The demo was very interesting, it's a state building/politics sim game set in an alternate but very similar world, you win the presidency of a Baltic type state. You can play a variety of governance styles and chose between a more command economy or free market.
The socialist pathway seems like it should be very interesting as you have to deal with a lot of libs in government and greasy oligarchs and media barons, a lot of balancing getting done what you need without straying too far from your ideals.
Not really, much more dialog and then making choices. You don't place any buildings just make decisions on where resources should be spent, eg building roads in the less developed regions or better trains between the main industrial cities. There is a lot of dealing with political events, how you want to react to assassination attempts or insurgents in a city or foreign aggression, things like that.
Tropico is great though, still need to finish the last few missions on 6.
oh, that's cool, i'll take a look at it, thanks for the reccommendation