In medieval strategy sim County Of Fortune you run a whole county's worth of quarrelling towns

rockpapershotgun.com:

Nepos Games are the two-person studio behind Nebuchadnezzar, which Nate Crowley called "two thirds of an outstanding historical city builder". They've just informed me they're making a new building sim called County Of Fortune, out in Q4 2025. It ain't a city builder, though. In fact, it claims to have murdered the city builder in cold blood, which is unfortunate, because I was really looking forward to a round of Manor Lords later.

"The city-builder is dead, long live the county-builder," declares the press release, brandishing the husk of SimCity over its head. OK, I'll bite - what's a county-builder then? Well, it's sort of several city-builders having an argument. In County Of Fortune, you seed and grow a number of settlements side by side, then manage their economic and social relations. In other words, it's a game that appears to simulate the phenomenon of culture clash. I'm not sure all this amounts to the wholesale death of a genre, but it's certainly intriguing. Here's the Steam page, and here's a trailer.

"In County of Fortune, you're not just managing a single city, but an entire county," the press release continues. "The game focuses on the bigger picture: managing multiple settlements and their development, overseeing logistics, and making sure resources flow effectively across your region without worrying about individual buildings.

"Furthermore, as your county expands, unique cultural traits will emerge, based on the characteristics you cultivate in each settlement," it continues. "These traits influence how your communities develop, making each region or even village in the county unique. And it also brings interesting interactions between settlements and even between their leaders."

My thoroughly piqued interest is heightened by the discovery that the game is set in (procedurally generated) England, made up of towns like Winchelsea and Chipping Campden that sound like they've been AI hallucinated based on episodes of I'm Alan Partridge, but