By ground level, I mean games where the scope is of people on the ground (either an individual PC or party) rather than playing as an abstract nation or political party like in a grand strategy game. So nothing Paradox- or Kremlingames-related (though, Victoria 3 including little things like pop info is a nice touch).
At first, Fallout 4 seemed to fit the bill with its settlement system but it’s still very much within the bounds of capitalism and private property no matter how much I like to think the Minutemen are actually communalists or whatever.
Does it have to be within the confines of a single player game? If not maybe join the lemmygrad Minecraft server or play with the hexbear people in No Man’s Sky.
This wasn’t on the lemmygrad MC server, but building rail infrastructure in create on a modded Minecraft server with ~30 players sure had a lot of feel good comradery/shared fruits of labor moments to it.
Unfortunately I have no suggestions in the single player space and have this thread bookmarked in case someone else does.