Is a city builder a subset of tycoon game that just focuses on managing a city or some other polity? Is a tycoon game a city builder except it’s open to you managing something that isn’t a town/city/state?
Crossposted to !citybuilders@sh.itjust.works here. (My instance would not give me the little Crossposted thing when this little bit wasn’t edited in and the posts were identical but in separate communities, so I figured I’d just do it myself. Wonder if this is just a my instance deal or if it happened for everyone. And if it happened for everyone, wonder if crossposting only gets auto-shown if it is a link post, and what the requirements are in general to make crossposting automatically show up.)
City builders have you zoning and laying down infrastructure, rather than actually building a city bit by bit. Most of what gets built is random based on zoning, taxes, land value, etc.
A tycoon game is all plopping down every single piece you want with varying degrees of background simulation that is still usually a fraction of what a city builder simulates.