I want to be able to be a colonizing warlord who also lives with 20 cats, Is perpetually horny. and keeps lighting his house on fire.
Rimworld
Yes this is literally just rimworld
Crusader Kings?
Checks everything.
Colonizing: definitely. Warlord: 100%, if that’s what you’re into. 20 cats: only the one, I believe; and a dog, if they can get along. But there are mods. Perpetually horny: oh, yeah. Practically the name of the game. Unless you become impotent, of course, or live in Byzantium and get on your liege’s bad side. Getting your house on fire: metaphorically…? Sure, constantly. Literally? I don’t think there’s an event for that, but there’s that one with the basement full of manure…
Civ + Sims is an interesting combo. The Sims has the interpersonal drama, Civ has the macro strategy. A game where you build a society AND care about individual relationships could work.
Dwarf Fortress is the closest thing I’ve played to this
20 cats, not 200 cats.
At some point in the past decade they introduced the option to geld animals, now you can stop the cat explosion before it starts!
Also, a tremendous game. A work of art!
If you can stand it, yes
Your likely best bet is whatever you’d call the genre RimWorld is in. RimWorld itself could probably scratch that itch if you up the number of colonies you can have in the settings and add a few mods that expand the world map-level gameplay.
Just a few thousand more mods and it will be perfect. lol
Rimworld feels like my kind of game but everytime I watch its trailer on steam I think “oh maybe it isn’t”.
Mostly the guns and stuff make it seem like it might not be the kind of game I expect.
Rimworld is a game that you get to play in the way you want to play. It allows you to choose the pace of your game and the difficulty by allowing you to choose a “storyteller” that determines the events that happen in your game and how often. You won’t ever be able to turn off combat, but you can make it less of a problem.
They showcase the combat because action looks better in previews. Your base does get raided occasionally, but most of your time is spent balancing all the tasks a colony needs done and maintaining the fragile mental states of your limited number of colonists (it takes heavy inspiration from Dwarf Fortress in that regard).
You can also adjust the settings of the “storyteller” (the AI that makes events happen to shake up the gameplay) if you want a more peaceful community builder sort of experience.
One of those is turn based, the other is a real time simulation. How were you envisioning time would pass?
Massive Chalice comes to mind, but it’s more like tactics + sim.
I didn’t think that far! I thought maybe one of you would find the solution for me :D
The honesty is refreshing.
Stellaris is a pretty decent hybrid of a real-time-turn-based game.
Time flows on, but the major math all happens at the end of the month. You can spacebar pause whenever you need, but you don’t have to keep smashing that turn button
Interesting, i’ve heard of it, but I’ve never played it. I’ll have to check it out.
In SimCity 4 you were able to import your Sims from The Sims (1). But that was about it. It didn’t influence the game very much.
And you could use your city as a neighborhood in The Sims 2.
Crusader Kings 3
I haven’t dug my teeth into it as much as I should have yet, so I can’t tell you which parts of your requirements are and aren’t fulfilled. But have you had a look at Kenshi? There’s also a sequel on the horizon.
It doesn’t quite have everything you were asking for but you might like Space Haven. No cats, but you’re trying to keep your small group of spacefarers alive and your spaceship afloat. A lot of the game is resource management, managing faction relations, and doing small scale tactics as you fight against aliens, robots, and raiders. It has some of the small scale control over your spacefarers similar to Sims, but allows you the freedom to be a group of roaming mercenaries, set up your own little outpost on an asteroid to offer services, or raid everyone in sight.
It’s still in early access, but it has fairly active development with several updates having been pushed out this month alone.
I have often thought about making a game like that. One of my main inspirations is “Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as A King”
Go. Outside.
I’m outside right now thank you very much.

Is that “Go Outside” with mixed steam ratings or “Go Outside Simulator”?
The progression system sucks
Off the topic title alone, I’d say Animal Crossing fits the bill. I mean, it’s Sims but you build up your island. You technically colonise the archipelago in the DLC, and you can put castle walls and turrets around your house.
There are a bunch of games like that. Animal Crossing is just the one I play. It’s made for kids, but it’s secretly (?) post-apocalyptic (I was shocked to find out but apparently it’s kinda common knowledge in the fandom?), but there are others like that.








