Are there any historical city builders that DON'T force you to use an ugly, modern-era grid system?

So you're talking about a grid system in the game itself. As opposed to splines.
In that case, no.

I like grid faggotry

Post grids.

Pretty much every large civilization used grid systems.

You running banished on a pickle? What the fuck?

Even slime molds do it.

It's a texture mod user

Even if you can only build roads at right angles, you can avoid making grids by making a sort of tree system. A few very large, high traffic highways branch out into medium traffic roads which branch out into low traffic streets. In fact, that's the best way to approach traffic in any game that calculates it. If you have a bunch of criss-crossing roads, that creates more intersections and thus slows down traffic.

how the hell does INTERSECTIONS CREATE MORE TRAFFIC
IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE

Have you played Cities:Skylines? Halfway through the game you either have to re-lay all your roads just because the shit you had planned is now too big to cope with one lane roads, or rebuild an entire CBD and surrounding areas.

The image looks interlaced.

Because a lot of times the AI will wander around aimlessly until they land on a destination, rather than aiming for a specific destination and taking a direct route.

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This is documented to be what basically happens in RCT as well. I'm guessing it's because trying to pathfind for a lot of peeps would slow the game down.

What do you do on a road? You go.
What do you do at an intersection? You stop, you wait for some period of time, then you go.

I think it's because, they aren't supposed to know where things are until they have a map. So they have desires (thirsty, bathroom, etc.) and they'll walk down paths until the hit the things they need, randomly choosing a direction every time they have more than one choice.
The same thing happens in pharoah with jobs that are supposed to deliver things to houses (like the water guy and the fire marshal). The result is that guys will just move around in circles unless you guide them with roadblocks.

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Pretty much this user. Closing down roads resulting in improved traffic is a real world phenomenon

Even without a map they do some measure of pathfinding: github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/blob/develop/src/peep/peep.c#L9750

Wow. This game is more true to life than I thought.

I'll make another question to fight OP's one:

Are there any city builders with a competitive multiplayer mode that doesn't suck? Or at least where you are required to be a dick against other players?

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It's natural if the mayor is autistic and obsessed with symmetry.

Maybe that's why he was banished…

While being a dick is not a requirement, SC2K network edition is pretty much Simcity 2000 with other people; plus the concept of annexing land. Buying land right outside your friend's city is pretty damn hilarious.

That's why I saved it.

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I'm feeling kind of sad
And no, I mean it as a requirement to fuck with other people's progress

Jeez, get a load of these fags

That's one thing I could never get down. I always disappointed myself in getting comfy looking farm land.

Efficient how? Tight grids are only space efficient. They are incredibly inefficient at traffic management, which is far more important in a game like SC4 or C:S where efficient use of land is not as important as eliminating traffic jams.

What about the WEWUZ?

Some of them

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You'd have to be able to build something that isn't mudhuts first.

Wewuz City Builder actually sounds kinda fun. Houses on stilts inna jungle, 'n' shit.

It's so fucking pretty. I wish they'd ported it.

Thoughts on a sim city 4, Civilization 3 hybrid?

Are we talking ancient wewuz or modern wewuz? Because ancient wewuz would me more of a nomad sim, migrating with your prey and setting up temporary settlements.
Unreal World is like that but it takes place in Finland, where the biggest animal is the bear. An African one would be cool with elephant hunts n' sheit.

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The whole concept of housing blocks in Pharaoh sprung up around the idea of controlling random walkers. There are destination walkers, too, but those ignore roadblocks and always take the shortest road. Hell, in some specific cases, they can even go across grass to a completely disconnected piece of city (you can do that by creating a storage yard with "Get" set on some goods in the isolated city section).

But random walkers are different, they have certain patterns and preferences as to how they choose a path on an intersection, how long they are active, how they return to their dwelling etc.

I'll fight you

This custom map is completely fucked

Children of the Nile was superior to that system, you can turn on path finding debug mode and actually see what the AI is doing. Its some really good pathfinding with that game, just a shame the games far too easy and has very little depth compared to Pharaoh. I also hate that combat was removed, yes it was clunky as fuckery in Pharaoh but at least it was interactive unlike CoN.

Well yeah, walker pathing is a constant headache in Pharaoh, unless you design your city really, really well. But that's not an issue, not for me at least - all other aspects of the game compensate for it.

That actually sounds fucking rad. SJWs are always bitching about "representation," so why hasn't anything like this pop up yet?

Because it would require time, work and research.

So is Cities: Skylines actually worth a buy, or is it just a traffic sim?

Yes to both. Get mods for it though.

Name one reason why a city planner shouldn't grid his city.

Congestion.

it's a shitty traffic sim

W
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Its also a driving game and a flight sim.

Yeah its pretty cool.

Solved by not relying on the automobile as your primary form of transit or properly programming your traffic lights.

It's a bad traffic simulator. Inferior in every way to SC4, which is a better traffic simulator.

epic

Modern Cirencester is nicer than the Roman grid, although that said there is definitely something to be said for the old city designs of antiquity and even modern grid systems, the only reason I don't like modern cities is because the architecture fucking sucks.

Already copyrighted. We'll let you make one though… for a small fee.

heh jokes on you, can't copyright history. If that were the case every era would be owned by Ubisoft.

If you're a fan of sc4, then no, you'll just be disappointed. It's better than sc2013, and probably the best city sim to come out in years, but they just waste so much fucking effort simulating each person that the scale is doomed to be too small to feel like a real city.

It ends up being a downtown-area builder rather than a city builder.

LOL that faggit must've had a hard time in high school with a name like that

I'd love to see that news headline though.

Is SC4 the best sim city? I've only played SC2000 back in my youth, what's the best option now?