As the title says, I'm looking for a fun building game, not necessarily a city building one. Some of the things I'm looking for are a somewhat complex economy, lots of building options, having to keep citizens happy, and a fun campaign mode, but these are all optional.
Some of the games I've played and some remarks;-SimCity obviously; fun, but more of a simulation than a game. the lack of a campaign with some hard challenges makes it not very interesting.-Tropico; also quite fun, but I feel you're building the same city over and over again. Also the campaign wasn't very interesting for some reason.-Ceasar; I played III for ages, it has everything I'm looking for. I did play IV, but for some reason it didn't keep me as occupied as III. Maybe I was distracted by something else at the time, and I should give it another go.-Anno 1404 (Dawn of discovery for you Americans); played it and most of the prequels. 1404 was quite fun for a while, but it felt a bit unfinished at some points, and the campaign was not great. Didn't try Venice, as it seemed to add just a new neutral and a few ships.-Settlers; had a lot of fun with most of them. Didn't buy 7 because of the DRM used.-Dungeon Keeper; lots of fun with the original picked up at a bargain bin. Missed the sequel for some reason.-Startopia; awesome game that just didn't get a lot of attention. Campaign wasn't that challenging but finished it just because the game was so much fun.
I might have forgotten a few here. So any suggestions?
Maybe:
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/constructor
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/mob_rule
Probably not exactly what you are looking for, but Evil Genius is somewhat similiar to Dungeon Keeper.
I've got an old game called Pharoh (I think it's by the same people who made Ceasar) that I always rather liked. The population didn't have any sort of morale mechanic, but it was fun to try and upgrade houses by satisfying a loooooooooooooooooong chain of different prerequisites, and watching my merchants attempt to navigate the streets. I didn't get far into the campaign, but it was definitely nice and long without getting boring.
I've always leaned more towards those "tycoon" games than pure city-builders, however... I like the smaller scale and more intimate control of your empire. I wish I still had that old moon-colony one....
Same here.. when i first got it I was distracted by the fact my PC made it run horribly lol. But after some upgrades I've fired it up and its pretty much everything III was just with updated graphics. I would suggest firing Caesar IV back up. I'm on republic stage 7 right now rebuilding carthage.. its not going so well lol.
Fixed. And yes, it is very similar but it is just diffrent enough that being tired of one will not make the other boring. And I liked Pharaoh better than Ceaser III. There is also an expansion pack for Pharaoh. Look for Impressions Games* (they made Ceaser and Pharaoh) titles, the few games since then that were building oriented were so sub-par by comparison that I have taken to playing strategy games to build cities (and other stuff) instead.
* I have not encountered a game by them that was not fun.
About the best I have found are:
- Black and White (I have 2, but hear 1 is even better).It has lots of building, though it is not up to a true city builder. However it has lots of other things that can be done. And you get to play as a god.
- MajestyThe first was better for building, particularly as you could continue playing after beating levels so you could build a large kingdom.
- Light of AltairThe building of colonies is addictive, but the levels with fighting are a pain. Very simple on the building side, but it is like Tetris: it is so darn hard to stop.
Speaking of Pharaoh, I need to finsish building the Prymids. I think the level after the current one is the Great Prymid.
If you really enjoyed Dungeon Keeper 1, you could consider getting 2. In many ways I actually felt it was a far superior game. Someone had mentioned Evil Genius, and while I don't really feel it played at all like Dungeon Keeper (other then the basic concept of having an evil base) it's still a really interesting game, and in many ways like what dungeon keeper should have been. It's also extremely flawed and buggy and frequently frustrating but it may be worth checking out still. Of course none of these are really city building games.
Regarding Black and White 1, I don't know what 2 was like, but the city building in 1 was completely awful. The game was about raising your giant pokemon and some people loved that and some people hated it. But almost every review agreed that the city building/managing elements were completely atrocius and dragged the game down.
I think those that I have heard about the first were in the camp that liked the creature. The city building in number two is good (though simpler than Ceaser and such), at least until it is really big. At that point you never have enough food due to your people eating too much (and farm production does not entirely scale as the city grows).
Stronghold: Crusader! Technically it's an RTS, but the castle building in it is as involved as any city builder and it's really, really fun.
And since it was mentioned, forget Evil Genius. The traps in that game are fantastic but the rest of it is just a crappier Dungeon Keeper.
If you can wait Cities in Motion is coming out soon and looks pretty promising.
If you want city builiding game and liked Sim City at least a bit, than the obvious choice would be Cities XL 2011, what is in many ways similar to Sim City, but concentrates more on the social than economical stuff... i suppose one of the later sequels of Sim City, called Societes was heavily inspired by ancestor of this game, called City Life.
If your comuter is a bit older and you do not think it can run the game, there was a 2009 or 2010 edition of this game too (though i believe hardware wise it will be no different from the latest one) or aforementioned City Life, which is about 5 years old (or more)
If ANYONE here wants to play Dungeon Keeper 2, and you are using Windows Vista or 7, please, PLEASE feel free to contact me.
I just recently put DK2 onto my laptop. I LOVE this game, but Vista simpy does not want to run this game. I won't go into the specifics on why, but take my word for it when I say that you WILL run into problems at some point if you try to play DK2.
WHEN you hit an issue you can't get around (notice I didn't say "if"), shoot me a line and tell me what the problem for you is, and I will be happy to point you in the right direction.
I'm currently playing DK2 regularly, without any crashes, bugs, or errors. So, again, feel free to ask me for a hand. I don't want anyone else to go through the headache I experienced just to get it to run properly.
If you enjoyed DK, you should definitely check Dwarf Fortress. Its free, and its friggin best building sim out there.
Civ 4, beyond the sword, has a mod called Wyre's and fall of civilization. Keeping a stable civ is vital in this mod, so keeping citizens happy is important...
If you're interested in 'the oldies,' you might get some fun out of SimTower. It's originally Japanese, not a Will Wright game, but he apparently liked it enough to encourage Maxis to do a localize/re-brand thing.
Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions guys! Sorry it took me a while to reply, haven't been on the forums much the past few days.
Another of my favorites was Atlantis: Underwater Tycoon. This one had a lot of unlockable buildings and a surprisingly memorable soundtrack, but I found myself getting forced into either a tourism or industrial track with alarming regularity.
SimCity4+Rush Hours - The classic. Thousands of mods. Possibility to play in HD resolution. Lots of fun with first cities. Later it gets boring. Especially if in the same region. Massive demand makes the game too easy. Bunch of unique landmarks/reward. Clear isometric view. Unfortunatelly lots of mod means unstability and lack of autosave option is sometime the reason of losing few hours of building.
CityLife 2008 - SimCity with 6 culture groups. 3D with some camera limitations. Quite fun to play, but money is the problem so you are 'forced' to play at fast forward to faster gather some.
Pharaoh&Cleopatra, Zeus&Poseidon, Emperor (China thing) - all based on Ceasar3. All fun to play, with huge campaigns. Great stuff.
Children of the Nile&ALexandria addon, full 3D - Less fun then P&C but seems more realistic. Although engine is 3d it is surprisingly uglier then Pharaoh. Again, quite a long campaign
Sim City Societies - this game is ripped to bits by SimCity fans but I bought it anyway, with Destinations expansions. It is fun to play (maybe little too harsh in scenarios and hardcore economy). There are some mods available but comparing to SC4 it's nothing. The game is really unstable on my rig and CTDs are often.
Space Colony - Fun game, but it would be funnier without all the sim crap. You must take care of the base on some planet and additionally the inhabitants (I think there are about 20 different characters) have different need and skills. You need to plan they work and spare time to keep them clean, happy, social and fed. Overall it's a nice idea and cool thing to check. 2 campaigns (peaceful and military) and some missions (For example one of the mission's goals: 12 clolonists. Try to make everyone fall in love with each other!).
Anno 1404 Venice - Venice addon apart of giving 'The Venice' also 'streamlines' the game. There are more side quest. ,more NPC-s, sabotage missions and tech tree and things like archievements and unlockable content (unlockable with the experience, not some 6.99$DLC). This is beautifull game, very gripping. A lot better then last Settlers incarnation.
CitiesXL - That game was suppose to knock down the SimCity4 and take it's place... but didn't. Nice 3d environment but with huge requirements. In my opinion the game gets quite choppy quite fast and it is annoying. There is lots of 'freedom' in building. The engine isn't based on square tiles so it looks more natural. But.. the buildings are just ugly and city looks really artificial. I must say I don't like it. I tried to like it but I can't.
Imperium Romanum/Grand ages Rome - I didn't play these games but reading the reviews and features they're looking like the Ceasar deluxe of some sort.
Startopia - Didn't play it but I remember that the demo was quite fun - managing of orbital space station, with different visitors, races and stuff.
New ones
Dungeons - Not Dungeon Keeper clone but rather something like RC Tycoon mixed with tower defense. At least thhat's what I've read about it.
Cities in Motion - New and cheap. You are not building the cities. You are organizing the mass transit in pre-made four cities. It might be fun.
You should give Cities in Motion a try. It's the spiritual successor of The Traffic Giant and plays very well. For 20 bucks it's also relatively cheap.
It is a bit like Ceaser. It is more like it really was in some ways (you have slave labor for one). But the economy in the game was hard to figure out compared to Ceaser, as there does not seem to be as many tools to see how things are going which lead to a lot of guess work without much in the way of results. Maybe there are ways to get the info needed to learn how to build cities that work, but they are not mentioned in the tutorial and were not obvious to me.
PS:
3D Graphics in a Roman city builder are pointless as everything stays on the ground. Plus the buildings in Ceaser look more like those on a poster my Latin teacher had of what Rome was believed to have looked like. As in, some of them look exactly like a specific building on the poster.
Edit:
I said it was more like Rome in some ways that Ceaser, but that is not true in all cases. It lacks aquaducts which are one of the major hallmarks of Roman civilization.
Tropico 3 - http://www.impulsedriven.com/products/ESD-IMP-W786
City Life 2008 - http://www.impulsedriven.com/citylife2008
Cities XL - http://www.impulsedriven.com/citiesxl2011
It's on building, by a hair. It is an RTS after all, but instead of having the game being army vs army it's about building the right army and siege weapons to take down your enemies' castle, and vice versa. It's relatively laid back for an RTS as well and doesn't require you to keep a high APM or anything.
This is what you end up building:
Zoomed out:
You have complete control over it all too, so you can just skip the whole castle thing and just build the Great Wall if you really want to.
As a fan of both city builders and RTS games I thought it was pretty fantastic.
I finally bought Settlers 7 last week, found the gold edition with all the dlc for 10 euros. Just finished the 100 years of peace map in the campaign, and I had a blast! At first I thought I wouldn't like the victory point system, and although occasionally it forces you to act quickly, for the most part it's quite well balanced and allows for several routes to victory. Conquering the map is still an option, but with a few well planned sectors you can get an economic/scientific/religious victory just as easily.
I still don't approve of the drm (constant Internet connection required), but I haven't had any real problems with it so far. I just hope they'll patch it out sometime in the near future.
Nov. 18th Anno 2070 is scheduled to come out. Demo here:http://www.gamershell.com/download_81912.shtml
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