Hmmm, maybe The Colonists? It’s kind of Settlers-like, and I like it:
Though its campaign is scenario-oriented, I think there’s some free mode or something of the sort. Not sure though, as I only played some of the campaign so far.
Yeah, if it weren’t for the scenario ban, I’d definitely say Settlers (2) or one of its imitators, The Colonists being the best of those.
BTW, you said “no early access”, but you might want to take a look at Factory Town and keep it in your wishlist for when it gets out of EA:
I’ll take a look at The Colonists. When I was clearing up my confusion, I saw Tman talking about that one. Factory Town is already on my wishlist, and it certainly looks up my alley.
How about something like Dawn of Man? I enjoyed it. It has a small group of citizens that you don’t have to fuss over too much, and no “traits” etc. It’s all about gathering/hunting/building, and advancing to new ages.
Anno 1404 (Dawn of Discovery) hits all your requirements except the population one. It abstracts your population much more than a colony management game, but what it gives you is power over your resource supply chains (in the form of transport ships and roads). And a lot is automatable.
The what ban?
This.
Yeah, if it weren’t for that, I would suggest Tropico 3/4.
Hey, point out the important stuff too!
will launch on Steam’s Early Access in Q2 2021
Well, I didn’t really point anything at all out - I just linked the news, I expected folks would read it. :)
But for a few seconds I thought I might be able to play a complete game instead of paying for the privilege of being a member of their QA team.
That’s all right. I think the other one is a real release and I know at least a few around here cannot resist the the Siren’s call of an EA title, so they can report back.
The early access stuff is getting kind of annoying in general - not just for this genre. I appreciate EA, don’t get me wrong, since it can lead to a more balanced and polished final product - key for a small development team. But it feels like 9 out of 10 games that I discover and think look cool and get initially excited about end up being Early Access titles, and more often than not there isn’t really an ETA.
My current, frustrating list of games I own and wish I could actually dig into.
I’ve taken to no longer buying Early Access titles unless I find out the price is changing when they come out of EA.
Did you tag those manually or is there a way to get Steam to tell you what EA games you have?
I have three of the ones on your list also :P
Yeah. It’s a bit like Kickstarter. Not every game needs to go through Kickstarter and not very game needs to hit EA status first.
During the demo week of the last Steam sales, it kind of cemented to me that I am not a huge fan city builders in progress status.
This - I wish it was automated, but it didn’t take too long.
I think you can create a “Dynamic Collection” to put Early Access games into a collection automatically. No?
Edit: Nevermind. It is based on Tags, and released games still have Early Access tags on them.
Dawn of Man was decent. There are only a handful of specialist that you have to control, and not a lot of personality difference. The rest of the colonist are generic and you really don’t control them.
That there isn’t a lot of originality in the game, really the only interesting aspect is it really starts from the hunter gather era, and you progress slow up to the early middle ages.
I’ll check out Dawn of Man and Anno 1404. Anno 1404 is probably the most different to the games I’ve been playing, so maybe I should try it to see if I like city builders.