I would like to nominate A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

It’s a fantastic entry into the genre. Interesting future human cultures. The world feels very fleshed out and unlike anything I have read before. It plays with the concept of what an “alien” even is.

I love pretty much all of his books but this trilogy was truly epic.

Basically everything by Adrian Tchaikovsky But specifically Children of Time series. Humans are essentially the “ancient” alien race. It’s a unique spin on it.

Against the storm is one of my favorite entries to the sub genre in a long time. I play loads of city/colony sims and this title stood out as something unique without getting away from the core elements of a colony sim. It also takes the best parts of rogue likes without making the game feel impossibly hard (but you can ramp up the difficulty in a variety of ways including in the middle of playing)

But like others have stated it’s not going to scratch the same itch as massive city builders like Cities, or factory games.

Still it felt fresh and I dumped a couple hundred hours into it already.