The 12 Best City Building Board Games of All Time, Ranked

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City building board games make puzzling over the placement of tiles and planning your most creative construction strategies a ton of fun. To claim victory in these tabletop titles, you’ll often need to line up roadways, assemble buildings, and generate resources with your factories and farms. In the list below, we’re highlighting twelve fantastic board games that offer an immensely satisfying urban planning experience.

12. My City

My City is relatively straightforward tile placement game that takes players through a twenty-four part campaign. In each chapter, you’ll have to put tiles on your player mat according to the order in which they appear in your construction deck. However, there are a number of simple rules that complicate this process. You can’t place buildings on mountain or forest spaces, nor can you position them over the river that crosses the middle of your board. In addition, you’ll lose points for every rock and empty space that’s showing, but you’ll gain a point back for every tree that you leave uncovered. Scoring carries over from game to game, so you’ll have plenty of chances to catch up in case you didn’t do very well in a particular chapter.

11. Sunrise City

In Sunrise City, players construct a city with zone tiles, and then compete to control these zones, so that they have the rights to put buildings on them. In addition to placing tiles, the players will pick up role cards, which all have special abilities. The zoning commissioner, for example, will double your score for increasing the size of your districts. Meanwhile, the city treasurer and the union boss will give you extra points depending on the height of your buildings. The game’s benchmarks system rewards you the most points when you meet your scoring goal exactly, rather than exceeding it.

10. Sprawlopolis

The portable city-building board game Sprawlopolis is packed with plenty of exciting action despite its small size. Each round of urban planning has a special scoring condition that gives points to players who can complete a particular arrangement of cards. In one game, this might be laying down roads so they form a loop. In another, it might be putting together industrial blocks so that they share corners. You can enjoy the game cooperatively with up to three additional players, or take advantage of the equally fun solitaire mode. You’ll likely be amazed at just how much you can do with the game’s 18-card deck.

9. Carcassonne

The classic tile placement game Carcassonne offers an easy-to-learn medieval landscape building experience that never gets old thanks to the game’s enormous catalog of expansion content. When it’s your turn, you’ll play a new tile adjacent to the existing ones that continues the surrounding fields, cities, and roads. Monasteries and other buildings from the expansions can also alter the countryside. Each player has a collection of meeples to work with that serve as either highwaymen or knights, depending on where they’re placed. It’s a good gateway for anyone who’s taking their first steps into the tabletop gaming world.

8. Dorfromantik: The Board Game

Even if you’ve never played or heard of the Dorfromantik video game, you can have a blast playing its zen tabletop adaption. Instead of lining up your tiles to create massive city districts, you and your teammates will instead be building a mix of small towns and villages amongst a rolling landscape of railroads, pastures, and rivers. The only thing you need to do when it’s your turn is place a tile, which is a simple formula that keeps the experience relatively relaxed. However, you’ll still need to puzzle over how to get the achievements and goals that are within your reach. It’s a fully cooperative campaign experience that both beginner and veteran gamers can enjoy. For something that’s a bit more competitive, try the “Duel” edition of the game instead.

7. Suburbia

In Suburbia, one to four players work to take their small town of hex tiles and turn it into a bustling city that’s full of interesting buildings and infrastructure. Will you add farms, factories, and airports in an attempt to generate the highest population at the end of the game? Or will you stick with apartments, high-rises, and hostels? As it turns out, you’ll usually need a mix of both in order to claim victory. The game has considerable replay value due to its randomized goal system, which can completely alter your objectives and reshape the landscape of your entire city.

6. Nevada City

Nevada City is an exciting yet complex worker placement board game set in the old west. You’ll start with a homestead and a couple family cards, plus a farm and a few other basic building supplies. You’ll use both your hired hands and your characters to take actions, and once you’re unable to take another turn, the year ends. With each passing year, you’ll be able to construct more buildings in the local boom town, and charge anyone who uses them a fee. If you’re using the advanced rules, you can also gamble at the local saloon and face off against the dissatisfied workers who didn’t get a contract from any of the players in a given year.

5. 7 Wonders Duel

7 Wonders Duel isn’t just about building cities. It’s about constructing an entire civilization, from its ancient roots to its era of scientific advancement and innovation. To begin, you’ll need to construct cards that give you basic resource generation, such as mines and lumber yards, so that you have stone, clay, and wood. With these materials on hand, you can turn your attention toward piecing together armories and walls, and attacking your opponent. In the final phase of the game, you’ll work on scoring as much as possible with obelisks, academies, and monuments. Alternatively, you can win by invading your enemy’s capital, or by being the first to reach scientific dominance.

4. Citadels

The goal of Citadels is simple: construct the highest scoring city with eight unique building cards. However, it can a complex process to achieve such a goal, since other players can destroy your buildings when they’re using the warlord card. Each round, the players will get a new role that dictates their abilities. The merchant will give you extra gold, but the thief can steal it. The bishop can protect your buildings, but the assassin might remove a player from the round entirely. There’s often plenty of fun negotiations with the other people at the table, especially if you’re playing with a larger group.

3. Everdell

The popular animal-themed board game Everdell is a fantastic introduction to both engine and tableau building mechanics. The game takes place over the course of four seasons, and requires you to send your workers out into the forest to collect sticks, pebbles, and berries. With these resources, you can construct buildings for your village, and attract new inhabitants to occupy them. When an inhabitant card matches one of your buildings, you can play that card for free. For example, postal pigeons fit post offices, and teachers fit schools. The variable achievements up in the game’s Evertree require you to keep a close eye on your opponents, since only one player can claim them.

2. NEOM

If you’re looking for a city building board game in which tile drafting plays a central role, then you’ll love NEOM. With the game’s sizeable collection of tiles and seventeen different types of goods, there’s a ton of variety to ensure that every game ends up feeling completely new. The game notably draws some of its mechanics from the original version of 7 Wonders, but the player interaction is arguably greatly improved compared with the classic. That’s because you can purchase materials from everyone at the table, not just the players to your immediate left and right, provided you pay a small transport fee.

1. Underwater Cities

Turn the sea floor into a thriving metropolis in Underwater Cities, a fantastic engine building board game that gives players a ton of different ways to win. Besides simply building domes for your metropolis, you can link your infrastructure with tunnels, construct farms, and utilize laboratories. When it’s your turn, your aim is to play cards that match the color of the slot you’re playing them in, which will not only allow you to take an action, but activate the advantage on your card. There are more than 200 different cards to work with, and your engine and strategy will always be completely different from game to game. It’s an unrivalled city building experience that pretty much any tabletop gamer will love.

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