A list of ancient and medieval city builder games

[nuyokcity 22]

Hello,

Here is a list of ancient and medieval city building games for anyone interested in exploring the ancient city building genre more. The list starts with the original ancient city building series by Impressions Games and Tilted Mill, followed by links to the latest 2d and mobile versions as well as other related game series, and includes independent games in various stages of completion.

There is still much potential in the ancient city building genre, for example here is a list of historical ancient city building civilizations for which games haven't been made yet. There have mostly been many Roman, Egyptian, Greek and European themed games. If anyone is familiar with other languages then maybe you can search for games in other countries and contact any developers that may be interested in working on their own version of an ancient city building game and release localized language packs.

I also posted a similar thread here in Simtropolis about modern city builder games. As you can see, it seems there have been more attempts at independent projects for modern city builder games than ancient city builder games. I figure there is a cross-over between these games in terms of history, development and interest so if anyone has any ideas for new ancient city builder games as well any relevant entries and links, please post them here or message me and I will add them. Lastly there is a section for links to forums and discussions.

Ancient and Medieval city building games:

Caesar 2 (1994)

Caesar 3 (1998)

Knights and Merchants (1998)

Pharoah (1999)

Cleopatra expansion (2000)

Zeus (2000)

Poseidon expansion (2001)

Emperor (2002)

Children of the Nile (2004)

Alexandria expansion (2008)

Medieval Lords: Build, Defend, Expand (2004)

Caesar 4 (2006)

Glory of the Roman Empire (2006)

Arabian Lords (2007)

Imperium Romanum (2008)

Grand Ages: Rome (2008)

Grand Ages: Medieval (?)

Villages and Cities (?)

Various new 2d, flash, browser, mmo, social and mobile versions here

Various new mmo browser versions here

Independent projects:

Widelands (2002)

Unknown Horizons (2008)

CaesarIA (aka Open Caesar 3) (In progress/?)

Other related city builder and economic game series:

Anno series

Patrician series

Settlers series

Alien Nations series

Cultures series

Port Royale series

Tropico series

SimCity series

Various new/mobile 2d versions

Various merchant and trade-oriented games

Related game and mod links:

Heavengames Forums

Sierra Chest

Tilted Mill Forums

Anno Fans

Settlers Forum

Stronghold Forums

Patrician, Tropico and Port Royale Forums

Simtropolis Forums

SimCity Societies Forum at Tilted Mill

City Builder Games Forum

Game Mod Database

Indie Game Database

City Building Games at Wikia

City Building Games at Wikipedia

Chronology of City Building Games at Wikipedia

Mobygames Videogame Database and Forum

Related Projects:

Caesar 3 Mod Squad (2008, ?) - incomplete, some ideas continued by others here and also discussed here.

Ymir Online (2011, ?) - in progress

Discussions:

Compatibility of future TM CBs by Son of Moose (8-23-2004, Tilted Mill forum)

Caesar 3 Mod Squad by Crashe (6-17-2009, Tilted Mill forum)

Is Tilted Mill working on anything new? by gamester (6-6-2011, Tilted Mill forum)

Legality of making a game clone by cyberfish (11-13-2011, Cprogramming forum)

Making your own city builder game by DenSomKastade (11-20-2011, City Builder Games forum)

Caesar 3 Mod Squad new phase of project by RandomEd and gaddas (1-15-2012, Caesar 3 Mod Squad forum)

The possibilities for new 2d city builder games by alincarpetman (1-19-2012, Heavengames forum)

The possibilities for new city builder games by alincarpetman (5-17-2012, Tilted Mill forum)

List of related rts and city builder projects and discussions:

- 0 AD (2000, ?) - an ancient military rts game, sort of a Age of Empires 3d "remake" but better, is open for game testing and will have the option for custom modding.

- Glest (2004) - is a game engine for fantasy rts games.

- Zero-K (2010) - is an open source futuristic military rts game.

Related thread lists

These game lists have been cross posted on related gaming forums:

A list of ancient city builder games here, here,

A list of modern city builder and global civilization builder games:

A list of fantasy and sci-fi rts and city builder games here, here, here

So some options for new city building games may be the following:

- port the classic 2d games onto new systems which will give the developers money for new projects

- mod the existing games in some ways such as the Open Caesar 3 project for something different

- try to get the original 2d game info to make new games in a similar style independently using the old versions

- create new games independently from scratch which will take time if funds and talent is limited, but is certainly possible

- it's up to gamers to post on various forums, social networks, and game mod websites to generate interest and potential collaborations

- ideally an open source version of a city building game can be made where anyone can go in and mod it to add any historical time periods and civilizations or completely new settings, including ancient, medieval, pre-industrial, modern, post-industrial, alternate history, fantasy, scfi, alien, custom, any specific historical time/culture/location, etc.

[catty-cb 4,381]

Thanks interesting reading

[Ocram's Razr 963]

There is a new, RPG styled City Builder called Towns.

[nuyokcity 22]

Hi OcramSeattle, thanks I'll take a look at Towns.

Medieval Mayor, a new medieval city building game from Tilted Mill has been announced for 2013. So it seems we have a parallel to the modern city builder Simcity also due in 2013.

  Edited October 23, 2012 by nuyokcity  

[quazardous 0]

I ve found this post very interesting.

 

I'm trying to create a wiki about a hypothetical perfetc city builder maybe one day actualy dev it ...

 

http://the-perfect-city-builder.wikia.com

 

feel free to join the effort !

[nuyokcity 22]

Updated the lists with the latest games and links - post or pm if you have any more

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

On 1/18/2015 at 2:25 AM, nuyokcity said:

Updated the lists with the latest games and links - post or pm if you have any more

I just found this thread when searching for an answer for someone. It's pretty cool and since we have so few pinned topics in this forum I'm going to pin it.

[APSMS 1,892]

I noticed Banished isn't on this list. It may be good to mention it as well, even though it's a different type of city-builder (resource management).

[Ocram's Razr 963]

This thread hasn't been updated in a while. Towns was abandoned long ago, Banished just received its last update (unless there are bugs to be fixed), and Life is Feudal: Forest Village has been released.