Engine Recommendation - world/city builder Thread

Hi All,

Thanks for reading! I am looking to develop a colonization style game, and am looking for recommendations for a world/city builder engine. I have done modding on a lot of existing games (e.g. Civ IV), and so far none has really worked the way I want, so I want to try starting from scratch. Ideally I would like to:

• Create tiled maps with different terrain types, and ability to randomly generate terrain
• Overall graphic quality, physics, etc not THAT important, but ideally would be sort of scalable - so you could start with either simple graphics and art or import from a library, and work on overall flow and scripting. Then once it works the way you want go back and swap out for more customized/higher quality art/graphics/effects.
• I would like to spend my time with story, scripting, logic, etc. not creating photo-realistic rocks and trees
• Ability to create cut-scenes, etc, again ideally with the ability to use simple placeholders to see how the overall concept works, the be able to swap out for a more polished cinematic at a later point.
• There will be quite a lot to do with tech trees, production, managing of inventories, etc
• There will not be much emphasis on combat, so this is not that important
• No big preference as to real time or turn based
• I don't mind spending a little money for it, but would like to try it first.

My skill level: Have done basic programming in Python, C. 2 and 3 D modeling (photoshop, blender), have done lots of modding over the years, but limited "programming from scratch". I can learn anything, and am patient - but want to focus on the story and not the visuals, physics, etc.

Any thought welcome!

Thanks!