A game that requires a bit of effort to acquire [Ed insert: but see Fine Games, Michael Dean’s Column.], and whose rules are a bit puzzling, but seems to have had a lot of thought go into it, is Azure Wish Entertainment's La Revolution Francaise (a French game, but you can get it with English rules).

A very interesting thing about it is that the structure of the government (and thus the procedures followed by the players) changes as the game proceeds, as in the real period 1791-1795. If you play the "histor-ical" game you have four types of government: Legislative, Convention, Terror, and Thermidor. The "open" variant adds seven more: Wrath, Mercy, and Prairial (variants of the Terror), Vendemiaire (monarchist restoration via coup), Directorate (the historical post-Thermidor government), plus the Federal First Republic and the First Republic One and Indivisible (different schemes for the post-revolutionary government favored by certain groups). In each system the electoral, legislative, and judicial procedures differ, sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly, as do the designations of which players' "currents" (political factions) are outlawed, and thus subject to arrest but capable of starting revolts.

Most importantly, most players can only win (come in first of six) if their favored government type is in effect at the end of the game - so the players not only jockey within the government to get measures they like passed, but try to create the conditions to get the form of government they want into place (a little demagoguery to rile up the mobs of Paris is often useful for this).

Plus it has gorgeous components - the map is a period map of France overlaid with game notations, and the counters include ones for the various historic figures involved (Robespierre, Louis XVI, Danton, et al.) with little replicas of period engravings of their portraits!