Build a thriving society! note
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is a city building game in which you build up an Eastern European country with its planned economy. You need to manage resource extraction and manufacturing supply chains, maintain some import-export balance, and also ensure that your citizens' needs are fulfilled. Developed and released by a Slovak game studio 3Division.It is currently
in Steam Early Access, having entered it on March 15th, 2019.
This game provides examples of:
- 0% Approval Rating: All citizens have various stats meassuring their happiness and loyalty to either you or the church (and their addiction to alcohol) and allowing any of them to drop to low (or too high in case of Religious Loyalty) may cause them to escape your country.
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
- The difficulty level determines whether or not vehicles need to refuel at gas stations and if buildings require electrical power, water supply and garbage collection.
- Additionally, all crops grown at farms can be used interchangeably for food manufacturing, cloth making, or to produce the equally universal “chemicals”.
- All vehicles that use fossil fuels (road vehicles, trains, airplanes, ships) use the same fuel.
- Bland-Name Product: Numerous cars have a name like this, such as small German personal cars called The Beat.
- Command & Conquer Economy: A more justified example since you are literally in charge of a planned economy. Even so, you are still able to automate many of its day-to-day aspects.
- Commie Land: A positive, even idealistic portrayal. Though keeping the somewhat depressing-looking aesthetics, you can raise the standard of living of your citizens quite high. There is (so far) no government oppression, with non-loyal citizens merely missing out on certain luxuries or specific government jobs and otherwise enjoying the exact same (potentially very high) standard of living as the loyal ones.
- Chummy Commies: The advisors in the campaign are very interested in building a thriving society, and extol the superiority of a Communist planned economy - which you, the player, are meant to set up.
- Critical Staffing Shortage: The productivity of all buildings is dependent on the amount of workers on the shift, and if there are none, the building stops all production. This is the worst thing that could happen to your republic, especially if it happens at the heating plant or prison.
- Disk One Nuke: The refinery used to be available from the start, require only one resource (Oil) to make Fuel and Bitumen, both of which are produced in large quantities and sell for quite a bit to both factions. Now it is locked behind university research (which can be disabled in the settings, though).
- Expy: Many of the cars used are based on real cars used by various Eastern Nations at the time like the U-377 being based on the Ural-375D.
- Game Mod: Loads, available through the Steam Workshop.
- Memorial Statue: You can build statues of Vladimir Lenin (as well as Soviet symbols) to increase nearby citizens' government loyalty.
- Non-Entity General: Played straight.
- Not In My Back Yard: Pollution. Polluting buildings near residential districts cause the district's population to become ill faster and reduce their life expectancy.
- Level Editor: There are map and building editors to make mod creation easier.
- Orphanage of Fear: All citizens who have come through an orphanage have increased tendencies for criminality and decreased government loyalty, especially if it's understaffed or its employees have low loyalty themselves.
- Permanently Missable Content: The vehicles have a "production date", and when it expires, the vehicle can no longer be bought. In late game, that can happen with entire classes of vehicles. Subverted because you can produce those vehicles yourself. Patents can be bought even for vehicles discontinued decades ago, though the manufacturing plant and patents are a large upfront investment.
- Prisoner's Work: You can use prison buses to deliver prisoners to work.
- Propaganda Machine: You will need radio and TV broadcasts to keep your citizens' government loyalty high, as well as promote a healthy lifestyle and discourage alcohol consumption and religion.
- Real-Time with Pause: If paused, you can observe the game and plan new construction, but building is only possible in real time.
- Secret Police: You can create a force of secret police, though contrary to the usual depictions they do very little oppression and instead seem to exist solely to snoop on citizens and track their loyalty, with higher loyalty being potentially rewarded by you and mild, if any, punishments for low loyalty.
- Snow Means Death: Winter is one of the hardest parts of the game: citizens die very quickly without heating, therefore the heating plant must be supplied with workers and coal, and pipes and heating substations must be built near residential districts, civil infrastructure and educational buildings, hospitals must be always ready and supplied with doctors with university education and personnel with school education, transportation is hampered by snow, so a technical services building with plows must be ready to clear snow, and some buildings, like sports grounds, cannot work because of low temperature.
- Tech Tree: Certain buildings (like advanced industry or airports) and game mechanics (such as the ability to accept foreign tourists, locate natural resources on the map and Secret Police), have to be unlocked by research in the Technical University, Medical University and Party Headquarters.
- Truth in Television:
- The citizens' needs currently consist of 9 stats, which all have historical background behind them. For instance, "clothes quality" stat may seem esoteric to some, but the lack of "cool" Western-style clothing was one of the pressing reasons for the gradual rise in popular dissatisfaction during the 80s, to the point that a common (and often rueful) refrain in the ensuing years was "USSR fell because it couldn't produce jeans".
- If you decide to sell your resources or products on the global market, then their price will be in part determined by how costly it was to create them: in particular, having an inefficient supply chain with long delivery times and the like will immediately make them less competitive. However, the global resource price swings are also a real thing, and they can be severe enough to potentially boost or cripple your finances overnight, especially if your economy is not diversified enough.
- Vast Bureaucracy: Surprisingly averted; you, the player, are in charge of everything and help from the state apparatus is very limited. You can build Party offices, but they are mostly dedicated to providing research (to improve the Republic) and propaganda (to keep worker loyalty high), and don't help with administration directly. As such, even with the Anti-Frustration Features the game has, it's far from easy.
- Vice City: This is what a republic can become if prisons increase the criminality of inmates instead of reducing it.
- Vodka Drunkenski: All workers imported from the USSR have around 30% of the alcohol addiction stat.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: There are over 30 different resources. While you can (and will have to, on the start) buy them for money, you can also produce them to save money, and in the late game you can aim to become fully self-sufficient.
