I’ve always been a big fan of the Anno series, pretty much played all of them!
Recently tried the Steamworld Build demo, and it was great. Looking for something to scratch the itch until release though. I’ve heard Farthest Frontier is good, any opinions on that, or other recommendation?
I’ve been a big fan of cities: skylines, but, big but here, it’s kinda janky. That being said there’s great mods out there for it. The biggest issue I always run into is managing traffic, but I have also gotten better at managing the stock traffic, it’s kind of a fun challenge. Cities: Skylines 2 is supposed to be coming out at some point, but I don’t know an exact date. I’ll also say I got the game free from epic so fee is always the right price.
The problem I have with this game is there’s no challenge. I like games where losing happens frequently. I can’t be entertained without challenge. This, to me, falls under the class of sandbox games which just don’t engage me. Too many of these games focus on graphics and flavor without really nailing down the core simulation. I’d rather manage a tiny town with deep simulation and high difficulty than paint a metropolis that feels empty to me.
I would love a city builder that was truly challenging. I don’t care to spend hours painting my beautiful city for screenshots.
It would be great if there was a middle ground between city skylines and mini motorways. Something where the city you build is the result of the constraints imposed on you.
Mini motorways offers a challenge, but is too simple (and too easy to cheese). City skylines is complex, but rather pointless. You could self impose challenges, but what’s the fun with that?
Maybe there’s a mod, but I haven’t looked into it.
Tropico series is pretty good.
Tropico 6 is the newest and the most joke-like, but all of them are extremely tongue-in-cheek. The addition of Carmen Sandiego-like “Steal the Whitehouse with Hackers” mechanic is going a bit too far with the joke IMO, but there is a solid city-builder here.
Tropico is somewhere between Sims and Sim City: a “Large” Tropico is ~10,000 people, and every person has their food/rest/religion/job/entertainment/political scores tracked individually (much like in Sims where food/hygine/etc. etc. scores are tracked). You cannot control anyone on the island except “El Presidente”. But you do have orders that probably get followed, such as arrests, assassinations and the like.
If you lose an election, you instantly lose the game. If you piss off “the Superpowers”, you instantly lose the game (In earlier games, USA and Soviet Union are the superpowers. In Tropico 6, the superpowers change from age-to-age).
I’d say that Tropico is “unstable” after reaching high populations. Its more designed as a scenario where you play until the point of instability, and then you end your save. Its still many months of real-life gameplay before you reach unstable points, but its really designed to play different scenarios rather than perfecting a singular island chain. Think “Roller-coaster Tycoon”, or “Ceasar 3”, or Cleopatra.
Which btw: Cesar 3 and Cleopatra are also excellent citybuilders, albeit aimed towards the “scenario” slant rather than the infinite slant… and also 20+ years old. But these oldies are a goodie for a good reason.
I vouch for Tropico! Tropico 4 is my favorite. It captures the original spirit of the series but feels modern enough that it’s not difficult to play mechanically. There’s fun and rewarding scenarios to play through and just sandbox mode if that’s more your speed.
Tropico 4 definitely had some instability problems with regards to traffic.
Because Tropico 4’s traffic was somewhat realistically modeled, you’d grow and grow until your roads got congested, and then your entire island collapses economically (and you’ll likely be deposed as a leader, or piss off the Americans / Soviets enough that they invade and you lose since your politics with them likely relied upon trade deals that you’re failing). And unlike Cities: Skylines (or Tropico 5/6), there weren’t as many options for fixing (or preventing) traffic problems.
But if we ignore the traffic problems with very-late state islands, Tropico 4 is probably my favorite too.
Against the Storm has you play the most challenging part of industry builders - starting up and getting the production lines going - but gives you a limited selection of what buildings to build and a ticking timer to keep the pressure on.
Not for people who want to sit back and watch their city flourish, but if you really enjoy the process of scrambling to set up production lines to meet the needs of your people (and I do), then I highly recommend it.
Cities: Skylines is a great game, although traffic can be a struggle to master.
I mentioned Timberborn in a recent conversation about colony sims, but I’d consider it a fun city builder as well. It’s in early access and has received regular updates, and imo it’s already worth the money with what’s currently available.
Personally the traffic control is my favorite part of City Skylines. The second one is set to come out later this year as well, really looking forward to that.
OpenTTD is a much better traffic simulator though. Factorio too with its trains (Factorio is widely known to be “simpler OpenTTD” trains).
I tried openttd again after 15 or so years and it felt very simple to me. The passengers were just cargo with no predetermined destinations and could be unloaded to any station that accepted passengers. Am I missing something?
Not a game recommendation, but I follow Nookrium on YouTube and he jumps through tons of games (and puts the genre in the titles), most of which are small indie builder/strategy games, so he may have some in his catalogue of videos that you’d dig
