Agricola

Agricola is a Euro Game by Uwe Rosenberg, in which the players take on the role of pre-industrial farmers. (For those of you who speak Latin, this should not be surprising.) Players use their family members to take various actions to build up their farm:

Building fences to make pastures, in which one of three kinds of animal (sheep, pigs, and cattle) can be raised.
Plowing fields, in which grain and vegetables can be grown and harvested.
Building Major and Minor Improvements to give you an advantage (like letting you produce food or gather certain resources faster).
Hiring Occupations to help out around the farm and (like Improvements) give you an advantage.

Tropes used in Agricola include:

Automaton Horses: Your family members need to eat, your workers (Occupations) and farm animals don't. Justified with the animals, in that they tend to be kept in pastures and are presumably subsisting on grass.
Recursive Reality: The game features several different "Room" tiles, in one of which a game of Agricola is being played.
Shout-Out: A number of them on the card art.
- The Stone Carrier looks uncannily like Obelix
- The Dock Worker is a caricature of Klaus Teuber, creator of Settlers of Catan. Its effect is even based on the "port trading" mechanic from Catan.
- Another of the room tiles features a game of Bohnanza, another game by Uwe Rosenberg.
You Require More Vespene Gas: Like many Euro games, you need various resources in order to build up your farm, like Wood, Clay, Stone, and Reed to build Improvements and upgrade your farm house, and Food to pay for certain actions (like hiring Occupations) and to feed your family each turn.