It did not take long before medieval-themed city builders popped up. The city builder has its origins far back in the 1990s in the combination of the strategy genre and the management genre, leading to games such as Sim City (1989), Caesar (1992) and Age of Empires (1997). In this article, I will take a look at one sub-genre of the city builder, the medieval city builder, and explain how this gaming genre relates to our knowledge of medieval settlement planning. City builders are very similar to strategy games as they reward patience and strategy.
A city builder is a specific kind of computer game in which you design a city, extract resources, set up production chains and ensure that your settlement grows. Since many of us are working from home in these trying times, it seems safe to assume that more people than ever are indulging in playing the occasional computer game.