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Where are all the good city/colony builder games?

Elim

Augur
Joined
Feb 15, 2011
Messages
330
Project: Eternity
Serious question, there has to be more out there. It can't be Dwarf Fortress until my eyes bleed.
I tried Rimworld, a great little game that lacks any challenge after mid-game. Same with Planetbase. People whine and call it a survival colony builder. Sad truth is that the game offers no challenge after mid-game.

Skylines? Come on, this is a pure city building game. And with that I mean you build pretty cities. Zero challenge or resource management.

Is Banished any good? Where are the hardcore builder games?
 

Starwars

Arcane
Joined
Jan 31, 2007
Messages
2,829
Location
Sweden
Banished was excellent until you've seen what it has to offer. Then there is little reason to replay it. It probably goes on sale for really cheap nowadays so I'd definitely consider it worth getting for a few bucks.

Impressive effort for one guy but yeah... not very deep.
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
I dont play a lot of builders these days but Prison Architect was good. Tropico was good.

I've bought Train fever but so far had no interest to play it. It looks decent but sterile in a German kind of way. There is a new game coming up that is called Transport Fever and could be something for Transport Tycoon fans.

Though I didn't play, Life is Feudal - Forest Village is also supposed to be good.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
Isnt there some bad news regarding Caesar4? Never play it so I dont know.

Children of the Nile is awesome in a random self-run civilization kind of game.

Caesar3-Pharaoh-Zeus is still the holy trio of colony builder with fixed rules.

There's a chinese theme game after Zeus but I also never play it~.
 

imajia

Augur
Patron
Joined
Dec 14, 2010
Messages
160
Strap Yourselves In
Zeus was already too simplified compared to Pharaoh. No walkers from industrial buildings, no need for strategic placement of houses, you just plop stuff on the map. The only minor challenge was to place warehouses in a way that the cart makes it back before the next unit is produced.
Haven't played it for a while, but didn't they also remove the aging population?

I totally agree with Children of the Nile. Obviously it uses the same theme as Pharaoh, but has a very different approach and it plays very different. There are still some similarities like how to place buildings so that they work efficiently. Another bonus - compared to other 3d builders - is that you can choose a perspective which doesn't feel wrong (like Anno 1404). But perhaps that's just me.

Can't remember many details about Caesar IV, only the bug where the prefect walked slower on higher speeds which made buildings burn down which really shouldn't have. But this was fixed if I remember correctly.


For me Pharao still tops them all. With propper road blocks I'd put Caesar 3 on the same level.
 

Makabb

Arcane
Shitposter Bethestard
Joined
Sep 19, 2014
Messages
11,753
Just go back and play Settlers 2, it's the most relaxing builder ever created.

Watching crops grow, settlers feeding pigs and hearing ambient animal sounds and wind blowing is the most zen experience you can have on a PC.


165074691120111110222805.jpg
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Just go back and play Settlers 2, it's the most relaxing builder ever created.

Watching crops grow, settlers feeding pigs and hearing ambient animal sounds and wind blowing is the most zen experience you can have on a PC.


165074691120111110222805.jpg
:bro:
 

Incantatar

Cipher
Joined
Jan 9, 2012
Messages
453
Just go back and play Settlers 2, it's the most relaxing builder ever created.

Watching crops grow, settlers feeding pigs and hearing ambient animal sounds and wind blowing is the most zen experience you can have on a PC.

Widelands is the current successor of Settlers 2. One of the best open source games. Even more zen, since you can choose peaceful victories.
 
Joined
Jan 4, 2014
Messages
795
Serious question, there has to be more out there. It can't be Dwarf Fortress until my eyes bleed.
I tried Rimworld, a great little game that lacks any challenge after mid-game. Same with Planetbase. People whine and call it a survival colony builder. Sad truth is that the game offers no challenge after mid-game.

Skylines? Come on, this is a pure city building game. And with that I mean you build pretty cities. Zero challenge or resource management.

Is Banished any good? Where are the hardcore builder games?
You won't like me ssaying this. I don't like it either. AFraid to tell you you probably have some OC or someday will have OCD. We're the types like details and fretting over them. The rest of the 95% of the population don't want details in their games. They hate them. Listing resource management is the big indicator to me you're this way. You've probably enjoyed micromanaging a couple times in the past. You enjoy to have lots of things to watch. You compulsively need details. Do you think or worry a lot? Then you might be OC. Once it creates anxiety you're full blown OCD. Might find yourself in a hospital. The fact you want challenge just makes you a masochist. And remind yourself to keep an eye out for the big picture. When you got your eyes on the tree, you miss the forest and 95% will think you're retarded.

Sorry the troll in me got out. Damn troll never stays in its box.

But I understand. I like resource management too. I don't like extreme micromanagement, but I like to have some of it there. I'm the last person to complain about inventory or unit management. I do complain about user interface. A good example might be UFO Enemy Unknown (1994). It has a lot of mangement of items and so on. The newer installments of XCOM removed most of that.

Also I enjoyed the hell out of the original sim city and sim city 2000 and 3000. I remember reading about the recent SimCity releases and being angry. Seems like most of the modern game designers are sell outs.

Ultimatley games are just a way to feel good. Earning it or experiencing challenge are side effects of the methods game makers use. There's a selective pressure for games to please in the fastest cheapest way possible. So the ultimate aim is to remove frustration or boredom or challenge on the way to the reward, so you get your feel good squirt almost immediately. Of course, the more immediately the effect the more obvious it's what games are: drugs. Games exploit the natural high. Game makers are just figuring out how to produce that natural high using the fastest and cheapest methods. Casinos already do this quite well, but games are different. Tehy're more complicated, consequently expensive to develop. What game makers are trying to figure out is how to make games more like slot machines--to increase profits. Of course, game makers don't know they're doing this anymore than police know they're beating up or arresting people to eventually get themselves into another job.
 
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Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,925
Just go back and play Settlers 2, it's the most relaxing builder ever created.

Watching crops grow, settlers feeding pigs and hearing ambient animal sounds and wind blowing is the most zen experience you can have on a PC.

Widelands is the current successor of Settlers 2. One of the best open source games. Even more zen, since you can choose peaceful victories.
I remember finding Widelands like 10 years ago. The amount of progress done in this time is pure :negative:
Fucking dude who made Banished made that whole game from scratch including the 3D engine in 3 years by himself.
 
Joined
Jan 4, 2014
Messages
795
Some (mostly old) games from my bookmark folders--may or may not be what you like:
https://af.gog.com/game/eador_genesis?as=1649904300
http://www.freeciv.org/
https://af.gog.com/game/patrician_3?as=1649904300
https://af.gog.com/game/empire_earth_gold_edition?as=1649904300
https://af.gog.com/game/fantasy_wars?as=1649904300

Haven't tried these but they remind me of Dwarf Fortress sort of:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/311980
http://gnomoria.com/

I leave you with this:
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/post-arcade/a-simcity-review-of-biblical-proportions
But herein lies the problem, and what I feel is SimCity‘s largest failing — none of these data and none of this customization quite seems to matter as much as the game would have you think. It’s entirely possible to run an entire city without ever really paying close attention to any of these graphs, and even when things go wrong, it feels near-impossible to run a city into the ground.
What I remember of the SimCity from my youth is a game that was hard — not so hard that my single-digit aged self couldn’t play with some degree of success, but just punishing enough that ignoring some of the finer points of transit planning, zoning and residential/commercial density could break my game in a very serious way. Knowledge came with time, however, and the game rewarded as much of it as I could spare to spend.

The new SimCity, however, rewards you for nearly everything. And though you’re given fine-grained control taxes, you’ll earn so much money with so little effort that its inclusion is practically moot.
/ithurts

It's the way of the world. Embrace your disorder. But don't embrace ignorance.
 
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