Imagine games like Caesar or Anno but you’re just doing lame quests like “gather 20 resources and spend them at this empty spot, you win next mission”

None of the intricacies of a city builder, none of the losing is fun of a roguelite.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 28 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Hrm, fair enough, although I will say for it's nearly opposite.

I expected it to be pretty meh, for those very reasons.

In practice, it makes me realize that when I play city builders, only a brief moment in an empty map is actually interesting to me, then it's just hours upon hours of prettification and optimizing for the sake of optimizing, so here something gives me just an endless randomized sequence of those beginning minutes and eshews the parts after that.

But I can very easily see why someone would dislike it, after all I thought I would, too.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago

I think this explains my feeling really well. I get bored after a couple hours in games like city skylines. But this game lets me go over and over and over.

[–] Gustephan@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago

I've really enjoyed how much ATS incentivizes that optimization, given that years spent on a settlement count toward the blightstorm cycle. It's really satisfying to figure out how to max rep as quickly as possible, especially with really hard modifiers like the "no orders" one

[–] birdcannon@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Pretty much how I felt too. I looooved Frostpunk and wanted more games like that. 100+ hours and loved every second, but eventually gotta move on. Tried Anno 1800 and liked it but not as much, got maybe 50 hours out of it. Tried Against the Storm and after 10 hours of not feeling anything I uninstalled. Really don’t get why Frostpunk and Against the Storm get lumped together, other than both having mechanics of building buildings and assigning workers. There’s sooooo much more to Frostpunk beyond that.

[–] Brokkr@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried Factorio? If you want something that you can invest some time in the then that might be what you want.

[–] birdcannon@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Ooooh yeah Factorio and I are well acquainted, think I’m probably close to 500 hours on that. Definitely closer to Frostpunk than AtS

[–] HotPurplePeach@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I really like that you have to take into account what your villagers like and build the city around their needs. It makes choosing the type of buildings exciting every run. And then making sure that the production is fast enough so that the needs are satisfied.

I didn't play the games you mention so I don't know what do you enjoy about them, but for me this game was a fantastic surprise. It somehow gives me the old Warcraft III vibe, without the "building an army" part that I didn't enjoy and was never good at.

[–] LordKitsuna@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's funny because I do none of that. I never build any of the luxury goods of any kind no coats no beef jerky no special housing. The game is honestly pretty easy to beat the maps, get to building tools as quickly as you can and then just Spam Glades and send crates to the Citadel easy rep points

[–] HotPurplePeach@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Wow, it never occurred to me to try that approach. I always focus first on the food and mostly don't even get to building tools, and I find the game really fun and challenging. It's great that you can take so different approaches and still enjoy the game. I'll surely try it out your way, thanks.