Wow, you guys are great. Thanks for the tips so far. The city builders crossed my mind as well, but they do lack the exploration aspect..

Actually, I *love* minecraft, exactly for those reasons (though I enjoy the survival aspect as well in that game). Seems that what I enjoy most in games is exploring and building stuff :) However, I was looking for it in a different genre this time, play a lot of minecraft already :D

hey, those look great! I seem to recognize the graphics of 1503 from somewhere. I might actually have played this at a friend when I was younger. Thanks, I will definitely give those a try (and I'll probably mark you as the solution, unless someone comes up with something even better).

Now, while we're at it, the same thing, but now sci-fi? I actually spotted Anno 2070 as to be released, which seems cool, but any others?

Fare enough it's a 4x but Alpha-Centuri?

I whole-heartedly agree with the OP. I love 4x games but sometimes would prefer a 3x option. I have been eye-ing Patrician 3 in the GOG catalog. Could any offer an opinion about whether that game would fit the bill?

Thanks!

With an aggressive expansionist strategy, you can win Star Trek: Birth of the Federation without fighting.

Sounds about right I guess yeah. It's a great trading simulator if you can get into that sort of thing.

The Guild.

^While The Guild IS a good game, it doesn't really fit the bill for a 3X game (without horribly contorting the criteria for the genre, at least), but I recall LordCinnamon already has that game, so he knows it anyway.

I don't think it does. You don't really have to explore (contrary to the Port Royale games, you start seeing every city on the map, and you can click on them to see what they produce), and exploitation means only that you can buy up surplus goods and build businesses where they'll produce something.
It's a great game, but I wouldn't call it 2/3/4X.

Dawn of Discovery (Anno 1404) or other games in that series.

+1 for the Anno series. In fact, I just bought the second part today (Anno 1503, which came out in 2002). The games do contain combat, but that component is rather rudimentary and can mostly be avoided. It's almost entirely exploration, settling and trade.

Ditto for the Anno/Dawn of Discovery. I think that Settler's might satisfy some of the bill, but it does tend to have some basic combat.

Thanks for the response. I am still looking forward to trying Patrician sometime as I would love a good economic sim but it's good to know a little bit more of what it's about.

It sounds like I am going to have to try out the Anno series that everyone keeps mentioning.

Settlers 2 for the win!

thanks for the suggestions everyone! I'm going to try to track down the anno games. I'm not sure if I can run the latest ones (going to try the demos first), so maybe I'm going to have to hunt for the older ones. Why aren't they here on GOG yet, I wonder? Ubisoft is on board, right?

EDIT: also, nice to know I'm not the only one looking for games like this :)