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[Astral]

I've recently had a hankering for games that involve, as the title notes, games that include or entirely require the building and management of a civilization, city, or something along those lines. Old, new, turn based, real time, grand strategy; there's just something that pleases me about making what may be a lasting (or not so lasting, if done badly) mark on the world that the game involves. Whether it's a kingdom, an island, a city, a country, a galaxy, or just managing a few psychotic dwarves, I generally love to play it.

They don't seem to have all that many these days, and those that try usually don't seem to do much beyond follow the same formula of those past with a few modifications and graphics updates. I do have a preference for space-based strategy games, but it's only a preference. I also prefer more in depth games rather than one shot skirmishes, as I find it more fun to watch my fledgling empire grow from a single sparsely populated city, country or world to expand well beyond its roots, usually through the crushing power of an overwhelming economy and sheer numbers.

Anything that lets you play as the aliens, zombies, or robots is a plus, too. Humans are boring. Zerg rushing with superior numbers (yet weaker individually), raising the corpses of your fallen enemies to serve you, not or having to worry as much about supply lines due to readily available resources in terms of the enemy population make for interesting mechanics.

If they're for Android, even better, but no freemium games. I have no tolerance for games that prey on psychological buttons for money; while I play them on occasion, my strict rule is to delete them once I get bored, or find I get to a point where paying money is the only option to continue at any decent pace.

Instances of the games I've played include, now alphabetically for readability:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

7 Days to Die (Building your own "civilization" among friends, working up from the stone age counts even if it's in first person, in my opinion)
Age of Empires 1/2/3
Age of Wonders 1/2/Shadow Magic/3
AI War: Fleet Command (Sort of hard to get into, I need to spend a day trying to learn this game)
Alpha Centauri
Banished
Cities XL
Civilization 1/2/3/4/5/Beyond Earth (Of course; Cavemen2Cosmos for Civ4 was probably one of the more enjoyable experiences I've had with the genre, as was the Fall From Heaven 2 mod)
Civilization Call To Power 1/2
Crusader Kings 2
Distant Worlds (With too much automation, it plays itself, but with too little, I don't know what's going on)
Dwarf Fortress (Wouldn't be here if I hadn't)
Eador, Masters of the Broken World
Endless Legend
Endless Space
Europa Universalis III/IV
Fallen Enchantress
Galactic Civilizations 2 (Haven't decided if 3 is worth it yet)
Gratuitous Space Battles (Campaign Mode)
Master of Magic
Master of Orion 1/2
Minecraft FTB packs (Building your own "civilization" among friends, working up from the stone age counts even if it's in first person, in my opinion)
Mount & Blade Warband (Even with mods, the kingdom creation feels very lacking due to the relatively primitive AI)
Pharoah+Cleopatra/Zeus+Poseidon/Rise of the Middle Kingdom/Casear 3 (Old city builder games)
Rise of Nations
Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Starting from 3 to whichever the most recent English translated one was... sad they seem to have stopped development on this series)
Sim City (Haven't played the new one, think I've played up to 3000 or 4
SimEarth
Star Ruler 1/2
StarDrive
Sword of the Stars 1/2
The Last Federation
Towns
Tropico 2/3/4
Warcraft 3 Custom Maps (Namely, Heroes and Empires, Genesis of Empires, and many others)
Warlock - Master of the Arcane

So does anyone have suggestions for games other than those listed above? I'm sure there are some I missed that I have played, but any suggestions are welcome.

Games that I've seen listed in the thread that I haven't tried yet:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

C-Evo
Cultures 1/2
Deadlock 1/2
Enemy Nations
FreeOrion
Grand Ages: Rome
Immortal Cities: Children Of The Nile
Pandora: First Contact
Rise and Rule of Ancient Empires
Space Empires 4
Victoria 2

[MonkeyHead]

PTF, just in case someone suggests a hidden gem I have missed somewhere.

[Moron]

There's FreeOrion, an open source game inspired by the MOO series. AFAIK, it's playable but far from complete.

Also, Gratuitous Space Battles has a campaign mode which has empire building elements, though as the name suggests it's mostly focussed on designing fleets and fighting battles.

[miauw62]

Do the Grand Strategy games count? You could try Crusader Kings 2, starting as a very lowly Duke or something.

[Sonlirain]

Master of Orion (any of the series) - While already name dropped as free orion the old ones can still be aquired for free on some sites.... then just st dosbox up and there ya go.

I'd all "Civilization: Call to Power" and "Call to Power 2" as they were pretty much civ games. However they had some cool twists other civ games just lacked like being able to build under the oceans and in space... and that's mostly because technology could be researched into the future so instead of the modern endgame you get in the "true" civ games in CtP you got space cruisers orbital bombers plasma hover tanks and other neat futuristic thingies.
Not to mention special "civilian" units that could suck your cities (or the enemy cities) of money or production.
Quite honestly mechanics wise it was quite far in front of the regular civ games imho and is worth playing if you like civ.

[Moron]

Oh yeah, I forgot about Civ Call to Power, actually had some really good ideas that should have been used in Civ 4 or 5. (like armies fighting as armies rather than 1 unit at a time.)

[Bouchart]

There's one called Pandora: First Contact which is supposedly a low budget game like Civilization Beyond Earth.

There's an old game called Rise and Rule of Ancient Empires but it wasn't that good.

Warlock: Master of the Arcane had a sequel.

[Sonlirain]

Oh and i just remembered one game... not sure if its any good tho.

Enemy Nations.
It's pretty much what you'd get if you crossed Settlers, Rise of Nations and mildly CiV... and did it in 1997.

It's pretty obscure but worth a look imo... i never managed to finish a game in it since oil in this game is evtremely hard to come by (or easy but you deplete it in staggering ammounts as essential machines like supply trucks or even idling tanks deplete it in large ammounts)

So basically the story goes like this:
Humanity goes into space hoping to colonoze a new planet for themselves however it turned out that life was plentiful and every habitable planet was pretty much taken and attacking even a primitive inteligent race or colonizing a planet of tribals gave every single race in the galaxu a casus belli agaisnt said race... meaning noone ever did it... so humans were shit out of luck.
But someone found an inhabitalbe planet! news spread quickly and many races saw it as the last opportunity in history to establish themselves on another planet... and a giant blockade of th planet began taking thousands of lives as would be colonists tried to break the blockade and get protected by planetary regulations... they all failed.

After some fighting the races finally negotiated a solution.
Each race would send one colonization ship armed with only modest weapons and technology and let the last race standing get the planet.

tl;dr
Start with rifles. Technology is kinda low so your people can't even build a ship (and won't be capable of building aircraft.... ever) and you have to research everything.

[TheDarkStar]

Master of Magic, also an old but good TBS game. It's like Civ but with magic.

[Uristides]

May I suggest with my favorite Paradox title, Victoria 2? It's a bit contrived but apart from CK2 it's the only other Paradox game I can have massive amounts of fun without ever going into battle.

Also, Gratuitous Space Battles has a campaign mode which has empire building elements, though as the name suggests it's mostly focussed on designing fleets and fighting battles.

Is it DLC or unlocked after finishing something? I have that game and all I have are individual battle scenarios. Would love more empire building elements in it.

[Baijiu]

Wurm Online (has F2P option) and Xsyon (B2P) are both games that give you the option of building or joining a player civilization. In Wurm's case, they're kingdoms and in Xyson's case they're tribes. Xyson is a bit heavier on the survivor aspect compared to Wurm, because a recent update now added starvation death.

Of course, since they're MMOs you need other people.

[Exerosp]

Oh, they didn't stop Development on ROTK, there's a new one I think, yet again without english, same thing with Nobunaga's Ambition. To be honest they were ahead of their time a couple of years back when it came to strategy games IMO, but they milked their ideas.

I second the ideas about Paradox games, though.

[Uristides]

The Koei talk remembered me of Gemfire/Royal Blood. It's broken and a bit on the simple side of things, but I used to have so much fun with that, might be worth giving a try.

[Moron]

Also, Gratuitous Space Battles has a campaign mode which has empire building elements, though as the name suggests it's mostly focussed on designing fleets and fighting battles.

Is it DLC or unlocked after finishing something? I have that game and all I have are individual battle scenarios. Would love more empire building elements in it.

It's DLC. Link here. I've not played it myself as my antique laptop can barely run the game.

[Haspen]

Master of Orion 2 cuz it's not on your list

Cultures and Cultures 2 if you want some city building with vikings.

SimEarth, if you want to try a DOS game about Earth building