I used to like playing SimCity. Now I just wonder why hospitals and schools don’t spring up in commercial zones when there is a demand for them.
Is there a way to make a SimCity style game that works under AE? What would you do, especially if you make it ancap? You can’t change tax rates, you can’t zone land, you can’t place anything. About all you could do is set off natural disasters and watch the market respond to them.
Or… would the best option be to narrow the focus, have you as the CEO of a type of business that tries to survive in this city by staying competitive? In which case you could see how the city develops on its own and you just react to that? Do you run a PDA and provide security? Or a hospital, providing the best care? Do you open your new fire station in an industrial area or the wealthy residential one?
The only way to get around it is to think of the game as one of you legitimately owning the land. The tax rates are the rates charged for doing business on your land, just like many malls take a cut of the sales of shops in their mall. The same goes for everything else.
I use to play that game extensively. If there is any game that kids should play it should be that one. 1st, you have to be creative and think like an entrepreneur when it comes to your park, and 2nd you’ll see how your customers respond to various situations and while doing so you encounter problems, plus it brings in a lot of finances for each situation.
Also, if I recall correctly, there are not any taxes in that game.
I use to play that game extensively. If there is any game that kids should play it should be that one. 1st, you have to be creative and think like an entrepreneur when it comes to your park, and 2nd you’ll see how your customers respond to various situations and while doing so you encounter problems, plus it brings in a lot of finances for each situation.
Also, if I recall correctly, there are not any taxes in that game.
Hmm.. this gives me an idea. SimCity: Soviet Edition, complete with colossal breadlines, landmarks such as the Kremlin, St Basils, the KGB Headquarters, Lenin’s Tomb and Red Square, and KGB headquarters as a super-police building. It’d be like Tropico on steroids.
Also, your post on an anarchist SimCity reminded me of this: http://xkcd.com/569/
They have St Basils, but not the others. They did have a city style based on the Soviet Union in SimCity Societies, but that was a horrible and extremely buggy game.
Here’s a cool board game that I saw at a specialty game shop. Perhaps you could build a SimCity-knockoff that relies on the tension on which Anti-Monopoly is based, allowing you to choose whether to play as a free marketeer or monopolist (against the system or part of the system). The NPCs would buy/sell properties and assets as either free marketeers or monopolists and the human player(s) could choose to be either free marketeers or monopolists. As monopolists, they work through the regulatory system to increase taxes and regs on free marketeers (i.e. SimCity-style zoning). As free marketeers, they work to avoid taxes and regs to build real production of goods and services that consumers demand.
Maybe your best bet is to buy Anti-Monopoly and play it. [:)]
