Perhaps Banished is more in line with what he's describing.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/242920/

Thanks, that's very interesting to me but not quite what I had in mind. I'm thinking modern era, where the sims have links to an outside world - so some sims would commute out of the village for work each day, some would go to the nearby city for nightlife at weekends.

Look at Clockwork Empires, too.

I was thinking a contemporary village where villagers have cell phones, cars, social network accounts, hobbies, errands, illnesses, social functions etc. Human simulation at the level of The Sims, but community size of up to 1000.