Recommendations for more "hardcore" strategy/planning games?

Gaming
1

Ok, i’ll try to explain here what i’m looking for and what i have played to compare to.

I’d like to get a new game in the realm of Anno or Cities Skylines. Both of those are decent but on playing for longer they are laking some depth for me and either feel Sandboxy easy or you loose for no reason.

I recently started The Universim and it’s good for what it is. But after 4 hours it already bacame repetitive. Either it’s slow to progress or it’s laking depth and variety.

I watched some banished lets plays recently that looked really, really good. Especially with Colonial Charter added the depth seems to be great. It also seem harder than other games while beeing fair. Steam Reviews are mixed though.

As i served the military for some years, i’ve also been looking at the Gary Grisby games over and over. War in the East looks good (while graphically a bit… boring). But price, complexity and Interface (but mostly Price) are a bit offputting.

So what do you recommend for a strategy/city builder type game that’s a bit more on the complex and challenging site while not beeing artificially punishing? The setting isn’t too important, but the banished/anno timeline is certainly interesting.

2

What about HOI 3/4 ?

3

Past two weeks, friend has been playing these two games equally many hours as that Anno 2205


Best I can do, not my genres

4

I tried Project Highrise, but it ultimately only lasts me an hour or two on a single Map. I found it rather repetitive in that you only do the same things but in several “levels” of how big the rooms are. It’s a nice game for shorter periods, but nothing to really plan out on.

Stellaris wasn’t on my map at all and from the first steam impressions, i’m not capable of grasping what this game actually is. But I’ll make sure to look at it later.

5

Similar to Hearts of Iron (space in space instead of WW2) its a grand strategy / x4 like game.

Stellaris is probably more accessible than HOI or Europa Universalis