Check out Kingdoms Reborn

I played this when it first came out and loved it so much. Unfortunately, as it developed it just went in a bunch of directions that made it less and less fun to play. I still try and play it occasionally but there’s so much that gets in the way of enjoying it now. It feels like it got the “too many chefs” treatment and now it’s just not anything like as much fun as it was. I’m not joking when I say it kind of broke my heart to see it basically loose it’s way so much. It also still struggles with an issue they’ve never really resolved which is that when your town grows and your workers end up having to travel further and further away from their workplaces everything becomes inefficient. Every town I’ve made eventually spirals down into this issue and you can’t just delete all the houses and force people to build homes nearer their workplaces cos it’s insanely expensive and produces very unpredictable results. It’s just a shame. TL;DR Used to be great but is kind of not great now (in my opinion of course. Your mileage may vary).

Loved the book series

How many of these city builders are there lol

Manor lords and ostriv vibes

I haven’t played Foundation, but since you’re looking for laid-back and medieval, there’s a really cozy looking game I want to try called Tiny Glade that apparently has no objectives. It seems to be a pure sandbox game.

Plus, if you like supporting devs who use smaller/less-well-known engines, this one runs on Bevy, a small Rust-based engine!

I haven’t played it, but I just added it to my wish list. Another you might like, rimworld, but change it’s storyteller settings to peaceful.

also check out

Patron

Zeus and Poseidon

Played it about a year ago when it was still in EA. AFAIK, the full release will be in a couple of weeks and there is a demo, which you can test ATM.

Imo this game is perfect for people who want to build a village/town and manage your economy without the hassle of attacks or else. There are some events like bad weather but almost every time it’s not that big of a deal. Last time I played, I had multiple bugs where the economy stopped working which started a spiral downwards. But this was a year ago. Oh and I forgot to mention, this game has already a pretty big mod library.

$40 for an early access game? That’s pushing it, imo. To me that means it’s a $50/$60 game at release. And it’s these devs first game. Idk.

Maybe I’m still privileged from the KSP model years ago though, and the rest of the inde scene.