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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

For someone who’s bored with combat-focused games and misses the open nature of games like Railroad Tycoon, who’s following in Meier’s footsteps? I was thinking that if there was a rebooted RT2 I’d buy it in a second but fell off the Civ train due to wanting either less or more plausible combat, not to mention QA.

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Actually working on a non-violent indie 4X right now, called Slipways [1][2]. It's set in space, but I do owe lots of inspiration to Railroad Tycoon and Transport Tycoon, and the core of the game is about connecting places together so that goods can flow from place to place.

It's a much more condensed experience than either of these - 40-60 minutes per playthrough depending on playstyle.

[1]: https://twitter.com/krajzeg/status/1304447134209585152

[2]: https://slipways.net

Oh, neat – I'll take a look tonight!

Why use ESDF instead of WASD

Fun game btw.

The web version is a PICO-8 game. PICO-8 is a very constrained fantasy console (posted here on HN a few times). ESDF are actually the "player 2" keys of the "console", so they're easy to access from within, unlike the actual keyboard - letting me save precious code tokens (you only get 8192 for the whole game on the PICO-8) for actual gameplay.

I love the PICO-8 version as a way to spend time when waiting for a compile to finish. Thanks for making it!

You might want to give Europa Universalis IV, Crusader Kings 2(free on steam), or Crusader Kings 3 a try. Definitely more of a learning curve than Civilization, but can be really fun.

I would also add Stellaris to this list.

Yes and in fact, that might be an easier start to a Paradox Interactive game. My first PI game was Stellaris which I quickly racked up hundreds of hours in and despite several major changes by the devs in mechanics it's still easy to jump back in to. I feel like it's a worthy successor to SMAC with its own uniqueness.

But EUIII, EUIV, CKII, HoI? Considerably steeper learning curve, IMO! I've spent over a hundred hours just trying to take over Ireland (the traditionally newb scenario) in CKII.

I would not suggest jumping from a Civ to any Paradox title except Stellaris. There's enough of Paradox's goofiness in the space combat ("whaa... I slaughtered the enemy, how do I not get their planets... war exhaustion, wtf is that... oh that kind of makes sense") and lots of visual feedback to keep you interested without making you cry too much.

Take a look at OpenTTD, Banished, Tropico 5, Cities Skylines and Frostpunk. It's a diverse list, but they all fit your open non-combat strategy criteria.

Thanks – I've definitely heard good things about Skylines before but went on a hiatus for the last few years after my son was born.

Banished... I probably think about this game at least once a month, but am unable to return to it since "solving" the core loop. Once you figure it out, it's easy. But the climb to the solution is... steep to say the least. It took me a few failed runs to survive the winter easily.

What a great game. There's a lot of mod content out there, but it all just felt off to me, so I never really explored outside of vanilla.

I hope Shining Rock's next game is along the same lines and as good, if not better!

The sound track is especially amazing during the storm. It captures that feeling of hope interwoven with despair and a will to survive.

Transport Fever 2 scratched the itch for me when I last had the urge for makin' trains

Transport Fever is a very satisfying train game. The early game is all about making the business profitable. After that, resources are basically unlimited. The end game plays like a giant tabletop train simulator, with a focus on fitting to terrain while minimizing gradients and tight turns.

Factorio also has a very satisfying train mini-game, with a focus on complex signaling and dynamic pathing. Thankfully, there are dials to tune down combat. I like to use the "rail world" preset, which disables enemy expansion.

I've been having a lot of fun in Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo by Frontier recently. Highly creative games and give a good rest from higher paced genres.

"Indie" games is the genre you are looking for. Maybe "Simulator"

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