Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

I don't play videogames, but I am familiar with famous titles like this one.

I would have loved to see something really bold, such as Cities set in Venice, and the task is to revamp the city. More interesting, instead of cars, cars, cars...

View on HN

You might be more interested in the Anno series then, of which 1800 is the most recent release: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_1800

It's set in the early industrial era, so a lot of sails and rails and small colonies exporting things all over. I can't remember if there are cars yet, but if there are, it's not a major focus. Some of the levels have you revamping existing towns, while others let you start from scratch.

(Edit: Anno 1800 is actually free to play on Steam this weekend: https://store.steampowered.com/app/916440/Anno_1800/)

An older title, Anno 1404, had a Venice expansion too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_1404#Expansion

All of them are playable on Ubisoft+ for $15/mo (I think?), so it's a pretty low-risk investment if you want to try them. If you don't have the hardware, you can also stream them on GeForce Now and, I think, Amazon Luna.

Games are super accessible these days!

I'd love to see something with the flexibility and sandbox nature of Skylines and the historic themes of the Anno series (which has pretty graphics but is ultimately tied to a grid and more about sticking buildings on the right tiles to maximise efficiency than worldbuilding)

Have you tried 1800? The grid there is a pretty "soft" one, meaning it's more like a visual guide than anything enforcing gameplay. It's not that different from zoning and road-building in Skylines, where your beneficial buildings (like hospitals and police stations and schools) also have a limited radius of effectiveness.

Gameplay vid with no commentary, if you wanna see: https://youtu.be/jxm_ZroHj3E?si=qDnn1AK1d2kdVAf-&t=68

The campaign might be linear, but the sandbox mode feels like a mix of Cities and Civilization to me. It kinda scratches that sandbox itch, though the focus on trade (vs city-building) got a bit tiresome for me.

I think CS:2 also copied some of the mechanics from 1800 (like the customizable placement of farms around production buildings), trade buildings for lumber, ore, etc.

PS: 1800 is free this weekend, if you wanna try it https://store.steampowered.com/app/916440/Anno_1800/

I heard about city simulator games modelling the number of carparks they'd need before deciding to scrap them instead.

If they left them in, it would have been a fun challenge to minimise them.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/9/4316222/simcity-lead-desig...

Parking and traffic is actually a big deal in Cities: Skylines too, both 1 and especially 2. Traffic will make a lot of areas harder to get to.

The second game adds parking lots of various sizes, parking structures both underground and above ground, etc. But it also encourages you to build alternative public transportation like buses, trolleys, trains, metros, etc. (Sadly no bicycles in the 2nd game yet).

Cities: Skylines was sort of a follow-up to Cities In Motion, which was entirely about transportation, so that's a very essential part of its DNA.

As someone who played a lot of CiM, CiM2 and C:S: they’re not as similar as you might expect.

The CiM games were all about public transit, cars played a supporting role at best. IMHO, they’re the best transit games ever made.

In C:S, it’s the other way around: managing car traffic is imperative (to the point that many recommend micromanaging intersections with mods such as TM:PE), and transit takes the supporting role (although it’s still a lot of fun).

No idea why you were downvoted, there are big limitations about this game: the zoning made of squares favors grids, lack of bike infrastructure, no progress has been made on this, so yes cars and grids unless you want dead areas.

Because the game they're asking for isn't a city builder, it's a city fixer. It's like the difference between playing the FIFA series and the Football Manager series.

Your comment ignores the primary point of their comment, they want to start with an existing city and fix it.

There's a game kind of like that, maybe, called Cities in Motion (also published by Paradox...) where you build mass transit for existing cities. Buses, subways, trams, etc. It's narrow focus is pretty fun, while there isn't a Venice city, it's about revamping existing cities kinda.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com