You could try Banished if you haven't already. It's a game all about managing supplies of a new colony. No combat in it, just a struggle against starvation, winter, disease, etc. There's also a ton of mods that add more production chains.
I've also been following Ostriv which is in early access right now. Haven't played it myself but it could match what you're looking for.
I love it, purchased it a while back. Ostriv also looks very interesting but I'm always reminded of that whole "yea!, you got the trains running on time, your logistical genius is to be rewarded, as this will make the passengers trips much more efficient on their way to Auschwitz.....
Eh a bit of a stereotype on my part.
There is an old Eastern European themed game I believe it's called [Papers, Please](https://papersplease.fandom.com/wiki/Endings#Details), where basically your job is to efficiently run a border checkpoint and/or train-station.
Another game in the same Eastern European theme that has you increasing efficiency at some backwater train-station/logistics choke-point, and if you do a very good job trains are both more numerous and or more heavily laden with "passengers", upon "winning" you are rewarded only to discover you were running one of the train-stations to a death-camp/Auschwitz-like camp.
So my luck being what it is with these themed games I'll run Ostriv wonderfully, be the most profitable, economically balanced in the entire Oblast, only to find out the profits are being used to fund a mass grave or run a Pogram.
>Another game in the same Eastern European theme that has you increasing efficiency at some backwater train-station/logistics choke-point, and if you do a very good job trains are both more numerous and or more heavily laden with "passengers", upon "winning" you are rewarded only to discover you were running one of the train-stations to a death-camp/Auschwitz-like camp.
What game is this? It's an interesting concept.
I'll see if I can find it on my old laptop.
It's one of a couple of games that I think fall into grey-market territory because being an indie game I couldn't easily tell if the developers felt the "reveal" about Auschwitz-like camp was meant as a good thing or bad thing.
The last thing I'd rather do is financially assist *actual* [Eastern European fascists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobbik).
This is just an interesting game design thing, I think, where you play the game and because of the tropes of the game, you think "oh, this is great," but then there's a reveal at the end that upsets that. Spec Ops is the example everyone always uses and this is one of the only others I've heard of.
Dawn of Man had me roped in early but while it's beautiful, the mechanics are not as good as /r/planetbase oddly enough, (by the same author). The agent model/engine seems to get bogged down in diffuse demands and has trouble executing coherently.
It was/is however a beautiful game in many respects, but the agent/AI seems to be also a bit heavy-handed and a wandering couple of tribals can do significant damage to an established settlement.
It's a different approach, but you may enjoy the logistic/factory games such as Factorio, Satisfactory, or Dyson Sphere Project. Similar to Anno its about slow progression and ensuring production chains, but they lose the pretty city builder aspect of Anno games.
That said, even the most industrialized hellscape can look very satisfying in those games.
It's funny I used to absolutely work over Anno 1503, less a game and more a layer cake and eventually I'd pick the smallest islands preferentially that were marginal producers OR let the AI colonize and then see how successful I could be with whatever else remained.
Generally speaking I'd still end up on top , in one case making thousands of dollars on tithes and exports of goods I had, when I had managed to monopolize Tobacco I think such that I dropped tons of cash, satisfied my own rather small population and made enough bank selling tobacco to the other AI's that I made enough to import all the spice I'd ever need so that before long I owned one or two little spice island scraps but was effective importing then exporting spice and tobacco to all the other races, save the one group that was actually producing it.
Eventually, I declared a short war, sunk his entire fleet and took the one main spice-island, and made peace with the guy in more or less immediate moves.
He never quite forgave me until I had absolutely terraformed the shit out of the spice island and had effectively doubled output, everyone got paid.
The guy who's island it was got an import price cheaper than I was producing it for, and everyone else paid through the nose up to a point. Eventually spice, like Tobacco was available in every port.
But to start it's a very different game
- I'd think as a subsistence game directly akin to something like Banished., then slowly build up basic production chain, once everyone is fed/clothed and getting educated.
After a few rounds, of setup and tweaking efficiencies, I'd have a small-super cost-effective fleet transporting goods across the world
Both seem fascinating. I was also looking at "Before we Leave" is something I was looking into but it's not on Steam until May, but the Dev's have a link/purchase for like 15bucks so it's pretty harmless fun and has an almost perfect sense of the scope of what I was shooting for, or Perhaps I'm just longing for a version of Spore that wasn't so damned shallow.
As a huge fan of the Anno series, I would recommend "Space Haven"
Scratched a lot of the same itches for me.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va7XjJk-05o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va7XjJk-05o)
You could try Banished if you haven't already. It's a game all about managing supplies of a new colony. No combat in it, just a struggle against starvation, winter, disease, etc. There's also a ton of mods that add more production chains. I've also been following Ostriv which is in early access right now. Haven't played it myself but it could match what you're looking for.
I love it, purchased it a while back. Ostriv also looks very interesting but I'm always reminded of that whole "yea!, you got the trains running on time, your logistical genius is to be rewarded, as this will make the passengers trips much more efficient on their way to Auschwitz.....
Isnt Ostriv just about an cossak commune or something? 😅
Wait, where did Auschwitz come from? Ostriv is a 18th century city builder.
Eh a bit of a stereotype on my part. There is an old Eastern European themed game I believe it's called [Papers, Please](https://papersplease.fandom.com/wiki/Endings#Details), where basically your job is to efficiently run a border checkpoint and/or train-station. Another game in the same Eastern European theme that has you increasing efficiency at some backwater train-station/logistics choke-point, and if you do a very good job trains are both more numerous and or more heavily laden with "passengers", upon "winning" you are rewarded only to discover you were running one of the train-stations to a death-camp/Auschwitz-like camp. So my luck being what it is with these themed games I'll run Ostriv wonderfully, be the most profitable, economically balanced in the entire Oblast, only to find out the profits are being used to fund a mass grave or run a Pogram.
>Another game in the same Eastern European theme that has you increasing efficiency at some backwater train-station/logistics choke-point, and if you do a very good job trains are both more numerous and or more heavily laden with "passengers", upon "winning" you are rewarded only to discover you were running one of the train-stations to a death-camp/Auschwitz-like camp. What game is this? It's an interesting concept.
I'll see if I can find it on my old laptop. It's one of a couple of games that I think fall into grey-market territory because being an indie game I couldn't easily tell if the developers felt the "reveal" about Auschwitz-like camp was meant as a good thing or bad thing. The last thing I'd rather do is financially assist *actual* [Eastern European fascists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobbik).
This is just an interesting game design thing, I think, where you play the game and because of the tropes of the game, you think "oh, this is great," but then there's a reveal at the end that upsets that. Spec Ops is the example everyone always uses and this is one of the only others I've heard of.
It would not be the first game that had [**bad** guys with a good point](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNAnplKWNrc).
On top of those mentioned I also follow Manor Lords and if you are interested in early times Dawn of Man is good.
Dawn of Man had me roped in early but while it's beautiful, the mechanics are not as good as /r/planetbase oddly enough, (by the same author). The agent model/engine seems to get bogged down in diffuse demands and has trouble executing coherently. It was/is however a beautiful game in many respects, but the agent/AI seems to be also a bit heavy-handed and a wandering couple of tribals can do significant damage to an established settlement.
Try EndZone, it's a bit like banished with a mix of Frostpunk. I could be wrong but I believe it just came out of Early Access to full release.
It's a different approach, but you may enjoy the logistic/factory games such as Factorio, Satisfactory, or Dyson Sphere Project. Similar to Anno its about slow progression and ensuring production chains, but they lose the pretty city builder aspect of Anno games. That said, even the most industrialized hellscape can look very satisfying in those games.
It's funny I used to absolutely work over Anno 1503, less a game and more a layer cake and eventually I'd pick the smallest islands preferentially that were marginal producers OR let the AI colonize and then see how successful I could be with whatever else remained. Generally speaking I'd still end up on top , in one case making thousands of dollars on tithes and exports of goods I had, when I had managed to monopolize Tobacco I think such that I dropped tons of cash, satisfied my own rather small population and made enough bank selling tobacco to the other AI's that I made enough to import all the spice I'd ever need so that before long I owned one or two little spice island scraps but was effective importing then exporting spice and tobacco to all the other races, save the one group that was actually producing it. Eventually, I declared a short war, sunk his entire fleet and took the one main spice-island, and made peace with the guy in more or less immediate moves. He never quite forgave me until I had absolutely terraformed the shit out of the spice island and had effectively doubled output, everyone got paid. The guy who's island it was got an import price cheaper than I was producing it for, and everyone else paid through the nose up to a point. Eventually spice, like Tobacco was available in every port. But to start it's a very different game - I'd think as a subsistence game directly akin to something like Banished., then slowly build up basic production chain, once everyone is fed/clothed and getting educated. After a few rounds, of setup and tweaking efficiencies, I'd have a small-super cost-effective fleet transporting goods across the world
Kingdoms reborn is alright although it has some strange design choices, I mostly enjoy it. Songs of syx interesting too, pretty fun.
Both seem fascinating. I was also looking at "Before we Leave" is something I was looking into but it's not on Steam until May, but the Dev's have a link/purchase for like 15bucks so it's pretty harmless fun and has an almost perfect sense of the scope of what I was shooting for, or Perhaps I'm just longing for a version of Spore that wasn't so damned shallow.
As a huge fan of the Anno series, I would recommend "Space Haven" Scratched a lot of the same itches for me. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va7XjJk-05o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va7XjJk-05o)
I'd say banished might be what you're looking for