Looking for something like Sim City...

[RuleOfSines]

Anyone enjoy Cim City -esque games? I kind of want to play one again, but the last I remember of Sim City was some online-only debacle years ago. Is there a good competitor in that genre that doesn't require I buy a game and then a bunch of DLC?

[ChoSanJuan]

If you want a fun Sim City esque experience on mobile, try out Pocket City. Even though there is a fair amount of in app purchases stuff, it's still very playable!

[Nish]

Cities Skylines from paradox is supposed to be good. Being a paradox game there will be DLC but I'm not sure that you need to buy any of them.

[the_matrix_guy]

As someone who played Sim City way back in the day. I can tell ya, that you'd probably enjoy strategy games. Strategy games vary, some are more battle oriented than others, but they're a ton of fun, and have lots of similarities. Lots of resource management too, in order to keep your populations productive and "distracted" so that you can fund your armies and wage war, etc. You don't really watch cities get built, per se, but regardless, they are much better games IMO.

Also a game like Fallout 4 is pretty entertaining, even though it's an action RPG, and obviously apples and oranges, but you have a whole aspect of the game dedicated to settlement building, and with some of the mods out there you can really go all out and spend tons of hours building out your settlements. And this is actually building. So you do build stuff if that is what you enjoyed from playing SimCity. You have a ton of different items that you craft everything from water pumps, to different kinds of structures, walls, and fortifications, to generators, electricity posts, lighting, furniture, defense/turrets, etc, etc. And mods add thousands of new items so you can go all out and build Sims-style -- but with a post-apocalyptic twist. You also have to take resources into consideration and keep your settlers happy, etc.

I recommend: Crusader Kings 3, the Total War series, Age of Empires, and Fallout 4. That said, as Nish suggested, Cities Skylines is probably the closest to SimCity. But I still recommend the other games I suggested. Crusader Kings 3 is also from Paradox and has overwhelmingly positive reviews.

[Nish]

I'm on the fence about Ck3 only because of time. I played Ck2 and currently play Stellaris (Great 4x game like the civ games but galactic) and really cant add another time sink right now.

The CK games are great strategy games based on managing your family and dynasty. Building resources, power and influence

I will say that paradox is notoriously bad at teaching you to play it's games. It also keeps it's games interesting with DLC for years after release.

[RuleOfSines]

Thanks for the suggestions! For now I'm trying out Cities Skylines, just got the base game in case I didn't fall in love with it. So far its really hitting the spot, a nice relaxing follow up from playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I actually really like managing traffic flow it turns out..