Is there a way to implement a simulation of a city that has not been done to death already? My gut response was "no" until I played Dwarf Fortress. The game has taken a less used concept expanded on it and created what feels like a new gameplay. Are there other ways to make a standard sim more interesting? Current Standards: The sim genre has been done to death. Here is a general overview running from most focus on individual people to least. Sims- You control a small number of people and have a lot of control on their individual actions. Sim City- You control a city of people but have no control over there individual actions. By modifing the stucture of the city you have control over the general population. Civilization- You control an entire nation with multiple cities. People? What people? In general you have little control of the city other than what main building they create next. Most sim games can be fit into this scale and usually shoehorn into one of those specific types. For example Rollecoaster Tycoon fits into the Sim City category. You don't control where people go, but building rides influences them. Other Types: Dwarf Fortress fits between Sim City and Sims (along with Dungeon Keeper and several other games). Your focus is roughly 7 to 200 "people". You can not directly control them but you can give general orders and preferences that they will eventually follow. Each individual has enough information to make them recognizable, but little enough that you are not attached to any one persons fate. Discussion Point: What else can be done? How can one of the current standards be tweaked to give it a new feel? Is there a playable game between Sims and Dwarf Fortress where you have direct and indirect control over individuals?

I can see a few things:

- At the city level: I think that the focus on transportation has remained somewhat limited.

- At the country level: Civilization focuses a lot on war. Sim City focuses on the management of a city. What about the management of a whole country? Focus on macro-economy, international trade, research, alliances... The challenges would be very different between, say, Sierra Leone, Russia and Switzerland! You could still add the possibility of war (economic pressure? Land conquest?), but by making it awfully costly, it would be only used as last resort.

I can see this is a hot topic by the impressive flood of responses. [rolleyes]

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Original post by small_duck I can see a few things: - At the city level: I think that the focus on transportation has remained somewhat limited.

I would agree. Most city level sims have a choice between 1 or 2 levels of transportation and placement. There is nothing to show whether you put in a 2-lane road or a limited access express way and certainly nothing modeling the people moving around on the roads.
If fact Railroad Tycoon is one of the few to deal with transportation at all and that is on a much larger scale. A city transport sim could play with road size, light timing, sidewalks. That has some interesting potential.

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Original post by small_duck- At the country level: Civilization focuses a lot on war. Sim City focuses on the management of a city. What about the management of a whole country? Focus on macro-economy, international trade, research, alliances... The challenges would be very different between, say, Sierra Leone, Russia and Switzerland! You could still add the possibility of war (economic pressure? Land conquest?), but by making it awfully costly, it would be only used as last resort.

I am unsure how you would differ this from a Civilization type game. Would you have a world view? Or would the world outside of your country be an unseen but present area? Are you talking about mideval city-states or present day countries? What types of controls would you be able to work with?

If you are basically saying a Civilization game without the units- then there needs to be more of something else in order for there to have the control feel.

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Original post by Thermodynamics I am unsure how you would differ this from a Civilization type game. Would you have a world view? Or would the world outside of your country be an unseen but present area? Are you talking about mideval city-states or present day countries? What types of controls would you be able to work with? If you are basically saying a Civilization game without the units- then there needs to be more of something else in order for there to have the control feel.

For simplicity, I was thinking of the present day. The view could be intermediate between Civ and SimCity: a city needs to be more than one cell. A cell could represent a house block, or a district. This way, the user can control:
- What should be the building priorities in cities, and what should be their structure (industries, homes and commerce, pretty much like SimCity)
- The transportation between cities
- International trade
- The tax areas
- Education, research, diplomacy, police...
- Maybe, various economic factors, such as the money print, and the interest rate

One challenge that could arise from such a game is to transport efficiently goods across the country. You just cannot create a big bunch of factories in the middle of nowhere, you need to bring the people here (and give them a home), and you need to transfer the merchandises to other cities for consumption, or to docks to sell to other countries.

For the ones who like scenarios, there could be several initial situations, and goals to achieve, such as a reaching a certain population, a certain GDP, a certain GDP/hab, reimburse the public debt, or bring the commercial balance back in the positive.

Would that be fun to play?

The closest thing I can think of is some of the mafia games where you have control over some people, indirect control over others (bribes, influence, protection) and none over most.

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Original post by Thermodynamics I can see this is a hot topic by the impressive flood of responses. [rolleyes]

To be honest I was considering replying given my fondness for the city management sim genre, but I'm not entirely sure what you are wanting. It's a bit hard to try to invent a new game type that fits squarely within the genre without it, well, fitting squarely within the genre [smile].

I myself wouldn't lump the Rollercoaster Tycoon type game directly with Sim City. Although they are similar, Sim City doesn't have individual people; it abstracts away the population of the city into a series of mathematical forumalae, whereas Rollercoaster Tycoon has each person as a separate unit that you can see and follow. As such I'd lump the Rollercoaster Tycoons, Theme Parks/Hospitals, Tropicos, Dungeon Keepers etc. into a group of their own.

Majesty strikes me as an interesting variant of the genre; it's part city management, part RTS. You control a fantasy medieval city in an RTS-like interface and given an objective (often to destroy all the monster generators in the map) which you need to do by recruiting heroes, but you cannot influence the heroes decisions directly. Rather you must influence them by offering rewards for objectives, such as destroying particular monsters or buildings or setting exploration points.

Space Colony is another interesting variant, in that it is a hybrid of The Sims style personal relationships with a "build the base" Rollercoaster-tycoon type management sim. You need to build a space base in a similar vein to the tycoon type games, but there is a greater emphasis on the relationships between the staff.

Oh yes, Colonization fits pretty well into the Civilization sort with people. An interesting game for a few reasons.

As far as I can see there are a few idea based games which when combined could make an interesting game.

Business Simulation
I'm trying to remember the game but in it you run a business in various selected countries and try to out sell the competition to the games buying public. Its pretty old now but I am always going back to it. The online equivalent would be I think Starpeace II which I still play years on. Variants on these are the various Tycoon games.

People Simulation
Sims of course is the classic example of this. Each person is individual to a limit (only so much uniqueness is possible) and of course some traits can be passed down in the limited gene data.

City Simulation
Sim City is the first one that jumps to mind although Settlers is a good combo of this and People simulation with less uniqueness with the characters.

Transport Simulation
The various transport games out there can fit this well. Alot to mention them all but Transport Tycoon jumps to mind and Sid Meirs new Railroads is my current favorite.

Now what if there was a game that :

a) Allowed you to control of the characters when you zoom down to the lowest level. - People Simulator
b) Allowed you to control the business and economy when you zoom down to the building level. - Business Simulator
c) Allowed you to control the transport industry when you zoom down to the street level. - Transport Simulator
d) Allowed you to control the setup of the city as a whole when at the city level. - City Simulator
e) Allowed you to be god (for want of another word) and control the world/universe as a whole. - God Simulator

And for those bloodthirty players you can always have the turf wars/city wars/country wars etc.

Multiple worlds can then bring in the option of alien attacks.

Of course this type of game would take a while. And could be just a pipe dream. But there are so many games out there and I have a few of them. Each game I like for a different reason. I would love a game that combined each element I liked.

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Original post by small_duck For simplicity, I was thinking of the present day. The view could be intermediate between Civ and SimCity: a city needs to be more than one cell. A cell could represent a house block, or a district. This way, the user can control: - What should be the building priorities in cities, and what should be their structure (industries, homes and commerce, pretty much like SimCity) - The transportation between cities - International trade - The tax areas - Education, research, diplomacy, police... - Maybe, various economic factors, such as the money print, and the interest rate One challenge that could arise from such a game is to transport efficiently goods across the country. You just cannot create a big bunch of factories in the middle of nowhere, you need to bring the people here (and give them a home), and you need to transfer the merchandises to other cities for consumption, or to docks to sell to other countries.

Now I understand. I wasn't seeing the extra detail in the city planning or any of the inter-city connections. This makes much more sense to me now. One thing I can easily envision is that certain resources would only be available to certain areas. Lumber, grain, ore, livestock- all would be more easily created in different areas and could add more depth to the transport needs. Even labor (people) could be transported if there was a desperate need for workers.

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Original post by small_duck For the ones who like scenarios, there could be several initial situations, and goals to achieve, such as a reaching a certain population, a certain GDP, a certain GDP/hab, reimburse the public debt, or bring the commercial balance back in the positive.

I like your ideas for the different scenarios. Would you have natural disaters like tsunamis and tornados occur randomly?

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Would that be fun to play?

That would absolutely be fun to play! Well at least I think so. [grin] Thanks for the input.

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Original post by Telastyn The closest thing I can think of is some of the mafia games where you have control over some people, indirect control over others (bribes, influence, protection) and none over most.

I don't think I haved played a game like this before. What sort of emotional attachment or personal investment do you get into the different types of players? If one that you have direct control of dies do you lose the game (restart the level) or is it less drastic? Does it require some effort to bribe someone or is it a fairly painless process? Can you turn someone you have no control over into an indirect control?

It sounds interesting, none the less, Telastyn.