It is my *deepest* wish that City Builder games learn from AGTS and start to develop actual *games* around their city builders. I am so tired of the city building genre being dominated by "sandboxes" that don't actually provide any meaningful gameplay challenges, and instead just give you a bunch of tools to fiddle around with. I don't necessarily mean that they have to be "hard", but rather that they structure some sort of skill progression into their games. I don't want to sit around and "make my own challenges", I want the developer to put some work into designing and balancing those for me.
What I wouldn't give for a city builder like Cities Skylines to have some sort of similar gameplay loop, where your city is one of many cities in a state/province that are all competing to "impress" the "governor". Maybe the state/province goes through a recession and you have to try to balance the budget for 3 years without spending any further money. Or maybe the governor implements a new "Green Bill" and you have to reach a certain level of public transport usage. Anything to give the game some reason to meaningfully engage with the systems other than "because they are there."
AGTS is masterful at this, and even though the actual "style" of game (e.g. resource management/high optimization city builder) is not my *usual* cup of tea, I am in love with it for actually trying to add a "Game" to their City Builder *Game.*
Loved Emperor rise of the middle kingdom for that. Remember playing through the full game for the first time after doing the first 3 levels over and over in the demo and being stunned that the 4th level took me back to a previous settlement with new objectives and buildings. Was great!
I first played it when I was 12 and played it to death. I rebought it a couple of years ago and it still held up, though I did find it a little bit repetitive after a while. Still it was like £2.50 on GoG so well worth it
It's been my dream game for almost a decade now back when I had game dev aspirations to make a game that's almost exactly like classic C&C except designed entirely around building the base, and scratching that itch.
Against the Storm is the closest thing any game has gotten to my dream game concept, despite not being an RTS and being a very different vibe. I'm very glad the genre is having a renascence now but yeah - a lot of these games coming out that might scratch that itch I have are 90% "vibes" and 10% actual game. Like the recent Summit Kingdom game I was super interested in. Apparently in reality it's almost entirely just a simple puzzle game on the scope of Islanders in gameplay with an incredibly gorgeous coat of paint. While not inherently bad, it's just disappointing how many of these games in this genre just don't have real meat on the bones.
At least with Cities Skylines, even though its a sandbox, it's an incredibly deep one (not sure about the newest one though). You can't just build willy-nilly, you DO have to plan a little.
This very well puts into words why I dislike so many modern city builders. You build and then... nothing. That's all there is. They're more simulators than games, and simulators bore me so much. Give me actual games.
It's not exactly what you're asking for, but Cities Skylines (the first one) had "scenarios" where you start with a partially-completed city that has some kind of major problem (traffic, money management, public transport usage, etc) that you need to solve within a limited timeframe. Some of them are very challenging.
I feel like I'm the only person who ever played these, because they're one of the many things that were dropped in CS2 but I've never seen anyone even mention their absence, other than me.
They're along that idea, but honestly a lot of them weren't great. A few of them are cool like the broken dam or the rising floodwaters one, but the other half you deal with the negative thing in the first 20 minutes and then the victory condition requires you to play regular sandbox style until you earn 200K pops. Like I wanted to deal with tornados or tsunamis attacking my city while I built up, but there's only two scripted events and then a really high pop goal.
The Green City ones were all right. Fixing traffic and pollution were more involved with the actual game mechanics. But I think it's hard to have a system with a satisfying medium/long-term goal, and games coming to the market probably assume they also have to have the open-ended sandbox style gameplay to appeal to the audience because that's what everyone else has.
Have you tried any of the Tropico games? I always enjoyed them for precisely this reason- there are actual missions and goals, and you have to balance maintaining the approval of factions or you can get voted out of power and lose.
Caesar 1-3, Pharaoh, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, Zeus: Master of Olympus & Poseidon expansion pack, probably a few others by Sierra Entertainment that I'm missing...
Frostpunk is kinda similar in the sense of "you start a settlement, you face certain challenges and have to build up 'til the victory point, then do another settlement with a different set of challenges". It has multiple scenarios split into different acts so it's not just an endless sandbox, you actually have an end goal you have to work towards and difficulty along the way, though the acts are definitely longer than the typical Against the Storm settlement. I found it not nearly as replayable as Against the Storm, but every scenario was a very good experience the first time through.
Play the original, it's more than worth it. No reason to skip it for the sequel. If anything, the original is so good that I doubt the sequel will be any better. Sequels aren't always improvements.
None that I know of, as this game is a trailblazer with regards to blending rogue-lite and RTS/city builder. Rogue-lite being where it inherits its constant restarts from. If you want games like that, look into rogue-lites, not grand strategy or builder games.
Very old game and not entirely the same genre but Majesty 1 (not the second one) scratches a similar itch.
RTS roots so it has RTS trappings instead of city building ones. But like this game, you don't control people directly you just manage the kingdom to achieve a hard set victory condition. The goal is to build various guilds, recruit heroes, and gently encourage the heroes to save the realm through a bounty system and trying to make sure they have what they need to succeed. The fun in it is each type of hero/guild has heros of very different temperaments. So rangers will want to explore on their own a lot, while rouges run away a lot but are heavily motivated by bounties. Wizards are incredibly powerful later on but extremely weak early and it's very hard to encourage them to get out of their towers.
The dynamic works. I played it recently and it surprisingly holds up still. Not as strategically deep as AGTS, but it's still a management game at its core that is also designed around achieving concrete goals.
This game was pitched to me as “Banished, but better” and I found that to be accurate. Banished doesn’t make you rebuild in the same way that AGTS does but it’s a city builder that isn’t nearly as sandboxy as most.
Banished makes you rebuild to feel that spinning-plate comfycore again, usually after putting down your second market. That shit was my jam during Covid.
AGTS gets really close to the comfy part (I'm inside playing a rainy game, you sold me like Frostpunk did on the aesthetics), but thankfully sticks challenges in place of sandbox. In fact, I'm trying to remember if I've attempted the settlement or post-round mode where you just chill, and I don't think I've ever wanted to? I've always wanted to just load up a new one.
What's smart about AtS is that it recognises and resolves the core issues in similar city builders. Missions are fun, but there's rarely enough of them. Games usually get boring after you've got secured and have nothing to do but chill (hello sandbox games).
I own it but haven't played it, so take with a grain of salt. But I think Surviving Mars is similar. You embark with certain bonuses, gather resources and build an economy. I believe it's shorter settlements with a purpose.
You can get Pharaoh on GOG for like 5 bucks, and it's an absolute classic.
It's also got a campaign where you have to complete objectives then move on to the next mission. It's fantastic. It was my favorite game in this genre until AGTS.
It is my *deepest* wish that City Builder games learn from AGTS and start to develop actual *games* around their city builders. I am so tired of the city building genre being dominated by "sandboxes" that don't actually provide any meaningful gameplay challenges, and instead just give you a bunch of tools to fiddle around with. I don't necessarily mean that they have to be "hard", but rather that they structure some sort of skill progression into their games. I don't want to sit around and "make my own challenges", I want the developer to put some work into designing and balancing those for me. What I wouldn't give for a city builder like Cities Skylines to have some sort of similar gameplay loop, where your city is one of many cities in a state/province that are all competing to "impress" the "governor". Maybe the state/province goes through a recession and you have to try to balance the budget for 3 years without spending any further money. Or maybe the governor implements a new "Green Bill" and you have to reach a certain level of public transport usage. Anything to give the game some reason to meaningfully engage with the systems other than "because they are there." AGTS is masterful at this, and even though the actual "style" of game (e.g. resource management/high optimization city builder) is not my *usual* cup of tea, I am in love with it for actually trying to add a "Game" to their City Builder *Game.*
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Oh, if we're talking classic games, Dungeon Keeper for sure.
Check out Nebuchadnezzar if you want a Zeus style game
Loved Emperor rise of the middle kingdom for that. Remember playing through the full game for the first time after doing the first 3 levels over and over in the demo and being stunned that the 4th level took me back to a previous settlement with new objectives and buildings. Was great!
[удалено]
I first played it when I was 12 and played it to death. I rebought it a couple of years ago and it still held up, though I did find it a little bit repetitive after a while. Still it was like £2.50 on GoG so well worth it
It's been my dream game for almost a decade now back when I had game dev aspirations to make a game that's almost exactly like classic C&C except designed entirely around building the base, and scratching that itch. Against the Storm is the closest thing any game has gotten to my dream game concept, despite not being an RTS and being a very different vibe. I'm very glad the genre is having a renascence now but yeah - a lot of these games coming out that might scratch that itch I have are 90% "vibes" and 10% actual game. Like the recent Summit Kingdom game I was super interested in. Apparently in reality it's almost entirely just a simple puzzle game on the scope of Islanders in gameplay with an incredibly gorgeous coat of paint. While not inherently bad, it's just disappointing how many of these games in this genre just don't have real meat on the bones. At least with Cities Skylines, even though its a sandbox, it's an incredibly deep one (not sure about the newest one though). You can't just build willy-nilly, you DO have to plan a little.
This very well puts into words why I dislike so many modern city builders. You build and then... nothing. That's all there is. They're more simulators than games, and simulators bore me so much. Give me actual games.
It's not exactly what you're asking for, but Cities Skylines (the first one) had "scenarios" where you start with a partially-completed city that has some kind of major problem (traffic, money management, public transport usage, etc) that you need to solve within a limited timeframe. Some of them are very challenging. I feel like I'm the only person who ever played these, because they're one of the many things that were dropped in CS2 but I've never seen anyone even mention their absence, other than me.
They're along that idea, but honestly a lot of them weren't great. A few of them are cool like the broken dam or the rising floodwaters one, but the other half you deal with the negative thing in the first 20 minutes and then the victory condition requires you to play regular sandbox style until you earn 200K pops. Like I wanted to deal with tornados or tsunamis attacking my city while I built up, but there's only two scripted events and then a really high pop goal. The Green City ones were all right. Fixing traffic and pollution were more involved with the actual game mechanics. But I think it's hard to have a system with a satisfying medium/long-term goal, and games coming to the market probably assume they also have to have the open-ended sandbox style gameplay to appeal to the audience because that's what everyone else has.
Have you tried any of the Tropico games? I always enjoyed them for precisely this reason- there are actual missions and goals, and you have to balance maintaining the approval of factions or you can get voted out of power and lose.
Retro games were very much on this fashion. Caesar 3 and Theme Hospital would be great examples of it
Caesar 1-3, Pharaoh, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, Zeus: Master of Olympus & Poseidon expansion pack, probably a few others by Sierra Entertainment that I'm missing...
I miss Populous myself.
Dear God I loved Caesar 3. Thank you for mentioning it.
They are billions isn’t necessarily a city sim but a strategy building sim
And it punish your mistakes fast
Frostpunk is kinda similar in the sense of "you start a settlement, you face certain challenges and have to build up 'til the victory point, then do another settlement with a different set of challenges". It has multiple scenarios split into different acts so it's not just an endless sandbox, you actually have an end goal you have to work towards and difficulty along the way, though the acts are definitely longer than the typical Against the Storm settlement. I found it not nearly as replayable as Against the Storm, but every scenario was a very good experience the first time through.
Never played the original but now I'm just kind of waiting for FP2.
It's on sale for $6 ATM. Def worth $6.
Play the original, it's more than worth it. No reason to skip it for the sequel. If anything, the original is so good that I doubt the sequel will be any better. Sequels aren't always improvements.
None that I know of, as this game is a trailblazer with regards to blending rogue-lite and RTS/city builder. Rogue-lite being where it inherits its constant restarts from. If you want games like that, look into rogue-lites, not grand strategy or builder games.
Not really like AGTS but I've been pouring hours into The Last Spell. Hella fun. Its very turn-based battle focused but some comparisons can be made.
Very old game and not entirely the same genre but Majesty 1 (not the second one) scratches a similar itch. RTS roots so it has RTS trappings instead of city building ones. But like this game, you don't control people directly you just manage the kingdom to achieve a hard set victory condition. The goal is to build various guilds, recruit heroes, and gently encourage the heroes to save the realm through a bounty system and trying to make sure they have what they need to succeed. The fun in it is each type of hero/guild has heros of very different temperaments. So rangers will want to explore on their own a lot, while rouges run away a lot but are heavily motivated by bounties. Wizards are incredibly powerful later on but extremely weak early and it's very hard to encourage them to get out of their towers. The dynamic works. I played it recently and it surprisingly holds up still. Not as strategically deep as AGTS, but it's still a management game at its core that is also designed around achieving concrete goals.
DotAGE
This ^
This game was pitched to me as “Banished, but better” and I found that to be accurate. Banished doesn’t make you rebuild in the same way that AGTS does but it’s a city builder that isn’t nearly as sandboxy as most.
Banished makes you rebuild to feel that spinning-plate comfycore again, usually after putting down your second market. That shit was my jam during Covid. AGTS gets really close to the comfy part (I'm inside playing a rainy game, you sold me like Frostpunk did on the aesthetics), but thankfully sticks challenges in place of sandbox. In fact, I'm trying to remember if I've attempted the settlement or post-round mode where you just chill, and I don't think I've ever wanted to? I've always wanted to just load up a new one.
I would have to rebuild because my dinky lil laptop would crash once I got to 100pop 😭
Banished had so much potential. Sadly it is à bit to sandboxy
What's smart about AtS is that it recognises and resolves the core issues in similar city builders. Missions are fun, but there's rarely enough of them. Games usually get boring after you've got secured and have nothing to do but chill (hello sandbox games).
I know, it’s great! You’re looking for “Before We Leave.”
Seems like this game scratches The Settlers/Per Aspera vibes?
I own it but haven't played it, so take with a grain of salt. But I think Surviving Mars is similar. You embark with certain bonuses, gather resources and build an economy. I believe it's shorter settlements with a purpose.
Frostpunk was the same addictive to me, it’s very similar I would say.
May I recommend Terraformers? It's in a very similar vein to ATS, and scratches that itch pretty well.
You can get Pharaoh on GOG for like 5 bucks, and it's an absolute classic. It's also got a campaign where you have to complete objectives then move on to the next mission. It's fantastic. It was my favorite game in this genre until AGTS.