Same bones, different beast
If you’ve played Postcode Envy, the rhythm is familiar: eight years, one build a year, two events, two dilemmas, a 32-strong league ranked on Culture + Attractions + Economy + Pull. The fundamentals in that guide — Economy pays (€4m + €1m per 12 points), prices rise ~15% from Year 6, major projects run Years 1–7, deals are coin flips — all hold here. What follows is what’s different, because the differences are where county runs are won.
The summit is slippier
The county game’s taper is harsher at the top than London’s. Once a stat passes 75 the gains thin out sharply, and past 85 a magnificent build might move it a single point. The practical meaning: the ceiling is further away for everyone, chasing a 90 is romance rather than strategy, and balanced counties punch even harder than balanced boroughs do. If your plan involves one glorious stat, the island will humble it by Year 5.
Rivals have moods
London’s rivals improve on steady schedules. Irish counties have form. Each year, every rival privately rolls one of three seasons: a shambles (board rows, a hotel fire, a manager saga — they barely improve and may slip), steady away (normal progress), or a county on the move (a surge across the board). About one year in six is a shambles; roughly one in three is a surge.
You can’t see the rolls — but you can see the league move, and you should read it. A rival who leapt eight points is probably mid-surge, not permanently better; don’t panic-spend chasing them. A faller is having their shambles; that’s the year to overtake them cheaply. The table is noisier than London’s — which means mid-table logjams break open more often, and a well-timed good year of your own moves you further than it would in the borough game.
Choosing your county is half the game
The 32 counties span four provinces — Ulster, Leinster, Munster, Connacht — and the spread between strong and weak is real. Three honest archetypes:
- The crowns (your Dublins, your Corks): high stats, real money — and the harsh taper means they grow at a crawl while 31 counties aim at them. You’re defending, not climbing. Hardest to improve, easiest to finish respectably.
- The engines: mid-table counties with a strong perk — cheap events, tourist cash, a stat floor. Perks scale across eight years; a 25% discount is effectively two free builds a run. Usually the strongest pure-strategy picks.
- The romances: low stats, low expectations, grant money on the way up — and cheap gains everywhere, because the taper works both ways. The bottom quartile’s regeneration funding and the levelling-up perks make these forgiving, and the story when it works is the best in the game.
Whatever you pick, read the perk before the stats. Eight years of a compounding perk beats a prettier starting position.
Dilemmas, soul, and knowing your own name
The county’s dilemmas are their own set — stadium rows, festival politics, the county’s one famous person coming home — but the machinery matches London’s: effects hidden until year-end, some consequences arriving years late, and every choice quietly moving the county’s soul. The soul meter never scores; it decides what your ending sounds like, and on the island the endings have particular teeth — a county that finishes top having traded away its character gets told so, at length. The mood line in each annual report is the tell: when it says people are muttering, they’re muttering about you.
A county opening, move by move
- Year 1: build for your weakest stat (cheap gains), host both events if the budget allows, and answer dilemmas as the manager you intend to be — the consequences are already in the post.
- Years 2–4: feed Economy toward the next €1m settlement step; say yes to a major project the moment a good one appears — the payoff years are the whole point.
- Year 4: the mid-game review tells you your strongest suit and your soft underbelly. Believe it, and spend the second half fixing the underbelly.
- Years 6–8: prices are up 15%, so shift from building to events and dilemma value; watch the run-in gaps in the report, and remember rivals surging at the death are having a year, not a coronation.
Finish a run and the game tells you how you rank against every other manager of your county, worldwide — and with 32 counties, some benchmarks are still barely defended. How the ranking works.