> Eg: See the recent game Dorfromantik, its aesthetically pleasing, its rustic european scene, but why isn't it not set in Indonesia or Ecuador or Uzbekistan?

That seems a bit harsh judgement for a game with a German name, made by 4 German game design students living in Berlin, with funds from the German state [0].

[0] https://toukana.itch.io/

Yeah, if a European developer attempted to make a non-European city builder then they'd probably get accused of appropriation, and in addition would also get slammed for the inaccuracies and socio-cultural misunderstandings that would inevitably manifest. Also, what stops developers in those aforementioned regions making their own games, there are plenty of relatively cheap and reasonable options in terms of game engines.

You make an excellent point.

Why don't YOU make a game with rustic Indonesian scenery? Someone wants to make a game set in Europe, so they are now annoying Eurocentrics. To criticize someone because they are not making some setting choices that you would prefer, as some kind of moral failure, is not good.

>Cities skylines for example has no concept of slums.

That was one thing it seemed to simulate pretty well in my experience. Last time I played it, I set up the city with a bunch of low income housing areas in industrial zones, roads all through them, small housing plots next to industry and under overpasses and stuff.

The neighbourhoods looked exactly like the low income housing neighbourhoods around industrial areas I've seen in real life. The people in those houses were typically unhealthier than in other areas. I put the closest hospitals and schools just outside those areas, the waste water from the city was dumped nearby etc.

It's quite possible to create extremely disparate neighborhoods and areas. From slums to McMansion filled suburbs to bustling industrial areas.

Sadly though, my in game city started with me trying to model my real city. It turned out pretty accurate at least as far as neighbourhood layout and visual income disparity went.

Slums in Cities Skylines are useless. The only point of a "slum" in that game is to convert the slum into a richer neighborhood.

In contrast: creating Slums in Ceasar, Pharaoh, or Tropico is an explicit strategy. Why? Because low-income industries (such as mining or farming) cannot afford better housing. The slum is the best that you can give that population as a leader.

In Ceasar, they're extremely cheeky about the highest class of citizens. Only plebeians work. If you "upgrade" housing to the point of attracting patricians, you LOSE workers (because patricians don't work!!). There are entire strategies in the game about attracting as many plebeians (working-class) citizens needed to have a functioning economy, but then converting the excess workers into Patricians for higher-tax collection.

As such, you need to keep the plebeians purposefully at a lower class to keep your industrial sector working. If you convert everyone into patricians, no work would get done at all. Its a challenge to build road-networks that separate the housing units, but provide the workers needed to serve the upper class (ex: services such as bath-houses and marketplaces are run by plebeians, but should be placed inside of Patrician neighborhoods)

To be fair, almost everything in Cities felt useless. It didn't really feel like much of a game at all. Nothing you did really actually mattered at all. Cities was more like an interactive city model building toy than what I'd think of as a game.

Ceasar, Pharoh and Tropico are actual games with goals, win conditions and a point.

I didn't like Cities mostly because nothing you did mattered. Not just slums or anything else. You can kill off half the city by accidently routing waste dumping to the city's drinking water and within 15-20 minutes your city's back to being fully populated.

Trying to play Cities strategically the way you would those other games is going to be disappointing no matter how you build the city. It's just not that kind of game.

If I recall correctly, in at least some of the Caesar/Pharaoh/Zeus/Emperor games, access to workers is a binary "Did a worker walk by here recently?" check, and if the answer is yes, then the whole city's population of workers is available to the building. So to serve a remote cluster of mines or whatever, you can have a "slum" that's one or two houses big.

There might be seven or eight levels of "common" housing that provides workers and then two or three of "upper class" housing that doesn't. But at least to me, a block of insulae isn't a "slum" in the game--a couple of huts with no water or food are.

Oooph. I definitely did not know that.

Sim City btw, does the same thing with Residential / Commercial / Industrial zones. All "traffic" start from a residential zone, then goes to a industrial zone, and finally ends in commercial.

That means a singular tile of "Residential" zone can "feed" the entire industrial sector. While a singular "Commercial" tile can serve as where the industry drops off their goods.

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So I knew that fact for Sim City (and took advantage of it in some designs). I never really knew that for Caesar / Pharaoh.

Cool then start an indie dev shop in Uzbekistan and make it happen. I will preorder the game if you do it for the hell of it, even if it is bad.