[Cthulhu_]

The 'feel' of a game can't be understated. I get the same vibes from KCD 2, where just walking through the environment is in itself a joy.

The thing I didn't like about Age of Empires compared to Settlers was that warfare is the main point of the game; I wish AoE had a plain city / society building mode. Actually it probably does via mods or custom maps, or there's other games that tick the AoE and city builder boxes. Settlers has war as well but I always felt it was secondary, definitely not something large scale.

[lis]

Same here. Also one of the reason I loved building castles in Stronghold so much. It's so much more fun to build than to destroy.

That's also why I love Anno 1800 (as well as its predecessors). You can (mostly) avoid combat.

[lqet]

> Settlers has war as well but I always felt it was secondary, definitely not something large scale.

Yes. This is the main reason why I always preferred Settlers and the Anno titles to AoE, EE or similar games. You could build things. AoE was mainly about destroying things. "Warfare" in the original Settlers I was just 2 cute knights hitting each other on the head with a sword until one of them was flat as a pancake.

> I get the same vibes from KCD 2

Add Gothic II, which was also very pretty (it still is, although it came out nearly 25 years ago).

[qw]

I liked Settlers, but I was much more invested in the Caesar/Zeus/Pharaoh series of games. Maybe it was due to the historical context.