Greg Recommends City Skylines

Website: STEAM / Paradox Interactive

As of the writing of this article (October 2017) Paradox Interactive's "City Skylines" is the best city builder on the market. It's basically Sim City except bigger and better in all the ways that matter. It's a relaxing "go at your own pace" ginormous sandbox of opportunity that layers a multitude of systems on top of each other to create a city building experience that keeps it simple enough for beginners but with enough depth and mechanics to keep the expert city builders occupied for hundreds of hours.

Image from the Steam Community

Anyone who has played a Sim City game will immediately be familiar with the 'zoning' system whereby you designate what types of buildings can be built in different parts of your city. You start out every city by laying road down off a preexisting highway into whatever layout you like and then designate different zones (residential, commercial, and industrial to start). Virtual citizens will then start flocking to your tiny town and start building houses and businesses for themselves. The amount of each type of building as well as their location relative to each other matters. Residents will need jobs to work at and shops to frequent and the various industrial and commercial businesses will require workers to run. You need to keep a balance so that your city can keep growing. Keep on eye on the RCI panel to see what type of buildings are needed.

As mayor you're responsible for providing your citizens with basic utilities and so you'll also start off by laying down some water pipes underground and then connect them to a clean source of water for drinking and somewhere else (hopefully down river) to dump your water waste. (Don't worry, you'll eventually unlock more environmentally friendly ways to dispose of your raw sewage). You'll also need to provide electricity via a power plant (cost effective but makes lots of pollution) or wind turbines (expensive but eco-friendly). More options are unlocked later.

As your town grows you'll begin to reach population milestones that unlock more features for you to play with. You'll be 'plopping' down schools, parks, police stations, fire stations, clinics, and public transport buildings that will increase the value of your land so the buildings on it will upgrade themselves while also preventing danger and injury to your little people.

All of this is pretty standard and almost a direct copy and paste job from previous Sim City games. Where City Skylines surpasses Sim City in the basics is in its pathing logic, customization, and logical infrastructure. In Skylines your little people actually live and work in specific buildings while in Sim City your sims take the first vacant building / working spot they can find on their commute to and from work. In Skylines the traffic has always made sense while in Sim City the traffic only kind of makes sense after years of patching to try and fix what was originally a nightmare. In Skylines the relationship between residential / commercial / industry matter, you need to have a good balance to thrive while in Sim City your sims will be happy to live in a city with no stores, no schools, and no jobs.

A traffic solution I build myself!

As your town grows and becomes a city you'll run into problems with traffic. This is normal as the types of roads you had access to at the start weren't designed to accommodate the vast amounts of people who now want to live in your community. The question (and the fun) in this game is 'what are you going to do about it?' How are you going to fix the traffic problems?

Skylines gives you some powerful options for dealing with traffic. You can increase the number of lanes, you can make a road one-way only, you can build ramps and tunnels, but most importantly, you can place roads pretty much however you need to without the game telling you 'you can't do that' or auto-snapping your roads to where it 'thinks' they should go (like a certain other city builder series). There also options for mass-transit (buses, trains, ferries, metro, etc). You can even place or remove individual stop lights and stop signs at specific intersections if you want to really micro-manage traffic flow throughout your city and it will make a huge difference when you do.

Here's a story from my own city. At the entrance at the edge of the map I had a super busy four way intersection. North connected to the highway. South went into the downtown. East went to my farms. West went to my lumber industry. Everyone coming in and going out had to compete with heavy freight traffic wanting to go east, west, and north. Everyone had to stop at the lights and there was always a lineup on all four sides. At first I replaced the four - way with a roundabout so there would be no stoplights. This worked for a while but the traffic didn't flow as nicely as I wanted it to and lineups still happened. I did some brain storming and thought about real life overpasses and then tried to build one myself. It took a little trial and error but I eventually did it, I built my own overpass so now the traffic flows smoothly from every direction, no more stopping, no more slowing, it was a very satisfying feeling when I had finally gotten it to work.

As your city keeps growing it will become beneficial for you to separate it into different sectors. This is easily done from the HUD and costs you nothing to do. Sectors are areas of your city that follow specific rules that affect what your little people can and can not do, how much they pay, and how much they produce. You may want to put pollution restrictions on an industrial zone but also give them permission to double their production by cutting corners on safety. You may want to make an especially high value part of your city pay higher taxes and restrict pets and freight trucks to keep it as desirable as possible. I was especially pleased with the sector option that made large commercial buildings double their sales which ended up doubling my income per month in taxes even for my small city.

Sectors also allow you to customize what specialization your industry will have in that area. Farming (if on fertile ground), forestry, mining, and oil are all options that will produce needed goods for your city as well as a lot of freight traffic to import and export needed materials. It is usually worth thinking through how you will keep your freight traffic smoothly going where it needs to go and away from your busy commuter routes.

You'll also need to set up a garbage disposal system, a 'death care' system, public transport, put down more schools, and experiment with new zoning types (high density residential / commercial and offices). If you have the 'Night Life' DLC then you'll also be wanting to look at the entertainment industry to bring in tourists and the potential for lots of crime.

Underneath the hood of this game there is a lot going on. Your city actually has specific needs that your little people will try to fill. Businesses require workers of varying education levels as well as specific materials to function. Your stores need specific freight of varying types which can be produced by your industries or imported. Your industries require specific materials to make their products. Home and business owners will expand if all their needs are being met so even more people can live and work there. Your little people will drive, bike, walk, and jump between all manner of public transportation to get to work, go to school, go shopping, and go home. Each of these things affects your city and Skylines provides lots of tools to track these analytics. You can see at a glance how effective each of your systems is, and which areas of your city are being overlooked.

As you keep growing things keep changing and the old systems and infrastructure that used to work fine will need to be upgraded, changed, or removed and replaced with something else. The result is an organic city building experience that moves at the pace you set for yourself.

After a while you will start rubbing up against the sides of your portion of the map. That's ok, you're allowed to buy more sections. You can even download a mod that lets you use the entire 5x5 grid to build a massive metropolis provided your CPU can handle it.

Two bus routes and two metro routes combine at the center of town to take everyone where they need to go.

The fun in this game is definitely in the building, the problem solving, and the watching. Planning out how I want my little people to meet their needs and move about smoothly is fun and the Skylines has enough options and more than enough depth to make the planning phase a stimulating endeavor. The robust mechanics ensure that there will always be things to do and problems to solve as well as a multitude of ways to solve them. This game respects you and gives you free reign to use all the tools a real city planner would have and lets you make mistakes so you can learn from them.

The game is also beautiful. It may not be as polished as Sim City (Maxis loved to polish all their stuff) but it still looks great. I sometimes lose track of what I wanted to do just looking at the busy streets and all the traffic flowing like life giving blood through the arteries of a living thing.

screenshot from Jonathan Bolding's review on The Escapist Magazine

It gets better though. The game is fully supported for mods which means the community has put together a very large body of easily added buildings, vehicles, people, utilities, and much much more to grace your city. Simply visit the City Skylines Steam Workshop and start subscribing to whatever content you would like to have access to for free.

The only things I can say that could use improvement in Skylines would be if they had in-game tutorials, campaign or, challenge maps. There are plenty of tutorials online, which are good, and you can download player-made challenge maps, but these tend to be unrealistic.

The game is a bit expensive if you're purchasing the base and all the DLCs at regular price. As is common with Paradox games the base game is always being added to with free features as new DLC is being created while the DLCs themselves still really add a lot to the base and it is worth picking them up if you enjoy the game. Here is a list of the current DLCs and what they do.

After Dark - Adds 'Leisure Specialization' which makes your commercial buildings extra active at night and 'Tourism Specialization' which makes your commercial buildings near the beach a hotbed for tourism.

Snowfall - Adds the option to have a winter city with snow removal being another system to layer on top of your city. Unfortunately there are no changing seasons (yet).

Natural Disasters - Adds the ability to afflict your city with a variety of natural disasters.

Mass Transit - Adds a variety of new mass transit options to get your citizens from point A to point B without clogging your roads.

Green Cities - Adds a bunch of specializations, buildings, vehicles, parks, policies, and scenarios of the eco-friendly variety.

Concerts - Adds the ability to get live performances in your stadium(s) to generate money, traffic problems, and maybe crime.

Cosmetic Packs - There are a variety of packs that add extra buildings from the top of the modding community.

On a final note perfectionists may need to just relax and mentally prepare before playing this game. It is entirely possible to build a perfect city with a perfect grid and a perfect balance of all types of buildings and services. however, I would advice against this and I think that it is far more interesting and freeing to not try and build a perfect grid. Allow yourself to make things unsymmetrical and even (dare I say it) mistakes on purpose. Let your city have some personality. If you try for the perfect grid every time then you'll be frustrated as you run into new options you hadn't considered when you first started building.

City Skylines - Easy to get into, difficult to master, organic, vibrant, deep, mod and community friendly, this is the best city builder in a long time.

Greg Recommends The Anno Series

UBISoft / STEAM / GoG

Dirt Cheap to $50 depending on the title.

The "Anno Series" are real time strategy games that blend city building with business and resource management. The first title, Anno 1602 launched in 1998 and the most recent title, Anno 2205 launched late 2015. Each of these titles is good and you can start with any one of them.

1601 - Tobacco Plantations. Good graphics for 1998.

Your goal in each of these games is to go out and locate a new home to settle, build up, and 'conquer'. I put conquer in quotations because the game is 98% settling, building, and perfecting. These are peaceful and often slow strategy games with a heavy emphasis on building placement and resource management over and above combat.

1503 - An army lies siege to your city! Graphics upgraded from 1602.

One of the core mechanics behind the series is that your citizens will require (demand?) certain things according to how fancy their house is, similar to the old Caesar classics but far easier to control. So taking the first game, 1602, when you create a new house the residents require that they live within a certain distance from the town center building and that your island inventory contain enough food to feed them. If you don't meet these basic demands the people will eventually leave and the building will collapse over time. Alternatively should you go above and beyond the basic requirements and provide some of their requests like being a certain distance from a chapel and have access to wool cloth, they will be happy to pay higher taxes and even improve their residence should the appropriate resources be available to them. These upgraded houses represent an entirely new class of resident with the former demands and requests now becoming the baseline to maintain them and a new list of requests being presented. So now instead of pioneers requiring community, a chapel, cloth, and fish you now have settlers who require all these things but now also request alcohol, spices, education, and tobacco. The higher the tier of housing, the more people live therein, the more money you can tax, but the more they require to stay happy.

1701 - Zooming in close to one of your ships. Large graphics upgrade from 1503.

As the population of your settlement(s) grow you gain access to new buildings that you need to keep growing or just make your existing infrastructure more efficient. To ensure that you branch out from your original island home no one island will have everything that you need to keep growing. Once you are established on your home you will find yourself loading up a ship in hopes of finding more new land, hopefully containing the right conditions to grow your own grapes or spices or whatever it is that your people need before they upgrade their houses again.

1701 - A lively port city!

The result is a game of mostly peaceful building with ships sailing this way and that delivering goods back and forth as you slowly add more layers of complexity to keep up with the needs of your people before meeting the map's win conditions. Later titles after 1602 add a few interesting twists like different types of resources, expanded diplomacy with other players, lesser NPC nations that hold exclusive luxury goods, tech trees, going underwater, additional society factions, or landing on the moon, but the core premise and game-play fixtures are always the same.

1404 - Everything is somehow bigger and crisper than 1701.

The graphics are always good for the time in which the game was released. Anno 1602 graphics were quite good for 1998 and Anno 2205 has great graphics for a 2015 game (read: beefy video card and processor required), but I have always found the details limited. Everything looks good, but it all starts to look the same after a little while. If you've seen one block of housing you've seen every block of housing and your cities tend to feature lots of blocks of housing. You can zoom in to see your people milling about in the newer titles but your people do little more than just mill about. This isn't like Tropico where every person is busy doing things on the island, the 'people' you see in Anno are just eye-candy and while the buildings and the countrysides look beautiful they are just representative of the real game of supply and demand and expanding your infrastructure to make your city bigger. I think that, in a strange way, the beauty of the game works against itself in that people expect to find a higher level of detail and personality in the graphics of a game that looks so good.

2070 - Welcome to the future. Everything is much bigger here.

One thing I have always appreciated about the Anno series is the music. Orchestral and dynamic right from good old 1602 onward. Many of the songs are downright gorgeous and make the game a joy to play. Here's a link to some good music from 2070 to show you what I'm talking about.

As for the combat it is minimal and the least interesting part of the Anno series. Should your expansion for more resources get blocked or if you're just greedy or a jerk then you build warships of varying sizes to go sink your rival's boats and blow up their coastal buildings. In the pre-2070 titles you can also build a handful of soldier types to land on your rival's island and take it over one warehouse at a time while the new titles employ airborne drones with which to bomb things. The defense against ships, soldiers, and drones is to build static defense towers to shoot at enemies within range in addition to having your own ships, soldiers, and drones. There is no strategy beyond 'attack as a big group' and taking out an opponent is a long and boring task.

2070 - An underwater base. Very important for producing algae, oil, and many rare elements.

The fun of this game is definitely in building a big city and setting up the supporting infrastructure. Whether that's lumber camps and clay pits in Anno 1602 or Oil Rigs / Processing plants and mass produced fast food in Anno 2070. Some of the production chains to get desired items can be quite involved; like creating service bots in 2070 which requires sand from a river, copper from a mine, corn from a farm, seaweed from an underwater farm, a chip factory, a biopolymer factory, and a robot factory. Getting the balance of lower tier resource gathering buildings to higher tier refining buildings mixed with the ever growing demands of your population can be a daunting task after a while, but this is part of the fun.

2205 - You thought things in 2070 were big? This is REALLY big.

There is also fun in just sitting back and watching a well oiled infrastructure servicing a city. All those ships coming and going and, depending on which title you're playing, either delivery people carrying wheelbarrows of goods this way and that or airborne drones ferrying cargo all over the skies.

The Anno series is about long term gaming. You can't really just play through it in a week and be done, completing a map takes a long time and there are lots of maps to play through should you desire them.

There is multiplayer, although I have never tried it outside of building peacefully with my family in 1602.

2205 - Building on the moon.

The one caveat I have on this series is that the DRM on Anno 2070 was so stringent that I couldn't actually play my legally purchased version of the game for years and their customer service team eventually just threw up their hands and said "we don't know how to help you." I eventually found the answer in a steam forum about which setting was off in my network that made the game impossible to play.

Other than that I think the games hold a lot of merit. They make infrastructure fun, they look and sound fantastic, and they are primarily a peaceful building game which we probably need more of in our violence obsessed culture.

Greg Recommends Tropico 4 + Modern Times Expansion

Price: $16.99

Website: http://store.steampowered.com/app/57690/

Tropico 4 is a smart city builder with a twist; you play as El Presedente, a ridiculous but brilliant (or quite possibly just very lucky) tin pot dictator who must build up a Caribbean island nation while stashing away as much money as possible while also ensuring that the Tropican citizens don't arm themselves and storm the palace. With over 90 hours of game play logged I have played through all of the content in Tropico 4, including the Modern Times expansion and all DLCs. The mechanics are deceptively deep and intricate while also seamless, the graphics show some aging but still offer some beautiful shots, and the humor spread throughout is a blast. This is definitely my city builder of choice.

Special note: Don't bother with Tropico 3 as it is the same game as Tropico 4 except but with less options.

Special note 2: Tropico 5 is a significant revamp of the Tropico series and is worth playing if you enjoy city builders. Tropico 4 is my favorite though and it's cheaper.

Gameplay

Humble beginnings... your lonely palace, a handful of corn
farms, a dock, a construction office, and some shacks.

The general goal of each Tropico game is to take your tiny underdeveloped and poverty stricken island village and turn into a profitable Caribbean paradise. There are many ways to do this and many challenges along the way; the scenarios in the campaigns also tend to mix things up a bit with special objectives and unique challenges.

As already alluded to the mechanics of Tropico 4 are complex and very well integrated. As El Presedente you are responsible for all aspects of your islands' infrastructure, economy, politics, military, and the well being of your citizens. To summarize things very briefly the two main things that lead to success are the happiness of your people and the amount of money you are able to generate. Generally speaking you begin by build up basic industries to export goods which make enough money to build more industries as well as the things that make your citizens happy (real houses, churches, hospitals, entertainment options, etc). As the game progresses you will be able to expand beyond basic raw material exports (crops, metals, lumber etc.) to processed goods (Rum, weapons, furniture etc.) as well as create hotels for tourists to come give you their money, that is, assuming you have the infrastructure to field these things. Where you place buildings matters as a long commute may cost you productivity or citizen happiness and some buildings have area affect bonuses depending on what is around them. Efficient roadways are important and require a measure of planning as they can become clogged and bog down production. There is rarely enough money, time, or resources to make everyone happy until a successful mid - late game and the fun is striking a balance and watching your island nation grow. In terms of the size of your city you are only limited by the size of your island (up to 'very big') and the speed of your processor.

Turns into skyscrapers, factories, shopping malls, tourist
traps, luxury entertainment, and bustling roadways.

Every citizen is procedurally generated with varying importance spread out among several needs (food, housing, job, entertainment, safety, health etc.) and will seek out ways to meet needs that get too low. Your citizens choose which building to live in, where they want to work, and which political faction they support. They interact with your city and react to how you rule them. You can click on any one of them to see their stats and have them fired, arrested, executed, excommunicated, bribed, or arrange an accident... Likewise you can click on specific buildings to adjust the wages they pay, who works there, and how many positions they are allowed to fill. El Presedente's ingame character can even visit specific buildings to increase their 'quality', make construction crews work faster or give speeches from the palace to raise the respect of everyone who attends. You can zoom the camera right in to street level and get up close and personal with your creation and the people who live there. These sorts of micro-management options are especially useful at the beginning of the game when money is tight and high school / college educated citizens are in short supply, but what is even more impressive is the way the game gives you information and control at the meta-level.

Zooming in on a residential sector with a nice little restaurant on the corner.

The 'Almanac' gives El Presedente a bird's eye view of all the important statistics of your island. The happiness of your people (for example) is listed as percentages which can in turn be clicked on for a full breakdown. You can get a birds eye view of your economy, trade, political factions, and the various demographics of your citizens. The almanac is especially useful when an election is called and you want to see where you stand with the various political factions (Capitalists, Communists, Militarists, Religious, Nationalists, Environmentalists, Loyalists). The makeup of these political groups will affect how you approach your island. A Communist majority will have different demands than a Religious majority and appeasing one group may make other groups upset with you. It's an uneven sea-saw and you are in the middle trying not to fall off.

At least the people respect their leader and are eating well... No, you cannot have more liberty!
Here's some blocky soviet tenements and a church to appease you while I bathe in my money.

The foreign superpowers also affect how you will rule your little island paradise. The US and the USSR will provide you with annual financial aid and unique trade options according to how much they like you but will invade if you make them angry. Other foreign powers like the UK, China, and the Middle East will provide lucrative trade options and gifts if appeased. The foreign powers as well as Tropico's political factions will offer minor objectives throughout the game asking you do something they want in return for money, respect, or a trade deal.

Also available to El Presedente are powerful edicts that can be unlocked to change how things are done on the island. Some examples are 'Food for the People' which gives a large boost to food quality at the cost of allowing Tropicans to eat twice as much of your food, 'Martial Law' which cancels all elections and greatly reduces crime at the cost of liberty and tourism ratings, and 'Off to Florida!' which sends all criminals to Miami on a government approved raft-like structure at the cost of US - Tropico relations for the next five years.

Looking over a mid - late game Tropico.

The campaign does a good job of breaking you in slowly as you learn how to build farms to feed your people and set up basic industries to start earning some cash. New concepts (foreign affairs, military, education, and edicts to name a few) are introduced slowly at first and it makes for an enjoyable tutorial as such. There are always strategies for how to run the island as well as a multitude of ways to squeeze extra money out of exports and tourists either into the island's bank account or into El Presedente's retirement fund... some of them are even unsuspiciously legal!

Between the robust mechanics and a multitude of options there is no right or wrong way to rule your island, although some strategies are better suited than others depending on the situation. Keep it simple as a self-sufficient farmer's haven or try for the big bucks by building factories and importing the necessary raw materials. Keep your citizens uneducated and indoctrinate them to become Loyalists Kim Jong-il style or embrace democracy and bring your people all the luxuries and liberties of the western world. Find the play style that works for you and then use your political influence to encourage some factions to grow while discouraging those troublesome nay saying factions. Bribery, coercion, control of the media, prison labor camps (DLC), and good old fashioned execution are all at your disposal. A word of caution though, ensure that your army is big enough (and loyal enough) to handle any explosive consequences that come from aggressive political shaping. A secret police HQ wouldn't go amiss either...

The Tropican Armed Forces intercept a group of rebels intent on storming the palace!

Bright Aesthetics & Humor

The overall tone and atmosphere of Tropico is as bright and silly as a city builder could be. The graphics are of an older generation but they are nonetheless full of vibrant colors, swaying palm trees, busy streets, blocky communist style tenements, glass skyscrapers, and beautiful gardens surrounded by the blue of the Caribbean Sea. The soundtrack is an absurdly happy, catchy, lively and (depending on your tastes) possibly annoying medley of Latin-American inspired musics which set the mood for upbeat fun in the sun. The representatives of Tropico's factions serve as your advisers and each one is a silly caricature that will chime in with helpful advise every once in a while and will occasionally take control of the radio and comment on El Presedente's actions and quite possibly bicker with other faction leaders over the air waves.

The story line of the campaigns starts out normal enough but becomes a wacky over the top concoction of conspiracies, international espionage, outrageous master plans, and crazy vendettas all wrapped up in some excellent humor and lighthearted fun. This is a story where El Presedente begins as a simple tin pot dictator with delusions of grandeur and in his quest to make Tropico the richest most powerful nation on earth he ends up the victim of an elaborate conspiracy (original game) and then in the expansion also single-handedly diffusing World War 3, defeating international terrorism, landing on the moon, warding off the zombie apocalypse, and moving Tropico out of the path of a nuclear missile by building lots of wind turbines. The characters are bright, zany, and varied. El Presedente is obviously corrupt but is so charismatic that he convinces everyone that he's the hero. You're #1 adviser worships you and is utterly incompetent, but his crazy schemes usually end up working in the end. Your environmental adviser, Sunny Flowers, is a tree hugging hippy left wing loon and your military adviser tries to scare off tornadoes to make them retreat while your capitalist adviser tries to sell discount weapons to the rebels over the radio. Everything is a joke in Tropico, everyone is happy in Tropico, everything is corrupt in Tropico, and Tropico is most definitely the best place in the entire world.

A Note on the Modern Times Expansion

The modern times expansion adds new buildings, edicts, and an additional campaign to Tropico 4 that build off the existing mechanics. As time progresses in your games these new buildings and options will be unlocked (makes the decision of when to use certain options more interesting). Older buildings can be replaced by modern day buildings improving efficiency and (maybe) decreasing pollution. Many of the modern buildings have options that affect how they function as well as potential bonuses depending on location. It adds a nice addition to the Tropico experience and makes for a more interesting late game but it's not necessary and I'm not sure I could recommend buying it at full price to new players. Play through some Tropico 4 to see if you enjoy it enough to commit the time required to play a few games through. My recommendation would be to wait for a good Steam sale and pick it and all the DLC up for about $15.

A nice Tropican skyline brought to you by the Modern Times Expansion.

Summary

Tropico 4 is a smart city builder with great style. Robust and seamless building, economy, and political mechanics covered in bright and lively aesthetics wrapped in some of the most humorous writing I've ever encountered in a video game make this a personal all time favorite. The learning curve in the campaigns is gentle enough to ease new players in while also leaving all the options open for more adventurous players to experiment and go wild. Pick this title (and all the addons) up in the next Steam sale for some excellent city building and seriously silly fun in the sun.