Heh, I wanted to say that I like
F-19 Stealth Fighter but since this isn't really about simulation games in this sense...
I'm quite fond of, but haven't played a lot so far, games in the
Settlers series, which I think qualifies to an extent being a managerial strategy game. In particular, I like
The Settlers II, which I assume is mostly for nostalgic reasons, although I played several different demo versions of it and like the game mechanics too.
Back in the 90s I was all into RTS games (inspired by my experience with
Warcraft II), and I remember reading articles about the then-upcoming
Settlers II in several magazines. However I did not get the chance to actually play the game until much later, and at the first glance was confused by profoundly different mechanics compared to the "typical" RTS. Again, only sometime later I played the demo to such an extent as to get the idea of how it all works, followed by a demo of
Knights & Merchants, which is somewhat of a marriage between
The Settlers and
Warcraft II. Didn't like
The Settlers III though because they have altered some of the core mechanics like removed the roads.
Another game that also qualifies and I have played more is
Seven Kingdoms. It's pretty in-depth an intricate, and actually the only game I am familiar with where I had the impression that I'm interacting with a living world where characters are not simply game functions but people who have actual needs. You pay your workers and soldiers salaries, villagers buy stuff in the market if available, and there's a loyalty/morale counter for each of the player's subjects that shows how happy they are with their leader. The economy system is somewhat limited but it's ways ahead of something you would find in a more typical RTS.
By contrast, in
The Settlers, the eponimous settlers seem to be only working, and food and money are just different types of resource like wood and stone, not essential commodities that the people require. This is why I gave the game an unofficial moniker of
Workaholics. In
Knights and Merchants, this is somewhat remedied by the fact that all of your subjects need to eat and drink, and the feeling of a living world is more reinforced on the whole.
I haven't really tried
Cultures which, as far as I can tell, addresses many issues with insufficient realism in depicting the life of a society under the player's control. The cartoonish graphics kinda put me off although I believe that some gameplay ideas are better executed in this series than elsewhere.
I've also played a limited demo of
Alien Nations and its sequel but wasn't too impressed.
Recently I played demo versions of
Transport Tycoon and
Transport Tycoon Deluxe. I think I like the concept altogether. There's the free OpenTTD version so I might give it a try as well.
UPD: Right, I completely forgot to say that I have also played demo versions of
SimCity 2000,
Caesar II and
III,
Pharaoh and
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. Out of these I really only enjoyed the latter if only because it has a very detailed tutorial: for the first time I had a more or less clear idea of what I was doing
others might enjoy hearing about games for other platforms so feel fry to discuss them here!