I like industrial simulators. I like transport games. I like city builders. Here’s a couple games that exist that suit these niches, and my issues with them:

Cities Skylines

I generally have no issue with Cities Skylines, but the most modern instalment is a little lacking and the original is fine but still doesn’t live up to my dreamy expectations. Cities Skylines (the first one) is a great city builder with brilliant mechanics perfect for designing your own city, establishing transport networks of your own complexity, and even creating industrial areas for resource extracting purposes.

The best aspects of Cities Skylines, especially when modded, is the brilliant roads and road designing, exhaustive transport network options for civilian transport, and a fully functional city builder around this. In my perfect industrial simulator, I would take a lot from Cities Skylines.

The only things I think it lacks for my purposes are a proper focus on industrial activity, as well as a somewhat lacklustre base game transit system. Another issue that other games have highlighted is the lack of an adversary, where the only goal is growth and the only thing between you and that growth is money. Another aspect of cities skylines that actual economic simulation games have is self-reliance: that is Cities Skylines has none of it. Self reliance in Cities Skylines is possible I think, but the game is not designed for that and the industry is supposed to be a side job from the main job of magically erecting a city presumably using off map materials.

Transport Fever 2

I really like Transport Fever 2, especially as an idea, but there are things I would do to make the game so much better. One of the biggest issues with Transport Fever 2 is the payments system. The game is focused solely around transporting goods from one place to another, but their payment model is done on a point-to-point basis. Optimal Transport Fever 2 is point-to-point links so that trains carry everything they can from one point to another, never stopping.

The game randomly scatters industry across the map, which is cool. With the density of industries in the game, it ends up creating zones and regions. My only issue with this is that industries have no relation to their local area, for example you’ll see a sand collection area in the middle of a mountain range, or a fishery deeply inland, or mines right on the coast.

Another thing I like about Transport Fever 2 is its focus on history. It starts when the first commercial trains came about, and the player has to build their company as time passes, eventually catching up with modernity.

But Transport Fever 2 could take some things from cities skylines. Its roads are highly lacking, its civilian transport is simplified and point-to-point is most efficient because of the cost calculation system. It is also not a city builder, and cities build themselves depending on how well you supply them.

Another thing Transport Fever 2 is highly lacking is the inclusion of overground and underground train stations, as well as special train station shapes. As an industrial simulator, this is fine, but when you’re doing civilian transport its somewhat nonsensical.

Rise of Industry

I don’t have a lot of experience in Rise of Industry, but its a pretty good game especially for the industry stuff. Like Transport Fever 2, cities build themselves depending on how well you supply them. Rise of Industry also challenges you to build up your own industrial buildings, and in fact this is the focus. In Rise of Industry, you have to place down the resource gatherers and the processors, and then sell those products to the town. Goods have a dynamic price that depends on demand at the point of purchase, which is a much better model compared to Transport Fever 2’s point-to-point system.

Rise of Industry doesn’t let you edit towns’ roads or even edit the roads between towns, which Transport Fever 2 does let you do. Rise of Industry also has no civilian transport.

Where Rise of Industry is really lacking is how overly simplified the resource transit is. You have trucks, trains, and zeppelins. I haven’t used zeppelins because it removes the challenge of actually establishing a network. Unfortunately, the pathfinding and rules of movement around vehicles and trains is extremely dumb. The majority of control the player has around truck transit comes in the form of one-way roads, but these are still finnicky and not customisable. Trains are exceedingly dumb. Given how trains work on a single track, the train pathfinding does not care about other trains on that track. Tracks are bi-directional, which is a huge mistake. Trains often collide head-on which slows them down and makes the whole train transit system a bit silly. In addition to that, the train tracks themselves are finnicky to place.

The best parts about Rise of Industry is the number of industries represented in the game, as well as the Player’s ability to place them wherever is suitable in the map. This lets players build their own collection yards, their own factory complexes, and their own chain of supply.

Another place where Rise of Industry excels is in having adversaries. The game has plots, and after the player chooses theirs, rival industry companies are placed in some of the other tiles and act as a financial adversary, pressuring the player to do well and challenging them in many of the game’s events.

Victoria 3

Victoria 3 is a completely different type of game, but it shares the core concept of economy. Like Transport Fever and even Rise of Industry to some extent, Victoria 3 has a huge focus on history (in part because of the type of game it is). It essentially has the same chains of industry as Transport Fever 2 and Rise of Industry, while the transport within and outside of a state is abstracted into a bunch of numbers. I love Victoria for its economic aspects, and especially its focus on materialism and, whether the developers intended it or not, a weirdly Marxian interpretation of the world where theories of historical materialism and dialectics are highly applicable, especially in the way that the material situation your country is in determines its situation in general.

The larger country-wide aspects of Victoria 3 are also something I like, and I much prefer the economic simulation of Victoria 3 over the economic simulation of any other game on this list. The only thing Victoria 3 is missing is the detailed transportation system that games of its drama shouldn’t have.