/games/ - Games

I knew what I had to do. The failure of socialism had been demonstrated, and everything had been building to this moment.I had tried to be someone conciliatory and more socdem than commie in how I answered the political issues that popped up, but it wasn't enough.I knew that the only thing that would GET THE ECONOMY MOVING AGAIN and create jobs for the unemployed and homes for the homeless was full on Austrian economics.So, I lowered taxes on the lower classes a bit to try encourage the slum dwellers to build homes, and zoned huge new plots of land for residential and industrial development, but the most important part of the plan was the most difficult. I had to slash not only the public services budget, but also repeal all the laws I had passed to replace them with free market capitalist ones. It had only been about 40 years, but socialism had failed.Socialism had only brought us 'utopian' conditions for the privileged few that were counted in the census, while the majority lived outside the system. I desperately had to bring in foreign investment if I wanted to save Halcyon.It was around this time that I also took a closer look at some of the demographic tools and tried to understand the underlying mechanics a bit better. I noticed in the demographic viewer that not only were the upper and middle class alienated by my prior legislation, but the lower classes actually received a large growth penalty from my perfect education rating.In other words, the lower classes not only did not benefit from education, but they hated education, and it made them resentful and angry. They would rather live in a slum outside the system then have to engage with my benevolent welfarist government.This was a double benefit for me, as I could no longer afford education anyway. So, as I slashed all public services and opened up the markets to the rich, things slowly but surely turned around. The game kept track of your ideology, and while I had started at Communist People's Republic, I had drifted away to Socialist Welfare State through my efforts at reformism. Now, it was time for the Chicago School to hyperdrive my economy, and I went all the way down to Capitalist Democracy.Gradually, over years and years, the slums began to decline and fall in population, and as living standards fell, the lower class began to grow again, with small apartments beginning to replace trailer parks. There still didn't seem to be much interest from the middle or upper classes, but at least the budgets were balanced and stable.After some time, I began to ponder again how the systems worked. I had put the tax rate for middle and high income residents at 0% for a long time now, with no interest despite this. I knew from Simcity that this should be working, and my legislation choices now were conciliatory to the rich, so I looked deeper into it.As it turned out, it was a slider I barely noticed, my sales tax, that was stopping the rich from wanting to move in or invest. It was set at a flat 10%, presumably from my communist constitutional choices at the start of the game, but I didn't really pay it any attention since I made no sales tax anyways, and I couldn't get any commercial buildings to develop. However, when I reduced the sales tax too to 0%, suddenly there was a sea change. As if by magic, the rich began to flock to Halycon (well, not exactly that quick, it still took a while), and as the economy began to grow once again, I even put a bit more money back into public services and increased the standard of living.Eventually, I found a balance that worked okay, and my tenements began to grow into, well, larger tenements. Almost all of the population were still lower class, but the factories had grown a bit and so had commercial buildings, so the unemployment crisis was over. I had removed the boot of government from the neck of the job creators, and a rising tide had buoyed all boats.

Things were looking up, and I was able to build my first shiny arcologies in a sure nod to the classic Simcity games, but at this point we faced another crisis - that of the environment. For a long time, we had not had any environmental issues, due to my left wing constitutional choices, and even during my market liberalisation phase, I had left most of those in place on the environment.However, even as I went full eco-warrior and passed all environmental legislation, it had no effect. Long story short, after some time I arose on the solution of painting the entire map with forest tiles, as those provided an environmental boost depending on density. However, after doing this painstakingly for some time (there are no brushes so it could only be done one tile at a time), it still had no effect and my environment was still at 0/100. Of course, the middle and upper classes hated this, and it created another crisis. Thankfully, I eventually realised that the problem was not my factories which my economy depended on, but traffic. Despite the fact that there were no traffic black spots on the map, and traffic seemed to move smoothly, it was what was creating all the environmental penalties. I had thought that the monorail, the only public transport option, required me to bulldoze half the city to build, so I had ignored it, but I now realised that it fit neatly over the roads, including the stations. Joy!Once again, as if by magic, the city was saved by green capitalism, and we returned to normalcy.Anyway, to cut a long story short, things progressed in a linear way from there, with my population slowly ticking up, and though there was another slum crisis, I solved it again by cutting lower class taxes and building some more residential areas. I eventually unlocked the highest tier parks and used them to grow skyscrapers so as to stop the endless urban sprawl. I got my population to 400,000 and unlocked the last tier arcology (pictured), which I saw as basically an end to what the game had to offer. I even managed to slide the laws a bit more back to socialist, but I had to make sure not to alienate investors too much, creating basically a social democracy.However, the next day I still had an urge to play more and unlock some more achievements, so I continued to grow my city to 1 million residents through basically the same method.Though I achieved my goal eventually, and even got some cool final level skyscrapers to grow (which is the best bit of these kind of games), my environment rating eventually began to decline again, and this time nothing I did could bring it back. As the population ticked closer to 1 million, I desperately filled the whole map with dense trees (which took ages, but since I was just waiting for people to move in anyway on the highest speed, it was fine). This helped for a while, but eventually it still wasn't enough, and even building monorail and the highest tier roads over the whole map eventually couldn't help. As a last ditch effort, I enacted the most extreme environmental legislation possible, which got my ideology back up to Communist, but this too wasn't enough. My city had simply grown too big and populated, and there was no way to save the environment. A dark omen for mankind perhaps? Perhaps, but that question is left to a greater mind than I.I had achieved the highest population goal achievement of 1 million residents, so I was happy, and the economy was stable despite huge unemployment of 25%. Once again I had reached the problem of not enough upper class demand meaning no investment to grow factories and provide more jobs, and this time, they were turned off due to the low environment score and there was nothing I could do to fix it, but that was alright, as again, things were stable anyway. Now, I just had to write this chronicle of my trials and tribulations, and the story of Halcyon, as the year counter ticked up to 500 years and I would unlock another achievement.

Thanks for devoting your labour time to reviewing this game. I don't think I'll be playing it based on your experiences. Seems like the game is not designed to simulate large populations, rather unfortunate since modern city builders are all trying to do agent simulation which further reduces the population that can be simulated. Is there not a city builder that can create a population like Shanghai or Tokyo? Lack of international trade is a bit infuriating, I suppose this game wants to teach players the magic of autarky.

I've been trying out this game. To repeat what the OP essentially said, the game operates on capitalist logic and actually trying to play the as any kind of communist simply does not work. It grows for a while, but after you run out of natural resources you're really just fucked. It might work if farmlands weren't so pitiful, but they don't employ hardly anybody and they produce pennies.

>>5204
Honestly, a lot of city builder sims don't interest me as much anymore because they so tightly rely upon capitalism. Especially the historical period ones where it's just assumed that to develop better technology you have to embrace MORE CAPITALISM.

Anno 2070 looks pretty interesting though since you can either play as a capitalist or an environmentalist in 2070 after capitalists fucked the world with Global Warming and flooded it. I really should try it.