City Builder and Colony Sim Discussion Thread

[Zed Clampet]

Decided to play Farthest Frontier tonight. This game talked about how super chill it was on "Easy", so I put it on Easy and started her up, and less than 10 minutes later all my people were dying in a blizzard. Some people call it being frozen to death, but I guess "super chill" was accurate, too. Basically the same thing.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Playing some Airborne Kingdom, which I think is at it's Steam low price right now during the Strategy fest.

Save 50% on Airborne Kingdom on Steam

The sky city builder awaits. Create your own flying kingdom and lead it on a quest across an expansive world. Explore the varied landscape, build up a floating metropolis, aid struggling people below, uncover lost secrets and, ultimately, bring back the Airborne Kingdom legend.

store.steampowered.com

Unlike every other colony sim I've been playing, this isn't in early access. I'm actually playing it on Game Pass, but since I tend to use that as expensive way to play extended demos, I might actually buy it since I'm having fun with it.

You are in control of, well, a flying city center with, to start, 8 homeless inhabitants who you direct to do stuff like building your flying city, gathering resources from the ground (they fly little planes), and doing research.

As with all colony sims, you have to track your resources and make sure to replenish them. You also have to keep track of your lift and tilt, as crashing is considered bad form and citizens like their city not to tilt wildly because you've built too much on one side. If I were walking on narrow sidewalks 1000 meters above the ground, I would probably consider tilt a reason to stay home for the day.

You are constantly exploring the world looking for various resources, ruins (from which you get artifacts), small settlements (from which you get new residents) and new kingdoms. I just found my first kingdom, and I'm not 100 percent sure what all you can do with Kingdoms, but I know you can do missions for them, gain new techs and sign alliances with them.

As far as I can tell so far, there is no combat in the game.

 

[Brian Boru]

Airborne Kingdom

Fraser Brown's review.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Banished, the grandpappy of the modern colony sim, is on sale for $6.79 on Steam right now. It has workshop support and about 1500 mods, including a number of complete overhauls that should greatly expand how many hours you can get out of the game.

Banished on Steam

In this city-building strategy game, you control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland. The townspeople of Banished are your primary resource.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Pifanjr]

Banished, the grandpappy of the modern colony sim, is on sale for $6.79 on Steam right now. It has workshop support and about 1500 mods, including a number of complete overhauls that should greatly expand how many hours you can get out of the game.

Banished on Steam

In this city-building strategy game, you control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland. The townspeople of Banished are your primary resource.

store.steampowered.com

I remember playing Banished in beta and getting so rich from selling sticks I could buy any resource I needed. It looked like it had some good potential though.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I remember playing Banished in beta and getting so rich from selling sticks I could buy any resource I needed. It looked like it had some good potential though.

I haven't actually done any in-game trading yet, but I did the trading tutorial, and I'd be surprised if you could still get rich off of sticks. I had to trade 120 tools and some other stuff to get 6 chickens. I'll try it though and let you know. Except I don't think there are sticks anymore. It's just "wood".

 

[Zed Clampet]

The two major gripes I have about banished are that it doesn't have cloud saves and that it automatically pauses if I alt-tab out of it.

The cloud saves are because I play on more than one PC. Without the cloud saves I either have to just start a new game on the new PC or stream the game from my other PC. No, I'm not carrying save files around with me.

And I'm too much of an ADHD multitasker to sit here looking at the little people wandering around all day. I want them to keep working when I alt-tab out of the game, not sit there and wait for me to come back.

Fun game, though. I'm playing vanilla except for some UI mods, but after I finish this game, there's a huge mod that basically changes everything that I'm going to try.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Taking a little break from my grueling colony sim playing schedule to research the history of colony sims/city builders.

Then I going to work a little on the game I'm making, which is a 4x city builder.

 

[IwantPeak]

Sounds awesome! Enjoy your break and research. Best of luck with your 4x city builder game development! 🎮🏗️👍

Taking a little break from my grueling colony sim playing schedule to research the history of colony sims/city builders.

Then I going to work a little on the game I'm making, which is a 4x city builder.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I don't know why, but building out utilities in city builders is really boring to me. Think I'll stick to colony sims for now.

 

[Pifanjr]

I don't know why, but building out utilities in city builders is really boring to me. Think I'll stick to colony sims for now.

Building out the connections between things in any (management) game is generally tedious. Roads, pipes, cables, conveyor belts, etc. all kinda suck to keep up with.

 

[Brian Boru]

Building out the connections between things in any (management) game is generally tedious.

4X too, roads & rail were always a pain in Civ—one of the few things I used to set Workers to auto-do. I wish games in general treated it more like constructing a building or trade route, ie a menu item to connect A to B, C, D, etc…

Could be worse tho—I've had a few RTS 🤦‍♂️ where I built the barracks or vehicle factory facing the wrong way… as in, nowhere for new builds to go

 

[Pifanjr]

4X too, roads & rail were always a pain in Civ—one of the few things I used to set Workers to auto-do. I wish games in general treated it more like constructing a building or trade route, ie a menu item to connect A to B, C, D, etc…

I think Civ VI changing roads so they're made by trade routes was pretty nice. It has its downsides, but the reduction in micromanagement is nice.

Could be worse tho—I've had a few RTS 🤦‍♂️ where I built the barracks or vehicle factory facing the wrong way… as in, nowhere for new builds to go

Which is only slightly worse than building a port and then discovering the bit of water you found was part of a small lake/pond and not the coast of the sea/ocean.

 

[Brian Boru]

Civ VI changing roads so they're made by trade routes was pretty nice. It has its downsides

Oh that's right, but agree, it would be much better if one could manually 'draw' the route, or given an option to exclude water—way too many of mine were going by sea, which is useless for roads.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Honestly, Civ 6's roads were keeping me away from it for the longest time because of my defense strategy, which Alexander the Great always scoffs at. I keep almost no standing army because I can create one so quickly thanks to the rest of my strategy. But I have to be able to move them anywhere in my territory as fast as possible. I was afraid that without my usual network of roads I would have to keep a decent army most of the time.