Short Thought: We Need More City Builders with Less Combat

I am by no means a veteran of the city builder genre: I dabble in and out of games here and there because I find the visual of growing one or two small houses into massive towns and cities to be a near-unmatched level of satisfaction. The strategy behind resource management is incredibly enjoyable, yet I find myself turned away from many of these titles due to intrusive combat systems, which I have no choice but to engage with. While I don't have a problem with combat on the surface, being forced to engage and learn a whole new, relatively complex system while I just want to relax is a very frustrating endeavour. Many of the titles I've tried in the past seem to stick to the two extremes, either entirely forsaking any form of strategy, in the form of sandbox modes with infinite resources or forcing far more combat in its standard modes than I can personally enjoy.

I found myself playing Anno 1800 recently, which is really what sparked this initial thought; I'm still incredibly early into this title, yet I haven't been forced to play into any combat systems, and I'm not even sure whether there are any. So far, the gameplay loop is exactly what I've been looking for in a game of this genre: being able to expand my own town without constantly worrying about getting annihilated by opposing armies. Civilization VI is another title I have a positive experience with; while combat is a very important mechanic, there are a good variety of options to be able to avoid combat in its entirety. Despite this, the city-building elements are sadly lacking for my tastes.

City builders, to me are a very enjoyable genre, yet there is so much discrepancy between them it's hard to find one which I can fully engage with.