Info about Thriving City: Song:

Official game description:
_Thriving City: Song_ is a city-building simulation game set in ancient China with rich historic, story and strategy elements.
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As the mayor, you'll need to help the townspeople settle down, cultivate the land and expand the city. More than that, however, you must ensure your people live in peace and prosperity: by providing food and other necessities, lending the people your ear, preventing disasters, and lowering the crime rate. How to respond in the face of crisis is down to you. When the emperor issues a national mandate, an enemy state invades your homeland, or conflicts between factions threaten city development—what strategy will you adopt? How will your decisions change the course of history forever?  
Key Features:
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*   Experience the history of the Song dynasty brought to life, and live through the rise and fall of the empire in Story Mode.  
*   Interact with a detailed world that references museum and historical records, with everything from buildings, industries, professions and even clothing from the Song dynasty.  
*   Soak in Thriving City's traditional Chinese-style art design, with intricate building and character animations.  
*   Control agriculture, industry, commerce, education, civil affairs and politics; all are closely linked, and demand careful planning.  
*   Fight disasters and plagues and defend against invasion. Raise a small, run-down village into a thriving city with 2,000+ citizens on-screen at any one time.  
*   Take creative liberties as you build your own bustling cityscape in Adventure Mode.
Gameplay:
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In Story Mode, you'll experience the history of the Song Empire first-hand. Actual historical events are referenced heavily, so time is an important concept you'll need to keep in mind.As the game progresses, you must complete tasks assigned by the emperor's edicts, take part in major events throughout each dynastic period, make key decisions and lead your city into the future.  
A city's development relies on its planning. You'll be tasked with assigning jobs, collecting valuable resources in time, building a range of production and living facilities, and more. Construct related buildings together to stimulate production, and ensure the basic needs of your populace are met to build a peaceful and prosperous city.  
Hold perfume contests, provide poetry and music events, scripture chants, diversified diets and more... Their basic needs aside, you'll also need to enrich your people's lives and increase their Happiness. Plan your city carefully, build Economy buildings and develop a thriving city praised by all.  
Spice Shops, Inns, Taverns, Brothels and other entertainment facilities attract more residents and tourists to your city. Academic research, student education, and students passing the Imperial Exam also works to provide an abundant income while improving your city's Reputation, allowing for further development.  
Alas, peace never lasts. As your city grows, you'll need to build a Prison to crack down on criminals that commit robbery, arson, murder and other heinous deeds. Besides that, you'll need to safeguard the city from invasion. Construct City Walls and Archer Towers, and train Militias and Archers to defend against attacks. It is to you that your populace will turn for protection.  
As a responsible mayor, you must keep an eye on city accounts and plan ahead for each year. What's more, you can enact policies to aid governance. Improve city management efficiency by matching and combining various policies. However, policies may not always work in your favor. Some may drive production, yet adversely affect your people's lives. What steps will you take?

Release date: 29 May, 2024

Categories: City Builder, Management Simulation, Resource Management, Economic Simulation, Single-player Story, Strategic Combat, Base Building, Worker Management


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Praised Chinese-inspired art style (weight 0.97): The game's art style, particularly its Chinese historical and ink-wash influences, receives widespread acclaim.  Reviewers appreciate the beautiful and delicate graphics, the visually appealing aesthetics, and the way the art style enhances the overall gaming experience. The art style is consistently mentioned as a major positive aspect.
- Engaging, addictive, high replayability (weight 0.8): The game is praised for its engaging and addictive gameplay, rich content, and high replayability. Reviewers highlight the well-balanced difficulty, user-friendly controls, and the relaxing yet challenging experience it provides. Many found it hard to stop playing, with some spending extensive time enjoying the game.
- Pleasant, immersive music (weight 0.5): The game's music and sound design are well-received, with reviewers noting that the music fits the mood, enhances immersion, and is pleasant to listen to. The relaxing music is specifically mentioned as a positive aspect of the game.
- Immersive Song Dynasty setting (weight 0.48): The game's setting in the Song Dynasty is a major draw, with reviewers appreciating the historical accuracy, integration of historical events and figures, and the immersive experience of building and managing a city in that era. Some reviewers express interest in learning more about the Song Dynasty as a result of playing the game.
- Good city-building simulation (weight 0.4): The game is compared favorably to other city-building and management games like Caesar, Pharaoh, Anno 1800, and Tropico, with some reviewers finding it more accessible or enjoyable. The game's mechanics are familiar to fans of the genre, but with its own unique charm and Chinese cultural twist.
- Generally acceptable, decent (weight 0.07): Some reviewers found the game to be generally acceptable or decent, particularly as a casual time-killer. These reviews lack specific details and constructive feedback, resulting in a lower importance score.
- Detailed, vibrant building designs (weight 0.06): Reviewers appreciate the detailed building skins, vibrant color palettes, and animations of daily life that bring the game world to life. Watching the residents go about their lives and seeing the city evolve is a source of enjoyment and satisfaction.
- Enjoyable, but stressful story (weight 0.05): The story mode is generally enjoyable, particularly in the early stages, but some reviewers express a desire for more story content or find the later stages stressful. The endless mode is recommended as a more enjoyable alternative by some.
- Emotional, exciting final level (weight 0.03): The final level, often depicting the Mongol invasion, evokes strong emotions and a sense of historical tragedy. Successfully defending against the invasion can lead to feelings of national pride and satisfaction.
- Simple, easy to control (weight 0.02): The game is easy to pick up and play with simple controls, making it suitable for single-handed play. This accessibility is a positive aspect for casual players.

Common complaints:
- Repetitive and lacks depth (weight 0.87): Many reviewers found the game becomes repetitive and boring after a relatively short time, often within the first few hours or by the mid-game. This is due to a lack of content, shallow gameplay mechanics, and a lack of engaging late-game goals.  The game fails to provide a compelling reason to continue playing long-term.
- Poor optimization and instability (weight 0.7): The game suffers from numerous technical issues, including frequent crashes, lag, and poor optimization, especially in the later stages.  Many reviewers found the game became unplayable due to these performance problems. This significantly detracts from the overall experience and makes it difficult to enjoy the game.
- Poor resource management/economy (weight 0.52): The game suffers from poor resource management and economic balance.  Reviewers noted issues such as resource scarcity, difficulty in managing resources effectively, and a lack of clear information on resource production and consumption. This leads to frustration and makes it difficult to progress.
- Inflexible building placement (weight 0.45): The game's building system is criticized for being restrictive and inflexible.  Buildings can only be placed in two orientations, and cannot be moved once placed, forcing players to demolish and rebuild structures. This limits design freedom and makes city planning frustrating.
- Poor tutorial and guidance (weight 0.37): The game lacks clear guidance and explanations of its mechanics, making it difficult for new players to understand how to play effectively. The tutorial is inadequate and fails to explain many aspects of the game clearly, leading to a steep learning curve and potential frustration.
- Poor English translation (weight 0.27): The game's English translation is lackluster and unclear, causing confusion in the story mode. Some items lack descriptions, and some parts of the game are not translated at all. This detracts from the overall experience and makes it difficult to understand the game's mechanics.
- Lacks building/resource variety (weight 0.16): The game lacks variety in buildings, resources, and industries, leading to repetitive gameplay.  Reviewers noted the absence of key elements such as a woodworker job, upgrade options for buildings, and a lack of building and scenery variety. This limits the player's options and makes the game feel shallow.
- Unbalanced population mechanics (weight 0.13): The game's population mechanics are flawed, leading to an unbalanced and frustrating experience.  Reviewers noted issues such as artificial population growth, population decline in the late game, and a lack of interaction with villagers. The constant influx of new residents and the resulting need to build houses and find jobs for them can become tedious.
- Unintuitive and cumbersome UI (weight 0.12): The game's user interface (UI) is unintuitive, cumbersome, and lacks clear information.  Reviewers noted issues such as resource icons that aren't fully displayed, a lack of numerical values for resources, and inconvenient navigation. This makes it difficult to manage the game effectively.
- Story mode bugs hinder progress (weight 0.07): The game suffers from various bugs in the story mode that can prevent progression or lead to frustration.  These include missions that incorrectly report as incomplete, unclear completion conditions, and ineffective save systems.  These bugs can significantly detract from the player's experience.
- Illogical reputation system (weight 0.07): The game's reputation system feels inconsistent and illogical.  Reviewers noted that defending against barbarian invasions doesn't improve public or official favor, but the resulting corpses decrease public favor. The rumor system is also criticized for being random and disconnected from the player's actions.
- Flawed food consumption mechanic (weight 0.06): The game's food consumption mechanic is flawed and leads to resource management issues.  Reviewers noted a lack of control over resource allocation, limited food diversity, and counter-intuitive elements such as characters taking a long time to starve. This creates a frustrating gameplay loop where more people lead to more problems and food scarcity.
- Poor unit AI and pathfinding (weight 0.06): The game suffers from issues with unit behavior and pathfinding.  In-game characters frequently struggle to navigate even when paths are available, and units behave unintelligently and cannot be directed to attack specific targets. The game also lacks advance warning of enemy attack directions.
- Unbalanced endless mode (weight 0.06): The endless mode is criticized for being unbalanced and repetitive.  The probability of catching fire on higher difficulties feels too high, leading to rapid loss of resources. The war aspect is too easy, and the random events are too limited.

Gameplay feedback:
- Familiar but shallow gameplay (weight 0.24): The game blends city-building, resource management, and defense, but lacks depth and innovation. Core mechanics are familiar to city-builder fans, involving resource gathering, construction, and managing residents. However, the military aspects are simple, and the overall experience lacks surprises.
- Building combos boost revenue (weight 0.17): Certain building combinations significantly boost tourist spending and takeaway prices. Optimizing these combinations is key to maximizing revenue. The specific combinations and their effects are detailed, providing actionable information for players.
- Limited population growth (weight 0.13): Population growth relies on attracting new residents, which feels limited. Early game is difficult due to labor shortages, as new population growth depends on happiness. This creates a bottleneck in the early stages of the game.
- Underdeveloped examination system (weight 0.05): The civil service examination system (科举) is unbalanced and not very useful. It provides a small prestige boost, but its impact on gameplay is limited. Some reviewers suggest improvements to make the system more autonomous and useful.
- Tedious tourist/rumor mechanics (weight 0.03): Tourists behave illogically, ignoring nearby attractions and traveling long distances. Collecting 'foreigners' for the museum requires excessive housing. The rumor system is tedious due to its frequency and lack of automation.
- Exploitable adjacency bonuses (weight 0.03): The game features extreme building adjacency bonuses to increase production. There is a reputation-boosting mechanic using mansions that can be exploited. These mechanics can be used to optimize city development.
- Unclear tech tree descriptions (weight 0.02): The game's tech tree has unclear descriptions, making it difficult to understand the benefits of research. The game has a lot of content that is not well presented, hindering the player's ability to make informed decisions.

Performance notes:
- Population growth causes severe lag (weight 0.11): Multiple reviews report significant performance degradation (lag, frame rate drops) as population increases, even on high-end systems. The issues start around 1000-3000 population and become severe around 10,000, making late-game play difficult. This indicates optimization issues related to population size and number of active agents.
- Loading crashes after update (weight 0.04): Some players report unexplained loading crashes after a specific update, preventing them from opening the game. This indicates a potential bug introduced in the 2023.11.05 update.
- Poor CPU/GPU utilization (weight 0.02): Reviewers note that the game doesn't fully utilize the CPU or GPU, suggesting potential optimization bottlenecks. This could explain why performance suffers even on powerful hardware.
- Stone mine production bug (weight 0.01): There is a bug where stone mine production repeatedly increases, reaching over 4000. This is a specific bug that can affect gameplay balance.
- Failure unlocks achievements (weight 0.01): Completing the story mode with a failure still unlocks achievements and new levels. This raises the question of whether simply experiencing the content is sufficient.
- Poorly optimized ancestral code (weight 0.01): This point uses emotional language without specific details. Therefore, the importance score is reduced by 90%.

Recommendations:
- Purchase during sale recommended (weight 0.51): A common suggestion is to purchase the game only when it's on sale, as the full price may not be justified by the current content and quality. Some reviewers suggest waiting for a deeper discount before buying. Trying the demo is also recommended.
- Generally enjoyable with future potential (weight 0.47): Many reviewers recommend the game and express overall enjoyment, while acknowledging existing flaws. They appreciate the developers' commitment and look forward to future updates and improvements. Some reviewers are updating their reviews to positive ones.
- Desire for more content/free DLC (weight 0.43): Many reviewers hope for continued support, more content, and free DLC in future updates. They are willing to be patient and wait for the development team to address the game's shortcomings and expand upon its features.
- Support for domestic developers (weight 0.38): Some reviewers support domestic products and hope the game gets better with updates. They recommend the game for those who want to support the developers and the Chinese art style.
- Improve localisation/add languages (weight 0.38): Some reviewers hope the developers will improve the localisation and add more languages. The localisation hinders replayability and should be improved.
- Not recommended due to issues (weight 0.11): Several reviewers advise against purchasing the game due to game-breaking bugs, generic qualities, lack of depth, and a tiring bond system. Some suggest the game is not worth the price and recommend getting a refund.
- Appeals to specific interests (weight 0.09): The game is recommended for players interested in the Chinese art style, historical setting, and cultural content. Some reviewers support domestic games with unique characteristics as a form of cultural export.
- Suggests 'Emperor' as alternative (weight 0.02): Some reviewers recommend 'Emperor Rise of Middle Kingdom' as a better alternative for a city builder set in ancient China. They feel that there are few Chinese-style construction games in 2024 that can compare to Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
- Suggests adding map strategy elements (weight 0.02): Some reviewers suggest adding map strategy elements to allow players to counter-attack, recover territory, and unify the world. They hope the game can be improved by allowing players to rewrite history through their own management of cities and countries.
- Hardcore system, not for casuals (weight 0.01): The game's complex and hardcore system is best suited for experienced, enthusiastic, and hardcore real-time survival construction and management enthusiasts, but not for casual players.
- Gossip detracts from relaxing experience (weight 0.01): The game is positioned as a relaxing, idle experience, but the constant need to address gossip and rumors even after completing construction and ensuring sufficient supplies detracts from this.

Other player notes:
- Balance county needs vs. emperor (weight 0.02): The game requires players to balance the needs of their county with the demands of the emperor, often forcing strategic trade-offs. Meeting the emperor's demands can sometimes lead to negative consequences, such as decreased reputation among the local population, creating a challenging dynamic.
- Repetitive credits, city naming issue (weight 0.02): The game shows the credits after completing each story mission, which can become repetitive. Additionally, city names should default to the mission name to help players differentiate between cities, as city names cannot be changed.
- Small scale, limited content (weight 0.02): The game is on a small scale, and the content and scale are limited, which is understandable given the price.
- Developer support and response (weight 0.01): The reviewer wishes the developers well, and the developer responded to the review and requested the save file to investigate the issue.
- Inconsistent textile mill location (weight 0.01): The location of the textile mill is inconsistent, listed under 'Baigong' in the construction menu but under 'Shi Jing' in the workforce allocation list, which may cause confusion for players.
- Lack of official guides/articles (weight 0.01): As an indie game, there is a lack of official articles or guides available for the game. Players must rely on community-created resources for assistance.
- Suggests water-based city wall defenses (weight 0.01): The reviewer suggests adding defenses to water-based city walls, specifically a net-like structure with water holes, to improve city defense options.
- Difficult/grindy achievements noted (weight 0.01): The low percentage of players unlocking certain achievements, such as 'Tree Killer', '5A Scenic Area', and 'Smiling in the Nine Springs', suggests that these achievements may be difficult or grindy to obtain.
- Compared unfavorably to 'Longer Days' (weight 0.01): The reviewer compares the game unfavorably to 'Longer Days' and expresses a desire to return to that game.
- Map has a lot of clay (weight 0.01): The map has a lot of clay.
- Played at maximum difficulty (weight 0.01): The reviewer played the game at maximum difficulty with all settings maxed out.
- Year-end report shows population increase (weight 0.01): The review mentions a year-end report indicating an increase in the number of people.
- Insulting turtle in endless mode (weight 0.01): In endless mode, a large, colorful turtle appears that insults the player when clicked. This point is not constructive and may be a joke.

Emotions:
No emotions}