Ranking 6 Best City Builders For New Players
City builders can be hard for new players to understand because they have a lot of moving parts, but there are some great games for newbies.
Some people think that being able to change the game world is one of the best parts of a game. Whether the player is playing as a character or as themselves, the things they do have an effect on the game world, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
That’s one reason why city-builder games are so popular: anyone can start from scratch and make their own little society, choosing everything from the buildings to the people who live there. At first look, city-builders might seem a little too hard, but there are a few games that are great for beginners.
Anno 1800
Anno is a series of games about making cities in the past. Players start out in the Old World and move into the New World. Each game in the Anno series can be played on its own, and Anno 2070 and Anno 2205 are the only ones in the series that aren’t set in the past. But Anno 1800, the last game in the series, takes Anno back to where it all began. Anno 1800 takes place at the start of the Industrial Age. It shows a lot of new things, such as tourism and the results of industrialization.
Players have to build factories to meet the wants of their citizens, but each factory built lowers the city’s “attractiveness rating” and increases pollution. Finding a good balance between industrialization and keeping their cities places that people and tourists will enjoy is an interesting task. Still, both new and experienced players can use the new blueprint mode to plan out how to build their city without losing materials or money. Even if the player doesn’t have enough means to start building right away, the blueprint will stay on their city map.
Frostpunk
Frostpunk might be the right game for city-builder fans who want something a little more serious and with higher risks. This game is a survival city-building game that takes place in a world where it is always cold and snowy. The player’s job is to build the last city on Earth and take care of the city’s giant generator, which is also important to everyone’s life. No matter how big or small a choice is, it could affect the city and its people’s ability to stay alive, so players must think carefully.
The player’s city will be shaped by how the rules are set and how kind or cruel the player is as a leader. The Endless Mode in Frostpunk has three ways to play: Builders, Serenity, and Endurance. Endurance puts players in the most difficult situations to test their skills and decisions, while Builders starts them off with a task by not giving them the generator. And Serenity is a “peaceful” mode where players can just build without any stress.
Tropico 6
The new game in the famous city-building series is called Tropico 6. Even though the games are mostly about politics, Tropico has always been a bit more funny and playful. In Tropico 6, players can continue to choose what kind of “El Presidente” they want to be. For the first time in the series, players can run large groups of islands called archipelagos. To link their islands, they can use different kinds of infrastructure and transportation.
As players build and grow their islands through four different times, they can choose whether they want to be kind leaders or cruel dictators. There is a lot to do, like managing your people and sending agents to raid foreign lands for treasures. People who are new to this type of game will spend a few hours on each session. Even though the game is complex, it’s easy for new players to build their regimes from scratch with the help of the in-game guide to tasks.
Surviving Mars
Surviving Mars might be the right game for people who want to start playing city builders but don’t want to do so in a real-world setting. This sci-fi city-builder game doesn’t take place on Earth in the past or present. Instead, players have to settle Mars. Players have to build domes and other important structures for the people to live on Mars. If they make a mistake, it could mean the difference between life and death.
But making the infrastructure for the colonies isn’t too hard. Tubes are used to move water and oxygen, power lines are needed to power the dome, tunnels can connect domes that are close together, and shuttles can be used to get colonists to places farther away. The game also has a detailed introduction that you should go through.
Cities: Skylines
Cities: Skylines is likely one of the best-known city-building games. Some of its fans even say it is the best city-building game ever. As the city’s mayor, the player can build the city in any way they want. They can put almost anything they want wherever they want, and it won’t affect or stop them from running their city the way they want to.
And if players want something different from the normal gameplay, they can buy DLCs that add new gameplay, like Spacebar Clicker – Natural Disasters, which adds a bunch of different disasters that players can guide their city through.
Banished
Banished is probably the best game to start with if you want to build a city. Players take care of a group of exiled travelers and help them start a new life in a new land. Banished isn’t like other city builders because it doesn’t have skill trees or money to worry about. The people in the town are the game’s main supply.
The key to making a territory great is to make sure that the people who live there are healthy and happy and that they provide goods and services that help the town do well. There are many ways to play because each map is different and some supplies may be harder to find than others. Banished is a great place to start for someone who has never played a city-building game before. It will help them figure out what they like about these games and help them find more like them.
