Civ-style game centered on human and social capital?

[:) Smiley]

One shortcoming I've found in Civ and other similar games is the lack of modelling of human and social capital, and to a lesser degree, environmental systems. This leads to unrealistic gameplay when the game reaches the modern age, as it fails to address big things such as the migration from fields to cities, water resources, or mass education.

Additionally, while real life modern economies are built on a well educated workforce, there is nothing to model that - instead, it is poorly abstracted through the building of facilities.

What I'm looking for is a game where the emphasis is on development of the population. For example, if a citizen is tasked on farming for multiple turns, they will get better at it, and may make discoveries in that field. Also, that same citizen would feel a special connection to its home tile, rather than the all forests are the same phenomenon in Civ. (reminds me of Reagen's famous speech on cutting down the national forests - "if you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all"). The current system of strategic resources is a step in the right direction, but still very simple.

so, does anyone know of such a game?

[Bosh]

Victoria by Paradox could be your best bet.

[Main_Brain]

Colonization, up to a certain degree.

[Verrucosus]

Among the games I know Victoria is certainly the one with the strongest focus on population development. I'd like to mention two other games that feature some of the mechanics you've described.

In Colonization, colonists that work a particular square for a very long time can obtain expert status (expert farmer, lumberjack, fisherman etc.). They can pass on their knowledge by teaching in a school or college, so experience is not the only (in fact, not even a frequent) way of improving productivity, but the feature as such is there.

In the Imperialism games, the population that gathers resources from individual tiles is not represented by individual population points. It's there, but it lives off the land and the player does not have to worry about it. By contrast, the processing of resources into the materials needed for (a) buying armies and ships, (b) building fortifications and tile improvements (Imperialism II only) and (c) producing goods for sale on the world market (Imperialism only) is concentrated in the capital. You need to spend materials to recruit peasants to come to the capital and once they've moved there you need to supply them with food. Workers in the capital can be send to a trade school to improve their productivity.

Please note, that all of this is highly abstracted, and just to squash any hopes about realism, let me add that the the master worker in Imperialism II needs to not just food, but also a new fur hat each turn or he will go on strike. However, both Colonization and the Imperialism games are turn-based and tile-based and therefore closer to Civilization than Victoria is.

Verrucosus

(Edit: Sorry, Main_Brain. I hadn't seen your post.)

[lord of the mark]

Vickie is great on urbanizing the work force, but doesnt really have any "learning on the job" dynamics.

Colonization i guess is the only game that has that (though i didnt play much and dont really remember that aspect)

None of the games that I know of have any sense of attachment of workers to a particular place, of the morale impact of migration so to speak. That would be very good, an unhappiness factor related to recency of migration, representing a broad alienation, rather than tied to unemployment, consumption goods, or politics. Thats a big element of 19th and esp 20th cent urban instability I think, and I dont know of a game that captures it.

[Bkeela]

RE: Colonization - I don't recall lumberjacks and such becoming expert if they worked a certain square for long enough. You had to build educational facilities and have an expert in a university for the unskilled workers to upgrade.

[Verrucosus]

It is a rare occurence in my experience, but I've seen it happen several times. In the most memorable case, I got a master tobacco planter in this way after having searched half the map for an Indian village to teach the skill. It's certainly more luck than strategy, but the mechanism is there.

"Acquiring Skills: A free colonist that works at a particular job for an extended period may become a specialist in that skill. The colonist has learned through experience." (Colonization Manual p. 39)