TL;DR a jank and skrunkly indie Anno with UI and information problems, game ending bugs, and a single music track that will haunt your dreams like the worlds worst elevator music. Despite this, a fun and addictive little title, relatively cheap. The game itself is deceptively simple: you must found a classical era mediterranean city state and guide it up through the reineissance era and beyond. The game gives you a map, you plop down a city center, and from there you go. Building is done in control zones, your city center(s) generate a circle of this, as well as survey outpost you can build. The # of survey outposts you can build is limited by the level of your city center in a particular era, meaning you want to expand strategically. The only building you have control of is industrial and civic. Civilian buildings will spring up in districts, growing organically out from your city center and civic buildings based on an attraction force stat they have. Civic buildings and decorations attract populace (and thus districts), industrial buildings repel them. As a result you want to sequester your industry from your cities, building resource harvestors on the periphery as you expand. There are 6 'base' resources in the game, though each of them is introduced gradually and 2 won't even appear until the medieval era. You start out harvesting wood, stone, and food. Wood is harvested from tree's, stone from rocks and mountains, and food is generated from farms. Stone and Wood harvesters have a radial harvest area, that shows you how much they can expect to harvest in that zone. Higher # better, unless you're just clear cutting tree's to make space for later. Resource's are visible on the map, but their numerical value can deplete (tree's will just outright get clear cut). Food is generated from farms, which expand out radially into a # of field plots based on their level. The level of your city ranges from 1-5 per era, and you can upgrade it with a certain amount of population and resources. Progress is thus gated by your production lines. Each level introduces new technologies and resources, which you unlock via a blueprint resource. Blueprints are generated by an architect building you unlock very early on at tier 2 in the classical era. The architect building, like every resource generator/harvester, can be upgraded. Hard resources aren't your only balance however, citizens have needs. Your population has 5 needs: Health (prosperity), Security, Belonging, Esteem, and Creativity. Health is generated by industry and trade buildings, Security by military buildings, Belonging by religious buildings, Esteem by government buildings, and creativity by Education buildings - though many civic buildings also have secondary 'need' effects you can assign (like +180 security, +80 belonging etc). You unlock civic buildings using blueprints, but they must first be made available via faction power/influence. Each civic need has an associated faction. As you position your civic buildings near civilian districts, that faction will gain influence on that district. The more powerful the faction grows, the more you unlock. You also have a faction management screen where you can decide on your tax level for those factions which affects their trust, which in turn affects their disposition and technology unlocks. Factions will also sometimes give you small quests (build x building, pass x law) to generate more trust and power with them. Sound complicated? It is. And the games UI does... not do a great job of keeping you on top of all of it, but it's serviceable. There's one final resource, the most important, the one you will run out of more than any. Workers. Building and staffing structures requires workers. Workers are added to your pool at a rate of ~1.3rd your population. Need more workers? Either pause a structure or tear it down to free them up (note: tearing down structures also requires workers). Usually, you cannot go over your worker cap, as you need them upfront for structures. But if something happens that results in a change in available worker #'s? Watch in joy as all your farms shut down and you quickly begin starving to death. Which the game will not warn you about, until you're very low on or out of food. It also won't explain any of this to you, so as you can imagine this is how my first few runs ended. ONE MORE THING! Yes, really. Your progress is tracked throughout the era based on the resources you claim, buildings you build, civilian needs you meet (which each have their own passive effects for being high and low btw), and overall power of your factions. Four times an era, you will receive an inspection. If you hit passing grades, you earn a coin which you can use at the end of an Era to preserve buildings (your civic buildings become dis-repaired over era change). You may also get a special narrative event if you hit all the grades. Getting all of these is doable in the first era with optimization and understanding. When you reach the middle ages though, eh... Look, i'm just saying my citizens can go ♥♥♥♥ themselves with their 'needs' ok? There's a LOT of crunch to chew on here. There's only one map, everything including resources is fixed, the narrative events are the same every time with some minor multiple choice to pick your outcomes. The game is somewhat obtuse, doesn't explain it's layered mechanics well. I didn't even mention SERVICES, which are special meta layer features you unlock via service buildings. For instance in the classical era you can set up a senate and pass decree's which give a passive benefit, build fortifications which help provide security and health to the city center, do some simple trade routes, and keep track of your resources and generators via a central storage building. In the medieval era you can re-unlock the senate, build MORE walls, unlock a library which gives you passive benefits you unlock by building various buildings, and unlock civic planning which allows you to upgrade district density. I have no idea what comes after the medieval era, because despite playing 16 hours in 2 days, bugs crash my ♥♥♥♥ or brick my save before I can reach the end of it. That's without accidentally killing myself via cascading farm failure. I still feel addicted and keep wanting to go back and optimize more. If you like supply chain logistics, if you like # go up, if you like civic planning, if you have an autistic brain that chews on things endlessly you will like this game. Just don't expect AAA polish, stability, or balance. It's very much an indie game, albiet an incredibly complex and ambitious one. I hate it, I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate and I absolutely recommend it so you can hate it too and waste hours of your life organizing stone cutters and sand scrapers. 8/10, listen to your own music or a podcast or the one song will make you want to kill yourself.
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