, but Tropico always "scaled poorly" at the end of simulations. (While Sim City / City Skylines felt like games you could keep watching for many months, I don't think I ever put much more than a few weeks of effort into any particular Tropico playthrough).

Tropico is more about playing, reaching the modern era, and then starting over again. Tropico has a "poor steady state", but an excellent "growth" phase that feels very natural. (Ex: setting up a Pro-Communism Newspaper in a neighborhood will slowly turn that neighborhood into pro-communists, pleasing the USSR. Seeing these trends play out over 10+ in-game years is very pleasing)

In contrast, Sim City / City Skylines feel like they "hold steady state" very well, but are kind of unrealistic from a growth perspective.

OH MY GOD!

The FIRST game (and one I LOVE so much) that popped into my head just upon reading the post title was "Knights and Merchants" -- Played the SHIT out of that game while at Intel... All nighters and such.

Clicked the link thinking no way that game would be in here -- and its the FIRST image on the submission!

Great post.