City-building Game Catch All

kazooka wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

How do you feel about the Impressions games, kazooka?

Don't think I've played any.

OMG dude, they're the best. Caesar 3, Pharaoh, Zeus and Rise of the Middle Kingdom are amaaaaaaaazing and you should try them.

I loved the Impressions games, but really, the pathing killed them. They just could not get that to work smoothly, as I recall. It didn't scale and filtering walkers became a big core part of the game that resource distribution depended on.

Robear wrote:

I loved the Impressions games, but really, the pathing killed them. They just could not get that to work smoothly, as I recall. It didn't scale and filtering walkers became a big core part of the game that resource distribution depended on.

RotMK had a pretty good solution with "roadblocks" that could be configured to allow/disallow different walkers.

Yes, but the system still puts implicit limits on what can be how far away from other things, and thus creates the same constraints people were complaining about above. It's a different configuration of the same problem.

Robear wrote:

Yes, but the system still puts implicit limits on what can be how far away from other things, and thus creates the same constraints people were complaining about above. It's a different configuration of the same problem.

Agreed. I enjoyed the Impressions city-builders back in the day and tolerated the pathing issues, but these days, I just don't have the tolerance for that annoyance.

DoveBrown wrote:

I would like a game where I had some of the same challenges I see cities face in reality. Let me try and deal with Gentrification and shifting demographics.

Robear wrote:

Isn't that kind of modeling out of the reach of gaming systems, though? You're asking for agent-based people, vehicles, and corporations, at least, with a large number of variables driving them (race, politics, loan policies, cash flow in the economy, education levels and quality, food availability, crime levels and locations, accessibility, housing stock condition, economic drivers (local and regional)... And taking that step for a few systems won't create the effect you're looking for, either, I don't think.

I strongly suspect that you would find that we can get a lot of more interesting gameplay elements without most of what you're proposing. Our current systems are, when you get right down to it, pretty barebones, and they still provide interesting effects in conjunction with one another. I think that with some trial and error you could get a better mimicry of life with fewer new systems than you would expect.

For example, I've fantasized about a better residential zoning system for awhile (certainly you could do similar things with the other zone types as well, but we have a better intuitive grasp of homes). Currently we just do "density" with three discrete choices, and the game builds or replaces buildings of different quality levels in that density category. But that's not even in the same zip code of what specific characteristics you can zone for IRL. What if we introduced just a teensy bit more wiggle room?

We replace the single "slider" of "density" with three sliders. Lot Size, maximum Floors, and square footage per housing unit. Just with these three options you now have a phenomenally better ability to affect your cities housing, and to see your city affect that housing. A 12 story building filled with 1600 square footage apartments in the middle of your downtown is going to have a huge property value, and huge costs, only the wealthier sims are going to live there. That same building out in the suburbs is going to have the less wealthy families that can't afford the nearby quarter-acre stand-alone homes. As more employment opportunities come to that suburb and the property value goes up, more and more higher-income people will start moving in to that building, displacing the lower-income people into a farther suburb (or a nearby 1100 square footage apartment, and those people go into a farther suburb).

I agree with you, Yonder. I think that change comes incrementally, and I'm arguing that Cities is not devoid of it. It's worth playing. We should not expect it to be perfect, but we should also expect better from the next iteration.

Yeah, I'm not arguing that C:S is a bad game (unlike the latest SimCity for example), only voicing my personal issues with it. I get most of my city building kicks from smaller agent based games these days. Frostpunk is scratching that itch right now.

This just dropped on Steam, and it looks really neat.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/6...

Edit: Okay, it didn't just drop, it just had a big update and is on sale. Never noticed it before, but in doing a search, it wasn't mentioned before either. Still looks neat.

A... VR city builder? O.o

I just started playing Frostpunk. Things can go south quickly. I felt pretty good in the early days, providing food and shelter. People were warm, I found survivors.

Then we got a cold spell and some workers out collecting resources got sick, then more got sick. I closed down shop for the last day of the cold streak, but it was too late. I built more healthcare but it wasn't enough. I also didn't build wood and coal mines quite soon enough. i fell behind on food and started serving soup.

I got kicked out on day 13, but I can't wait to jump back in.

Anybody played Foundation? Looks pretty neat, but I wasn't willing to go in at the €40 price tag from the developer's site. Is just gone into Early Access on Steam, for the slightly more reasonable €26 (or £24ish for me).

Still, if it's miles off being enjoyable then I may as well hold off even longer.

omni wrote:

Anybody played Foundation? Looks pretty neat, but I wasn't willing to go in at the €40 price tag from the developer's site. Is just gone into Early Access on Steam, for the slightly more reasonable €26 (or £24ish for me).

Still, if it's miles off being enjoyable then I may as well hold off even longer.

There's some cool stuff in it but it is very far from done.

Cool stuff:
- No grids, pathways happen "organically". Same with housing. You place other buildings but it is pretty freeform
- Design your own church/manor is kind of cool although currently the options are kind of limited
- Supply chains require thought to building placement if you want to be semi-efficient

Not Done:
- Once you kind of get things set up decently there's not much to do
- No push back by the game really, once you can make enough food
- They have soldiers but I don't think there's anything to have them do other than train
- Need more starting biomes (I think they just added another, bringing the total to 4, I believe)
- "Quest" system is pretty limited. As is the trading aspect.

Despite those, it is very chill game. Given little pressure by the game as it currently stands, you can spend your time just messing around without worrying about something killing everyone. Even the "pressure" of food is not bad as the game forces you to start with access to berries that can be foraged.

TL;DR: It is a chill game that I have enjoyed my time in but is far from finished.

Frostpunk is brutal. I somehow survived even though everything was going to crap around me. I think everyone was half frozen and maybe a third died in the last couple days. I love how their games manage to capture such a grim tone and make it fun to try and make the best of a bad situation.

Airborne Kingdom? A floating city building game? Yes please!

Budo wrote:

Airborne Kingdom? A floating city building game? Yes please!

At least link the Steam page for chrissakes.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/9...

Well, that certainly unique! Bravo to them.

Airborne Kingdom uniquely blends city management and exploration

Uh, oh, I went from Meh to Interested.

It sounds like someone watched that Mortal Engines movie and decided to figure out how not to make it stink.

Budo wrote:

It sounds like someone watched that Mortal Engines movie and decided to figure out how not to make it stink.

Not super difficult, that movie was a pile of garbage.

Any thoughts on "Townsmen", newly released on Steam from a THQ Nordic developer called Handyman?

It was a crappy time restricted freemium game when I tried it on Android

Oh! Good to know, thanks BadKen.

Just checked Steam, and yeah, that's the same thing I played. I'm not sure what they did about the time gating on PC.

I think they got rid of it and are charging $20 for the game ($15 for a short time).

Oh man, Airborne Kingdom is just asking for some sort of ~ morality meter in the game. The city border.. dropoff could 'solve' so many management issues.

quick edit/add: also, I really want them to combine their design with classic Joust arcade gameplay.

'Dem edit and add buttons.. they be like separate coasts, yo!

Has anyone been following or tried Dawn of Man? It was just released on Steam yesterday.

Yonder wrote:

Has anyone been following or tried Dawn of Man? It was just released on Steam yesterday.

Several people have put it on their wishlist, I only see TrashiDawa playing it so far. I'm very interested.

After reading the RPS piece, I'm tempted... On sale until the 8th, too.