When comparing Distant Worlds: Universe vs Cities: Skylines, the Slant community recommends Cities: Skylines for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Cities: Skylines is ranked 28th while Distant Worlds: Universe is ranked 106th. The most important reason people chose Cities: Skylines is:
At a total of 36sq.km of area to use (compared to SimCity 4), there is a large amount of room to build and play.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro The universe is huge
With the possibility to simulate thousands of stars and tens of thousands of planets in realtime, the universe in Distant Worlds is truely vast.
Pro In-depth problem solving
Unlike games like Civ where solving a problem is a few clicks away, Distant Worlds has many layers of abstraction that will make problem solving a lot more difficult and more like a real living world. There may be many elements needed in order to solve a problem that the player will have to figure out on their own, making for a very immersive way to solve issues.
Pro Large scale
At a total of 36sq.km of area to use (compared to SimCity 4), there is a large amount of room to build and play.
Pro Steady Stream of new content via DLCs
DLCs are optional, they do go one sale. Plus when a new DLC is released a bit of the content is released into the base game.
Pro Depth of field
There is a depth of field effect that will blur distant buildings, which mimics Sim City's diorama effect. It can of course be adjusted with a slider as to how much or little to use.
Pro Large Amount of Workshop Mods & Assets
With almost 150 thousand assets and mods, you can totally change the gameplay and look of the game
Cons
Con Requires a time commitment
This is not a game that one can jump into with no prior knowledge, there is a high learning curve that will take many trial sessions in order to get the hang of the full aspects of the game.
Con Resource Heavy
If your computer doesn’t have decent specs, don’t expect to be able to run this game smoothly.
Con Expensive
If you want more gameplay features, you have to buy expensive DLC, but you can get them on sale sometimes.
Con Can be difficult to glean what one has done wrong in game
Cities: Skylines has difficulty letting the player know what they have done wrong, which results in a lot of head scratching.