Banished

The game is fine on its own, but it really falls apart if you have significant experience with other simulation games. The main issue is the AI. While many people defend the game by saying you must plan your constructions and locations based on the AI in order to correct it, you shouldn't need to optimize every decision simply to make the AI competent; instead it should be that your optimizations make them more efficient rather than nominally efficient. Other than the AI I think the game is just fine. I would choose most other simulation games like ANNO, Cities: Skylines, Factorio, and Tropico since they offer a more complete experience with incredibly competent AI and programming. I don't fault anyone for loving this game but I just really much prefer others. It's a great introduction to simulation games for a new player, however.

Banished is a great city-building game which has its own style, different from Anno or SimCity. You have to carefully watch all your citizens behaviors and prevent all their and your town's problems. It may seem (and be) a bit limited since there are few long-term buildings or objectives, but the pure, simple mechanics stay enjoyable and addictive, and allow different development patterns. Plus, if survival will be your first goal, it will one day be growing, then keep growing with limited space while coping with the landscape... So there are renewed feats.

Finally there is a game, which really is fun and satisfying to play. This one guy that produced it all alone made a much better Job than the whole crew behind Sim City!

I bought this game off of steam and loved the game, one thing I wish there was more of though is more variety of building to place laying the same building over and over gets old but that's no reason not to buy the game it is a very fun game, hours of fun, good game to just past the time

This is precisely what I was looking for. Medieval village sim completely without enemies to fight, yet full of challenges.