pomalley

Join Date 08/2009

Current best city builder game?

Hello all,

Been lurking for a while, and I thought I'd come out of the shadows to ask what people thought that the best city builder game currently out there is. I've played SimCity, 2000, 3000, and 4 (to varying degrees) and enjoyed each of them. (I sank a *lot* of time into SC2000, and a fair amount into SC3000, but only done one city in 4.) I played Caesar as well (just the first one, I think, it was a while ago). I also enjoyed Sid Meier's Railroads! briefly but never tried any of the more serious railroad/transportation sims (but that's not what I'm after at the moment).

I have been out of the field for a while, so to speak, and I generally like what I read on this forum, so I thought I'd ask: what should I pick up? Is SimCity 4 still the best out there? Assume complete ignorance on my part of anything I didn't explicitly mention above.

Thanks!

TL;DR: What is newer and/or better than SimCity 4?

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I would suggest Anno 1404. It's tough but amazing.

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All the Old Tilted Mills and Sierra builders, Anno's are good, Startopia is fun and dorky, virtual city is a stretch but much like rail roads its about supply and some city building. If you want to build cities for fun that's not a game you can play with try City Engine. P.S. grab the mods for Simcity 4 at Simtropolis and its becomes a 10X better and amazing game.

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Tropico 4 is brilliant.

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

+441

Seconding tropico 4, lots of fun.

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Thanks folks. The Anno games do look pretty good. I'm intrigued by the different time periods--according to Wikipedia the previous one was 1701 and the next one will be 2070. Is 1404 better than the previous ones? It seems to be, from what I can tell.

What mods are recommended for SimCity 4? Honestly the prospect of mods didn't even occur to me, though I don't know why--generally I love to try mods. That said, they can be tedious to sort through to find ones that are worthwhile, so any advice is appreciated.

I remember following Tropico somewhat when it first came out (Tropico 1, that is), but I never gave it a shot. I don't trust game reviews as much as I used to, so would it be too much to ask you to briefly elaborate on Tropico 4?

Actually, can Tropico and Anno be compared? Is it worthwhile? I should probably just get demos and try them out, but I really do like to hear what others have to say.

Edit: Another question, actually: both those games have campaigns. I worry that the sandbox mode suffers because of it. Is this the case?

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Timmaigh

Join Date 05/2009

+76

Cities XL 2011 (or maybe 2012 already?)

http://www2.citiesxl.com/

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Tropico 4's campaign is merely a decider on what kind of island sandbox you want and the flavor of random events. Very smooth. Very well done.

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Tropico is good. Cities XL 2011 is good too. It depends on what you want.

The details on Cities XL is simply stunning....

NOT Photoshoped!

Sexy no?

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Island Dog

Join Date 06/2003

+1048

You really can't go wrong with either Tropico 4 or CitiesXL.

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In Tropico you can "misplace" your political opponents.

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Hawawaa

Join Date 09/2006

+33

I also say Tropico, Cities XL, and Anno.

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I tried the demo for Anno (er, Dawn of Discovery as it is here in the states, apparently) and I must say I quite enjoyed it. However, it is fundamentally different from the city builder that I was looking for (i.e. SimCity). It seemed to me to be less, well, open. You build your peasant houses and your lumberjacks, then your cider mills and your church, and so on. Don't get me wrong, I really liked it and I think I will probably pick it up at some point (also the demo was, by nature, limited, and I'm excited to sit down and play it for real).

I guess what I'm trying to say is I was initially looking for something that was more creative or sandbox-ey.

Cities XL looks pretty similar to SimCity, which seems good. I had also never heard of it before, which just goes to show how out of the loop I am. I glanced through the manual (available on the website) and while I'm not sure about some of the mechanics (the different classes of citizens seems weird on first blush) it certainly looks promising. The reviews were somewhat mixed, which doesn't necessarily mean anything, but what do the people here think (specifically relative to SimCity 4)? Should I wait for 2012 or is 2011 that good?

Thanks again folks!

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I'm out of the loop too, but Cities XL looked interesting. Does anyone know if there's going to be a demo version of it? Manuals these days often have only a loose relationship to the software...

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Cities XL 2012 is coming out, so hold off on getting Cities XL until 2012 is out.

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Do you have to be democratically elected in 2012? It has been so long since I have ruled by majority I don't think I would know how.

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I started playing Dawn of Discovery, till I realized my brain hurt with a slight buzz trying to figure out the best trade routes.

I always thought Stardock would have been wise to use this game engine for the EWoM series.

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sareth01

Join Date 08/2008

+50

Quoting wbino,

reply 16

I always thought Stardock would have been wise to use this game engine for the EWoM series.

Funny thing is I thought the exact same thing.

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Publius of NV

Join Date 08/2002

+231

There have been a number of recommendations for Tropico 4 posted. I see Tropico 3 is on sale on Impulse on Sunday. Can anyone comment on how 3 compares with 4? Thanks.

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Quoting Publius of NV,

reply 18

There have been a number of recommendations for Tropico 4 posted. I see Tropico 3 is on sale on Impulse on Sunday. Can anyone comment on how 3 compares with 4? Thanks.

Yes. It's exactly the same:)

So if you don't want to spend the 'release fee' go for the Tropico 3 with Absolute Power add on. T4 is built on that base with some new buildings, random missions (go achieve something), disasters and what is the biggest difference for me - visible input/output storage.

Anno 1404 is the best in resource management genre. I like the SimCity4 with all this modded buildings but never got to like CitiesXL.

What is neat in Tropico that the basic shacks are appearing without player intervention. If the houses are far from farms, the farmers are building shacks for themself.

I'm waiting for a real city manager placed in SF or fantasy reality, where societies have much more freedom and self-awareness. Something like you build facilities and industry but depends on it and local topography, resources and such the citizens are building other stuff. I was wondering what dirives the city development. At the beginning the vitel thing is abundance of food, resources or closeness to a trade route. It's not 'yey there is some flat land, let's make a city there!'

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Sins of a Solar Empire has a great engine for a really good SF Sim. That said, if you don't know Tropico and you want both games, buy Anno now and get Tropico 3 when it is on steam sale for 5.00 dollars. You can have the best of both worlds.

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SimCity 4 is my favorite. The only mod you need is one that focuses on transport. I forget the name, but it is fairly popular and you should be able to find it.

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Good city builder games which run on 32MB video, 1.6GHz CPU, and contain few bugs and are quick to load (oldies but goodies!). Many of their CDs are now sold complete with patches:

Anno 1503 (the random-map generator for sandbox games is unfortunately limited);

Civilization III (has some "city building". Turn-based game.);

Port Royale 2 (more Carribean colony ships strategy than city building);

Startopia;

Industry Giant II;

Settlers III, IV (IV has some game crashing) and HoK;

Tropico, and Tropico 2;

Capitalism II (build a retailing/manufacturing empire);

Caesar III (has an annoying in-built people limit, OK for the many smaller missions. "Peaceful" campaign involves reaching economic objectives, "Dangerous" campaign has extra military objectives and more enemies).

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