City Builder and Colony Sim Discussion Thread

These are some of the hottest categories on Steam with new games coming out regularly, and I know that several of us play occasionally in this/these genres, so I thought maybe this would merit its own thread.

I'm currently playing Timberborn, an early access colony sim about a colony of beavers. Just "finished" my first playthrough (I don't think there are official victory conditions) and am going to start a new colony. This time I'm more familiar with the tech trees and the requirements of each building, so I think I can better organize my colony. My first one wasn't too badly organized, but there was an essential building I missed in the mid-game, and when I got around to it, I had to either build it on the outskirts or start knocking down old buildings to rearrange then. I chose to just put it on the outskirts, but that causes a few slow-downs.
 
Some city builders/colony sims on sale right now during Simfest. A number of them are at their historical low pricing.

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Still playing Per Aspera in short bursts. Think I might even give the sandbox a go after the campaign finishes as its pretty satisfying to see the terraforming start to work. Its going to be easier to make the process more efficient when I have a better idea of the steps involved.

The story is pulling me along, and there seems to be multiple paths to take so it probably has some replay value outside of sandbox as well.
 
Timberborn has two different factions with different tech trees. It's possible that there are more factions I haven't unlocked yet, or more factions planned for early access. Not sure. But there are 12 different maps. So two factions and 12 maps is pretty good replayability.

I just unlocked the second faction, but am going to continue to play the first one for awhile, and actually am going to keep playing my current game because there are still plenty of things I haven't built yet. Although, honestly, the beginning of these games seems to be the most fun.
 
I like the sound of Timberborn, but one of the player reviews I read on Steam said that theres basically no endgame after you've built everything there is to build. Is that how it actually works?
That is correct, at least during the early access period. That's not really a problem for me because I'm used to playing early access, and I just set my own end goals. And, honestly, there's a ton to do, so I'm more likely to start over than to completely finish everything anyway, but that's just my personality.

There is definitely enough content to get your money's worth, but some people require an "end" to really be happy with a game, which I fully understand.

The thing about early access for me is that I get more play out of a game if there is no end/end game. For instance, I've got over 500 hours in Satisfactory, much of which I attribute to there being no end to the game. If I actually finish a game, or get to the end game, I rarely am inspired to go back and play it again.

I'm talking about two different things here. End and end game. If you get to the "end", the credits roll. If you get to the "end game", you have stuff to do for as long as you can stand to do that stuff, which is usually pretty repetitive.

I'm not sure what an "end game" would look like in Timberborn, but I can imagine just setting more goals, like reaching certain population milestones or certain levels of beaver happiness. Right now, the only sort of "end" that it has is that if you reach level 15 happiness then you unlock a new faction.

The thing about endless play in Timberborn is that the maps are only so big. The biggest map is 256 x 256. However, you can build vertically, too, which is something I haven't done a ton of yet, so I can imagine quite a large colony. Maybe they'll add a procedurally generated map at some point for truly endless play, but I don't know if that is planned or not.

Apologies for the ridiculously long response.
 
That is correct, at least during the early access period. That's not really a problem for me because I'm used to playing early access, and I just set my own end goals. And, honestly, there's a ton to do, so I'm more likely to start over than to completely finish everything anyway, but that's just my personality.

There is definitely enough content to get your money's worth, but some people require an "end" to really be happy with a game, which I fully understand.

The thing about early access for me is that I get more play out of a game if there is no end/end game. For instance, I've got over 500 hours in Satisfactory, much of which I attribute to there being no end to the game. If I actually finish a game, or get to the end game, I rarely am inspired to go back and play it again.

I'm talking about two different things here. End and end game. If you get to the "end", the credits roll. If you get to the "end game", you have stuff to do for as long as you can stand to do that stuff, which is usually pretty repetitive.

I'm not sure what an "end game" would look like in Timberborn, but I can imagine just setting more goals, like reaching certain population milestones or certain levels of beaver happiness. Right now, the only sort of "end" that it has is that if you reach level 15 happiness then you unlock a new faction.

The thing about endless play in Timberborn is that the maps are only so big. The biggest map is 256 x 256. However, you can build vertically, too, which is something I haven't done a ton of yet, so I can imagine quite a large colony. Maybe they'll add a procedurally generated map at some point for truly endless play, but I don't know if that is planned or not.

Apologies for the ridiculously long response.

Got you, hopefully they add something in then.

It only needs to be something like constructing a monument that takes a ton of resources and all end game buildings. Doesn't mean the game has to shut you out once its done, but just so that the game says you've done everything and everything from now on is on your own time sort of thing. A proper campaign with a story that affects the game in interesting ways and forces you to solve problems you weren't expecting as it goes on, even better.

Took me a couple tries in Banished to actually get a working colony that survived the winter and so on, but once it was done and every building built the game just kind of limps on, and like you say is just repeating the same stuff to make a bigger town. Its a huge anticlimax for me and feels like the devs left the game unfinished.

That's just the way my particular brain's broken, as you know. :)
 
Got you, hopefully they add something in then.

It only needs to be something like constructing a monument that takes a ton of resources and all end game buildings. Doesn't mean the game has to shut you out once its done, but just so that the game says you've done everything and everything from now on is on your own time sort of thing. A proper campaign with a story that affects the game in interesting ways and forces you to solve problems you weren't expecting as it goes on, even better.

Took me a couple tries in Banished to actually get a working colony that survived the winter and so on, but once it was done and every building built the game just kind of limps on, and like you say is just repeating the same stuff to make a bigger town. Its a huge anticlimax for me and feels like the devs left the game unfinished.

That's just the way my particular brain's broken, as you know. :)
I just checked and they don't have a public roadmap. They basically created a demo, and it was so popular that they released it into early access. They are constantly updating the game, but exactly where they are going with it, no one knows. You have to think it will eventually have some sort of story.

Unrelated, but they have a map editor I'm going to fiddle around with.
 
I have had Aven Colony for awhile now and not played it. Decided to play it today, and it requires a workaround to keep it from crashing to desktop after about a minute of play. You have to either completely disconnect from the Internet, or go into your firewall and block AvenColony-Win64-Shipping.exe
I thought about trying Aven Colony at some point but saw it wasn't rated very highly, so I picked something different. How are you liking it so far?
 
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I thought about trying Aven Colony at some point but saw it wasn't rated very highly, so I picked something different. How are you liking it so far?
So far. so good. I haven't gotten very far into it. Going to play it some more today and will let you know if my opinion changes and go into a little more depth about it. I wonder how many, if any, of the negative reviews are because people can't get the game to run since you have to block a file from Internet access.
 
That does make it sound more interesting, still have to wait for 1.0 though, I'm the scourge of humanity.
Having principles doesn't mean anything. Everyone has principles, from homeless drug addicts to Jim Jones and that guy from Austria with the funny mustache. Equally true is that everyone thinks their principles are better than other people's principles. When this comes up in conversation, they often say, "I have principles" or "I am a man of principles", thus pointing out the superior nature of their belief system. As there must be a differently principled party for the concept to come up, a declaration of principle often results in conflict, from an argument between two people, to the posturing and plotting of rival political groups. And when a very large group of generally homogenous people thinks, "We have principles", war is often the result. So you could say that "having principles" is the root of human problems, the scourge of humanity since its conception.

But it's usually not individual belief systems that are the problem; it is the fanatical belief each human has in their own belief system's infallibility and universal nature. Thus, if a man tells you he has principles, he feels no need to explain himself...

Sorry, I got bored there for a minute and just started writing. :ROFLMAO: Now you're bored too. SUCCESS!

Anyway, no one, not even the developers, has any idea when this will come out of early access. They are basically just listening to feedback and adding stuff. It could theoretically go on forever. They might even add conflict with rival beaver colonies, as I saw people speculating on weapons factories, etc.
 
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Having principles doesn't mean anything. Everyone has principles, from homeless drug addicts to Jim Jones and that guy from Austria with the funny mustache. Equally true is that everyone thinks their principles are better than other people's principles. When this comes up in conversation, they often say, "I have principles" or "I am a man of principles", thus pointing out the superior nature of their belief system. As there must be a differently principled party for the concept to come up, a declaration of principle often results in conflict, from an argument between two people, to the posturing and plotting of rival political groups. And when a very large group of generally homogenous people thinks, "We have principles", war is often the result. So you could say that "having principles" is the root of human problems, the scourge of humanity since its conception.

But it's usually not individual belief systems that are the problem; it is the fanatical belief each human has in their own belief system's infallibility and universal nature. Thus, if a man tells you he has principles, he feels no need to explain himself...

Sorry, I got bored there for a minute and just started writing. :ROFLMAO: Now you're bored too. SUCCESS!

Anyway, no one, not even the developers, has any idea when this will come out of early access. They are basically just listening to feedback and adding stuff. It could theoretically go on forever. They might even add conflict with rival beaver colonies, as I saw people speculating on weapons factories, etc.

I'm not going to reply to this on principle. :p /s etc.

It was a joke :) its pretty ridiculous to me to call not buying early access games a 'principle'. My reasoning for not buying EA games is just that I dont have time to play anywhere near all of the games that have already been released over the last 20 years. Let alone if I start digging into games that are still in development.

I'm happy that some devs care enough about their creations to want to involve the community into making them as good as they can be, and if people like to spend their time being a part of that process more power to them.
 
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I'm not going to reply to this on principle. :p /s etc.

It was a joke :) its pretty ridiculous to me to call not buying early access games a 'principle'. My reasoning for not buying EA games is just that I dont have time to play anywhere near all of the games that have already been released over the last 20 years. Let alone if I start digging into games that are still in development.

I'm happy that some devs care enough about their creations to want to involve the community into making them as good as they can be, and if people like to spend their time being a part of that process more power to them.
My ridiculous post was also a joke.

By the way, I played Kingdoms Reborn, another early access colony sim, for about 6 hours today with my son. Progress is incredibly slow, but somehow I had a blast. My beavers would never take that long to build stuff, though.

Timberborn is definitely the most relaxing/chill colony sim that I've played so far.
 
@Kaamos_Llama oh my gosh. Timberborn actually does have an ending--other than the final monument. I had kind of thought that it might, but I wasn't sure. Now I'm actually seeing it, and I'm not sure what's going to happen when I'm done. It's kind of funny in a way.

Anyhow, it's a ton of work/waiting, and I'm not going to see it tonight.
 

McStabStab

Community Contributor
I bought the Tropico 6 Caribbean Skies DLC last fall during the Steam Halloween Sale and haven't touched it because other games were pulling me away. Yesterday I took a sick day from work and I decided to play some games while accumulating a garbage can's worth of Kleenex from my head and chest cold.

I forgot how much I enjoy Tropico 6! The DLC adds some really unique and goofy game mechanics that turned out to be pretty damn fun! I'm only on the second mission but I'm happy to have returned to the game after beating all of the vanilla missions.
 

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