Can you play Eco with 2 people?
But thanks to how it works, it doesn't need 10s of coordinated people, you can certainly just join some existing server with a friend and have an equally good time.
I'll have to give it another go then. Do you have any recommended settings for this?
I also "cheat" at the start by using vanilla commands to research and level up in all the disciplines -- makes the game more about finding and efficiently utilizing resources without also having to scavenge random stuff to "research". Since there's such a breadth of everything, it reduces the grind ("specializations" are annoying if you're forced to be a jack of all trades) without making it too easy.
It still feels like a real accomplishment to build a large building -- both architecturally and via thinking about how each block traces back to the resources pulled out of the ground -- without requiring huge amounts of time in the game. I'm fairly proud of this one [1], and more so of the industry and infra that supported it.
Plus, Eco is just gorgeous, especially when in single-player with low ecological impact there are so many animals hanging around all the time (peep the alligator in that shot).