I grew up playing Sim City 2k and 3k (never got around to the latest one, but wasn't really interested after reading reviews).
I'd like to see the entire city builder genre challenged by changing the perspective from city planner/god-mayor, to those whom they serve.
Imagine, instead of a birds eye view, you could only build from the perspective of a pedestrian.
Maybe in certain instances you'd have to see a wider swath of land for planning purposes (transit as an example), but it would be interesting to see how the forms of cities created by users change from this new perspective.
I think I'd prefer something more similar to a Factorio setting (e.g. still top-down, but the camera actions/limited to your area as the "pedestrian").
However, I'd also like the insertion of balance against the "god" part too - like eminent domain costing goodwill or stability points. Too unstable or not enough goodwill, and the citizens start acting antagonist against the player on some level (e.g. higher crime/fraud, causing less taxes, protests, people leaving, etc)
Almost like city-state on some level, but less about the political compass and more about city government interacting with the local population.
The problem with these city simulators is that they're relatively simplistic, and it's easy to work out a "formula" that lets you get basically infinite money and do whatever you want (the "city painter" mode). Which can be terribly fun, but it's not so much a game as more of an open-world building toy.
This is the problem with most strategy games too, like EU4. It's all about min-maxing against the stats.
As frustrating as it can be sometimes, I prefer playing with fuzzier logic based on randomness. There's a great breakdown on EU3 vs EU4 that highlights this.
In CS, it'd be like if the economy went up and down randomly, affecting taxes or expenses, or if citizens randomly changed behavior patterns (e.g. started driving more when previously walked or vice versa).
I've been enjoying Workers and Resources because of some of this fuzziness is introduced by construction taking time and resources.
I'd like to see the entire city builder genre challenged by changing the perspective from city planner/god-mayor, to those whom they serve.
Imagine, instead of a birds eye view, you could only build from the perspective of a pedestrian.
Maybe in certain instances you'd have to see a wider swath of land for planning purposes (transit as an example), but it would be interesting to see how the forms of cities created by users change from this new perspective.