Do any games even remotely like this exist? My attempts so far to delve into the 'simulation' category have been disappointing but I can see how it would be doable even without any kind of especially advanced knowledge of the program.

do you mean like 'sim city' or 'civilization' type of games?

shameless plug of Kael and company 's AMAZING mod game for civ4:BtS xpac:

(he got a professional gaming job because of it, and he learned to program from scratch too for these 2 civ4 mods!)

Fall From Heaven II (FFH2)

http://kael.civfanatics.net/
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171398
http://kael.civfanatics.net/files/FFH_32.wmv

and there's also a scenerio-mod for civ 4:vanilla (no BtS xpac):

Fall From Heaven (FFH)

hehe

you can code both in (though it'd require really good coding abilities), but without graphics (which maybe can be done with quest ~ not my field at all, laughs), no one would really enjoy the game if everything is just displayed Attributes... that'd be a really messy and ugly game...

if you do 'codecademy' site, within ~halfway into the python section, they get into making a 'grid~ the battleship game', so you can make a 'tile~grid world with coding~quest... but you really need the graphics to make the game playable for people... as a 'simcity' type of game much more advanced than the simple old ("you sunk my battleship") battleship game. People don't like data~Attributes (computers do), we like seeing and touching (clicking on) graphics~GUI, and etc.

I do love me some Civ but it's not quite what I had in mind...maybe a trading sim would be a better example. Or something like King of Dragon Pass, though that's an insanely complex game so a pretty extreme example. But basically anything where you manage your resources, upgrade where you can, decide how best to deal with random events, etc.

I've got a rough demo of the basic concept so I know it can be done, I just was curious to see how other people handled the same ideas. But I haven't come across anything similar yet.

I have not seen it done, but they way I would do it is to have a room for each aspect of the game; a diplomacy room where you can talk to other nations, a science room where you can direct research, a war room where you can tell your generals what to do, perhaps a balcony where you can talk to your people and issue proclamations. The more I think about it, the more interesting it becomes; I might have a play around and see what happens.

The lack of graphics is an issue, and I think you would want some hook to grab the audience to get around that.

Pretty bare bones right now but here's a screenshot of something I was messing with in another program:



It's about goblins but ignore that, it's really about upgrading your town by balancing out a worker population with food/wood/stone/luxury production and consumption, and the basic idea could be applied to any setting.