As Cities Skylines II still isn’t worth it (the sub has a regular thread about that, in summary: no it’s not: https://old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/1ch6lup/is_cities_skylines_ii_worth_it_megathread/) which games scratch your city building itch?
Not sure if it’d quite qualify as “city builder”. I’d call it “base builder”. But since others mention them:
- Dwarf Fortress
- Rimworld
- Oxygen Not Included
The above games focus on the interactions of various things you build. They have a very high degree of replayability. Dwarf Fortress has a very high bar to entry, but for all of them, you’re going to be reading wikis and spending a lot of time understanding mechanics. I think that they all give very good value for money.
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Cities: Skylines (the original). It’s not bad. It’s quite expensive, if you’re going to buy a lot of the DLC – it’s a typical Paradox game, where the cost of the base game isn’t a large chunk of the overall price, where there is a lot of not-cheap DLC that really adds up. It currently has a lot of its content on sale on Steam, and even on sale, a purchase of all of it is $250. But…there’s a lot of neat stuff there. It’s one of the few relatively-modern citybuilders. It has curved roads. I don’t care that much about this – and I think that the focus on graphics was a major contributing factor to Cities: Skylines II doing poorly – but it is relatively-pretty.
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Sim City 4. It’s not new, but it should still be perfectly-playable. I still don’t feel that there’s a game series that has really replaced the Sim City series.
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The Tropico series. This really hasn’t changed all that much (other than Tropico 2). I don’t think I’ve played Tropico 6, but I’d probably recommend that as just being the latest in the series. It looks like they pulled the campaign from the latest, which is basically fine from my standpoint. More focus on individuals. A lot of the city-builder genre feels like of Star-Trek-y, kind of a focus on creating a utopian society, so this focus on running a banana republic can be a refreshing change thematically.
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Lincity-NG. Not technically the best, but it’s free and open-source, which may appeal. Focus mostly on dealing with freight congestion and achieving sustainability, which is a significant shift from most of the genre in terms of goals.
Along with your not city builder but somewhat has the same feeling as one, I’d add Factorio. The way things link together, and you essentially build roads/trains for supplies, gives a similar experience. I think there’s also a mod that adds people you have to take care of and other City-builder mechanics.
I have been playing Manor Lords recently. It is a medieval city builder like Banished, but with fighting battles for land, etc. The game is still in early development though. Its a one man indie developer, or as so I’ve heard.
that pupppy got big paws.
Currently surviving mars
I agree with most of the suggestions here, and I’ll also throw out Tropico 6. It’s one of the few coty builders outside of Frostpunk where the soundtrack actively pulls me into the experience. It’s also fun building up an island balancing between investing in economic growth, citizen happiness to get reelected, or military/oppression methods so you don’t have to get elected.
Tropico is nice.
ALL the Tropico’s are good!
also Space Station Koloki, same vibe but in space
Timberborn! It’s a city builder about beavers, the primary conceit is that there are periodic droughts that can and will kill all your beavers if you haven’t saved enough water.
Waiting for it to leave Early Access :( the concept is so cool, casting one of nature’s builders as the characters in a city builder…
Now I am thinking about a
cityhive-builder. Would make bee fans happy.
Anno 1800, love working with the supply chain.
Anno 1800
I’ve been eyeing the boardgame version which is also highly regarded. I guess will have to look into the original too. Always fun when hobbies intersect.
I play a lot of random city builders and enjoyed most of what’s already listed by others here.
Haven’t seen these ones mentioned yet (I think), but you could check out these to see if any tickle your fancy:
Modern:
- Haven Dock
Prehistoric:
- Dawn of Man
Casual:
- ISLANDERS
- Microtown
Fantasy:
- Founders’ Fortune
- Airborne Kingdom
- The Wandering Village
- Fabledom
- Noble Fates
Medieval:
- dotAGE
- Foundation
- Going Medieval
- Farthest Frontier
- Kingdoms Reborn
- Settlement Survival
- Clanfolk
Sci-fi:
- Cliff Empire
- Space Haven
- IXION
- Stranded: Alien Dawn
I honestly love Going Medieval. I found out about it from Spiffing Brit and Ambiguous Amphibian videos and have made a few different settlements since.
- Ostriv
- Banished
- Surving the Aftermath
- Frostpunk
- Planetbase
Smaller scale than Cities Skylines and also have other gameplay mechanics but that’s how I like it.
I was disappointed by Frostpunk. It checks a ton of boxes that should make me like the thing, but I just did not like the game that much in practice.
I dunno, just felt like it was too much on rails, more-restricted in layout than something like a typical Sim City-ish game.
Like, I felt less like I was just experimenting with how a lot of levers interact, as I do in a typical city-builder, and more like I’m just sussing out the right order of levers to pull.
Simutrans is quite interesting, although it’s probably closer to a Transport Tycoon than a SimCity. Otherwise I tend to go for SimCity 3000.
I still play SimCity sometimes. The SNES version. There’s something beautiful on slowly building your city, solving problems that arrive, and when you’re don… oh wait you’re never done! (Not even with the Mario statue.)
More into colony sim territory: Oxygen not Included, Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld. In special I’ve been playing the later quite a bit (1.4 version, up to Biotech), selectively breeding colonists to get superpawns.
Farthest Frontier.
Its got crop rotation!
songs of syx deserves a mention. You get people to watch too. It seems quite fun, but I’ve only played it for 10h so far.
Factorio without a doubt, but I’m not sure it’s really a city I built more of a satellite factory vibe.
Ostriv, it is made by a single Ukrainian developer. Been working on it since before the war. Nothing brings about as much of a sense of tranquility and peace. Just you and your slowly growing and living XVIII c. village.
I’m really very much not a City builder guy so grain of salt here: I really enjoyed Banished.
I dislike the scale of other games- in stuff like Cities Skylines I tend to get overwhelmed by how much is going on and everything I need to make work together. So I guess it makes sense that I prefer a village builder over a city builder lol
Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic flashbacks intensify.
I’m the same way with games that just get overwhelming and I loose interest.
Ostriv is another game like Banished where it is smaller scale so you might like that too.
I really love Caesar III, nostalgia plays a role, but I just like it overall.
Nebuchadnezzar (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1157220/Nebuchadnezzar/) seems to be a nice recent game in the same style. It seems promising, but not “there yet” compared to C3 and Pharaoh.
I think I need to check Nebuchadnezzar out.
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom is still my favorite in this genre by a mile. Dripping with cultural flavor, and there was really something about monument building in all of the games in this series.
I can’t believe I forgot Caesar and Pharaoh. I played the f out of those when I was a PC only player. I sucked at them but loved them.