Recommendations: Great City-building Games?

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You may have to view compatability files to find it

 

How does one view said compatibility files? /dumb yet serious question

 

If you're on vista on some games when you check out folders in explorer it has at the top Organize, Views, Burn etc. In some folders another option will pop up saying Compatability Files which has duplicates/files that are kept differently for one reason or another.

 

And what about XP?

 

I installed Sim City 4 last night, built a nice little town and still had around $450'000 left, so I started expanding it. Within half an hour, I was bankrupt. I've learned my lesson now >.<

 

Well, I'm returning Dawn of Discovery (Anno 1404). Not a happy bunny right now.

After trying the above workaround, with no luck, I called Ubisoft customer service. Surprisingly, I got right through, and a cranky yet helpful young woman spent about 20 minutes on the phone with me, checking my settings, and eventually making some changes to my startup checklist. This fix seemed to work, and the game finally got past the dumb black screen with he golden hourglass, and into the loading screens (Ubisoft brand animation, Anno intro movie, then menu). Problem is, the game now runs slow. REAL slow. Choppy sound, 2-3 fps framerate. To which the tech replied "maybe you need to update your motherboard drivers." I did. I update absolutely every driver. Twice. Nothing. Then I tried running the game at the lowest settings. NO change in frame rate. I made sure the engine file was set for DX9, instead of DX10. No change. This is utterly absurd. I run Dragon Age, Fallout 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Company of Heroes all on max settings with a frame rate varying from acceptable to excellent.

What a buggy, resource-hogging piece of crap. Dawn of Disappointment. Getting my money back.

 

Too bad for your last try. At least your problems may help give someone else a heads up of what to watch out for if they are thinking over the game.

I wonder if I talked a bit too much about the politics aspects of Tropico. It definitely has city/base building aspects to it that encourage you to worry about basic concerns for what a modern society/community should have (transportation, healthcare, education, work/finances/income).

You do put together cities/bases and try to figure out how they work and how to make them work best. Politics and the demands of your citizens and/or henchmen are an added thing that can drive your next expansion/building period by responding to demands for various things/buildings.

I really was impressed by the political aspect of it because, while I'm sure there are a few flaws, it was really a novel and neat approach to how does a game define-and let its users manipulate and respond to-politics. Imagine a Civ or SimCity game where your population could elect someone/something other than your and/or your party. For Civ you can choose to have a democratic government but the population at large has little in the way of actually making their will/concerns felt on your decision making processes.

Ditto for most of the Simcity games. If that SimCity 2000 save I had from years back had elections I would have gotten booted out of my mayorship/city plannerhood after purposefully setting down a 5th nuclear fission power station where I knew there was no water and the plant was likely to have a(another) meltdown-adding yet a few more radioactive areas to the bunch I had already built up next to (and in the middle of) residential housing. Granted, in most of my SimCity games/saves I tried to be a good leader rather than one that puts the majority of the population in most terrible living conditions possible. But if I chose to citizens had no method of responding.

Tropico involves building a town(s) where they may have a very powerful method of doing so. Democratic government more in practice than in name only.

Your town can involve a lot of micromanaging (how much do people working at ____ get paid, what farm grows what crop, is it worth it to build a bank rather than apartments and so on). But I think the game does it well and with methods that can be complex when added together (strategy games can be like that) but are sensible.

 

Funny you mentioned that, pplr...

When I arrived back from returning Dawn of Discovery to Best Buy, I logged on and found that Steam was selling Tripico 3 (special Steam edition) for 70% off this weekend (so it was $13 and change). Naturally, I picked it up. So far the game seems cool and I'm getting used to it. But I'm having a lot of trouble getting an economy going. I've tried building a couple of tobacco farms right away, along with a cigar factory and 1 purchased worker. Then, a tenement. As soon as I make money from my first shipment (I'm usually in debt by this point) I build a church, a pub and a clinic (responding to the demands of the unhappy citizens). My setting are always on easy, but still...I suck at being a commie dictator.

Any tips?

 

I never got into the SimCity games, and the only one I've played in the last few years is CivCity: Rome. I just didn't see the point. That said, I have heard very good things about the Tropico series, although I must admit I've never played them.

I agree that if you're interested in city-building type games, the Total War series is not what you're after.

 

I never saw the point in such games either, until I started playing them. I thought SimCity was a particularly dumb concept. Then I played it. It can be a lot of fun. Planning your city layouts, and seeing your city flourish or decay based on your design choices. It's like watching a child grow. The satisfaction level you get from starting with a tiny podunk town and growing it into a thriving metropolis is very enjoyable. Some people don't like them because there's really no "end" - but that's a good thing, if you ask me.

 

I (no matter how I come to power) usually declare early elections just so that I can remake myself as democratic. I know that usually leads to complications later when a skilled/intelligent individual joins the leadership of a faction that doesn't like me but I generally do it anyway-it tends to make at least some people pleased and cuts down on coup attempts. Though I sometimes think I do it to make that particular president more of an ideal leader than making the game easier.

I'm not sure if Tropico 3 is similar to Mucho Macho but I never bought a worker unless I was really short on educated people and needed some or needed to quickly boost my military for some reason (similar to bringing in foreign mercenaries to fight off rebels when half my army is dead or moving on to better paying jobs).

If Tropico 3 is similar to Mucho Macho then a factory can use a lot more workers than 1 to staff it. And with most factories you want raw materials (like farm produce) pouring in and finished goods pouring out. That means having at least a core group of people working at a factory (they get better at it with time too). A catch is that factory workers (like most soldiers unless you have a specific background that lets you put guns in the hands of the illiterate-which actually isn't too different from what has happened in many places in the 3rd world) have to have at least a high school education to work there.

Thus I usually build a high school about the same time I build my first factory (this gives people a source of better paying jobs and a way to get ready to have them). It makes building my first factory functionally that much more expensive but I think it pays for itself with time.

A side tip to that is make sure that teachers get paid enough they all don't decide to work at the factory. At least in Mucho Macho the number of students a high school can handle is determined by the number of teachers working there.

This means for my first factory I drop pay a little bit (it is still better than for farmers get so people still want to work there) and give teachers a raise.

I don't know how this will affect your situation as Tropico 3's nationalist faction seems to integrate anti-immigrant feelings directly into the political feelings of the time. But one thing I did was start building farms (of multiple sorts early on). If you get enough adding another building (forgot what it is called, sorry) for the people that transport goods around may be in order.

This usually means that sooner or later I have a bumper crop of produce jobs for a bumper crop of illiterate immigrants that want to come to my nation.

The first crops usually just get exported and it is from that money I get the revenue to build the factory and high school. Though one complication I have to warn you about is that this adds a bunch of people that are going to want housing sooner or later. So you have to balance building that with building factories & a school in terms of which you think you can politically get away with doing first.

Also I tend to build factories either really close to farms that produce what they use or between the farm producing its raw materials and the pier where exports are offloaded. This cuts down on travel time a bit and on the raw materials that are mistakenly taken to the pier rather than a factory that can use them (once it is built).

There is a page of commentary. Hope it is useful.

If you want suggestions about other stuff I can relay what my experiences have been.

 

Well pplr, thanks to your advice, I'm cruising. I created my own leader (named Jose Jalapeno!) who is an elected capitalist, and I've been doing early elections every few years. I started off building 3 farms (2 tobacco, 1 papaya), a ranch, a logging camp and 2 apartment blocks. Before long I was exporting about $4,000 per freighter. Then I built an oilwell (1 deposit available on my map) and 2 mines, and soon I was bringing in 5 times that. This allowed me to build a clinic (and hire a staffer), 2 churches, a pub, a restaurant, a highschool, more apartment blocks, etc., all while keeping at least $10,000 in my coffers as a nest egg. After about 90 minutes of play, I'd built my population to 130, with $40,000 in the bank, 55% approval, and now I'm starting to build factories, a police station, and (by demand from the clergy) a Cathedral. I think I'm in good shape now.

Now to follow my MO for most city-building games: overexpand and watch my city crumble around me.