The sims don’t really build anything on their own. I play the Sims 2, because it’s got decades of mods available at this point. The newer games don’t really seem worth it - the Sims 4 is very much focused on parcelling our everything as DLC.

Basically, I have a bunch of STALKER and Fallout 3 assets ported into the game and use them to decorate my little post apocalyptic setting. I try to destroy/rebuild in a way that looks sorta organic - having them squat in abandoned bowling alleys and the like.

Imho the Sims 2 is worth getting into. We’ve reached the point in the nostalgia cycle where the ridiculous early 00’s clothing is endearing. It’s a really open ended story telling tool, and with modding you can do things like historical simulations or weird sim cults or prisons… but even just playing the vanilla game has a lot of charm of its own.