Factorio. The factory must grow.

~~How~~ What do you call these games

I call them management sims, but I'm sure there are other names for the genre, too.

Rimworld is one of my favorites.

Mindustry has been getting a lot of praise. I hope to check it out soon.

Cities: Skylines is popular, and Cities: Skylines II is due soon.

Satisfactory is good (although the Steam version used Epic Games telemetry, which has been called out for being rather invasive, last time I looked).

I usually call them management games. Looking at the Steam tags for Factorio and RimWorld, they both have "Management" and Factorio additionally has "Resource Management". But I think "Management" is your best bet.

I think RTS games don't usually fall under management and instead are just called RTS.

In terms of my favourite ones, I love FTL: Faster Than Light. I'm picking it up again at the moment actually. I also like RinWorld, Oxygen Not Included, and Dungeon of the Endless.

https://feddit.de/c/automation_games

They're called management sims, or in the case of Factorio a factory builder.

Rimworld is a colony management sim... check out Dwarf Fortress or Oxygen Not Included for similar games

Rollercoaster Tycoon is a theme park management sim, the obvious suggestions are Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo but also check out City Skylines.

Factorio is a factory builder, I would recommend Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program, there's a few handfuls of those types of games. If you want to get a little wild look into Minecraft (Java edition) w/ mods - most easily something like the FTB Infinity Evolved or one of the new Direwolf packs, it's arguably where the factory building craze started.

Automation, procedural, visual programming. Or just world building game.

One example: https://store.steampowered.com/app/92800/SpaceChem/

Pretty much any game from that developer is procedural/automation related.

Just started timberborn and it seems to be in this vain. It's a beaver city builder and you have to manage the river with dams to survive droughts, along with the typical food, water and energy resource management.

Some genre names would be: Colony Sim, Base Builder or City Builder.

Another great one is Dwarf Fortress, you should give it a try if you haven't already. It probably has the most in depth simulation of any game there is.

Satisfactory

Dwarf Fortress for sure.

Settlers 2 (and the faithful remake Settlers 2: 10th Anniversary) is pretty old but is still one of my favorite economy building games

You might be interested in the game Majesty. In that game you have no direct control over any units. You simply set overall objectives. And the units themselves determine when they do something. It's even more hands-off than the other automation games.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majesty:_The_Fantasy_Kingdom_Sim

There is the Anno series of games, which are technically RTS games but if I'm honest I find them the most fun when I go out of my way to avoid combat/micromanagement. I've only played 1404, 2070, and 2205, 2070 being the best in my opinion, but it has a bad history with DRM so I'd suggest 1404 (known as "Dawn of Discovery" in the US because us americans are afraid of numbers apparently).

Edit: looking at the steam page it looks like they decided to take 1404 down and made a new page where the game is (mostly) unchanged besides requiring you to jump through all the BS hoops that 2070 did, so I'd say if you're gonna spend money get 1404 on GOG, or if you are willing to do unspeakable things go with 2070.

I would consider them a few different genres, but they are easily my favourite types of games these days. I cateogrize them in my steam list as below.

-Colony Builders: Games about building well, a colony, often from little to nothing. Often lots of You vs Environment friction, with the natural world. Tends to have a bit more focus on the individuals that comprise the colony. Examples: Rimworld (my favourite game of all time), Dwarf Fortress, Oxygen Not Included, Stranded Alien Dawn, Space Haven.

-City Builders: A bit broader in scope than a colony builder, working more on the macro level. Friction is often economic, sometimes adjusted with the natural world. Cities Skylines is kind of the prime exampe of this, but also games like Timberborn or Anno.

-Automation: Games about building a factory that...builds things automatically. Challenge tends to be logistical complexity but some games do feature combat as well. Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program (my personal favourite), Satisfactory, and Captain of Industry are the Four Horsemen of this genre to me. Techtonica is very early still but seems to have some promise as well.

For many of these games, there is a whole world of content to explore if you are interested in mods. Rimworld players regularly run hundreds of mods, my current game has about 350. Factorio has extensive overhaul mods that can take literally thousands of hours to finish in some cases (Py's). Satisfactory has a surprisingly robust mod scene for an early access game too.

I really love Anno for this, 1800 is the only one I have played and I think it's an amazing game. The base game on its own has tons of content already but the dlc's add whole new regions and lots of supply chians to the game. It's a bit of a crossover between a city builder and a supply chain simulator, where the majority of the game is based on providing the needs for your residents. It's on sale very often, including the dlc's.

If you were to get it, I recommend getting the dlc's, maybe after a playthrough of the base game. If you wanna know what dlc's to get, you can check out these videos:

• Nivarias
• Taka

Your suggestions are great, thank you! What’s still missing is a game that let’s you hire people with different skills and watch them do their stuff (Theme Hospital, maybe? There have to be better examples nowadays!)

A close example could be Game Dev Tycoon I played for a while. But unfortunately you really had to micromanage every step.

If you want a simple, casual one:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/35480/Dwarfs/

Prison Architect.

Space Haven, though it's EA.

I'm trying to make a game in this genre though I describe it as a base-building/simulation/survival game, other favourites include Oxygen Not Included, Timberborn, Factorio and Satisfactory.

Back in the day, Maxis had an entire brand of "Sim" games that were exactly this. Sim Farm, Sim Earth, Sim Ant, and, most notably, Sim City. I have no idea how many titles there were, but there were a lot of them.

Then EA ate them.

You could try ProsperousUniverse. It’s more of a game you play while you play others, but definitely a “wait, I spent 18 hours on a spreadsheet?” type of game.