Jul 31, 2019 We have tried to highlight the best city building games for iOS that are capable of giving you a memorable gaming experience. The list of city building game can go on and on as there are bundles of games available in different categories. Hopefully, this round-up article helped you get familiarized with some of the best games in the genre. Dec 27, 2018  After testing 25+ games, these are the best strategy games for Mac today. Our Top 10 has something for everyone, including fast-paced RTS, complex turn-based games, and even a few good casual free Mac strategy games.

Looking for the best city building games on PC? There’s nothing more relaxing than sitting down for an afternoon of city building games with a hot drink. We’ve lost countless hours lining up buildings just how we like them or scrambling to save a population on the brink of collapse, and occasionally we’ve purposefully brought about that collapse just to see how our citizens would cope. Not very well as it happens.

Our list of the best city building games offers something for every management games fan, from hardcore town planners looking for a challenge, to entries that welcome genre newcomers with the promise of tutorials, stripped back interfaces, and few apocalyptic threats. As well as difficulty, we’ve included a mix of realistic city builders and sci-fi simulator games, in case you’re bored of laying out your urban expanses against a traditional backdrop.

Whether your aim is to regroup and repopulate Earth, conquer new planets, or defeat the commuter’s menace that is congestion, then this list of the best city building games on PC should serve you well.

Here are the best city building games on PC:

Cities: Skylines

Simplicity is the key to Cities: Skylines meteoric rise to success. Whether you’re a veteran town planner capable of handling practically any scenario, or a newcomer to the genre, Cities: Skylines is arguably the best city building game for either party.

Instead of spending aeons scrolling through building types and then carefully rotating and placing them in accessible spots, Cities: Skylines breaks down the bulk of its buildings into categories like residential, commercial, and industrial, letting you rapidly build a skeleton for your city before agonising over the small details. The skill is all in how you balance the many needs of your citizens and each district, making you think more like a mayor.

Pc City Building Games

It’s not that Cities: Skylines is easy, that is far from true, it’s just easy to get your head around, and when things go wrong, which they inevitably will, you won’t feel defeated by the prospect of starting over again. As you’d expect from the studio behind Cities in Motion, Cities: Skylines also features a gloriously deep and complex mix of transit options, which means you get to spend countless hours trying to ensure your denizens are moving around as seamlessly and smoothly as possible.

For the hardcore players there’s also a still-thriving mod scene packed with scenarios, new buildings, and, er, traffic solutions so you can successfully recreate any city in the world or attempt to solve LA’s infamous traffic problem. Check out some of the best Cities: Skylines mods.

Tropico 6

El Presidente returns, this time to an archipelago where you can manage/rule over multiple islands simultaneously. This city building game charges you with building a city from the ground up, all while dealing with the economic demands of the island, the happiness of your citizens, and keeping paradise afloat on corrupt bargains with overseas allies.

Tropico 6 is all about finding balance in a city that can’t satisfy all factions and residents, as challenges arise from crooked government officials that you’ll need to complete in order to work towards your overall goal, which changes with each scenario.

As you’d expect from a dictatorial city builder, Tropico 6 gives you plenty of choice, but you can expect some brutal consequences if you make the wrong call. If a general election looms, you’ll have the choice to bend the figures or remain squeaky clean, but there’s a trade off between losing the election and having to restart the level or angering internal factions.

Tropico 6’s bombastic presentation belies just how much love and care you’ll need to devote to your regime to keep everyone happy, relatively speaking. Thankfully, the island setting makes it easy to keep tabs on your buildings and notifications whether that’s spotting rebels roaming the streets, or a group of shacks that has sprung up as a signal to build more homes for your citizens.

Aven Colony

Aven Colony transports the humble city builder to a different planet where you’ll face much more challenging obstacles than deciding where best to build your roads. For starters, you’ll have to factor in the challenges posed by all the terrifying new space biomes and the hostile atmosphere.

Instead of creating a new city to entice residents, your main objective is to rebuild humanity, a lofty goal indeed. In doing so, you’ll need to try to adjust to the atmosphere, battle against constant natural disasters, a lack of oxygen (pretty big deal, this one), and even alien lifeforms like gigantic sandworms.

You’ll start out as a governor and rise through the ranks to establish yourself as president of your colony as the rest of the game follows suit, expanding your toolset and testing your abilities by starting off with small goals like building a water pump and escalating all the way to manning a full-scale Starship Troopers-like army.

Aven Colony isn’t just a pure city-building game either, as it mixes in qualities from the best 4X games and strategy games. There’s some light combat and a neat expeditions system that lets you eventually uncover the planet’s history.

Frostpunk

Frostpunk is the kind of city builder that will make you question your own morality over and over again. Your job is to survive a premature ice age in a sheltered steampunk-powered city that was left unfinished before the big freeze took hold. As the leader of a group of survivors, your role is to rebuild the city around a giant heater that constantly needs fuel to keep your denizens safe and healthy.

Like in some of the best survival games, Frostpunk is all about managing resources effectively to keep the city going, and your main concern is keeping the furnace fueled. Unlike other city builders, Frostpunk is about surviving instead of ruling, and it’s a constant juggling act to keep your new citizens happy, while ensuring the city is stocked with food and the furnace is fully operational.

As you might have expected from one of the best apocalypse games Frostpunk isn’t exactly a light-hearted city building game. Death is inevitable in this harsh tundra and you face plenty of difficult decisions just to keep the city going – instead of worrying about structure placement and how everything looks, you need to make the laws that keep your citizens in order, gamble on risky expeditions, and occasionally make an example of a criminal.

Surviving Mars

Much like Frostpunk, Surviving Mars blends survival and city building, albeit on the barren red planet rather than a frozen hellscape. You’ll be armed with all the equipment you need to create a functional, happy city for colonists as you explore Mars’ dusty surface, searching for terrain that can be fertilised so you can continue expanding across the planet.

Unfortunately, there’s no scientist Matt Damon on standby to walk you through the whole process. You’ll be your own botanist, scientist, and city planner as you work to keep your flocking colonists fed and happy – but that’s the least of your problems. Surviving Mars is a little tougher to handle, it requires a lot of attention to ensure citizens have access to oxygen and are protected against impending natural disasters like dust storms and cold waves, but Surviving Mars does a great job at keeping you constantly informed of your city’s progress.

Research and exploration plays a huge role in this survival city builder, letting you massively improve the structures and facilities in your colony so that they match the Asimovian fantasy in your head. Plus, with a thriving mod scene there’s no end to the mad sci-fi colonies you can realise.

Anno 1800

Anno 1800 returns the city building series to its historical roots, positioning you as a company leader in the Industrial Revolution, as you trade and grow your empire from a couple of farms and warehouses to a thriving industrial metropolis that’s the envy of the world. Eventually, you can even attract tourists to one of your many museums or zoos as you transition to the modern world, navigating all the logistical and societal issues that come with such seismic change.

Anno 1800 offers many options on how to play across its campaign, multiplayer, and sandbox modes. Much like in the best 4X games, there are a variety of ways to win Anno 1800, ranging from accruing wealth and investors to attracting visitors and securing diplomatic ties. Pitted against other islands, you’ll need to keep a close eye on your rivals and their world decisions, as you figure out through diplomatic failings and trade how they operate and if they can be trusted.

Apart from monitoring your rivals, you’ll need to keep your workers happy, as you expand trade and grow your company town. There’s even a regular newspaper that makes the rounds affecting population happiness, spreading tales across the land of your city’s successes and failures. Details like this help bring the world of the Industrial Revolution to life, and while Anno 1800 definitely glazes over the grim reality of the era, it’s hard not to get drawn in by its picture perfect vistas and charm.

Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition

Instead of building a city to survive, to dictate, or repopulate, in Age of Empires 2 your main goal is to build your city as a base of operations for your army as you prepare to wage war through the ages. You pick from a number of historical civs and lean into their strengths in order to bring prosperity to your people.

Age of Empires II Definitive Edition reboots the original 1999 game, and although we were already treated to a HD edition in 2013, who says we can’t have even nicer things? If you have fond memories of playing Age of Empires, or if you’re new to the genre, there’s much more to this city builder, than just, er, building cities. Don’t let that put you off though, Age of Empires 2 has plenty of tutorials to aid you along the way.

Related: Check out everything we know about Age of Empires 4

The city building aspect of Age of Empires means creating towns, villages, and eventually morphing them altogether to form cities capable of withstanding the perils of war. It’s not enough to have your townspeople scavenging for supplies and farming the land to keep your civ afloat, you’ll also need to build watchtowers and barricades to defend against enemies, as well as training villagers for war. In Age of Empires 2, the results of creating a functional city reverberates through the ages. Few old games are as fun to play over 20 years later as AoE 2.

SimCity 4

The SimCity series has been around for a good while now, and you can see how much other city building games borrowed from – and in the case of Cities: skylines, improved upon – this incredibly popular city building series. SimCity 4 launched in 2003, and although the game doesn’t offer anything especially innovative to the genre, it’s still a satisfying and challenging contender.

Similar to Cities: Skylines, you’ll only really have one goal, creating your dream city. You have different zones of buildings you can lay down in a grid format, but you can also splash the cash to build intricate road systems or more advanced architecture, and even world wonders. You’ll get prompts as you expand your city, notifying you of your citizens needs as you gradually unlock new features and attract more residents. There’s not too much to think about when it comes to SimCity, but sometimes that can be just want you’re looking for in a city building game.

Best Free City Building Games Mac And Pc

Do you like City Builder Games where you can design amazing cities, communities and settlements?

These type of games are the perfect way to express yourself and be creative, sometimes without restriction. City management games or general management games on the other hand let you manage everything, whether it’s a city, a business or any kind of system.

It is also very similar to strategy games, but the main difference is that in city builder games or management games your success is not physical survival, but more financial survival.

The main goal is to make money and reach your goals. Most city building simulators have a sandbox mode meaning you can build with an unlimited budget and don’t have to worry about balancing your finances.

These type of games also give you problems to solve, whether it is traffic related or managing your resources, it is always fun to come up with a solution. Build bigger, better and become virtually rich! Here is a list of the best City Builder Games and Management Games you can play!

What is your favorite city building game? Tell me in the comments. If you like this post, please share it with your friends.

The Best City Builder Games

1. Cities Skylines

Cities Skylines is the ultimate city builder game you can play right now.

It has so many possibilities and features for players to create their dream city.

Cities Skylines challenges the player’s management and creative skills, whether you play with money or in sandbox mode.

In the beginning of every city create you will experience the need to expand quickly and get more people to move there.

Until… traffic becomes a problem!

Gaming on mac mini ssd 2011 price. That is one of the main challenges in the game, to find innovative way to solve traffic and expansion problems.

Traffic management, policies, taxation, infrastructure planning, resources, city connections ect. are only a few things you’ll manage during the game.

It also has massive modding capabilities and a big community with a number of awesome DLC content, so customization is virtually unlimited.

What are you waiting for, the people want to move in.

Don’t miss the latest DLC, Industries, which is definitely one of the best!

Find it here – Industries DLC

Get building!

Buy Cities Skylines

2. ANNO 1800

ANNO 1800 is a real-time city building game and it’s the latest edition into the series.

The ANNO Series has the ultimate blend between being a city builder and a city management game while you play through some super interesting campaigns.

The setting is focused around the 1800’s of the Industrial Revolution highlighting colonial trade with a touch of Victorian Era style.

You will have to manage many different aspects to conquer ANNO 1800, like production, supply chains, trade routes, political management and keeping your people happy.

You will ultimately decide what kind of ruler you will be.

Will you be an innovator or an exploiter?

Are you a liberator or a conqueror that rules with an iron fist?

Whichever you choose, be ready for an epic journey. Enjoy this city builder in singleplayer, multiplayer and sandbox mode.

ANNO has visited a few different eras, both historical and future, each giving you a rich storyline which will give you hours of playtime.

My favourite so far was ANNO 1404, but the new ANNO 1800 will definitely be one of the best. What is your favourite?

Buy ANNO 1800

3. Tropico 6

When you are looking for a fun city builder game that is not too serious, the Tropico series might just be perfect for you.

Tropico 6 is one of the latest city building and management games for the genre, with a list of new features.

You are taking the role of “El Presidente” the mayor on your very own little island, build a community from the ground, manage resources, politics, trade and much more.

Playing the main campaigns takes you through 4 time periods all with unique ways to build your settlements:

• The Colonial era
• The World Wars era
• The Cold War era
• The Modern era

Tropico 6 is a super fun game and you can play it in a variety of ways with several outcomes by implementing different policies, making decisions based on various factors and growing your rule in across your islands.

A new feature allows you build on various small islands throughout the 4 time periods and later connect them together, which was not the case in previous titles.

Even enjoy some multiplayer city building games with up to four friends.

Will you manage to keep your people happy, balance your production and supply, grow your empire?

You are the major and the choice of how to build, manage and rule is up to you.

So go and create an economy that your virtual people will be proud of!

Buy Tropico 6

4. Banished

Banished is a city building strategy game that lets you build and manage an isolated society. You literally start with nothing except a few people to control.

The main goal of this village building game is to develop a sustaining settlement for your people to survive through the various conditions.

It sounds easy enough right, but the thing is people will die if they are not fed or warm enough in the Winter.

You should order them to build, gather, farm and mine to keep your people alive. Banished has all the seasons where you will face challenges during each. For example, in Spring and Summer you need to grow food and gather wood to build houses and have enough firewood.

During Autumn and Winter, people will die if they are not warmed from fire and starve if they run out of food. The game has a few complex systems to understand and overcome before you can really build a large town, but it’s worth every minute.

If you like a real challenge and want to build your own little settlement, Banished is a great game to play.

It’s time to gather some firewood for the Winter!

Buy Banished:

5. Surviving Mars

From the same publisher’s as Cities Skylines, Surviving Mars is another challenging builder.

It is more focused around colony building and survival the different conditions than your usual city builders. Your mission is to build a sustainable settlement on Mars and survive the challenges that is thrown at you.

Being on Mars, there are a lot of factors that can affect the way you build your city which is really fun when you start to understand what needs to happen.

Surviving Mars has a lot of exciting gameplay, challenging environments and many customization to enjoy.

If you like a good colony builder game, this will be perfect for you.

Buy Surviving Mars

6. Frostpunk

The end of our civilization as we know it came fast during the 19th Century, which was supposed to be the peak of human achievement.

Frostpunk is a survival city building game that puts you in charge of managing the last city on earth. With a great story and many different ways to play it, you are fighting to survive while its your duty to manage both the people and the infrastructure.

There are many things that plays together, from workers, resources, building strategy, politics and much more.

What decisions will you make to ensure the survival of the human race?

You must do whatever it takes, just survive!

Buy Frostpunk

7. Aven Colony

Aven Colony is a city building game for PC, Xbox and Playstation. You find yourself on Aven Prime, an alien planet several light years from earth, where you need to build a new human colony and survive the conditions.

Like many city builder games, Aven Colony has a lot of challenges in store for you to overcome like the management of resources, environmental factors and the aliens themselves. It can be quite a hard game at first, but when you get into the phase where you know how to balance everything it can be great.

In order to keep your people alive, you need to mine resources, set up defenses and do research in order to overcome some of the challenges you may face. One moment the sun can be shining and the next moment a giant sandstorm approaches to blow everything away.

There are also a variety of different aliens that can attack your colony, from plague spores, hovering guardians and cultist airships. You can defend against attacks by building defensive buildings and do research to improve them.

With all that going on, you will also have to deal with and balance the morale of the people in your colony, as they will hold elections and can vote you out if you don’t take care of their needs. These can be things like crime, food supplies, living conditions, social policies and more.

There are also the option to expand your colony into sub-colonies and grow your population. That is a whole other challenge on it’s own.

Aven Colony can be really challenging at times, but offers you the satisfaction when you keep going.

Go save your people and build your settlement on a totally unknown planet.

Buy Aven Colony

8. Life is Feudal: Forest Village

Life is Feudal: Forest Village is extremely similar to Banished I listed earlier, just with a few more advanced features like the management systems and graphical enhancements.

The key is to build your settlement from nothing with a few peasants, by gathering, harvesting, mining and a lot more.

The setting is in the medieval time with a realistic world, famine, disease and harsh winters. The game has a dynamic ecosystem with changing weather and the world you play on is randomly generated which gives you a unique experience for every town you build.

Life is Feudal is a great game to relax and not take everything too serious, so do you have what it takes to build your own medieval settlement?

Buy Life is Feudal: Forest Village

9. Rise of Industry

Rise of Industry is a complex strategy game in which you are the CEO of your own blossoming company – building an industrial empire that produces and delivers essential products to a growing population

Gather resources by building farms, mines, oil and gas wells and many more.

From the most basic materials there will be a wide range of products you can manufacture and ship to towns.

Keep the economy moving and keep the masses’ needs fulfilled.

Facilitate the transportation of both raw and finished products at every stage of production with the help of roadways, trucks, trains, ships, and even zeppelins.

Each mode of travel has its own advantages and drawbacks, and it’s up to you to sort the logistic puzzle.

Rise of Industry is complex enough to keep you entertained for hours and the development team seem to be very active and trustworthy.

So if you love complex strategy game and building your own successful business sounds good then Rise of Industry is a game for you!

Buy Rise of Industry

10. Simcity Complete Edition

Buy Simcity Complete Edition

11. Stonehearth

Buy Stonehearth

12. Kingdoms and Castles

Top Free Mac Games

Buy Kingdoms and Castles

13. Urban Empire

Buy Urban Empire

14. Cities in Motion 2

Buy Cities in Motion 2

Conclusion

What is your favorite city builder game?

Parkour videos. Did I miss one?

Share it in the comments!

Now that you have a long list of great city builder games to choose from, you can be sure to have hours of fun! I listed the best city simulation games you can still play in 2019.

Please share my post with your friends if you found this post helpful or interesting.

Also read:

Free City Building Games For Mac

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