Builders are a genre of altered melee. Castlebuilder, Village Builder, and Empire Builder.
In the case of Castlebuilder, you can ally/unally/truce at will. Your income comes from a tax based on the number of peasants you control (secondary resource; replaces lumber) which is determined on the number of population buildings you control. There are a number of versions of it, most of which are broken. It's a very slow gameplay (1-3.5 hrs easily) that encourages players to role play to a degree.
Here's an example, sorry about it being offsite (was before I found THW). It's one of the better terrain mods I did. There's no AI, but you can play by yourself to get a general idea of gameplay. If your lucky, against someone else.
If and when you check it out, let me know what you think of the gameplay (in regards to builder maps).
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