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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

The government will usually be about 10 years behind what is actually happening. If we want a solution that works it has to be a market based one.

For example, if one wanted to create a DRM free version of Sim City now would be an excellent time to start a kickstarter.

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Here's one: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-...

Can't comment on the credibility though, nothing solid has been shown yet.

> now would be an excellent time to start a kickstarter.

Or you could just go get Cities XL

Unfortunately, Cities XL sucks.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/cities-xl they pissed everyone else off at launch, too

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/cities-xl-2012 not much better

SimCity 4 is still available (~$20 on Steam & Origin), and it's quite good, without any of the online nonsense that infects the current iteration.

Haemimont's Tropico games are also very good (Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/tropico-4) city-builders, with a smaller scale than traditional SimCity titles but more flavor and atmosphere. Steam has a bundle with the latest version, Tropico 4, plus all its expansions for $40 (http://store.steampowered.com/sub/19282/).

There's also "towns" which looks interesting http://www.townsgame.com/ though I have not yet played it.

don't bother.

Towns is its own genre. It's like third-person Minecraft. Not the same.

Towns is a stripped-out Dwarf Fortress done shittily with somehow even worse UI. For that sort of game you're better off playing either Dwarf Fortress or Gnomoria, which is also simplified compared to DF but has a much better UI.

Tropico 4 plus all its expansions is only $10 for this week, likely in response to all the bad Sim City PR.

Zeus: Master of Olympus is my favorite city building game.

It just has a crazy charm to it, and it also has really nifty features, like how it shows the whole (albeit simplified) production line for food (fisherman catch fish, take them to a fishery, etc.).

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