The series of history-themed city builders made by Impressions in the late 1990s are widely seen as one of the high water marks for this entire genre, and that series reached its Zenith with Emperor, a game about constructing cities through thousands of years of Chinese History.

If you want to reach further back in time, Dawn Of Man is a stellar neolithic settlement builder, while if you want to have more fights with your history, check out Stronghold HD later on this list, or stay in China and lose the building with Total War: Three Kingdoms. And if you like that, check out Children Of The Nile and the upcoming Builders Of Egypt. What else should I be playing: Any of the other classic Impressions city builders, although I'd recommend Pharaoh as my favourite. But if that's an issue for you, or if you find you've reached your appetite for the possibilities of the base game, there's such a vast catalogue of official DLC and community-built mods, that you're never going to run out of new ways to build. If there's a price to pay for this, it's that it's very sandboxy to play, without many definite objectives in sight. Skylines nailed so many of the issues crucial to simulating the construction of modern cities, with its suite of road placement and traffic mechanics being something of a masterpiece, and solid systems for zoning, public transport, and all those other things that sound dull on paper but become day-eatingly engrossing once you've gotten stuck in.Ĭ:S is as versatile as they come, with virtually any city design being possible with a bit of thought. The challenger that became the champion of 'realistic' city builders, Paradox's Cities: Skylines grew up in the genre shadow of SimCity, and ended up eclipsing it almost entirely. What else should I be playing: The obvious answer is the SimCity series, of which SimCity 4 is the best, but there's a crop of interesting newer contenders too - Theotown is a decent title that's also on mobile, and my personal pick is NewCity, which is a bit old-school and rough around the edges, but has a really impressive sense of scale. Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble, Paradox

Games about building cities, where you're working on too grand a scale to care about the individual lives of your ant-like citizens. (Or cut down on the scrolling with these helpful category links.)ĭon't see a game that you think should be on this list, or looking for something different entirely? Let us know - politely - in the comments, or hop over to our picks of the best PC games to broaden your scope. But OTHER THAN THAT, ready your mousewheel for a vigorous scroll, for here are the 20 best building games on PC. RTS games with more emphasis on waging war than base-building, including tower defence games, were (mostly) left out, as well as games in early access.

Pc games with building and crafting