So I was looking around for a suitable replacement to Simcity 4 (since it's prone to crashing on modern-day configurations) and came across the Cities XL series. I'd say that this game isn't as "simulation-like" as the ones from Maxis/EA but it may be more fun as a result of that. The core components are all there, with variations here and there to make an otherwise aging game genre seem fresh. And it seems you can grab a discounted "upgrade" for a newer version of the game if you already own the previous year's game (something I wish sports games would adopt). If you enjoyed creating multiple cities to fill in SimRegion in Simcity4, you're also in luck. They have an entire planet with over 50 different spots to start off in, with about a dozen different starting terrian types (that you can alter afterwards).

So I was looking around for a suitable replacement to Simcity 4 (since it's prone to crashing on modern-day configurations) and came across the Cities XL series. I'd say that this game isn't as "simulation-like" as the ones from Maxis/EA but it may be more fun as a result of that. The core components are all there, with variations here and there to make an otherwise aging game genre seem fresh. And it seems you can grab a discounted "upgrade" for a newer version of the game if you already own the previous year's game (something I wish sports games would adopt). If you enjoyed creating multiple cities to fill in SimRegion in Simcity4, you're also in luck. They have an entire planet with over 50 different spots to start off in, with about a dozen different starting terrian types (that you can alter afterwards).