Recently, I've been addicted to city-building games. I've been scrounging around for more, and have been juggling several games at once. City-building games, unlike empire-building games, give the player more control of his or her cities, such as building placement and citizen interaction. You will have to worry about the economy and the citizen needs. You'll want to ensure their happiness, and doing so may involve entertainment, clothing, cleanliness, housing, or even jobs. Most of these games allow you to zoom in close and view their lives as they work and play and even follow their family lineage, and many have highly advanced citizen engines allowing you to view a great deal of citizen actions (and even bring a number of gameplay worries and elements to the table - what if a government official's wife is unhappy with the long walk to the market and forces her husband to help, thus delaying his work?). However, a lot of city-building games include a number of similarities from empire-building games. For example, you may have to worry about trade, diplomacy, expanding your territory and the construction of more than one city, and even war. So without further ado, even though this is the second time I've had to type all this out because I accidentally closed the window, I present the games! Many are these are more recent games, but don't feel afraid to discuss your favorite ones from times past. 1701 A.D. Developer: Aspyr Gamerankings: 80% 1701 A.D. is a unique empire building simulation set in the 17th century. In this third episode of the incredibly successful series, players are immersed in the golden age of exploration and trade, where they set out to discover and inhabit new islands islands that will soon be home to huge cities. Players are tasked with establishing, expanding and maintaining a flourishing medieval metropolis while interacting with other players through trade, diplomacy or military conflicts. 1701 A.D. presents players with a 3D gaming world bursting with life from the vibrant citizens, to the incredibly varied flora and fauna to detailed animated animals. (Gamerankings) This is probably my favorite game in the genre. It's a beautiful and colorful game, set in the Caribbean, and it's easy to play thanks to a great user-interface with easily presented information. You start with a settlement on an island, and increase settlement level by tending to the needs of your settlers. Some of these needs will include resources and goods, such as alcohol, but because every island will not include every resource, you may have to resort to trade. You can gain these resources by building a new settlement on another island, or by trade with the empire (your empire, in which a ship will come from the mainland and you can buy or sell resources) or other empires (other player settlements on the game map). You create trade routes by selecting another warehouse and the goods you want to transfer, the warehouse on another island where the goods should go, and the ship to do the transporting. Luckily, that's the most you'll have to do as far as micromanaging trade. You can set a number of victory conditions with plenty of other options, or you can choose scenarios such as rescuing a doctor and helping him create his perfect elixir. Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile Developer: Tilted Mill Gamerankings: 76% As a pharaoh in Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile, you have the great task of uniting the people of Ancient Egypt while elevating your status. In your quest to become a godlike ruler, you'll design cities and works of wonder for your people to build. You can direct the efforts of hundreds of citizens, including farmers, scribes, priests, military commanders, and more. With this carefree lot of people, it's up to you to build an empire to last throughout the ages. (Gamerankings) Children of the Nile probably has one of the more realistic AI systems in the genre. The example from the introduction is straight out of this game. There's even an intricate family system at work, and a day, night, and season cycle which is important to the citizens and work. There's a lot to like and explore, as it's one of the more deep games available, but it also can be hard to find information in the interface. However, it may not be the most beautiful game, as it's based off the Empire Earth engine, but it does it's job well. Caesar IV Developer: Tilted Mill Gamerankings: 75% In Caesar IV you govern a province (and most importantly its capital city) in the Roman Empire. Success yields political advancement, allowing you to take on a new challenge in another province, as you climb the ladder of power in ancient Rome. As city planner, you design and layout each city in detail, creating road networks to facilitate the distribution of resources, and to provide homes access to entertainment venues, health care facilities, fire protection services, and so on. Of course, you must in turn develop these industries and services to meet the needs of your growing population. You control your city's finances, and must quickly turn a profit in your new endeavor or face the wrath of the emperor. You must build a military force and direct the defense of the province against barbarian threats. You must establish far flung trade networks so the exotic wealth of the empire can flow into your province, bringing it fully under the Roman fold. As the city grows from a simple village to a bustling cosmopolitan city, so too do your challenges and responsibilities increase. To achieve your goals as provincial governor in Caesar IV you must consistently provide for your citizens' needs, keep them healthy, happy and safe... and on top of that satisfy the demands of the empire. Your ultimate goal is to rise among the political ranks of the empire, and become Caesar yourself. (Gamerankings) Finally, Rome! One of my favorite settings in history! This is the next game after Children of the Nile by Tilted Mill. The Caesar series is one of the more popular series in the genre, and there's a lot to enjoy in the latest game. Caesar IV introduces a class system, and each class has their own jobs, possibilities, needs, and housing. However, like their previous game, there are some interface issues which make it difficult to get to the information you need. But like Children of the Nile, there's lots of depth, and both include great economic systems. The Settlers: Rise of an Empire Developer: Blue Byte Gamerankings: 64% [Based on two reviews] In The Settlers Rise of an Empire, the player builds lively, bustling towns in a medieval world. Everything is visible, lovingly animated and realistic. Each settler has his or her own daily routine, with a range of different actions and behaviors that can be observed by the player at all times. This enables the player to get the best out of the settlers, build up a flourishing economy, tend to the settlers' needs and protect the empire against danger from the outside. By expanding the empire, the player can aspire to becoming a legendary king or queen. (Gamerankings) The latest Settlers game is the more recently released game in the genre, and while 64% may not seem too appealing, I've still found a lot of fun in it. However, it's not as complex as the other games, which may attribute to it's lower score, and thus the easiest game to get into and play. You start with a warehouse, a city center, and a church. As your city grows, you'll need to worry about the needs of your citizens, essentially food, clothing, cleanliness, and entertainment, and doing so can increase the rank of your knight, offering you knew buildings to expand your city with. At the beginning of each game, you choose a knight for your city and/or empire. Each knight has different abilities and bonuses to offer, such as treating the ill, providing food, increased collections from church sermons, increased gold from trade, and more. To expand your empire and gain necessary resources, you'll want to obtain new territories. The map is split into these territories, and claiming one is achieved through placing an outpost (requires gold and wood) or capturing one. Territories with more resources will increase the money required to place an outpost, so you'll have to juggle the worth of placing an outpost in a territory early game. You can gain the necessary money through taxation, church sermons, and even trade with other cities - but be careful of bandits! Stronghold 2 Developer: FireFly Studios Gamerankings: 66% As powerful barons jostle for control of a disintegrating kingdom, you must stem the tide of their ambition and unite the land under the king once again. In Stronghold 2, you can build and develop different types of castles and defenses while watching their peasants go about their everyday lives. Appease the peasantry by hosting festivals and letting the ale flow, or rule with an iron fist and strike fear into the hearts of your subjects. Stronghold 2 depicts aspects of both siege warfare and castle life. (Gamerankings) I had a lot of fun with this one in the past. Stronghold focuses on the building of castles and castle towns, and the life there-of. However, it was a bit more combat oriented, and so it was necessary to build up armies and conquer enemy territory more-so than other games in the genre. It was fun building torture devices and watching criminals be humiliated and decapitated, though. I also remember having a great time online in Stronghold 2. SimCity Societies Developer: Tilted Mill Gamerankings: Not Yet Released [November 13th, 2007] SimCity Societies allows players to create a variety of cities with the unique societies they desire. Players can choose from a variety of more than 350 building types, each of which allows them to combine, connect and re-arrange structures freely. Players can also challenge authority and experiment with what happens when citizens flagrantly disobey power in an unruly Orwellian society. Or if players are feeling happy, they can build a Fun City filled with Ferris Wheels, Gingerbread Houses and Chocolate Factories! (IGN) Unlike the other games, SimCity Societies focuses on simply building a city. There won't be any territories or other cities to conquer. As such, however, it'll offer far more options in how you build your cities. As the description said, you can build a very large number of types of cities. Make a fun city, make a grime infested society, and watch how your citizens react to their surroundings! Epilogue Even though the genre fits a niche group, hopefully it'll only grow. So discuss these games or any other game you find fun, and let's celebrate a great genre of games! P.S. Tilted Mill is awesome. Please make more games, Tilted Mill.

I used to fiddle around with Caesar 3 and had a LOT of fun. I wouldn't exactly call myself an enormous fan of the genre (I love it, it just requires a serious time commitment) but you just got me pumped for SimCity Societies.

I want to be able to make a futuristic dystopia city in Simcity.

City Life was entertaining, though it really needed more building models. Surveying your grand city at eye level? Cool. Surveying your grand city of a total of twelve different looking buildings repeated indefinitely? Not so cool.

I was kinda hoping this would be a SimCity thread. :\

I was kinda hoping this would be a SimCity thread. :\ Its SimCity and stuff like it o.O What's wrong with that?

Great OP, but....where's Zeus? I love the city-building genre, and marrying that with a Greek mythology setting was brilliant. Sure, there were some interface issues, but all in all it was a brilliant piece of work. Oh, also: MASSIVE points to the devs for doing the entire, giant manual in-character.

I always enjoyed the SimCity series, but I am so bad at resource management. Invariably I'd end up cheating and giving myself millions of dollars to play with. SimCity Societies looks really interesting. I'll probably give that a go. I enjoyed Stronghold a lot, but again...horrible resource management, so I sucked dongs on that one.

Lots of SimCity love. I actually wasn't too into that series, and in truth I wasn't interested in the entire genre back then. I've only recently started loving these type of games. Societies looks pretty fun, though. I'll be trying Caesar IV later today, and after that I'm thinking about picking up Children of the Nile. I'm absolutely addicted to 1701 A.D., though. I can't recommend that one enough.

I always enjoyed the SimCity series, but I am so bad at resource management. Invariably I'd end up cheating and giving myself millions of dollars to play with. SimCity Societies looks really interesting. I'll probably give that a go. I enjoyed Stronghold a lot, but again...horrible resource management, so I sucked dongs on that one. My problem with SimCity was that I'd inevitably end up with a negative income and have to start laying RCI with reckless abandon to turn a profit, which always ended up with the most unorganized city in existence. And I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

A weird thing for me was I always got strange enjoyment from laying down water pipes. Finding the best path and using as little pipe as possible to cover everywhere. Strange.

A weird thing for me was I always got strange enjoyment from laying down water pipes. Finding the best path and using as little pipe as possible to cover everywhere. Strange. I liked to organize my city based on looks rather than function. I'd use water towers because I liked the way they looked in my city, so there'd be dozens of them spaced every few blocks apart from each other. With water pipes I gave up and just tried to make sure everything had water, too much work to get it all neat and nice for me. I once tried to make an actually functional mass transit system. Nightmare

simcity societies cannot come out fast enough

Where's Actraiser? Okay it's not strictly a city-building game but there is some in it and anything that gets people to mention Actraiser more cannot be a bad thing.

Where's Actraiser? Okay it's not strictly a city-building game but there is some in it and anything that gets people to mention Actraiser more cannot be a bad thing. I just decided to go with a few more recent ones for the OP, mainly 2000 and above. That doesn't mean any of the others are bad or that we can't talk about them. If you guys really want, I think there's some more room for more.

Dungeon Keeper falls mainly in the RTS category, but I got the most enjoyment out of the game laying out my evil lair and getting my creatures to not kill each other in their little homes.

I decided to plat Caesar 3 recently, and was doing quite well. However, it eventually got to the point where I could no longer hold off the barbarian hordes, so they breached my walls and proceeded to level 9/10's before they'd had enough chaos and left my city. I decided to keep playing though, and I'm actually succeeding in rebuilding the city and getting everything running again. But my savings just ran dry and money is slow flowing so it still remains to be seen how much longer I can keep going.

I decided to plat Caesar 3 recently, and was doing quite well. However, it eventually got to the point where I could no longer hold off the barbarian hordes, so they breached my walls and proceeded to level 9/10's before they'd had enough chaos and left my city. I decided to keep playing though, and I'm actually succeeding in rebuilding the city and getting everything running again. But my savings just ran dry and money is slow flowing so it still remains to be seen how much longer I can keep going. Just long enough for them to become interested in your city once more, I'd imagine.

In those Simcity screenshots, Do I not see real cars, and the BP gas station in the lower left? Are we gonna have real brands in this one or something?

anyone played 1701? I saw it on the shelf today and was intrigued. I do love me some empire management...

anyone played 1701? I saw it on the shelf today and was intrigued. I do love me some empire management... Do it. As I wrote in the OP, it's my favorite game out of the list. It's beautiful and easy to play without being too simple and lacking. There's also multiplayer, so you can create a Caribbean empire online.

I love the impressions series (Caesar, Pharaoh, Zeus, Emperor) so much. For some reason Pharaoh was my favourite of the lot. I always managed to overproduce from my industries, and I couldn't bring myself to shut them down so I always ended up with great swathes of my city being made up of storage yards, mostly filled with flax for some reason. I always have way too much flax.

I used to love this genre and I haven't played any of them for quite awhile. That 1701 A.D looks good but no place I can find has it. Damn.

I love the impressions series (Caesar, Pharaoh, Zeus, Emperor) so much. For some reason Pharaoh was my favourite of the lot. I always managed to overproduce from my industries, and I couldn't bring myself to shut them down so I always ended up with great swathes of my city being made up of storage yards, mostly filled with flax for some reason. I always have way too much flax. Pharoah was awesome I've still got the disc sitting in my room on a dresser. Should reinstall that.

I managed, after a lot of problems, to completely pull my city up to become one of the greatest cities in the empire. Too bad I had to reposition my forts so that I now have no army and an indigenous army attacked.