There’s a similar class system element in one of my favorite city building games, Foundation, where higher level citizens need more luxury goods and better property values to be satisfied compared to the low level serfs that you can pretty much exploit to your pleasure as long as you have a strong church presence. I love it though, it’s an interactive peer into the political economy of the feudal period. The end game is the beginnings of a proto-capitalist society and I’ve seen complaints from players online that it’s nearly impossible to manage the logistics of the economy after that point but that’s great because in real history this creates the need for bureaucracy to manage those logistics rather than relying on a centralized power figure like under feudalism. It’s a really fun little educational tool in its own way. Honestly my biggest complaint is that the game is fully gender neutral for which jobs you assign the peasants too which I feel like is a miss if you’re trying to show how the economics of the medieval period worked. Maybe the creators aren’t being that intentional tho
It’s funny in both situations the games correctly display the horrifying economic stratification present in our economic systems but because the Sim City devs live under liberalism their brains are drenched in liberal ideology so they see these disparities as either good or “unavoidable” but either way immutable and natural to how economics should work
Sim City 4 has the player actively valuing rich residence over poor ones and they have to set taxes lower for rich residents.
There’s a similar class system element in one of my favorite city building games, Foundation, where higher level citizens need more luxury goods and better property values to be satisfied compared to the low level serfs that you can pretty much exploit to your pleasure as long as you have a strong church presence. I love it though, it’s an interactive peer into the political economy of the feudal period. The end game is the beginnings of a proto-capitalist society and I’ve seen complaints from players online that it’s nearly impossible to manage the logistics of the economy after that point but that’s great because in real history this creates the need for bureaucracy to manage those logistics rather than relying on a centralized power figure like under feudalism. It’s a really fun little educational tool in its own way. Honestly my biggest complaint is that the game is fully gender neutral for which jobs you assign the peasants too which I feel like is a miss if you’re trying to show how the economics of the medieval period worked. Maybe the creators aren’t being that intentional tho
It’s funny in both situations the games correctly display the horrifying economic stratification present in our economic systems but because the Sim City devs live under liberalism their brains are drenched in liberal ideology so they see these disparities as either good or “unavoidable” but either way immutable and natural to how economics should work