Rise of natione comes to mind

 

Rise of natione comes to mind

Rise to Nations look like a RTS game.

The main focus of RTS game is usually on the units and not on the buildings and population building.

 

Rise of nations is probably my favorite RTS of all time. Pretty much Age of Empires 2 mixed with risk and more eras. The focus isn't primarily on building cities, but taking them over takes a bit more effort since they don't let you demolish them, you have to capture and hold them for a specified amount of time before its under your control.

 

I suppose The Settlers was pretty much the type you are talking about....

 

IMO, the city building aspect of the Settlers 5 is good, but not good enough to cover it's weakness in battles. For me, it got boring pretty fast.

 

Settlers and Civilization.

 

Ceasar III, maybe focus a little more on the city, but has some pretty good military parts as well, kinda out dated though.

 

I suppose The Settlers was pretty much the type you are talking about....

You can download Settlers 2 for free since it's abandoneware. Nice game though I don't know if it runs on an XP system. I've tried the demo of Settlers 5 but I fealt something was missing when compared to the old ones like 3 or 4. But I must say that Settlers is more about economics than the social stuff Sim City had.

 

A game called Castles... sure, it's old now and kinda simple, but it's always been one of my favorite sim games.

 

What about Empire Earth II ? Never tried it myself, but I heard good things about it...

 

Empire Earth is an old, yet good game, especially if you want to build massive armies. Their is not much real citybuilding, except to gain access to resources. Rise of Nations is an excellent game. I like its real time battles but turn based campaigns (when your on the map moving your armies). The Civilization series, however, I don't like. Too much turn based and not enough action.

 

You can check "Stronghold 2". So far the game is giving me the feeling that its emphasis on city building is pretty big.

Empire Earth 2 is due in less than a week BTW.

 

Empire Earth is an old, yet good game, especially if you want to build massive armies. Their is not much real citybuilding, except to gain access to resources. Rise of Nations is an excellent game. I like its real time battles but turn based campaigns (when your on the map moving your armies). The Civilization series, however, I don't like. Too much turn based and not enough action.

I agree with you about RoN and Civilization. I tried to play Civilization III, but got bored after a couple of hours.

Anyway, the Empire Earth I mentioned in my post was Empire Earth II, which is a very recent game. My bad not putting the "II" part. But, as I've said, I didn't try it myself, so I was relying other people's views there.

Empire Earth 2 is due in less than a week BTW.

Huh? According to a certain site (which I cannot mention here), it was already released.

 

Gamespot says 4/26/05, I havent checked other places.

 

I recommend Caesar 3 as well, and if you don't mind outdated grafics its predecesor Caesar 2 is a gem as well