Economics driven empire expansion sim
In Santa Paravia and Fumaccio you can pit yourself against up to other 7 players in a game that wants one of you to become the dominant ruler of a renaissance country. The game plays a math heavy, bare boned economic simulator, but there are other elements to it as well. There is collaboration, ruse as well, and, the game plays boardgame style, in turns and with a very limited amount of elements. There is also a military potion to it, again, delivered within the same top down board game system, which works relatively well within. However, the most laborious portion of the game is learning its text based commands. Anything you want to do has to be imputed text based style, and, given that the game is quite hard and long, it can be a drag. I can't really say it is worth learning it, especially given that a Civilization game has the same ideas but delivers them, interaction wise, much more palatably, though a mouse and keyboard interface. But it's worth knowing about and worth looking at just to see how much empire building games have evolved.
