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This thread is to discuss the multitudes of city and village games out there. I'm hoping it will be a place where city/village builders can come to get suggestions about other city building games that they'd like to play from people who are already playing them. The existing city building threads should be used for detailed advice on how to play or improve your game, this thread is really for discovery. Existing active threads: Cities Skylines Prison Architect (not sure if still active) Surviving Mars Sim City Retro thread Current games on Steam (there's a ton but these are the ones I'm most familiar with): Banished Tropico 6 Rise to Ruins Foundation Kingdoms and Castles Dawn of Man Surviving the Aftermath (Epic store; similar to Surviving Mars) Frostpunk Anno 1800 (Epic Store and Ubisoft only; you'll need Ubisoft anyway so might as well get it there). Workers and Resources in the Soviet Republic Recommend Adekyn's videos on YT. Happy to add more if consensus is that they are good games. It doesn't matter if they are in 'early access' the main thing is that they worth playing right now. Classic Impressions games: Caesar 3 Pharaoh & Cleopatra Zeus/Poseidon YouTuber for these: GameZakh Youtubers Dylan (previously known as ConflictNerd Raptor Katherine of Sky Sky Storme Looking for more here; note that they should play a variety of games, not just Skylines, as those should be in the Skylines thread. I hope this is helpful to folks and I'm happy to answer questions and consider changes. The Base Building Megathread is here. Mayveena fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Nov 28, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 19:06
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Definitely should include the classic suit of Impressions city-builders. I don't think any game onwards has managed to capture their charm.
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Oct 23, 2019 19:11
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toasterwarrior posted:Definitely should include the classic suit of Impressions city-builders. I don't think any game onwards has managed to capture their charm. There are a LOT of those, I'd rather not overwhelm the OP with them. Can you suggest 2-3 that are especially worthwhile to play today?
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Oct 23, 2019 19:14
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Mayveena posted:This thread is to discuss the multitudes of city and village games out there. I'm hoping it will be a place where city/village builders can come to get suggestions about other city building games that they'd like to play from people who are already playing them. The existing city building threads should be used for detailed advice on how to play or improve your game, this thread is really for discovery. I have played a solid 10 or so hours of Surviving the Apocalypse and would say it's far more similar to Banished than it is to Surviving Mars. Some other YouTubers that stream these sort of games would include KatherineOfSky, Skye Storme and Raptor.
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Oct 23, 2019 19:14
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deathbagel posted:I have played a solid 10 or so hours of Surviving the Apocalypse and would say it's far more similar to Banished than it is to Surviving Mars. Some other YouTubers that stream these sort of games would include KatherineOfSky, Skye Storme and Raptor. OK I'll add those YouTubers. I'll add a parenthetical for Surviving the Aftermath.
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Oct 23, 2019 19:15
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Mayveena posted:There are a LOT of those, I'd rather not overwhelm the OP with them. Can you suggest 2-3 that are especially worthwhile to play today? Eh, not really, just consider the latest ones per "theme." Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/517790/Caesar_3/ Caesar 3, the final entry of Caesar series when it was under Impressions. Not as refined as the rest, but was the first to adopt a lively world and impressive spritework that ended up becoming a rather charming aspect of the city-builders. https://store.steampowered.com/app/564530/Pharaoh__Cleopatra/ Pharaoh and its expack, Cleopatra, introduced mechanics that took advantage of the Egyptian setting, particularly the Nile and its seasonal Inundations, and the construction of massive monuments, and entire industries and labor chains to support the effort. https://store.steampowered.com/app/566050/Zeus__Poseidon/ Zeus, and its expack, Poseidon, went full mythology (and rather flippantly cartoony as well), and upended the older games' need to have residences near workplaces, freeing up the player's choices for city layouts. That said, it did make the act of building a functional city a lot less challenging, though it did make for easier aesthetics. Also, the expansion puts you in the sandals of the Atlanteans, yes, and even though they're technically just reskins of the generic Greeks of the vanilla game, it's still a rather interesting setting for a city-builder. https://www.gog.com/game/emperor_rise_of_the_middle_kingdom The final Impressions city-builder, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom is based in China. The most refined of the builders, with an emphasis on building walled-off residential blocks with services and whatnot. There's also Feng Shui to consider, and while it keeps the more fantastical elements from Zeus re: mythology and legendary figures, it's a fair bit less ridiculous than Zeus. toasterwarrior fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 19:33
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Dwarf Fortress ought to get an honorable mention, rimworld as well. They do a good job of including resource and worker management as well as small scale village building.
frogge fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 19:42
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Don't know if it really counts for the thread, but Crossroads Inn just came out on Steam, and not in early access. It's $20 but I may pick it up without waiting for first impressions.
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Oct 23, 2019 19:53
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Pylons posted:Don't know if it really counts for the thread, but Crossroads Inn just came out on Steam, and not in early access. It's $20 but I may pick it up without waiting for first impressions. Wow, thanks for this! I don't know how I hadn't heard about this, but I'm definitely picking it up tonight after work!
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Oct 23, 2019 20:21
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Caesar III really burned my bacon because, while it was pretty, it was also very rigid in terms of what you needed to do to beat a scenario. Particularly the barbarian attacks and Caesar's demands, they forced you to develop a certain way according to a strict schedule or you were screwed. Never felt like I could fully get my sandbox on, which is one reason I prefer Children of the Nile (and still play it to this day sometimes!).
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Oct 23, 2019 20:24
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deathbagel posted:Wow, thanks for this! I don't know how I hadn't heard about this, but I'm definitely picking it up tonight after work! Cool, be sure to post some impressions! I'm always down for a good Tycoon/City Builder.
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Oct 23, 2019 20:25
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frogge posted:Dwarf Fortress ought to get an honorable mention, rimworld as well. They do a good job of including resource and worker management as well as small scale village building. It’s front and center here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3901789
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Oct 23, 2019 21:23
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Did you know that in Rise to Ruins, tamed chickens will gladly move into human buildings if your rangers have been enthusiastic in their hunting? I've got like 26! all cluckering up my housing that I need to keep my villagers happy, and that's with 2 fully upgraded Coops. 
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Oct 23, 2019 21:26
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Pylons posted:Don't know if it really counts for the thread, but Crossroads Inn just came out on Steam, and not in early access. It's $20 but I may pick it up without waiting for first impressions. oh yeah this is extremely my poo poo
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Oct 23, 2019 21:47
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I still want to know how you're supposed to push back the corruption in rise to ruins. It seems impossible and also not really intended for you to do. Enemies scale far and beyond the max level of your towers so are you supposed to be super aggressive against it early on or something to cage it in while your towers can still be useful against it?
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Oct 23, 2019 21:53
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Fire pits, they are ignored by the enemy unless it is immediately blocking their way into your base. Monsters don't attack you directly while the sun is shining so you can muster out a construction crew in the morning, build a couple outside your walls, and then wait out the night. Then you can deliberately breach your wall (or build a large set of consecutive gates so the AI doesn't consider it an alternative means into your base) and build out curtain walls to enclose the space you've decontaminated. I have been able to hold out until summer of the second year. We'll see if that can be extended as the angry bar increases.
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Oct 23, 2019 22:47
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it's not entirely fleshed out yet and still has a way to go, but if you wanna build pretty villages Ostriv is pretty decent.
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Oct 23, 2019 23:41
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If you're curious about the Anno series but don't want to dive in to Anno 1800 because of the price, Anno 1404 is thematically and mechanically similar, dead cheap, and has some fantastic mods. Anno 2070 is also great (I actually prefer it for gameplay, just not the setting) and also has a great set of mods available for it. Be prepared however, as while it is a base building game, it's also a logistic simulator.
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Oct 23, 2019 23:48
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Mayveena posted:It’s front and center here:  awesome.What do people do to make their cities appear realistic? Do you deliberately create issue areas or just avoid min/maxing? For example in cities skylines I find that I have to create areas that don't get many services on top of ploppables. I guess what I mean is- is realism something we strive for in other city builders or only in sandboxes?
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Oct 24, 2019 01:35
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frogge posted:
city builders, by the nature of the assumptions that go into their underlying models, can't really be realistic like this dichotomy is true of all games because you have to compromise on simulation fidelity for the sake of entertainment, but with something like a flight simulator there's a great amount of overlap because flying is fun. managing a city from a single godlike perspective is itself deeply unrealistic, and the more you move your simulation closer to being realistic the more it becomes deeply frustrating and really, really boring so i guess what i'm saying is go for the aesthetics of realism above all else. city builders are a garden, and if you want your garden to look a little raggedy then go for it
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Oct 24, 2019 01:51
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This tower and maze setup will get you, at minimum, through the first year even having 2/3rds of the map under your control and antagonizing the corruption early. It does not hold up without significant resources dumped into magic energy generation. I had something on the order of 10 Essence Generators crowded around my Crystillery and I was still running dry. And once that happens the specters draw closer and closer absorbing your bow tower fire until the fire elementals can get in firing range and burn through your towers in seconds. It's still possible to recapture territory between those two points of time, however. And there's still room to improve: I didn't upgrade my bow towers past Established and into an elemental flavour, for fear that my energy would burn out faster. I was visited by a worse terror, though. My livestock decided human housing was comfier. 
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Oct 24, 2019 18:42
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Pylons posted:Don't know if it really counts for the thread, but Crossroads Inn just came out on Steam, and not in early access. It's $20 but I may pick it up without waiting for first impressions. Impression: So buggy that it is almost unplayable and for it to be a release and not early access there are major features that are almost entirely absent.
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Oct 24, 2019 21:34
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So its basically early access but you don't get the no questions asked indefinite refund if they don't actually fix the bugs so the worst of both worlds? Sounds like a pass and wishlist check back in a year to me.
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Oct 24, 2019 21:38
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One thing that bugs me in this genre (probably my favorite genre of games overall) is that most games hit a weird balance between aesthetic, “garden” building and mechanics. To name a few favorites of mine and how they stack up: Cities Skylines has great aesthetics, but mechanics and gameplay feel like asides at best. Tropico and Surviving Mars seem like they hit both angles somewhat, but are a little sparse in both departments. I love them but I feel like I’m always wanting more mechanics or more creativity. To be fair to Surviving Mars, I haven’t played it since the DLCs. Banished with the mega mods is a pretty good balance honestly, especially because you are constantly threatened by death spirals even late into the game and there’s a lot of really awesome things you can build that are both effective and aesthetically pleasing. Anno always feels like I’m gimping myself a little making things pretty instead of horribly efficient, but the tourist mechanics and that from 1800 make a huge stride toward balancing this out. Rimworld hits me almost right, except for very specific cases like building effective defenses for late game raids - you have to get pretty gamey with it. It also has a style that, while it works for the game, doesn’t quite hit that “zoom out and drink it in” level. I really would love a Cities 2 with a better system for assets and things so load times aren’t crazy. My hope, though I’m not sure how realistic, would be a more challenging gameplay arc that plans better for the mechanics they’ll add in DLCs, like universities and whatever. I’m no game dev so I might not be the expert, but I could see something like high value neighborhoods and buildings being more expensive to destroy, and kind of put more stress on decisions like “I need a new light rail in downtown, but I’d have to take out this whole block and that’ll cost me a huge amount of money.” Not quite a city builder, but a modern 3D Airport Tycoon game could be crazy awesome. Those seem to have pretty good mechanics and arcs, and airports are perfect for that “staring at your ant farm” effect. I’ve probably played every major game in this genre, but if anyone has a game that hits both aspects, share! I’d be interested in knowing how other people view the split.
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Oct 24, 2019 22:32
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luxury handset posted:city builders, by the nature of the assumptions that go into their underlying models, can't really be realistic Oh absolutely. I don't really want a city sim that has me doing neighborhood council meetings and initiatives for whether or not I can cut a tree down. I don't want a game to be that granular, I just meant aesthetically I want a balance between it looks like a real city and it looks like a game.
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Oct 25, 2019 00:42
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Omnicarus posted:Impression: So buggy that it is almost unplayable and for it to be a release and not early access there are major features that are almost entirely absent. Yea, there are a couple of big bugs that I keep running in to. Workers get stuck on endless loops and end up just standing in place until you fire them. There seems to be a bad memory leak because it crashes to desktop every hour or so. It's sad, because without the bugs I think it'd be a super fun inn management game.
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Oct 25, 2019 00:45
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tavern management games seem like a cursed subgenre. everyone wants to make the first really good one but they all turn out poorly
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Oct 25, 2019 00:46
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luxury handset posted:tavern management games seem like a cursed subgenre. everyone wants to make the first really good one but they all turn out poorly I think most indie devs that jump into life simulation / management games severely underestimate just how hard they are to do well. Moreso even than most games there is a vast gulf between an interesting build mode and behavior demo in unity and a legitimate game. Just based on a lot of the flops and eternal, no-longer updated early access games we've seen it looks like a lot of developers jump in with both feet and then the scope of the task dawns on them and they pull the "just release it" ripcord and move on. Edit: Perfect example of this is the guy that is doing ParaLives, which had a shitload of promise at first and the dev is an extremely good at CAD / building simulations, but then just slammed dick first into trying to simulate people living in his buildings. Omnicarus fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 01:41
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toasterwarrior posted:Definitely should include the classic suit of Impressions city-builders. I don't think any game onwards has managed to capture their charm. Personally, I think Caesar II was the best. I enjoyed the world map appreciate more than 3's god stuff.
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Oct 25, 2019 01:43
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Continuing trip report in Rise To Ruins I decided to run the next map as a minimal village that hovered around 60 people once it was set up. Corruption didn't turn nasty until the last days of winter and I was basically coasting through the nights, bored out of my skull. It did let me migrate 30 people each to the next three maps and courier at least 100 resources, so the next villages are going to be much better situated initially. Surprising no one the biggest resource limiter is wood but you can sort of get around that by Motivate Land spells and recharging off the bodies of the dead monsters at night. Crystals were in high demand given that I threw together 23 of the energy collectors in hopes that would be enough generation for ~11 Elemental Bolt Towers, 9 Elemental Bow Towers and 5 Elemental Ballista through a heavy night. Crystilleries were able to keep up with demand with 4 employed and 2 buildings (to gain an extra 20% in refining speed) but the raw collection itself has been suffering. Motivators pretty much pay for themselves and worth the investment. Anyway, midway through Summer of Year 2 even that amount of collectors is not enough to keep up and fire rates stutter around 1/3rd into a night. Level 35 Spectres are no joke in absorbing damage, especially when ~80 are generated each day. I have managed to keep the horde at bay through Cold Field spam because each application appears to have a separate check if an enemy is frozen. And enough of them die before it runs out that you can Melt their bodies with another spell and collect enough essence to sustain the effects. Leading to a point where your entrance is clogged by 20-30 or so statues slowly dying to the freeze DoT and the occasional tower fire when they aren't targeting Spectres. On that note it is not worth upgrading Elemental Bolt towers all the way to an elemental flavour because that particular monster is 25% more vulnerable to straight up Magic versus Elemental Magic. It's much better to upgrade your Bow and Ballista to anything but Fire flavour (because Fire Elementals have a heavy resistance to them and are the next biggest threat) so they too have an energy store and can be more than just a tickle to them. But this is boring, mainly because the game chugs trying to simulate particles and 150 enemies, and also that you aren't threatened until essentially after you've "won" the map according to the game. I'm going to try an aggressive attack on the corruption from day one, by first establishing the village center (which spawns the corruption the tick afterward), deleting it and then rebuilding it much nearer to that center. I suspect enemy generation is limited in type for the early days of spring, leading only to headless and drones being generated. I think by rushing Golems after a Ranger Station for closer-in defense I'll be able to hold off even the worse of the spawning from tile cleansing, and close off a way out before it gets established.
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Oct 28, 2019 21:10
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This is a longshot, but anyone got the original goon gigapack for SimCity 4? Or is there a better one now? Edit: Apologies for posting this here, but this is my only hope of ever finding that pack again. zwdzk fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 03:44
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zwdzk posted:This is a longshot, but anyone got the original goon gigapack for SimCity 4? Or is there a better one now? As long as there's no active Sim City thread I personally don't see any issue. That's really what this thread was meant to be for.
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Oct 30, 2019 03:58
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I cleared the corruption for the first time. Made it And a tide it was. I lost about a fifth of my buildings in the second to last night, when I had all the corruption covered but it's "anger" prevented it from going away as quickly. The enemy levels were also a good 5-8 above my golems, about 8 of the Combobs and a singular Ranger's Hut being the only defenses I built. They're more suited to the fast, aggressive game because they can greatly outscale the enemy in the early game through upgrades and will deal with graveyards and enemy towers pretty well on their own. I also relied on about 4 Cullis Gates to drop in enemies (Mending spell whenever they overloaded themselves and the lightning rod) and dunking fire elementals into the wide river so they'd melt. My other attempt was more clear-cut and typical of the race against time. That one has maybe 7-8 tiles left uncovered but my village is in ridiculous shambles. I still have the village center so I can still build things but there's no housing, no farms and trash as far as the eye can see.
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Nov 1, 2019 01:33
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zwdzk posted:This is a longshot, but anyone got the original goon gigapack for SimCity 4? Or is there a better one now? I would also like this if anyone can find it, I used to have it but it got lost years ago.
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Nov 1, 2019 02:26
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frogge posted:Oh absolutely. I don't really want a city sim that has me doing neighborhood council meetings and initiatives for whether or not I can cut a tree down. I don't want a game to be that granular, I just meant aesthetically I want a balance between it looks like a real city and it looks like a game. That'd be interesting....once. Add a visual aspect so you can see what your meetings are doing, then run the various meetings. More like a Choose Your Own Adventure or some such.
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Nov 1, 2019 11:15
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PerniciousKnid posted:Personally, I think Caesar II was the best. I enjoyed the world map appreciate more than 3's god stuff.
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Nov 1, 2019 14:03
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SimCity 2000 and 3000 are available on Gog. Cities Skyline may have traffic managed my heart, but those two are still incredible city builders.
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Nov 2, 2019 13:39
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Bug Squash posted:SimCity 2000 and 3000 are available on Gog. Cities Skyline may have traffic managed my heart, but those two are still incredible city builders. I think it's the mods for Cities Skylines. Had EA realized this and not just abandoned the franchise we could be looking at a current SimCity.
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Nov 2, 2019 14:12
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zwdzk posted:This is a longshot, but anyone got the original goon gigapack for SimCity 4? Or is there a better one now? Do you mean 'Oldfashioned3.0.rar'? Here's a copy. If there's another goon gigapack I'd be interested in getting in on that, too.
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Nov 2, 2019 15:13
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Mayveena posted:As long as there's no active Sim City thread I personally don't see any issue. That's really what this thread was meant to be for. There's actually a thread in the retro subforum. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3902492&pagenumber=1&perpage=40
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Nov 2, 2019 20:07
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