Your favourite city building game?

Advanced search

If you registered for membership on this site but have not yet received the confirmation activation email, there are 3 main reasons.

1. It ended up in your junk or spam folder, please look there to see if it's in there.

2. You did not enter your correct email address.  Please register with a new username and the correct email address and try again.

3. Your IP address and or your Email Address is listed in the Stop Forum Spam (spam protection) database as a known spammer and when either your IP address and or your email address appears in that database, your account can not be approved.  As such if you are a spammer, please move along, our community is too small for you to bother with.  If you are NOT a spammer, contact the owners of Stop Forum Spam and get your information removed from their database and register a new account.

[Khalan]

I'm interested in which city building game is your favourite and why.

I'll start with mine, Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile, for a number of reasons.

- First and foremost for me, it is based on people.  Individuals even.  Every single person in the game is tracked, along with their family relations, job, satisfaction and family history.  Every single person is visible in the game at any time, even when they're at home sleeping.  This is quite impressive given the high number of people you can end up with in large cities, and gives a much greater sense of involvement for the player.

- There are no hard and fast rules.  If you run out of food, your people will forage for themselves.  If they're not happy, they'll return to village life.  There's no money, only food and goods.  If these are available, your people will be happy, and your nobles and Pharoah can live in luxury.

- The non-reliance on roads.  I love to use roads, but I like that your citizens aren't required to use them.  With the enhanced patch, they'll also speed up your walkers a bit.

- Buildings are built visually brick by brick, column by column instead of insta-build.

- Buildings evolve visually based on how well the individual building is doing.  You can also add your own touches.  You can go from mud huts and dirt roads to gleaming white structures and plazas.

- A completely non-restricted camera.  You can zoom right down into first person view and walk the streets.

- Large natural maps to build on.

- Large monuments to build, that take quite a long time and hundreds of resources, as well as being able to build many smaller statues and obelisks etc.

- Trading with dozens of different camps, villages, cities etc.

- Tombs for your nobles and Pharoahs.  They not only add prestige but they add a real sense of personal history to the game.  You can see where your very first pharaoh lies, while his descendent four or eight or ten generations later currently rules.

- The final and most important point for me besides the first, is that what you see is what you get.  There are no abstractions.

I just hope there'll be a CotN2, or a new Immortal Cities game.  I'm interested to hear what others have to say about their favourite game, whether it's new, recent or old.

[City Builder]

I'd have to say, probably Anno 1404, closely followed by Children of the Nile.

I find Anno more challenging thatn Cotn, however I like Cotn for all the reasons that you mentioned.  i feel that I've really accomplished something in Cotn when that great pyramid is completed.  I really would have liked to see more economical scenarios for the game instead of military.  military just isn't my thing in a city building game, I try to avoid it if at all possible like in Civcity rome and the way they had the campaign branch off, one direction military, the other way economy.

I would love to see another game in the Immortal Cities series, more so then a cotn 2, maybe  Immortal Cities: The silk road (Asia) (Yes, I have no idea if the silk road is in Asia or not, I just like the name of it).

I would still play cotn if there were some decent economical scenarios to play, but I don't see them anywhere.

[`Farmboy 102]

I have to go for Stronghold Crusader. 

It's a simple yet very addictive game.

They paid alot of attention to attention to detail and made gameplay very easy.

It's suteable for all audiences and the editor interface is easy to use.

Hope that was helpfull info.

[City Builder]

What year was Stronhold Crusader first sold?

Is Firefly studios still using the same engine from Stronghold 1 or 2 to produce their newer Stronghold games?  I'm really an eye candy whore now adays and needs mah eye candy.  I had a great deal of fun in Stronghold 1 and 2, but I never bought anymore of the stronghold series after that because the eye candy didn't seem to keep up with the times and was starting to feel really dated to me.  Especially things like the way that they do their water.  Does Crusader use the same engine as their other Stronghold titles?  If not, I may have to see if anybody sells them locally or if they are on steam, impulse or well... Just those two.

Edit: Apparently, it's not sold on Steam or Impulse.  I didn't see it at the local best buy either when I was down there last Sunday, so I suppose it would be an Amazon or eBay title if I wanted it, however the eye candy would need to be improved over the original games for me.  Sad, I didn't use to be such a graphics whore.

[RhiannOn]

My favourite is Pharoah.  Even though there are some wonderful games available eg anno series, simcity, cotn, Emperor etc I still go back to Pharoah and is always kept on my main pc.

The graphics are not flash now, but the game play, though it is simple for starters, does become a real challenge later on but not overly exhausting.
The atmosphere, colour, enviornment and music are also pretty nice.
It's well put together and is definately not a 20 hour game...(I still haven't finished it as I get sidetracked with other cb's .  Bad I know )

[mike28086]

I know that it is old,
but Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom is my favorite game.   
I think that an updated (3d) version of this game should have been made.

Regards,

mike28086

[City Builder]

I agree, I would much rather have seen Emperor 2 in full 3D goodness instead of Caesar IV.  The architecture in the game was really beautiful to look at.  I still load it up from time to time to romp around a little bit, but not for very long as after all these years of playing free roaming CB games it's hard for me to go back to building blocks of buildings again.  Going to be even harder after putting a lot of time into Tropico 3.

I'm a slow player so I never get through games in as little time as many other players.  For example currently Im playing an action rpg called Torchlight, I've seen people complain that they were able to get through the game in as little as 10 hours.  Yet my main character has now got over 40 hours on him and he's still not done with the story dungeon, let alone started to do any deep diving into the infinity dungeon.

[Fishrob]

My Fav has to be Emperor too,i play it over and over never get bored of it,it was great when the multiplayer worked

[Lengo]

What year was Stronhold Crusader first sold?

Is Firefly studios still using the same engine from Stronghold 1 or 2 to produce their newer Stronghold games?  I'm really an eye candy whore now adays and needs mah eye candy.  I had a great deal of fun in Stronghold 1 and 2, but I never bought anymore of the stronghold series after that because the eye candy didn't seem to keep up with the times and was starting to feel really dated to me.  Especially things like the way that they do their water.  Does Crusader use the same engine as their other Stronghold titles?  If not, I may have to see if anybody sells them locally or if they are on steam, impulse or well... Just those two.

Edit: Apparently, it's not sold on Steam or Impulse.  I didn't see it at the local best buy either when I was down there last Sunday, so I suppose it would be an Amazon or eBay title if I wanted it, however the eye candy would need to be improved over the original games for me.  Sad, I didn't use to be such a graphics whore.

Stronghold Crusaders is available at Target Stores. You probably can find it at Amazon.com too. I STRONGLY recommend that you buy the CD. It is already patched and up to date, so no additional work is necessary.

Additions to the game are also available. I'll have to look for where to find these, but they add additional AI opponents.

I think Farmboy is spot on. I agree on all matters, especially being suitable for all ages. But one thing he forgot -- it's just plain FUN! Erm... unless you lose. But there's elements in this game that are not found in most others. THAT, is a sense of humor.

"Great! Moat digging! I hate water!"

[City Builder]

If they would bring Stronghold into the modern age of 3D graphics I'd buy it (again - and why not I've bought Glory of the Roman empire 3 times what with Glory to the Roman Empire, Imperium Romanum and what ever the hell the name is of the last one (senility has definitely set in for me)  ), but in it's current form, I dunno, I just can't really get into it anymore with it's "style" of yesterdays games.

Now don't get me wrong, I still believe that gameplay is where it's at, however I needs meh eye candy too now a days.