Recommendations: Great City-building Games?

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Yo.

So it's been a long, long time since I've played a good city/economy building game. I'd rather dive into something new, and I'm looking for recommendations. Some of my faves, to get an idea for my flavor:

SimCity 4 Deluxe. - Despite how damn hard this game is to get right, I loved it. I'm still a little annoyed that it's been so long without a follow-up and there appears to be no SimCity 5 in sight (I don't count SimCity Societies as #5...it was too different and too awful). Plus, since I'm unable to actually build a large-scale, functional city (like you see in screen caps online that make you drool), before long I get too frustrated and quit this one. Personally, I think the game is bugged and broken, but that's me.

CivCity: Rome - Another one I loved (because I love ancient Rome), but I think I've played this one to death. And outside the missions, beyond making beautiful, functional cities, there's little point (which I didn't mind, actually).

Civilization IV: Colonization - This one was more focused on economics than anything, but still, great fun. Hard to win and kind of frustrating though.

Civ4 - Love this game to death. But there's really no city planning or prettiness. Just a big race to superiority. Not what I'm looking for.

LotR: Battle for Middle Earth 1-2 / Age of Empires 2-3 / Age of Mythology / Rise of Empires - Is it bad that I enjoyed the city building more than the battles with these?

Total War Series - Risk-style conquest is fun, but all the fun of city-building is removed. It's all strategy and economics. Meh.

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I think you get the general theme. I love building cities. I enjoy nation vs. nation combat, but more than anything I enjoy building funcitonal, aesthetically pleasing cities (I'm a designer by trade, so no big surprise). I haven't seen a good game like this in a long time.

Suggestions welcome and requested.

Thanks.

 

Have you looked at Tilted Mill? I'm loving Children of the Nile at the moment and want to get Hinterlands at some point too.

I like the old Great Nations series Sierra and Impressions did (who went on to make Tilted Mill) Emporer: Rise of the Middle Kingdom and Zeus/Poseidon is really fun too. Caesar 3 is good but I haven't played Caesar 4 that much.

Knights and Merchants is fun, more of a strategy game similar to Settlers. I'm trying to remember some of the other games I've got, I've got one that's based on building fortresses to defend from rebel baronies on the borders - Stronghold! That was it. Majesty 2 is fun, but not a city builder really, more an RTS with shiny buildings

I have Patrician, and a couple of others I haven't had a chance to play yet.

Hope that's a few good ideas for you to try

 

Besides the usual SimCity and Civ recommendations I would say

TROPICO

It is a few years old but is quite good.

You get to build up (or not) a small island nation during the Cold War time period.

You pick where farms, homes, factories, roads, docks, bars, theaters, and so on are built.

Before your game starts you design your president (democratic or dictator) with various attributes that include bonuses and flaws. You can pick from several "pre-made" based on real people as well.

When you start building your nation unless you choose not to (via unlimited funds) you have a budget that you have to figure out how to grow. You set the rent for any residential building your government puts down but that usually amounts to little. The real source of funds is usually from exports and only after they are loaded onto a boat that comes by to drop of immigrants if any want (or are allowed) to come to your island.

You have the economy to worry about but if you want to be a good (democratic IMO) leader you have to face an election once and awhile and it is game over if you loose.

To keep winning elections you have to enough people that support you.

People want to have fun, work, not live in garbage, have a nice home/apartment, get married and so on.

There are also 6 political factions concerned about some of these issues in a direct way.

Factions are:

Capitalists (for a good economy, high paying jobs and nice houses for a few, plus fun stuff)
Communists (for decent housing for many, more pay equality, jobs for all)
Military/Nationalists (desiring people with uniforms, guns, and high pay)
Intellectuals (democracy and a good educational system, "liberty" too)
Environmentalists (planting trees helps calm them down when annoyed as the footprint of your town(s) grow, plus anti-pollution edicts)
Religious (want staffed churches but certain edicts please them too)

If you go the dictator route there is a much greater chance you will face military coups and popular revolts. They pretty much only end when they break down your palace (game over) or those forces still loyal to you kill and/or arrest all of the opposing individuals. Putting down a popular revolt can end up killing a sizable part (like a third) of your island's population.

Regardless of if you are democratic or a dictator you (if you are popular enough with a given faction/political party) can get rid of rising political leaders in your population by having them shot (military/nationalists), declared heretics (religious), or arrested and thrown in jail (provided you built one). The last 2 don't kill the individual. And the first and the last look bad to members of the individual's family (actually all may for the family) and most citizens close enough to see it (within a set radius?) when it goes down.

Doing any during election season to the rival candidate looks bad.

The game keeps track of your popularity and your people's happiness.... as well as a bunch of other stuff.

The game was put together by people with a sense of humor.


The game runs in realtime but you can pause it to make putting down multiple buildings easier.

 

Children of the Nile looks intriguing. Price is good, too.

pplr, which version of Tropico are you talking about? It seems Tropico 3 was just released, and has decent reviews. Any good?

 

I actually hadn't heard that it was. I still kick around Tropico:Mucho Macho (an expansion pack for the original game).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropico

It struck me as a smart sleeper title (wasn't action packed as a first person shooter so it didn't get the same recognition and isn't as well known-or versioned-as the various Civ games).

I haven't tried Tropico 3 but it strikes as strongly based on the original so if they did a decent job it should be fun. A difference there is that Tropico 3 has a nativist faction called the nationalists.

Here are 2 reviews for the game as/similar to what I have.:
http://pc.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r20696.htm
http://www.insidemacgames.com/reviews/view.php?ID=381

Here is one for Tropico 3.:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy...vert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;read-review

 

Hmm...while reading the Gamespot review for the Tropico games, it suggested Dawn of Discovery. Anyone played that? It looks pretty cool.

 

What about the Anno series? They revolve around making cities on islands, the construction of houses and special buildings to gather resources, building ships and pleasing the population. Trading and fighting with surrounding islands and natives are also possible and a good way to get extra resources. The following video covers the first game in the series which is from 1998. Outdated graphics, but it's about the gameplay.



Edit:
Dawn of Discovery seems to be the name of the third game in the Anno series. So try it I guess

 

Yes - it's the North American name for Anno 1701. I've been looking into it, and I think it's exactly what I've been looking for. Thanks guys!

Feel free to keep dropping recommendations, though.

 

An old school game, Conquest of the New World, Gold Edition, the 1st world-builder I ever played. It is what hooked me on the genre. Battles were rock-paper-scissors version of Infantry-Calvary-Artillery on a chessboard. Kind of comical, but I enjoyed the city-building aspect. Many ways to win, not just through military conquest. One cool aspect of the game was at some point you will need to declare independence from your mother nation. Depending on the difficulty level, that wasn't always easy to achieve. English, French, Spanish, Portugese and the Dutch are possible starting civilizations. Dos-box required.

 

Sounds an awful lot like colonization.

 

I would like to briefly chip in with a short comment on how much I thought this game was awesome when I played it at the time. If you've always wanted to play a combination of Sim City and Civilization with D&D rules then this is the game to get. I may not be remembering it well as it's been 15 years since I played it, but it should be relatively easy to get anyway.

 

Have you tried the Settler series? Not my cup of tea, but my dad's been playing Settlers 3 for years and years and years now, and he's into the same things as you are - building pretty cities. Apparently the later games in the series gear more towards RTS, so you might want to avoid those.

 

I am not really sure which Stronghold game 8people is talking about, but there are several. The ancient one published by SSI and a newer one released in 2001 by Take 2 (which got several sequels).

 

I think I have Stronghold 2, Deluxe Edition. It didn't work very well on my PC and I have yet to try it on my laptop

 

Oops. I didn't know there were more recent ones. Anyway my recommendation for the original still stands

 

I picked up Dawn of Discovery - very excited to play it - but the game won't load. All it does is sit there with a black screen, with a golden hourglasses just spinning. I've tried downloading all available patches, updated my graphics card drivers, even my DVDrom drivers - nothing. I meet all the system requirements. Reinstalled it twice, once in safe mode. No dice. Really pissed off right now.

 

Uhh, okay that's really too bad then. Perhaps I might help. Is there a log file and what does it say?

 

No log file, no error messages. The little hourglass just spins and spins, and even ctrl-alt-del won't stop the process, so I'm forced to hit the reset button on the tower. I have Windows XP, but it's compatible, so I don't know how that's the problem.

 

Can you take a look at this?

 

Thanks, Morg. I will give that a try when I get home. I've already tried a version of this process, and could not locate the engine.ini file. But maybe I'm missing a step, so I'll try again this evening (or attempt to contact Ubisoft customer service). But this is the most detailed workthrough I've seen, so hopefully it works. I'll let you know.