Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio

An intermediary step in complexity between the brutally basic HAMURABI and more sophisticated modern titles such as Civilization, Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio ushers you into a Merchant Prince setting, governing over a 15th-century Italian city-state, competing with the savage forces of nature and against up to 5 (7 in some later versions) other players in the hot-seat, seeing who can rise through the ranks to claim titles from COUNT, to MARQUIS, GRAND DUKE (and, finally, H.R.H. KING).

At its heart the game is, as are its predecessors, about bean-counting -- weighing your current reserves of grain (measured in steres) against your population's food demands, wondering how many gold florins the market price for your surplus will net, and how many hectares of land that'll permit you to purchase... and whether that investment will come back to haunt you the following turn if the weather shifts from feast to famine, when you have plenty of dirt and nothing growing in it to feed your grumbling populace. However, the game cleans up real nice, and cute graphical depictions may help you to forget that your debauched Renaissance rule largely consists of moving debits and credits back and forth across a virtual ledger.