Mister Bates posted:

Citystate has some neat ideas if it wasn't made by a nerdonazi.

like, for example, it is the only city builder I've ever played to model population separately from homes, which is to say it is possible to have overcrowding and homelessness. it also models informal housing, i.e. homeless people setting up semipermanent encampments, and if you've got a ton of migration to the city it's possible to end up with these huge sprawling shantytowns as people for whom there is no room in your residential zones just build housing on their own.

the game very much reflects the politics of the dude who made it, though, like, this is a game very clearly made by somebody who thinks immigration is capital-b Bad and using walls and soldiers to control illegal immigration is a whole mechanic. also trickle-down economics is an objective fact in the game's economic simulation, the country will not develop past a certain point if there are no rich people. you can in theory use your policies to create a utopia where everyone is happy and prosperous and wealthy, but it will stagnate and die because buildings literally cannot develop past a certain point if there is not an upper class of people significantly wealthier than everyone else, regardless of how wealthy everyone is on average.