There was a big heyday a decade ago with town builders, like Banished, Farthest Frontier, Manor lords and a bunch of ancient history ones. It seems to have died out again the last few years. And I don't know any that replace simcity or cities skyline 1. The only city sim I play nowadays is Soviet Workers Republic, some combination of those words.

Maybe we'll get a million new city sims with the ai goldrush that have unique takes.

Think I gave up on actual city sims with massive scale.

Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic! That's actually the best one available if you're more interested in the simulation than the aesthetics, even with the jank.

Check out timberborn. Its the best new town builder. It's like banished but mixed with fluid dynamics. Water is a scarce resource and you have to manage flooding and droughts. You can also damn the wrong thing and flood your village

Manor Lords was only released early access in 2024, and has been 99% hype. The developer put in the bare minimum to gameplay then spent months and months on random visual stuff like "walk through your town in 3d" mode. It's only recently that it became remotely worthwhile.

It's not an example of the heyday of townbuilders except inasmuch as the existence of the heyday enabled a borderline grift.