What's your favorite city builder?

[Gamezor]

Used to love Pharaoh etc. but couldnt go through the faff of making it work on Win10 with a decent resolution, nearly did it once but there were graphical bugs.
SC4 was great.

What I want to mention though is the new Pharaoh type game that I recently found - Nebuchadnezzar, Im having a hard time remembering the name but this looks very promising and I love cute 2D graphics.

Neb looks pretty awesome.

 

[Guvide]

I've been playing Constructor Plus recently. It's definitely an upgrade over the original 1997 version without a doubt, although the interface and controls are a little bit sluggish. I wouldn't call it a builder, as it also has elements of an RTS to it. It's a very unique game actually, a bit like Dungeon Keeper it's difficult to categorize. It's not my favorite I've ever played but it's a lot of fun, in large part due to it's humour.

The Impressions Studios titles is where it's at for me. I could never get into Sim City.

 

[Sratopotator]

If someone got fed up with Impressions Games' pathing-based gameplay, Children of the Nile offers basically the same gameplay loop. And was made by some people from Impressions Games - Tilted Mill Entertainment (they made Caesar IV too, which is not a bad game per se, but is as flat and simplistic as Zeus/Poseidon + additional jank).

Apart from some hit-and-miss design ideas, and obvious jankiness, the game is really nice, although on the easy side a bit.
The puzzle-y, game-y aspect of Impressions Games is less pronounced too. Although, in harder scenarios the puzzle-y aspect is of course present.

I don't know why, but after playing the hell out of Impressions Games, while I replay Caesar and Pharaoh from time to time, I tend to return to CHOTN the most.
Maybe it's the music - some tracks are really nice, maybe its the scale - 3D with good proportions (Great Pyramid looks really nice in 3D), or maybe it's how the population works and looks like - cities with crowded streets of people that follow their own needs.
Gameplay-wise, Impressions Games are better, but this one really has soul, and is way less "robotic" and artificial than Pharaoh. Pharaoh/Caesar loses all organic 'feels' when the player gets up to a certain point with understanding the mechanics, but here, maybe because of the jankiness, and the general lack of transparency when it comes to some ingame rules, the game is still behaving as a city-simulator should, even after I played it over and over.

Recently, people at PCGW repackaged some fixes, so there is now a nice HD fix pack and a d3d9 fix easily available - the game plays and looks really smooth on Win7 (it has a lot of stuttering in camera movement on most GFX cards otherwise). State of Win10 compatibility is unknown to me, but I assume the fix works there too, as I haven't seen any info contrary to that.

Watch out, though, if you have problems with "wobbly" camera. Puking and overall confusion may arise from using full 3D camera. Limited camera, which was present I think in non-enhanced edition, is too limited to give a good overview though, so the game is just not for weak of stomach kind of people.

^Advertising the above, as people often tend to disregard or overlook the game, but I think it's a really worthwhile member of 'The Best of Impressions Games' list.

 

[J_C]

Anno 1404.
I love Sim City 4 but I never put enough time into it to properly learn to play it.

 

[Quilty]

What I am looking for is a city builder that actually punishes you for doing a bad job. I've always enjoyed the fact that in Tropico you are constantly fighting to maintain a positive approval rate, because otherwise you have to resort to election fraud or a dictatorship if you want to stay in power. Are there any other such games where you have to run for reelection or struggle to stay in power? As far as I remember, it is difficult to actually lose a game of Sim City or Skylines...

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

maybe you might like "city life", which has a more "puzzley" approach on how you must build themed blocks.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Used to love Pharaoh etc. but couldnt go through the faff of making it work on Win10 with a decent resolution, nearly did it once but there were graphical bugs.
SC4 was great.

What I want to mention though is the new Pharaoh type game that I recently found - Nebuchadnezzar, Im having a hard time remembering the name but this looks very promising and I love cute 2D graphics.

Neb looks pretty awesome.

That no-collision with all the tiny computer people madly running to and fro looks a little immershion breaking. Was this typical for old-style city builders? Don't have much experience with the genre though it always intrigued me. I don't like to feel pressure and the only time I spent more than few hours in a city builder was Utopia for my Super Nintendo when I had one years ago. I was enjoying it until aliens in their ships starting arriving and killing my fun.

 

[Joggerino]

If someone got fed up with Impressions Games' pathing-based gameplay, Children of the Nile offers basically the same gameplay loop. And was made by some people from Impressions Games - Tilted Mill Entertainment (they made Caesar IV too, which is not a bad game per se, but is as flat and simplistic as Zeus/Poseidon + additional jank).

Apart from some hit-and-miss design ideas, and obvious jankiness, the game is really nice, although on the easy side a bit.
The puzzle-y, game-y aspect of Impressions Games is less pronounced too. Although, in harder scenarios the puzzle-y aspect is of course present.

I don't know why, but after playing the hell out of Impressions Games, while I replay Caesar and Pharaoh from time to time, I tend to return to CHOTN the most.
Maybe it's the music - some tracks are really nice, maybe its the scale - 3D with good proportions (Great Pyramid looks really nice in 3D), or maybe it's how the population works and looks like - cities with crowded streets of people that follow their own needs.
Gameplay-wise, Impressions Games are better, but this one really has soul, and is way less "robotic" and artificial than Pharaoh. Pharaoh/Caesar loses all organic 'feels' when the player gets up to a certain point with understanding the mechanics, but here, maybe because of the jankiness, and the general lack of transparency when it comes to some ingame rules, the game is still behaving as a city-simulator should, even after I played it over and over.

Recently, people at PCGW repackaged some fixes, so there is now a nice HD fix pack and a d3d9 fix easily available - the game plays and looks really smooth on Win7 (it has a lot of stuttering in camera movement on most GFX cards otherwise). State of Win10 compatibility is unknown to me, but I assume the fix works there too, as I haven't seen any info contrary to that.

Watch out, though, if you have problems with "wobbly" camera. Puking and overall confusion may arise from using full 3D camera. Limited camera, which was present I think in non-enhanced edition, is too limited to give a good overview though, so the game is just not for weak of stomach kind of people.

^Advertising the above, as people often tend to disregard or overlook the game, but I think it's a really worthwhile member of 'The Best of Impressions Games' list.

I'm gonna try it now. I love the old impressions games and was tired of disappointing remakes so i skipped it.

 

[laclongquan]

A very good next game for you should be Children of the Nile. Its style is only bit similar and it's a refreshing change. Sratopotator made a good post above about it so I made this post here just to endorse his points.

I really enjoyed the Caesar III/Pharaoh/Zeus games.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Favorite would be SimCity 4 but that's maybe nostalgia with hundreds of hours into it. Really like the chill soundtrack. Caesar 3 was nice but I never put enough time into it. Cities Skylines was nice for a while but it's just too much DLC for my taste - I want to play the complete package in a way but DLC and expansions nowadays don't go always nice with that thought.

 

[Axioms]

Neb I heard is super terrible and shallow. It does look pretty but that is it. Emperor will always be the GOAT. I'm still waiting for a Majesty/Emperor type crossover. Driftland really tried but it is just too simplistic for me. The magic and island shit is cool but the townbuilding and the majesty gameplay is lacklustre.

I got pretty far into one built on a heavily modified Glest Advanced Engine but it use graphics from other Glest games/mods so it wasn't the prettiest graphically. Sadly I ended up deciding I didn't want to put in so much effort on a product that I could never sell. Since GAE is open-source as are the art assets.

I still don't understand why no one ever tried it. For a relatively small budget compared to AAA games you could cash in on a ton of nostalgia and "games I wish existed" energy.

 

[Luka-boy]

Honourable mentions to Caesar 2 and Tropico 1&2.

 

[Quilty]

I remember how in Tropico 1 you would build a road and your people would just ignore it much of the time, walking all over the place, just not on the road you so helpfully laid down for them. That always infuriated me. Then some years later when I played Tropico 2 and everyone almost exclusively chose to walk on roads, I felt a twinge of nostalgia. It was like, you're pirates! Loosen up guys, you don't need to walk on roads all the time...

Time to look up that glorious Tropico 1 soundtrack on YT.

 

[Norfleet]

I remember how in Tropico 1 you would build a road and your people would just ignore it much of the time, walking all over the place, just not on the road you so helpfully laid down for them.

Seems realistic to me. That's exactly what happens in the real world, too. The problem is that your roads planned by bureaucracy don't actually align with where people want to actually go.

What you do is that you don't build any roads and just let people walk wherever they please. Then you build the roads where they actually want to go.

 

[Quilty]

I remember how in Tropico 1 you would build a road and your people would just ignore it much of the time, walking all over the place, just not on the road you so helpfully laid down for them.

Seems realistic to me. That's exactly what happens in the real world, too. The problem is that your roads planned by bureaucracy don't actually align with where people want to actually go.

What you do is that you don't build any roads and just let people walk wherever they please. Then you build the roads where they actually want to go.

True, that sounds like a good approach and perfectly logical. Just not how a dictator would think!

 

[deama]

You can play black and white 2 as a city builder, and if you build your city more grandiose, the enemy AI will surrender and the citizens will come and join your city instead. You don't even have to continue to the next map, you can stay there and pretty much cover the entire island with your city.
I remember spending hours playing it as just a city builder, it still has more management stuff like food, resources you have you remember, plus you have a creature to teach and play around with, then there's the spells or general fuckery you can do.

 

[downwardspiral]

My nostalgic pick will be simcity 2000 and settler 2.
However my current pick for modern city game is skyline and , it has more creative freedom and more traffic planning.
And my pick for medieval city building is currently foundation and song of syx, which is likely to change in the following years.

My dilemma from choosing those city building game is always organic/creative vs optimizing/puzzle.
Some of the city builder is too focus on optimizing the city, like anno series.
In that case I rather play factorio.

I prefer city builder where I can monitoring my city like how ant farmer monitoring/managing their ant colony.
Instead of the one I must do central planing on everything and optimizing it to the extreme.
But I also don't want the game become too much of a city painter, where the game mechanics can't reflect the functionality of the city.
It is hard to find a balance point between two.

You can play black and white 2 as a city builder, and if you build your city more grandiose, the enemy AI will surrender and the citizens will come and join your city instead. You don't even have to continue to the next map, you can stay there and pretty much cover the entire island with your city.
I remember spending hours playing it as just a city builder, it still has more management stuff like food, resources you have you remember, plus you have a creature to teach and play around with, then there's the spells or general fuckery you can do.

I remember spending time monitoring village in black and white 1 and 2.
I prefer 1 over 2 because 2 made the city building aspect more standardized.