In that case, you might want to give http://gnomoria.com/ a try, which is similar to dwarf fortress, but significantly less complex, easier to control, and looks decent out-of-the-box.
You might also be interested in https://www.factorio.com/ which is a game about building factories (free world, 2d isometric). Aside from being addictive, it is also performant, looks good, has a decent soundtrack and comes with all of it's ingame-stats conveniently embedded in Lua-sourcefiles (which you don't even have to parse-- just run them through the interpreter if you want to start modding/theorycrafting).
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with those games in any way, just promoting them because they're awesome (best entertainment/price ratio of anything I ever paid for).
You might also be interested in https://www.factorio.com/ which is a game about building factories (free world, 2d isometric). Aside from being addictive, it is also performant, looks good, has a decent soundtrack and comes with all of it's ingame-stats conveniently embedded in Lua-sourcefiles (which you don't even have to parse-- just run them through the interpreter if you want to start modding/theorycrafting).
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with those games in any way, just promoting them because they're awesome (best entertainment/price ratio of anything I ever paid for).