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I love these types of games. Some options:

- Paradox games in spectate mode. You begin to see flaws in the model where nations conquer & hold in implausible ways which leads to stagnation, but still an interesting model.

- Gridworld on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/396890/Gridworld/

- AIbattle on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6oT1a9Kqfor47HA3_ItCjQ

- Cell Lab on Android: https://cell-lab.net/

I would enjoy a passive zero player game like this that then has a game aspect as a meta layer where players compete in betting markets on making the most accurate predictions of the model.

Kinda reminds me of SimAnt, which if I recall correctly would basically play itself but you could 'help' by throwing down food or digging tunnels for the ants.

Not sure if it fits the bill exactly, but globulation2 comes close to what you describe. Sometimes it feels more of a simulation than a game.

You might be interested in biogenesis, a 0-player game that simulates evolution at microorganism scale.