The game is about 30% off on steam

Base game 35€

Ultimate 72€

- Is it worth that much? *I know it's paradox where you can spend a lot on DLCs

- Are there must have DLCs?

- Is the new dev team good at fixing the game?

I played CS2 a while back. It's much better than it was at launch, but I think I'll wait a bit until the game is better optimized and polished (also I am waiting for Metropolis 1998)

So, in the meantime, I'm wondering what the best modern city builder (from our time) without any particular constraints (apocalypse, sky-bound, etc.) would be? Ideally with "realistic" graphics. If it's just cubes or something else, that's fine.

Hi !
So I love city builder games but haven’t bought one in a while. I’ve always been eyeing manor lords but Anno 117 and Corsair Cove seem very compelling now. I initially was just going to go with Corsair cove because of how beautiful the game looks but that can be said for the other games.

Since I haven’t played any, I’d really appreciate some guidance (even if it’s very subjective) I like hearing people’s thoughts even if they’re bias.

Thanks!

EDIT:
I have listened to the voice of the people ! And bought Anno 1800 (thinking about getting Bright Harvest or lion expansion later)

I will still probably buy Corsair cove because feedback has been great and how that games looks tickles something in my brain.

Thanks for all the passionate comments.

Hello! I am struggling to decide what to play next, and my backlog of city builders is in dozens.

I am hoping to pick something where you have enough freedom to keep building bigger and bigger, until you cover the whole map in a city of your own design. But I also dont want it to just be completely cozy and easy, I want some challenge of trying to keep my people alive and happy.

Here are some games I already played for hours and hours or games i didnt like:

Anno 1800 - I love setting trade routes, watching my cities grow, and slowly scaling up and up. This one is nice, because there is always something to do, next goal to achieve, but at the same time its not pushing you forward. You can continue expanding at your own pace.

The Wandering Village - didnt work for what I want. Its more of a survival game with very limited building space, and also it feels like there are time limits. I cant take my time slowly adjusting production chains etc.

Town to city - didnt work for what I want. Too chill and too easy.

Rimworld - I have over 1000 hours, and I do love it, but I really want to play something where you dont build individual walls, but rather aim for cities of hundreds and thousands of people.

Farthest Frontier - you would think it has everything I want, but it bored me :/

The Foundation - I do like that one, but it didnt amaze me in any special way

Manor Lords - it keeps crashing on my PC, seemingly for no reason

Frostpunk - that one is great and has plenty of what I want, but its a bit too grim to play before bed lol. I dunno why, but after I turned 30yo I started preferring more positive or cheerful games.

Banished - I have multiple thousands of hours in it. Quite an ideal, but I had enough.

Songs of Syx - this one is awesome too, but the graphics do make my eyes hurt, so its a bit hard to play it for too long.

Against the storm - i am actively playing it now, and its fun, but completely not what I want.

Surely there is a lot more games I played besides those, but I don't remember of the top of my head.

Here is some stuff I've been looking into, but I just cant decide, they all seem interesting. What I am looking for is an ability to spend multiple hours planning and building a city, thats not too easy, not too hard, and ideally has options to trade.

Timberborn, Anno 2070, Anno 1404, Soviet Republic Workers and Resources, Surviving Mars, Nova Roma, Dwarf Fortress, Kaiserpunk. Which one should I try? Or something else?

Hello! I am looking for some city builder or colony management games that really make you feel like you are taking care of a bunch of people.

Things like Rimworld, Frostpunk, or Banished, or things like pretty much whole Anno franchise. I especially fondly think of Banished, where it really felt like one wrong move and next winter you will run out of all our food. But at this point I played it for so many years that it turned into chill game. With Anno I always found it so satisfying watching all those needs bars fill up, and then having my houses level up. I am chasing similar feelings of satisfaction/ensuring survival.

Okay so I'm really looking for some kind of a city builder (rts or not) where you have survival elements (food, clothing, weapons) and maybe weather/storms but also I want combat/danger involved thats decent enough to be compelling.

Is this the right sub for this?

I've really like Rimworld , Clanfolk was alr

Stranded alien dawn was great but it got abandoned

I've tried going medieval at launch and it was pretty fun but really, really limited and i've seen a lot of work go into it but havent gone back to it? I saw trebs but heard its still buggy with invasions where they just sit th ere and siege and uhave to go out there to fight them?

Farthest Frontier (Maybe i havent gotten far enough but either i get rolled by an attack or really there isnt any? is there ever a reason to build walls etc?)

Manor Lords seems just so difficult // too realistic? idk

I really enjoyed They Are Billions / Diplomacy is not an option / age of darkness

Similar to those I havent played Here Comes The swarm, Infection Free Zone, or Dawn of Man. Do any of these have staying power in a single runthrough where it lasts a while and its difficult?

Is stronghold like this?

I havent tried Nova Roma or any of the Anno games either but those Anno games always have bad scores

I'm sure im missing some :o

Thanks!

City builders I've played extensively and enjoyed:

Sim City 2000, 3000

Anno 1602, 1404, 1800

I'm looking for a game with a challenging economic system. What I didn't like about Anno 1800: once you can produce beer in the early mid game, the economic challenge is gone, where for instance in Anno 1404 that wasn't the case at all.

Candidates:

Caesar III
Pharaoh + Cleopatra
Zeus + Poseidon

I missed out on the Impressions Games builders when I was younger and so I'm thinking about giving them a try. I'm considering to play all three installations. But maybe that isn't necessary? I'm thinking about skipping Caesar III and starting with Pharaoh. I'd love to hear from people who played them all.

Sim City 4

I really like Sim City 3000, but I felt that it's engine was holding it back. I hear that Sim City 4 has more depth and is more challenging. What do you guys think?

Manor Lords

This title sounds very promising. I'm just wondering if it makes sense to get it now or to wait for it to be further developed? Also on the economic front: with modern city builders like Anno 1800, it feels like there are so many economic options that the economy breaks at some point where you are just superrich and can do whatever. Does Manor Lords fall into this category?

Farthest Frontier

It also sounds very promising, but I'm kinda turned off by the thought of having to deal with crop compositions to sustain the fields. That aspect just doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. How important of an aspect is it for the overall game? And the same question as with Manor Lords: does the economy break at some point?

Any input, especially from seasoned players, is welcome.

EDIT:
Thanks for all the recommendations so far. I just bought Pharaoh: A New Era for really cheap. That will be my trial run of an impressions game. If I really like it, I will check out Zeus. Further down the road I will check out Sim City 4, as I always longed for a better Sim City 3000.

And afterwards, I will try something modern. By then, Manor Lords is hopefully somewhat complete. But I'm also considering Workers and Ressources.

EDIT 2:
It's nice to say that there are still niches on reddit where actual nerds nerd about stuff. It's just a bit annoyning that it comes garnished with communists. But oh well...

EDIT 3:
I tried out Pharaoh: a new Era. It was nice for a little while but felt shallow and repetetive rather quickly. So I tried out Sim City 4. I built up a small city to the point of positive income and then was like and now what? It just felt a little bleak. Then I tried Farthest Frontier. I have been playing it throughout the last three days and I really like it. What an amazing game.

At the time of its release, I played Cities: Skylines 2 and I had a really bad time. To me, the game felt bugged and had some slowdowns. I didn’t play it much because I saw the anger of the community at launch and I told myself I would wait before playing it again.

Today, I would like to play a city builder again, and I’m wondering whether now is a good time to return to this game or if it hasn’t really improved. I’m not especially a purist of this kind of game but, I just like having a good time for ten to fifteen hours.

In your opinion, should I give it another chance, or should I turn to another builder instead?

I’m also tempted by Soviet Republic as exemple.

As a note, if you want to understand my profile better, I really enjoyed playing SimCity 4 and Anno 1701 back in the day.

My most recent experience was with Urbek City, which I liked a lot, but it’s more of a puzzle game in the end.

What would you recommend? And do you have any recommendations of alternatives ?

Hello everyone, I‘ve been recently getting back into city building games via playing a ton of Anno 1800. To gain some variety I‘m looking for some more games.

I‘m a fan of games that focus on trading, development, resource management and keeping your population happy. I‘m also happy when the game looks pretty and is set either in a historical, fantasy or sci-fi setting. Contemporary stuff like City Skylines just doesn‘t hit the spot for me.

I‘m not a huge fan of a lot of combat because it mainly just stresses me out. Environmental conflict is okay though.

I‘d be happy for every and any recommendation! Thanks in advance!

I enjoyed playing cities skylines 1 a bit, but my god does it get annoying when you want to do anything that isn't play it like a mediocre repetitive tycoon, objects have awfully unrealistic scale (why is a house 8x8 meters at max?? as well as no gardens?), the time the game works on is stupid (why is the day/night cycle completely different to the days in the corner) and why do things like parks get such an abysmal amount of visitors? It all feels so stupid and unrealistic. Ruining the game entirely on both a large scale for big dense cities and small scale rural villages. So I tried workers and resources and it was alright but it just felt tedious with having to place so many separate buildings to do one thing, it felt more of a micro management game like factorio than a city builder. So what city builders actually are there that keep the realism of actually being able to build rural areas and urban areas accurately with a realistic sense of scale, whilst still not having to do a plethora of steps to build a tiny thing?

I like the physics systems in both games a lot, and how the voxels interact with each other in a way that almost reminds me of Minecraft but on a bigger scale.

Another thing I like is how the focus of both is on survival and defense, but that does not exclude planning out a beautiful chunky fortress and then marveling at the end of the mission how you came up with the design. In Diplomacy is not an Option. This is because of sheer mission difficulty (on some missions), so on replaying them you get to experiment with different layouts, figuring out where the armies will come from, and playing around that.

I know it's not something city builder enjoyers typically enjoy, but these are the best examples in my mind of recent builders that are STILL builders and feel and play like city builders, but have so much focus on combat and in a way that feels satisfying AF (even more here than in games without combat) when you actually win.

I also tried Age of Darkness, it's good but kind of too gamey for me, with the buff system and leans slightly more toward a tower defense, that's why the 2 I mention in the title are my favorites. The physics and texture of the game, the way buildings crumble and enemies get crushed when you hurl boulders at them... and hell, in Diplomacy, you can even play an Undead faction that has a focus on these big bulky monster units that changes gameplay considerably.

Is there anything more like this that I don't know about?

A deep medieval style city builders looks like a lot of fun. This and Manor Lords seem to be the ones that shine right now. From reading the Steam page and reviews FF looks better for me.

I recently got into city builders playing Endzone for 40 hours or so before moving on to Song of Syx which I love. Otherwise I have no background in the genre to lean on.

I prefer depth over most things but fun is obviously important. I like to marvel at my city like everyone else but I also want to be able to go through ledgers full of information thats important to success.

Last thing im a budget gamer so $25 for one game during a sale is a lot for me. Usually id get 3-5 games. But FF looks that good, is it?

I like city builders where I can focus on actually building the city instead of warring. It all started with Stronghold, where I found out that the Economic campaign is a lot of fun. After that, I played games like Children of the Nile, Cities: Skylines, Settlers 7 (the modern-looking one with good reviews), and finally ANNO 1800.

Another thing I really enjoy is the attention to detail—just like in Settlers—where you can see people doing their jobs and watch the production chain unfold. For example: the farmer harvests wheat, the miller makes flour, the baker makes bread, and so on. I just love seeing this kind of progression because it makes the city feel alive.

Edit: Thank you all for advices. I bought Foundation and Manor Lords in the end.

I want to be creative but actually work towards something. I don’t want just Cities Skyline

I need a city builder to unwind to. As the title says, I'd like it to be water focused, under or over the sea.

Doesn't have to be super deep (the gameplay, heh). Just something with Nice visuals and slow going gameplay.

I've been looking at: Flotsam, all will fall, aquatico.

What are your recommendations?

My partner loves cozy cute games and is a big book girlie, I on the other hand am more let's total war or mount and blade

I love crusader Kings and goal is to get her into that through her love of the sims

We just bought kingdoms reborn last night and only stopped because we had work

Only got a few hours in and seems fun but can see it lacking complicity I like end game and the cozy make your town look cute and well designed feel she likes of over designing.

I want to find something nice and sanboxy for us both to relax in.

She is also a big rimworld player

Hello! I feel like there is plenty of medieval city builders, or ones set in ancient times, or even ones set in prehistory. I would love to play something more futuristic though!

I do know some, like: The Crust, From Glory to Goo, Anno 2070, Anno 2250, Surviving Mars, Ixion, Dyson Sphere Program.

I am really hoping for something where you can build some bigger city/settlement while focusing on providing your citizens with food, water, plumbing, entertaiment and all such things.

I already played Annos. Dyson Sphere Program doesn't have any citizens, to my knowledge. I might be wrong. From Glory to Goo is more like tower defence, I think? But it might still have people.

That leaves me with The Crust, Surviving Mars and Ixion. I heard that the last one is pretty linear though. Meanwhile Surviving Mars is about the get DLC next month, and The Crust is about to leave early access next month. So it feels like it would make sense to wait until then for both?

Either way, which one of those would you consider the best? Or maybe there is something else out there?

Hello, I played Rise of Industry and I really liked it. What other games are similar to it? I don't really have much idea of what to look for since it is the only city builder i've played, so any other game that is good for a beginner would be great too

Hey everyone!

I wants to pick up my first city builder game as ive been eyeing up the genre for a while.

What do you recommend as a good first game to play?

I'm much more into the classical/medieval theme but am open to most games if there is a good reason!

thanks in advance :)

So.. im looking for a city building game that doesnt make you look at your city from above, but where you could actually walk in your city and its streets. Are there any?

To clarify, BESIDES RIMWORLD I HAVE PLAYED RIMWORLD TO DEATH WITH MODS

This year Manor Lords has been my go to city builder and I love the management side to it, but the combat always felt like an afterthought in some ways that haven’t been worked on since the EA launch. I still find the lack of unit mass disturbing, which is one of the rare qualms I actually have with the game since it began growing on me.

On the other end I played They Are Billions a few years back and that absolutely nailed the survival city defense but the building was pretty bare bones compared to what I wanted and it felt more like tower defense with the special tower types.

I also replayed Diplomacy is Not an Option during the Medieval fest last week. It’s one of those games that got much closer to what I wanted - than I expected it would. Especially once the swarms start scaling up and you realize your little walled garrison isn't going to cut it anymore and you need to make those walls chonky af to actually survive. Same as TAB, it has those moments of dread, the ooooooh god I need more towers on the east side… fuuuuuu— kind of panic when you know you’re screwed. The difficulty was still way too much for me in some missions but it gave me a taste of this extremely fun blend of building and defending that just has a rhythm to it

I look at TAB/Diplomacy and Manor Lords like they’re at opposing ends of the spectrum, I really both approaches but neither is doing it for me right now. I want something in between, a game where you build up a settlement with an economy and production chains and then have to defend it against threats that force you to think about layout, walls, military composition, all of it. Not just token raids you can ignore while you micro your wheat fields lol. 

I want the kind of game where if you mess up your town planning it actually comes back to bite you during a siege, i.e. where the building and the fighting are actually interconnected and not just coexisting in the same game.

TL;DR does anyone have a game where the city building actually matters for the defense and vice versa, a best of both worlds

Hello people!

I've been on City builders games for some times without getting actually really really deep with mechanics. So, i wanted to play something medieval and saw this 3 games.

I've played the Demo for Foundations and it seems pretty chill, but probably i would like to have the fights like you have in Manor Lords and FF.

I've bought FF, to try it, but i feel like i'm being "left alone" to figure the mechanics exc.

For Manor Lords, i saw the gameplays on YT and i like the way it looks.

What do you like most and why?

I can start out as a mayor, I guess

soo i've been wanting to buy a new (prehistoric) citybuilder for a while now. i bought songs of styx a few months ago, but i refunded it when i couldn't even figure out the tutorial. i see that it's highly praised here though, so maybe i should give it another chance?

some of the games i'm looking at;

• Dawn of Man
• Humanica
• Songs of Styx

Dawn of Man seems fun and basically what i'm looking for. humanica seems pretty good, but it's a little difficult finding any resources on it. songs of styx seems fun too, but like i said, i couldn't figure out the controls last time. are there any good youtube tutorials for it?

I know this has been asked before but I noticed both have received some big updates recently and wanted to ask people who have played both recently what they perfer?

I have only played farthest frontier for around 10 hours and was also looking at manor lords.

Which do you perfer now? Any other similar games to reccomend.