Back in the day, I used to love playing Caesar III and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. I love me a bit of city micro-management.
I now have a decent gaming PC (that can run World of Warcraft on ultra settings) running Windows 7 and I’d like to find a city building game for those times when I want to chill out with a game but don’t feel like being social.
The last one I played was Emperor, so I really am out of touch with city builders. I’m not interested in The Sims, but is Sim City still a good game?
You might want to look into the *Anno *series. The latest one (Anno 2070) could be too demanding spec-wise depending on your exact system (it chugs on my own machine for some reason, despite it being a fairly respectable dedicated gaming rig), but Anno 1404 should be right up your alley. I liked it a lot myself, and found it quite reminiscent of the Caesar series while at the same time streamlining/getting rid of some of the more annoying micro mechanics (like the bloody-minded walkers).
I haven’t played Tropico 4, but I’ve heard good things about it. The first one was pretty solid, if repetitive once you’ve figured out the best strategies.
I’d stay away from Cities XL. It’s not bad exactly, just… meh. You know ? Meh all around.
Thanks, I hadn’t heard of **Anno **so I will look into it! I think I downloaded a demo of **Tropico **but it didn’t do much for me. Was that the one with a South American feel?
I played Simcity Social on Facebook for a couple months. It leaned heavily toward being a software toy rather than a proper game. By which I mean, you could do whatever you wanted and strategy didn’t matter a whole lot. I think most of them are like that. However, there must be a dozen popular city games available on FB. It may be that one of them is something like what you’re looking for. It might be an idea to create an account just for that purpose.
Tropico is probably the most popular builder around right now. I still play the original from time to time. It may be worth a second look. I’ve been waiting for a good sale on Tropico 4.
Simcity is still around. In addition to the FB game I mentioned, number 5 is due out in Spring 2013. You should be able to pick up number 4 pretty cheap.
A company called Tilted Mill released a flurry of builders about 5 years ago, including the badly-received SimCity Societies. I guess that some of the people involved worked on the Impressions series. I played Children of the Nile for a while and really liked the look of it. It was a very slow game, though. Caesar IV seemed similar.
I actually know some of those people, so yeah - it’s a lot of the same team that worked on Children of the Nile and Zeus (And, I think, Caesar 3/4 but that was a long time ago).
I’m not really aware of any recent “Place the buildings” kind of city builders in the old SimCity vein, other than the handful mentioned here. =/
The last true “Sim City” game was Sim City 4 with the Rush Hour transportation expansion. It was a great game, especially with it’s ability to add user generated buildings and other content. But it’s also ten years old.
Sim City 5 is supposed to be released next year. It will incorporate 3D, curved roads and will actually simulate individual sims, as opposed to being a mathmatical approximation.
City Life was interesting in that it incorporated 3D and curved roads first. And you could build some really interesting looking cities. But it had some severe limitations and felt very sterile compared to the Sim City games.
If you don’t mind something that’s complex and difficult, and you can deal with the ASCII graphics (or simplistic sprites if you install a tile set) then there’s Dwarf Fortress. It’s got a learning curve so steep it bends back and smacks you in the head, but it’s essentially unchallenged in depth. It’s also completely free.
