City Builder and Colony Sim General Discussion

Zed Clampet

Community Contributor
I'm not going to stupidly put "2025" on it this time since we only had 6 responses to the 2024 thread.

I HAVE A COMPLAINT!

Sengoku Dynasty, which is a 1st or 3rd person (your choice) colony sim set in medieval Japan, expects me to build multiple colonies, but the citizens are too stupid for you to leave them alone. How am I supposed to build a second colony, which is my current mission, when my first colony's citizens can't get water out of a well or cook raw meat?

You see, to get water out of a well, you need a bucket, but to make a bucket, you need to make a chisel first. I've gone through the copper, tin and bronze stages and still haven't unlocked making a chisel. When I unlock it, I can assign someone to make them and another person to make buckets and another person to take the buckets, fill them with water and put them in the colony's storage. But until then, I have to go to the nearest village and sell everything in my inventory to afford to buy each day's chisel (they wear out before the day is over). I can't run 1500 meters across the mountains and start another colony that's going to be equally inept.

And food. While I can cook all sorts of things over the campfire, my colonists can't cook anything until I unlock the kitchen, which is the 2nd to last building you unlock.

Doesn't it seem like if the game is going to want you running all over the map that colonists taking care of their own basic needs of food and water should be the first thing you unlock?

It was sort of like this in Medieval Dynasty, but I didn't care because you only have one colony to worry about.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pifanjr and Zloth
Dec 22, 2024
213
475
670
I'm not going to stupidly put "2025" on it this time since we only had 6 responses to the 2024 thread.

I HAVE A COMPLAINT!

Sengoku Dynasty, which is a 1st or 3rd person (your choice) colony sim set in medieval Japan, expects me to build multiple colonies, but the citizens are too stupid for you to leave them alone. How am I supposed to build a second colony, which is my current mission, when my first colony's citizens can't get water out of a well or cook raw meat?

You see, to get water out of a well, you need a bucket, but to make a bucket, you need to make a chisel first. I've gone through the copper, tin and bronze stages and still haven't unlocked making a chisel. When I unlock it, I can assign someone to make them and another person to make buckets and another person to take the buckets, fill them with water and put them in the colony's storage. But until then, I have to go to the nearest village and sell everything in my inventory to afford to buy each day's chisel (they wear out before the day is over). I can't run 1500 meters across the mountains and start another colony that's going to be equally inept.

And food. While I can cook all sorts of things over the campfire, my colonists can't cook anything until I unlock the kitchen, which is the 2nd to last building you unlock.

Doesn't it seem like if the game is going to want you running all over the map that colonists taking care of their own basic needs of food and water should be the first thing you unlock?

It was sort of like this in Medieval Dynasty, but I didn't care because you only have one colony to worry about.
This sounds like a special kind of hell. A sort of bureaucratic feudalism. I'm sure Douglas Adams could have written a better game on this premise from the looks of it.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Zed Clampet
What are your guys' thoughts on playing Cities: Skylines 1 in 2025 with zero DLC? I have the base game and have been in the mood for a city builder...

Anything else you'd recommend that's fairly cheap?

I quite liked Cities: Skylines 1 and I don't think we own any of the DLC. I have no idea how it compares to other, more modern city builders though, as I haven't played any in quite a while, but I don't know of any that are as well-regarded.

The only downside I have heard of is that traffic is a major pain in bigger cities mostly because the routing AI makes some weird decisions, but I believe there are mods that alleviate this problem.
 
  • Love
Reactions: neogunhero

McStabStab

Community Contributor
Jan 13, 2020
801
2,497
16,270
What are your guys' thoughts on playing Cities: Skylines 1 in 2025 with zero DLC? I have the base game and have been in the mood for a city builder...

Anything else you'd recommend that's fairly cheap?
Cities: Skylines 1 is one of my favorite city builders of all time, and I have accumulated almost all of the DLC over my time with it. Here's the scoop:
  1. Cities: Skylines 1 is substantially discounted often. It goes as low as $2.99 USD. So wait for a sale and you've got a game for the price of a Starbucks Americano.
  2. Because of the low cost of the game if you get it on sale, I would suggest to weave in a little bit of DLC at a time. The ones that I think are priority: Industries (almost a money hack, the custom industrial zones generate so much income), Mass Transit, and Green Cities. Truly though each of them add something flavorful to the game, it's just overwhelming to do it all at once. One DLC at a time will make it more obvious which assets are meant to be used together.'
  3. I played C:S entirely vanilla, but people love modding the game. You can find so many wonderful community workshop tools and assets that vanilla can assume many of the attributes from the paid DLC. If you'd prefer to go this route it is always available.
Here's a city I got to 100K population (it's winter from the Snowfall DLC - another good one!):

 
  1. Because of the low cost of the game if you get it on sale, I would suggest to weave in a little bit of DLC at a time. The ones that I think are priority: Industries (almost a money hack, the custom industrial zones generate so much income), Mass Transit, and Green Cities. Truly though each of them add something flavorful to the game, it's just overwhelming to do it all at once. One DLC at a time will make it more obvious which assets are meant to be used together.'
This would be the most sensible way to go after it for sure. Sometimes I see games with a massive amount of DLC and in a way get FOMO if I don't own it all... that's really just a consumerist mindset issue though. The base game is what people like the most, not the DLC that adds some new stuff, so it's silly to get FOMO just because you don't own all the DLC for a game.

I'll definitely pick up some DLC on sale, thanks for the advice!
 

TRENDING THREADS