There's a pretty excellent and rather indie board game called "Wealth of Nations". If you squint, it's a bit like what you wish Catan was, after you've played C

There's a pretty excellent and rather indie board game called "Wealth of Nations". If you squint, it's a bit like what you wish Catan was, after you've played Catan for awhile. Players make resources, then re-invest those resources to expand. There's markets to buy and sell resources, and otherwise money isn't part of the game... until someone makes banks, and starts printing money. At which point everyone watches the prices of everything go up. It's a pretty cool microcosm.