Games where you can build houses or entire megacities are called urban simulators. Today there are a lot of variations of such projects. The player is given a choice: to build a modern city, solving the problems of lack of water and crime, an archaic village in which residents will fight for an ear of cabbage or a high-tech station on Mars. However, not only the scale determines the specifics of such a simulator. Games where you can build, on PC or Android, iOS, also vary depending on the era, such as buildings, a deviation in strategy, the presence of additional obstacles and the level of branching of the technological tree.
Anno
In talking about games where you can build entire cities, you can not help but mention Anno. This city-planning simulator with a bias in management and economics in particular has taken root very much among the Germans, who are even ready to postpone work for the new project from Sunflowers Interactive. A distinctive feature of the game is the need to cooperate and trade. The more efficiently a player uses resources, the higher the dependence of opponents on transactions with him. Victory in the games of this series is achieved not by the sword, but by gold.
Anno is also friendly to the beginner, which can not be said about most other games in the segment. Training here fully reveals the technological tree, which is characterized by the presence of a huge number of connections, geo-location and infrastructure. However, this does not make the gameplay boring and predictable. It is enough to make a mistake when planning the roads of the city, and the inhabitants are already raising a hunger riot, as the products do not get on time to remote areas.
Banished
Among city-building simulators, the brainchild of Shining Rock Software occupies a special place due to the maximum sophistication of the management system. Each peasant, or, more canonically, a settler, performs certain duties and specializes in the extraction or processing of a particular resource. The villagers need to be monitored, even protected, remember the threat of food shortages and the approaching cold.
Ultimately, among the games where you can build houses or villages, Banished is most thought out in terms of the ratio of the needs of the population and methods for meeting them. This strategy makes it possible to reach your full potential as a manager. But, as is the case with other urban simulation games, Banished does not have additional content for a long game. Sooner or later, the player begins to get bored of gradually overcoming the same difficulties, and the game goes to gather dust on the shelves of Steam.
Stronghold
This strategy is for those players whose sword rusts in the family nest, and the brave war horse ate the belly at the full satisfaction of the grooms. Stronghold at one time did not gain popularity among gamers, modestly occupying the niche of a city-planning simulator with a bias in the management of the castle. Meanwhile, the game has outgrown its time quite significantly. An easy-to-understand, but interesting model of the economy, the ability to fight and even seize castles, a rather tricky AI and an interesting company - all of this can boast of Stronghold.
Unlike other projects of the segment, here the enemies are more than real, the armies are diverse and correspond to the historical weapons system in the Middle Ages. Games of strategy, where you can build, often run into a development model. The competitor is an abstract factor of influence, such as hunger, lack of resources or cold. In Stronghold, the player needs to not only build his castle, but also protect it: think over the defense, stock up on food and weapons, ensure the flow of resources and protect the raw material bases. This makes this project one of the best urban simulators.
Tropico
Dictatorship, cigars and rum - all in one Tropico strategy. The games where you can build houses and conduct business, by themselves, provide for a deep study of the management system, but the project went even further. Tropico makes it possible to stay in the role of a dictator in a somewhat comic manner, to build the economy of the whole island, relying on agriculture, mining of wood, minerals or the defense industry.
A wide choice of development opportunities allows the player to embody a really functioning, autonomous economic system, and then erect another monument in honor of the "El President". The strategy seems simple, but it is only at first glance. It’s not possible to build everything right away, it’s up to you to decide whether the island needs teachers, when you can buy raw materials. The player will even have to build strong relations with the West or the USSR, as a result of which there is a risk of pressure from the offended partner. Tropico is interesting, multifaceted, colorful, and most importantly, it does not let the ruler get bored for a minute.
Simcity
Among modern urban simulations, SimCity takes one of the leading places thanks to the developed infrastructure of the metropolis. Resources in the game also play an important role, since gamers have to adapt to the needs of the city, because the budget is not unlimited. In addition, this simulator showed that you need to monitor not only the bare economy, but also the residents ’satisfaction, social security, neighborhood and crime rate. If there is a more thoughtful simulator of building a modern metropolis, then SimCity is ready for any competition.
Minecraft
Minecraft games, where you can build houses, got their name from one specific project. Minecraft is a city planning simulator with the most extensive audience. The construction and technological tree compensate for the unfriendly interface and the weak appeal of the game for beginners. Several materials can be devoted to this game; the possibilities of gamers in it are so vast. Server variation, the presence of competition and very real enemies, the inaccessibility of individual resources - all this makes Minecraft one of the most popular games in the segment.
The Sandbox also provides extensive opportunities for creating real architectural masterpieces, among which there are many famous buildings from popular television series and series of books. Such skill is not available to every player, but there is a possibility of its embodiment.
City-planning simulations you will not see on the shelf of the most popular games, because they are for everybody. A serious and thoughtful connoisseur of slow development. However, such projects have found their segment and are gradually developing, delighting their fans with new features of the gameplay.