I'd just get the novelization if I were you, lol.

 

1. Dwarf Fortress - Impossible many hours of replayability
2. Civilization II - I haven't played the new versions much, but this one has a particular place in my heart.
3. Sim City IV + expansions
4. Heroes of Might and Magic - I still play it sometimes with my friends.
5. Crusader Kings 2 + expansions

Might be some games that has fled my mind that could make the list, but I think this one is pretty solid.

 

What's the deal with Dwarf Fortress? I've never heard of it.

 

It's a dwarf simulator and city-builder.

It's a detailed environmental modeller.

It's has a 3D world, like Minecraft, but displayed in ASCII as a top-down 2D plane.

It's a hazardous world filled with crazy dwarves and things that kill crazy dwarves.

Your city will end. It will drown or burn or fall prey to madness.

Read the plight of the dwarves of Boatmurdered. You will understand: http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/

 

It's a nostalgia driven game for masochists that don't mind the lack of a decent GUI (that isn't a Third-Party mod).

 

Five games... nope, just can't do it. Are you crazy?

1. ME (wait for Andromeda to come out, hehe)
2. DA trilogy
3. Eh, just realized no Internet, so no CoD. Slap Skyrim in there, I guess
4. HOMM (after I get bored of the real-time clicking)
5. Minecraft

 

I saw that a number of people who play CK2 also gave Mount & Blade: Warband as their answer. Are there any good nation/settlement building mods, or is the base game enough in that regard?

Warband is free on Steam this weekend. Would you recommend the Viking and Napoleon DLCs for a singleplayer gamer?

 

The base game is very entertaining, up until the point you play your first mod. You can sink a hundred hours into The Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire), The Last Days of the Third Age (Lord of the Rings), and L'Angle (Napoleonic Wars) each. A couple more are in development that will be of similar quality, and there are a few waiting for Bannerlord before they start work.

While there is a nation/settlement building element, it's done in a very different way than something like Crusader Kings or the Total War series. The interface and in-game perspective isn't top-down where you're this disembodied entity moving all the pawns. Your lords and general (once you get to the point where you can start building a kingdom) have character models and travel the map independently (within parameters you give them). They feel like real characters and Mount & Blade's strongest positive is how it combines the more immersive RPG side with the massive armies brawling.

In order for you to get to the kingdom-ruling part, you play through several hours building up relations with various NPC lords, until they can defect to you. This RPG gameplay is pretty involving. The relations system is pretty strong - they like and dislike certain actions, other characters, your decisions as ruler, outcomes of battles. I like how characters aren't just unit cards, and it's what makes Warband one of a kind. Every game I'll find I have my homies who can make the game feel alive when I appoint them marshal, and they save my ass at a ridiculously clutch moment at the head of the nation's entire army. Or, they don't get there in time, and it turns into a desperate Hail Mary attempt to salvage your whole kingdom as your villages burn, your lords get taken prisoner, your economy gets broken etc.

The economy and trading runs is cool, but the actual settlement-building/management itself is shallow. You do the typical upgrading stuff, but all you need is time and money and it doesn't matter what you do, as opposed to Total War where you need to balance money upgrades with growing public unrest and sanitation etc. There's no taxing policy you have control over. The populations will never rebel so you don't have to keep garrisons (I mean, you do, the other kingdoms will snatch it if it isn't defended, but there's no actual TW/Civ-5 kind of mechanics built in). Bottom line is that there's enough dilemmas (do I head over to reinforce this stack of my lords, or relieve this siege?) for me to say you don't have to get mods to boost the settlement/nation-building aspect. You're going to have to make hard decisions no matter what.

The Reforged Edition of Viking Conquest, v1.05, is great. It's essentially the interim stage between Warband and Bannerlord with a slew of new features, There aren't any mods for it, but it's a very rich game and is the best official Mount & Blade experience, better than Warband vanilla. So I would say still get Warband (for the mods), and get Viking Conquest (as an excellent stand-alone experience). Napoleon isn't worth it, as it is drastically surpassed by the L'Angle mod which you can get for free.

 

Napoleon is strictly a multiplayer DLC, though I think the mod it's based also works for singleplayer. Viking Conquest was extremely buggy at release and has a bad reputaion as a result, though it's being fixed. I haven't played it yet but would recommend waiting for a sale. Fire and Sword never amazed me either, I'd say you don't need it.

Just get Warband and start with Floris or Silverstag as those mods are pretty big, acclaimed and focus on enhancing Vanilla instead of changing the setting to Warhammer Fantasy or whatever.
I personally prefer Floris, ymmv though.

 

1. Space Engineers
2. Civ IV
3. Skyrim
4. Galactic Civ II
5. Fallout NV

I had a tough time making that list. I couldn't add games like Kotor, which would make a list of my favorite games, because they are just too dated to imagine myself playing over and over again. Minecraft was original, but I stopped playing a long time ago, and after playing Space Engineers I doubt I ever will play Minecraft again.

 

I see that games like Civ are very popular here. I never saw the appeal myself to be honest.

 

There is no timesink like a good 4x game. I wouldn't list them as my favorites but they are amazing at keeping me entertained for hundreds of hours.

 

Mate, if you think Kotor is dated now, I shudder to think what Skyrim will be in 50 years, lol