What is your favorite city-building game of all time?
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Yes, the Cultures series is something I missed in the original poll, thank you for linking to one of them :)
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Although Tropico series are really good, I still like Caesar the best. I'm getting old I think
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I'm also a big fan of Pharaoh, but I have a big soft spot for the original Settlers - used to play for hours on my Amiga, including local multiplayer of the 'plug 2 mice into the controller ports' splitscreen variety.
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Speaking of decades it's got to be the classic SimCity series (3000 and 4). I have played SC3K since around 2001 and SC4 since 2003 or so. They were pretty much my go-to games during childhood when there were virtually none left for me to play. They were quite addicting and it was pretty usual for me to spend entire days to think about planning a well-functioned city.
SC4 was basically the most played game for me during 2006--2013 primarily because of its high modability. A successful city starts with great planning, but mods just made my cities look even greater.
I haven't played much SC4 recently first due to the lagging issues with large cities (800k population would bring the city sluggish enough, probably because there are so many props and automata and some optimization issues so the CPU couldn't handle them well), and secondly I started playing Cities XL and Cities: Skylines. I have to say CSL is by all means an awesome game for me and I have been spending quite a lot of time in it, but that still doesn't change my "best classic city building game" status for SC4.
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Sim City series.
But.. Cities Skylines is the more 'advanced' version, very enjoyable.
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Certainly Emperor, it crystallized all that was good about Impressions games city builders, I'd love another one in this style, maybe another Pharaoh - though with another, decent combat system - perhaps something more total war like?
I never got into Children of the Nile though it run like ass on my PC back then, and I kinda never got back.
I still remember Zeus and Emperor most fondly [mostly due to the refined worker supply system, more interesting campaign structure and less jank in general] , and should I feel the itch would gladly get Emperor on GOG for a pittance and play it again.
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Sierra's/Impression's Emperor. I am still looking for something that manages to be similar, to no avail. Recently played through Lethis that was an admirable attempt, but came nowhere close.
But at least Emperor was put on GOG recently, so I can replay it any time I want. :D It would just be nice to play it in a normal high resolution and dynamic screen ratio.
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Sadly, there haven't really been any games like that since Sierra shut down Impressions Games, with the exception of a few titles made by Tilted Mill, the studio created by remnants from Impressions. They worked on Immortal Cities (featured in the poll), as well as Caesar IV, and some years ago announced an isometric 2D city-builder called Medieval Mayor. Due to financial difficulties the game was frozen at one point, and since then their forums have gone mostly silent, though an update did appear on FB at some point. No information as far as I know, if anyone knows anything - please share. Would love to see that developer survive!
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I almost voted for Sim City 4 - I played it a ton - but then I saw Planetbase on the list, and I've been playing it a bunch recently. Do I like Planetbase better? Right now, I think so. In historical context it's not classic like Sim City, but I'm not playing Sim City anymore even though I have it installed.
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How far along are you? Don't read the rest of this if you haven't built a full base or two yet, don't want to spoil your experience.
For me it started out great, but after building full bases on the first two planets, I was left dissatisfied with what the game has to offer beyond the initial survival/buildup stage. There's no long-term goal. Nothing to really work towards. Combine that with the infuriating way food is implemented, the lack of precise controls on how many bots of each type to build up to, the tedious manual trading, the lackluster pathfinding, and the poor implementation of security and alerts, and the game ends up disappointing for me.
It's funny, normally when I look back on games my opinion of them is higher than while I was playing them, but for this one it's the opposite. I actually enjoyed it a lot while I was playing, but I don't much like it now.
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I think about 79 hrs so far. To go along with the fun, it does have it's problems. The challenge is at startup phase and understanding how all the systems works. Past a certain point it's more like a sandbox as long as you keep your eye on power, water, air, and food. Like you mention, as a base gets really big the simulation begins to break down because the AI doesn't utilize closest colonist for many tasks, so the scale of big base causes problems. My biggest base is around 600 people and maybe 350 bots - I was just building to see how it'd scale - and the scaling problems started to show up over 500 people or so. But oddly, I still found it fun. Once my base got big I was fairly self sufficient so pretty much turned off the trader ships except occasionally when I wanted to get rid of some excess.
Oddly, as I think about it, I really enjoyed the late game for building out my base to help the injured travelers, miners, soldiers, refugees, etc. I'd build up a big landing port, lots of medical bays, and like getting the requests for help and see them arrive and get fixed up. Yeah, it's just a game, but I liked seeing all the little hurt people get fixed up in my medical facilities. Same for building up security. I tried making the base both easily accessible and secure which required alot more security than just isolating the landing areas which I think most players do. I do wish there was more late game goal, but it's just not that kind of sim I guess.
I thought about these things when comparing to Sim City 4, one of my other favorites, and I realize I just don't play SC4 anymore. It's kindof got this open ended thing going on which leaves me wanting to grow my city bigger to see what buildings pop up, and fix traffic problems, budget, crime etc But I've tried and just can't get into it anymore. The systems of SC4 are probably more complex than Planetbase and should be engaging for me, but it doesn't do much for me now for whatever reason. It's more nostalgia now.
I have Cities Skylines but haven't played it yet. I need to give it a shot as I hear it's good.
Which ones are your favorite?
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reminds me of ^^
I like this movie way better than the other one 'cause I saw this one today.
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My vote goes to Pharaoh too.
Nice music, nice views and nice wild Hippos or Crocodiles, what does a man need more?
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Can't vote and discriminate against some of my favorites. :)
The ones I'll always cherish are Caesar 3, Settlers 2, Simcity 3000, Tropico1.
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Voted for Simcity classics but Dungeon Keeper for comfy city!
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all of them, each for a reason, even the ones I haven't played yet, I try to give city sim games all the time they need to show their potential
Tropico would be among the top ones but it's not since the publishers/devs are greedy bastards, Anno 2070 is great and is still getting updates for free, Banished is also a great survival sim game but I really hope that the dev would release something like an expansion or an update or maybe even Banished 2 because it's certainly lacking in a lot of ways while being quite immersive when played right, I've played a bit of Cities Skylines but not long enough to give an opinion about it even though that I hate they did similar stuff to Tropico's peeps with all that expensive low new content DLCs
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The Tropico DLC content is a decision made by the publishers Kalypso I hope, not the developers Haemimont (who are from my homeland Bulgaria, yeay). I do enjoy the games though, even without the DLCs 4 and 5 are quite good. Skylines is super even without any add-ons, best game I've played in the genre since Simcity 3000/4.
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Huh. Didn't realize you were Bulgarian too. I feel the same way about Haemimont, hoping the bad stuff is not their fault but Kalypso's.
I do enjoy the games though, even without the DLCs 4 and 5 are quite good.
I actually found the 4 base game pretty bad, a significant downgrade from 3. Most notable was the missing edict for banning a faction (gotta suppress the damn religious idiots!), the missing Juanito, and the annoying faction leader characters. The ability to import kind of made the game worse, as the unsustainable local production of raw materials became undesirable. On the other hand, the Modern Times expansion is pretty great, providing sustainable alternatives to the soil depleting basic farms and ranches, solving that problem the right way. Subways are pretty nice too. And modern apartment blocks, which let islands reach a population that wouldn't be doable with the massive land footprint per occupant of condos.
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Хах, здравей, нямах идея че сме сънародници :))
I enjoyed 4 with the expansions the most, but haven't played so much of 3 to be honest. Seeing as we don't have a lot of game developers in Bulgaria, I try to support all of them - have friends that have worked or are working in Haemimont, Creative Assembly Sofia (formerly Crytek Black Sea / Black Sea Studios), Ubisoft Sofia, Black Sea Games, plus I just saw we have the latest FIG campaigned Phoenix Point game being developed in Sofia as well. And a bunch of smaller indie studios, of course.
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Yeah, I agree on Skylines being good even without DLCs, however Tropico isn't that fun without its DLCs and it's probably the publisher's fault like you said
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I've only played Stronghold Crusaders HD, so voted for it
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still meaning to figure out how to run my old copy of simcity 2000 windows on a recent version of windows, but cities: skylines is pretty good too.
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I have a soft spot for Stronghold 1 and Stronghold Crusader 1 :) I will also include Dungeon Keeper in my reply. It is not a "city" builder, but still you build a dungeon which can be considered to be your city :)
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In order:
- Cities Skylines
- Stronghold Crusader
- Anno 1404
- Ceasar 3
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Emperor, Rise of the Middle Kingdom. Nothing like having a mill full of meat, fish, soybeans, and millet so that your people are fed well. The music is good, too, and fits the theme well. I found the feng shui aspect to add a nice little challenge to everything.
I have all the Sierra games in that series (Zeus, Pharaoh, Caesar, etc) but I've always gone back to Emperor. Just recently was re-released on GOG, too, so yay!
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Don't forget spices! Seeing houses full of delicious food, not even tasty one is always so great. ^__^ This is why Zau Jun the Kitchen God is my favourite hero in it.
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Hmm. Well when I was 10 or so I created a scenario in Age of Empires where the CPU had one dude trapped in a forest over the other side of the map so my villagers and i could just gather and build for hours. But seeing that's not an option, then I guess Tropico. This thread has given me heaps to check out though, so ty for that!
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Black & White... Ok, not exactly a "city-building" game but you still technically do that in it if you choose to.
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Yeah, it fits somewhere between Populous and Dungeon Keeper IMO, but definitely more of a god-game than a building one, in many ways it set standards that later found themselves into other games (Sims series for example, but also Spore).
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I picked Sim City for the nostalgia but Sim City 2000 is a very close second.
I absolutely hated Sim Isle! While the backstory was interesting I thought that the game was too difficult to be considered casual. It may have just been my state of mind at the time so I might try it again some day if I get bored and want to try to get it working in DOSBox.
Another honorable mention would be Yoot Tower, created by the lead designer of Sim Tower after he left Maxis. Unfortunately only Japan seems to have received any of the planned updates or plugins but the game offered more features and locations than the original Sim Tower.
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I mentioned Yoot Tower as well in my original post, great game! Project Highrise seems like its going for a bit of that segment, still on my wishlist and to play at some future point :))
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I see it now! You know how us old people get with their eyesight. 🤣
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Since the CRPG topic started some interesting discussions, I thought we could do another one, this time for city-builders. I wish I could edit the CRPG poll to include more options, but later in the year we can have another one when I've worked out some separation, perhaps by decade?
In the meantime, I selected some of the more prominent city- and empire-building games, and would like to hear which one is your favorite, and why? I will include an ''Other'' option this time, so feel free to pick that one and let us know in the comment box below. Since I can only include 20 entries, this time I will feature entire series instead of single entries = we all know Caesar 3 is the best of all 4, but for clarity's sake I will include them all as a single entry.
My vote goes to Impressions Games' Pharaoh, even though it was a tough call between that, Caesar 3, SimCity 4, and Cities: Skylines :)
Some games not included in the poll below
(this features city-builders, empire-builders, trading simulations, and various crossovers)
City Life
Imperium Romanum
Mobility
Lincity
Life is Feudal: Forest Village
SimIsle
SimTown
MoonBase Commander
Outpost Kaloki X
Tycoon City New York
Dwarf Fortress
Glory of the Roman Empire
Micropolis
Hinterland
OpenCity
1849 (+ Nevada expansion)
Clockwork Empires
Retro-Pixel Castles
Northgard
Townsmen
Populous
Grand Ages: Medieval
Patrician series
The Guild
Rise of Venice
Cultures series
a few outliers like Kingdom: New Lands, Yoot Tower, Project Highrise, Marble Age, Blueprint Tycoon, Another Brick in the Mall. I am missing a bunch of titles for sure, but should be enough to give us a head start, the rest will come up via the comment section.
EDIT - a separate topic (look below if you've missed the GA I added there) where you can vote on your favorite isometric CRPG games of all time is also available :)
GA (LEVEL 5+) - Had to add a little something for all the nice comments below, so good luck everyone :)
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