I’ve been playing a super old game again, Caesar 3 Augustus, that now has an open source port and I’m honestly impressed how good some of the mechanics are when it comes to city builders. You constantly have to deal with the emperor who you have to bribe and curry favor with all the time otherwise he’ll send his legion to capture you and burn down your city.

On top of that houses ‘promote’ to higher tiers the more services and goods you provide them but there’s two neat twists, one is that below a certain level they are basically just tents that over time grow more and more angry with you which means you need to provide them with a certain amount of minimum of living standards, healthcare, clean water and food. And at a certain level the houses promote from ‘worker’ status to ‘patrician’ status which don’t give you any workers but let you collect a bit more taxes from them, you need them for ‘prestige’ or mission reasons but most of the time they are just a drain on your cities economy.

Oh also crime is a function of how ‘angry’ people are which is a function of living standards, employment, wages and taxes which is better. Plus you can’t just suppress it with more police you need to address their situation.

Sounds like another round of mind stapling is in order