Favourite Game of this Type & The One You Look Forward To

[ScottFarRoad]

Favourite Game of This Type...

The first city builder game I played was Sim City 2000 back in the 90s. I actually did a school report on it that served me well, as teachers were still amazed there was a game that didn't involve killing aliens back then. I was terrible at it though, too young to understand how to actually keep a city going without cheat codes!

It took me a while to find another city building game after that. The Sim City games afterwards felt like more of the game to me. Then back in about 2002 I was seeking a job at the game studio Rare and sent them 2 ideas for games. One of them was about a post-apocalyptic city building game for the Gameboy Advance (in its prime back then!). I just sent it in because I was trying to think of an idea that would work in 2D. I got the job but my game ideas went nowhere at Rare. Years afterwards iI stumbled across the Tropico series that I found something exciting. I was late to the party with that series, and only stumbled across Tropico 3 on the Xbox 360, which I bought on a whim (and I never buy games on a whim) but it was the right game and the right time and I loved building my sunny island city. Little did I know the very basic policies you could set in that game would inspire me years later... 

There hasn't been much since for me then. I loved Anno 1701 but bounced off Banished. Prison Architect, Banished, and Rimworld haven't really grabbed me since, for whatever reason. Part of me hopes to find something I can get really addicted to in this genre and part of me fears it - because it will be a rival!

Vaguely Similar Game You're Watching...

This is hard for me to say, as my head is so full of Atomic Society every single day. I do track a few upcoming indie games but I'd love to hear what future games in the strategy/base building genre people are excited about so I can check them out one day.

[NaniFarRoad]

I would take a second look at any city builder where it's easy to build a city, but it's hard to tweak it so it runs perfectly. I loved it in Transport Tycoon (and later, Anno 1701) when you got the perfect line up of resources and users, and you could build a transport line that raked it in. That feeling of "yes, that part of the city WORKS" is great. Banished had it too, you felt you had the right population size, there was enough food lined up for next year, and no one was going to run out of tools anytime soon. Hard to get there, but you knew when it was working.

Non-optional combat/invasions always turns me off these games. It's hard enough playing against your own incompetence, no need to bring in outer chaos!

Yup, just reread my post and it's totally not what you asked for.. XD

[Lankhor]

Ah but you see it's his own fault for starting the thread with 


The first city builder game I played was Sim City 2000 back in the 90s. I actually did a school report on it that served me well, as teachers were still amazed there was a game that didn't involve killing aliens back then. I was terrible at it though, too young to understand how to actually keep a city going without cheat codes!


So instantly, one thinks of the first game one played in the genre in order to fit in with what has been said.

Now for me (being a tad older than most gamers) it was Pharaoh and Caesar, neither of which had much in the way of combat involved. In Caesar it was just the occasional barbarian foray, which could be prevented by patrols set up on a different screen. But if you pinned me down and forced me to state my favourite all time builder/sim from that era, then I would have to plump for A-Train ( Amiga version ).

A game where the city grew around you depending on how you set up the railway, having said that you could build some features yourself e.g. factories office buildings and apartment blocks. The AI for the time was pretty damn good, and could really bugger you up if you were too sloppy in your layout. 

Believe it or not, I just couldn't take to any of the Sim City series, preferring instead the massive play-ability of Railroad Tycoon 1 and 2. Again, being able to build your own industries to fuel the economy of your company was a great challenge.

In recent years, Tropico and Banished have also had their fair share of hours. Unfortunately it still remains difficult to find a really good city builder that doesn't include some form of combat. Not a fan of trying to defend my creation from nasty villains.
Having said that, you might say "Hey what about Cities: Skylines?" and I'd say yeah, got it all, great graphics, reasonable AI and oodles of replayability with the added bonus of not having to defend it. 
But..... I dunno..... for some reason it just doesn't hold me. No idea why, it should, it ticks all of the above boxes, but just check out my hours on Steam, don't think it's even made it to 20. Same with Lethis: Path of Progress. Just checked that and only got 90 mins on it.


What games are you looking forward to in this genre?

Atomic Society........ err....err...err.....  if i find any others that i don't think will get abandoned i'll let you know

Just found this on a forum on Steam

store.steampowered.com/app/552620/?snr=1_5_1100__1100

Interesting because its post apocalyptic..... but is an RPG rather than a builder.... uses the GURPS table top ruleset 

In other slightly related genres, I am watching Kalpyso's new train tycoon game due soon

store.steampowered.com/app/503940

and also The Guild 3
store.steampowered.com/app/311260

[ScottFarRoad]

Sim City 2000... Providing fake homework assignments to a generation. 

I was a big fan of Caesar/Pharaoh as well. But I find those game are pretty hard to go back to these days. But I loved them at the time but they seem quite limited nowadays.

I cannot personally share your love for train-based games, though I've nothing against it. Mariana still worships at the altar of Transport Tycoon to this day.

I'm looking forward to the Guild 3 for sure, heard really good things about that.

That other game you linked (which looks like a doomed/beware Kickstarter to me) reminds me of this post-apocalyptic RPG (Underail) that I've always meant to try when I am in the mood for that type of gameplay.

I'm hoping to jump in on Mount and Blade 2, which has a lot of what I want from a game, though it's not a city-builder. I don't think my old PC that I use to make AS can hack it though! 

[AdamFarRoad]

The first few city builders (and maybe PC games in general) I remember were 1602 AD, Pharaoh and RCT. I played the hell out of those growing up, but 1602 and Pharoah got me hooked on the genre for sure.

I picked up ANNO 2070 a few years ago and played quite a bit of that, I was glad to see the game had the same feeling, though set 450 years forward. ANNO got very complicated at times though, so it didn't hook me for quite as long as 1602 did. Just this past year I went back and tried to replay Pharaoh, but sadly it hasn't held up as well as I had hoped. Nowadays when I need my RTS fix, its usually Banished or Cities: Skylines.

Game I'm looking forward to? At this point my backlog has grown to the point that I'm trying not to pick up anything new. I got Witcher 3 (Complete Edition) this past Christmas, and it's got enough content to keep me busy for another year if I let it. After that, I picked up Horizon Zero Dawn but haven't even opened the package yet.