Monday, May 28, 2007

Inefficiency


I revisited
a couple of the old city-builders: Caesar III and Zeus.

One of the things about these games is how everything functions as closed loops. People harvest food and eat food. They shear sheep and purchase wool. They demand culture and attend the theater.

Where's the waste? Where's the inefficiency?

There is an assumption in these games that expansion is linear. A cluster of houses will be supported by a fountain. Another cluster will need its own fountain. But the number of fountains won't put a strain on the whole system. And everyone seems to use everything properly. Fountains aren't busted by morons or vandals.

I don't know if the most recent SimCity took fluctuating stresses and exponential system growth into account. That's something I'd like to see, though.

I want to see the vast differences between social/economic classes, not just housing upgrades. Holidays should increase demand across the board and produce a lot more waste. Upper classes can support leisure pursuits but put more strain on basic services - more consumption, more waste, large social events, big families, servants.

Maybe that's too much for a game. Dealing with a chaotic system would probably be heavy on challenge and light on game.

I can barely sustain a city in Caesar III as it is.

2 comments:

Patrick said...

Imagine Ceasar meets Virtual Villagers meets a near-future scenario where the global economy is a wrech, oil is up and out, and you're a millionare trying to build a self-sustainable compound/community in New Zealand and fly all your friends and relatives there. Might make a cool Flash.

Anonymous said...

c'mon, tell me where I can buy this in manila, philippines. My eyes hurt playing caesar iv. i think caesar iii is my thing because it's not too complicated but is still challenging. Can anyone sell me one we can meet at mrt ayala