Hey Holla Forums, my dad just posed an interesting question to me.
"hey son, do you have any city building games you can reccomend me? i've got a lot of spare time now and i'd like to try something like that out."
His experience with videogames is playing the living shit out of the yearly Call of Duty with me, and to say the least of the matter, this question brought tears to my eyes.
Only problem is, i'm not too well versed in city building games. and he isn't versed in videogames really at all. Im stuck on what to start him on. I don't want to start him on minecraft because its not exactly what he wants, and i dont want to start him on something like banished, because its too complicated for someone starting out on the genre. I thought about Factorio for a second, but at the same time, I worry that might not be what he's looking for exactly.
Can anyone think of a happy middle ground that balances casual gameplay with moderate depth? preferably with atleast a little combat, but not too high of a focus.
Sim City 4 It's deep, it's fun and the soundtrack is surprisingly emotional.
Aaron Murphy
I never did play any simcity games. Thanks user, ill put it on the list
Kayden Lopez
It will have the best longevity too because there are a number of mods to try once he's become very familiar with the game.
Kayden Morgan
Don't miss Tropico 3. Runs on a toaster. Has some combat that is not the focus. (pic related) Is fun. Is easy to play for people who don't play too much. Has a lot of charisma. Has not-so-good sequels that nonetheless extend the longevity of it if your dad wants more. Is a good gateway for more OCD games.
Jose Peterson
Thanks user, ill try it out and clear it for him.
thanks user. I wanted to play tropico 3 myself and i keep forgetting. ill give it a look for both me and him
Can anyone reccomend a medieval game also? something to give him a small selection to start with.
Wyatt Morales
For other "tycoon" games, he might like RollerCoaster Tycoon (if you get 2 you can do OpenRCT2 openrct2.org/) and Transport Tycoon which you can get free. (openttd.org/en/)
There's other shit like Capitalism 2, Patrician 3, The Guild and The Guild 2: Renaissance, and Imperialism 1 and 2 but it's probably too far off the mark of simply building and maintaining. Still, could be up his alley dunno.
Cameron Scott
oops, suggested cities: skylines twice.
Jose Moore
it realy depends on what type of "city" building he's looking for supply line infrastructure? does he like train autism? OpenTTD might be for him, although it's not directly city building where you control how the city grows and looks you do control the supply line of goods to make the cities grow there's also cities: skyline, which is a more traditional city builder like SimCity although somewhat simplified
Jonathan Flores
It's just that good.
Dominic Cooper
That cities game that came out awhile ago was good for a few hours
John Long
Are there any decent simulation/management/tycoon games for iOS that aren't completely and utterly P2W shite, trying to milk you for your cash? I've got some in-game currency for that total war multiplat game, but I heard that after a certain point there's a paywall and you can't do anything without putting a serious amount of time or a serious amount of cash in it. Hot sny recommendations?
Preferably something without any PVP, chill enough that you can play it only when you're shitting and fun enough that you can kill an hour or so on a train/plane ride.
Hunter Clark
Got any* Writing from my iPad.
Jacob Gutierrez
wasn't the original simcity ported to smartphones? Under Micropolis or something, dunno.
Also, Chris Sawyer said he's working on porting RCT2 to phones.
Luis Gomez
Look for Kairosoft games. They're not "traditional" city builders, but they're really fun management games. I think there's an Edo-period Japanese village simulator that they make.
Samuel Wood
zeus/poseidon i've also tried pharaoh and rome but generally i always felt like zeus/poseidon were the most polished ones
Dominic Wilson
If I may interject for a moment, Tropico 4 is the better choice. A little more intensive yes but can run on most rigs, it's mainly a touched up Tropico 3 (same campaign but more buildings) and now you can get the complete edition bundle with Modern Times which is a really fun expansion pack with a whole slew of new buildings missions islands and so on.
Also I can recommend Pharaoh\Cleopatra and Zeus \ Poseidon, fun isometric city builders that are pretty flavorful and comfy as hell. They're on GoG so you can torrent them without a problem.
Gabriel Bailey
Isn't Kairosoft the ones that did the Game Dev Story that Game Dev Tycoon ripped off? I remember having fun with that one. There was another one where you run a town for rpg heroes or something I think.
You should play Emperor, it's another one of theirs and Chinese theme. Came out after Zeus and plays closer to Zeus than Caesar and Pharaoh. It's personally my favorite one.
Yeah, Game Dev Tycoon ripped them off. Their games are comfy.
Thanks, I should have linked them.
Joshua Bennett
no problem, user.
Caleb Bell
Checked them out a bit, their games look like they'd interest me. Thanks, user.
Landon Flores
You're welcome m8.
Evan Martinez
Tropico games
Anno games. The old anno games run on toasters, but may be too difficult if Banished is already too difficult.
Simfarm. It's not city building, but it's building your own farm. It's pretty casual and old.
Luis Cruz
Do you have more suggestions for similar games? I'm currently playing Patrician 4 and have Industry Giant 2 installed. I used to love Port Royale, but heard Port Royale 3 was crap. Rise of Venice is similar to Patrician, so I havent played that yet.
Carson Morales
Well, it's probably the best modern-era city builder out there.
If you give him Sim City 4, if his computer has more than one core, the game will inevitably crash 100% of the time. There is a simple fix, where you simply set the affinity of Sim City 4 to just one core.
It's worth fixing in advance, because crashing and losing progress will probably turn him off of it.
Cities: Skylines is better though
Lucas Parker
What a coincidence, my dad loves SC2K too.
SC4 isn't a good idea then because it would struggle to run on moderately powerful computers for years.
Colton Rodriguez
The Sierra city building series
Luis Gonzalez
I thought 4 sucked, was I misled?
Sebastian Murphy
There's nothing wrong with it but it's more like Tropico 3.5.
Joseph Davis
It's basically tropico 3 again with some extra stuff, but i reckon tropico 3 looks a bit better, owning to the settings used. Tropico 4 literally has the same models with a more bland lighting. If you want to check out games i still recommend tropico 3, so when you get tired of it and some time passes you can play tropico 4 feeling it's a new experience and get some extra shit to play with.
Dominic Bell
Sim City 2000 Rollercoaster Tycoon 2
Daniel Flores
It will run fine. You're thinking of modded sim city 4
Alexander Gutierrez
sim city 2000
Jordan Stewart
It's like Tropico 3 but made super piss easy, and 3 was already fairly easy as it is.
I know that a lot of people had problems running it vanilla through the last decade so I can't count on a super toaster running it well.
Camden Parker
Not really, The Anno 1X0Y series has some city-building, but its main focus lies elsewhere.
For just casual stress relief, there is Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, but its gameplay options are rather limited, so it's shallow like a puddle.
Justin Foster
Simfarm is especially casual when you discover that apple and orange trees don't require any tending to after only few years.
Jackson Hall
I can't think of any. Management/tycoon/trade games aren't really done much anymore unfortunately, and what there was there wasn't a whole lot of.
I guess there's more casual stuff like Colonization, but I prefer Imperialism to it.
Also, for another citybuilder, there's Lethis which is somewhat similar to the Impression Games and Sierra city builders, but I wasn't really impressed with it. Much rather play Zeus, Emperor, or even Children of the Nile over it.
James Taylor
Why the fuck are there no games like these set in the Fertile Crescent region? I want to build me some god damn Ziggurats.
