20 Games Like Anno
Our assortment of games like Anno features games that combine city building and strategy together across a number of historic and future time periods.
The Anno series was launched in 1998 and offers a wealth of real time strategy titles for players with themes covering years like 1404, 1503, 1602, 1701 and 2070. With each offering the same core Anno experience but enhancing it with new mechanics and the change in era all the titles have their own unique place in the franchise. Known for their unique mixture of city building, real time strategy and economic simulation that challenges players to guide their colonies to survive and thrive.
This sees the the core elements of the series revolve around colonisation and resource management as players are often tasked with building up a settlement from small beginnings with limited access to resources for expansion. In each game there is plenty of room for exploration, trade, diplomacy and even combat although Anno often encourages non-combat paths.
The games like Anno that you’ll find here have a similar blend of strategy and city building to the popular Anno franchise and will have you managing your own settlements for hours of game time.
Cossacks: European Wars
Cossacks: European Wars is a real time strategy (RTS) game developed for Windows and released in 2001 that explores the European 17th and 18th eras and draws inspiration from the popular strategy titles of the day. With over a dozen nations that bring their own uniqueness the strategy elements of this first game in the Cossacks franchise offers a wealth of tactical options. Expanded with several expansion packs all of these were made available in on collection marketed as the Cossacks Anthology....[Read Review]
Tropico 4
Tropico 4 stays true to the popular Tropico series formula with an experience that combines city management mechanics alongside political considerations and humour along the way as players attempt to stay in power over the long term. Resulting in an exciting mixture of simulation, construction and management this addition to the franchise developed by Haemimont Games will keep you engaged for hours as you make all manner of decisions and watch the impacts play out. Tropico 4 was originally relea...[Read Review]
Stronghold
Stronghold is a real time strategy game developed by Firefly Studios that explores a historical game setting while challenging players to utilise all of options available to thrive in a century long past. Released in 2001 Stronghold is the first of many games in the Stronghold franchise with the success of this first strategy title leading to many sequels and spin off titles with some being equally successful. Given the time the game is set (Medieval Britain) was a period of war Stronghold has a...[Read Review]
Age of Mythology
Age of Mythology (or AoM) is a real time strategy game based on the Age of Empires series which offers a mythology based spin off to the otherwise historical RTS franchise. Exploring the legendary myths of some of the greatest civilisations of time such as the Greeks, Norse and Egyptians players will experience similarly robust campaign structures that draw from the legends of this civilisations rather than factual events across more than 30 game scenarios. Further content is available through t...[Read Review]
Tropico 3
Continuing the franchises dictator focused gameplay Tropico 3 offers an entire island nation to players to run with ample opportunity to create your own banana republic with unique laws, economy and general design. As the third variation of the Tropico franchise you’ll find familiar construction and management gameplay with a number of enhancements to give you greater control of your nation than past titles and is more in line with the original Tropico rather than the pirate themed Tropico...[Read Review]
Black & White 2
Black & White 2 is a sequel to the first popular god game in the series and expands on the core gameplay with the addition of real time strategy elements to expand on the original challenge. Praised as offering something unique Black & White 2 continues to have a small dedicated fan base decades after its release with plenty of nostalgia for those that played it upon original release date. In Black & White 2 players again take on the role of a god and use their divine hand to interac...[Read Review]
The Settlers Online
The Settlers Online (The Settlers Online: Castle Empire) is a free to play browser based strategy game that utilises familiar mechanics from the core Settlers franchise. The result is a mixture of popular modern strategy games and the MMO strategy genre. The Settlers Online offers an accessible challenge which features a familiar gameplay loop of building a sprawling city, raiding bandits, achieving objectives and in time gaining levels that unlock additional content to expand your strategy opti...[Read Review]
From Dust
From Dust combines a number of genres incorporating strategy, building and god games into one with players helping their own tribe of humans through the challenges that they face. From Dust was published by Ubisoft in July 2011 for the Xbox 360 and was followed by Windows and PlayStation 3 a few months later, along with Xbox One backwards compatibility. From Dust was briefly made available on the Google Chrome store in 2012 although this version has since been discontinued. Set in a world where ...[Read Review]
Banished
Banished joins the ranks of the city build genre with a 2014 release that takes it into a unique medieval setting where you’ll build from humble beginnings into a thriving economic powerhouse. Banished opts not to throw abundance of resources at players either and instead looks to force players into resource scarcity so that every decision is one of balance as you try to survive and with some luck, thrive. Banished starts you off with your own community of outcasts who have come together a...[Read Review]
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove takes a different direction to other games in the Tropico series but still features all of the core mechanics that make the city building experience so enjoyable and popular. Unlike the original Tropico game players will be running their own pirate island and take on the role of the pirate king. This role means you’ll have to carefully manage your reckless pirates and construction on your island while capturing the thing pirates love above all else, treasure. Tropico 2 let...[Read Review]
The Settlers: Rise of an Empire
The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is a real time strategy game that features a 4X style of gameplay with additional elements of city building that combine to create a diverse economic challenge. Released in 2007 Rise of an Empire is the sixth in the long running and popular series of The Settlers and seeks to bring together many of the different elements that the series has explored into a pinnacle adventure. Most notably this comes across in a reduction of overall combat and simplifying the core ...[Read Review]
Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile
Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile is one of the older city building games in the strategy management genre and was released in 2004. Serving as part of the city building series of games that includes Caesar, Pharaoh, Zeus and and Emperor the game has a similar focus on a historical location with ancient Egypt at your fingertips. Children of the Nile was developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment with an expansion pack (Children of the Nile: Alexandria) and online free to play spin-off (Nile Onli...[Read Review]
Tropico 5
Tropico 5 continues the legacy of the series with a management and construction simulation game centred on city building and management with a humorous twist layered on top. While this addition to the well known franchise doesn’t step out of the Tropico formula too much it does find that balance of offering just enough new content to get old fans excited without moving away from the gameplay and style you’ve come to love to date. One of the greatest additions to the Tropico franchise with the re...[Read Review]
Stronghold Crusader
Stronghold Crusader was the first sequel to the original Stronghold and also one of the most popular. The game shifts the game setting to the Middle East and adds plenty of new units for you to participate in the Crusades with. The game is simply packed full of single player campaign content with players participating in the first, second and third Crusades. This means there are over 50 missions to tackle which feature a number of unique and challenging objectives. These missions offer great pac...[Read Review]
Supreme Commander 2
Supreme Commander 2 is the second game in the Supreme Commander series of real time strategy games that explore modern and futuristic warfare with a focus on vehicle combat. The game takes place in a futuristic setting and is available on Windows, Mac and Xbox 360 with backward compatibility available for Xbox One. Supreme Commander 2 takes you through three different campaigns as you command the United Earth Federation, the Illuminate and the Cybran in battle. Each of these campaigns has their ...[Read Review]
Tropico
In Tropico players get to take control of El Presidente as he rules his own island nation in a Cold War era. The game is a light hearted city building, management and simulation game that injects humour into a number of its game mechanics. Tropico offers two different game modes for players to control their island nation, scenarios and custom games. In scenarios players are presented with a selection of goals that must be met given the current game conditions. Alternatively players can take to t...[Read Review]
Supreme Commander
Supreme Commander is a real time strategy title that was been born out of the success of Total Annihilation, an exceedingly popular 1997 strategy game. Centred around mechanical units known as Armoured Command Units (ACU) it’s a futuristic war like adventure. In this future setting humanity has also reached a point of space travel which makes it possible to jump across the galaxy quickly through an invention known as the quantum gateway. With the ability to travel the stars the United Eart...[Read Review]
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is a stand alone expansion to the original Supreme Commander title, this standalone approach was used in order to alter gameplay features, add additional units and improve performance over the original release. Set in the same futuristic setting where humans have achieved space travel through the use of quantum tunnels, capable of sending ships from one side of the galaxy to the other near instantaneously. This has in turn led to many human colonies across the ...[Read Review]
Stronghold Kingdoms
Stronghold Kingdoms aims to change up the classic MMORTS formula by focusing on wars between medieval castles all across ancient Europe. With a focus on managing your castle the title has castle simulation elements while offering plenty of depth and strategy to explore for newcomers or fans of the Stronghold franchise. Available for Windows Stronghold Kingdoms is also available on iOS and Android which share the same game world. Like other games in the genre Stronghold Kingdoms features an array...[Read Review]
Grand Ages: Rome
Grand Ages: Rome is a single player and multi-player game that offers a mixture of city building and real time strategy to create an overall fun and strategic focused game experience. Grand Ages: Rome was released in 2009 and is published by Kalypso Media. The game is the sequel to Imperium Romanum and was originally named Imperium Romanum 2. An expansion pack for the game (The Reign of Augustus) was released approximately a year later to add additional gameplay. In the single player campaign of...[Read Review]