I can't master any sim games

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What do the sim genre of games require in skills that I don't have? From the relatively simple SimCity series, to the more complex and niche such as the Geo-Political Simulator series by Eversim, I can't seem to make progress at even coming close to mastering any of them. I played the GPS games for 2 years and I should've learned how to master it by now. Same thing with SimCity and The Sims.

I love this genre, but what skills does it take to progress to mastering them?

You'd have to find some game-specific forums and see if there's a strategy guide.

Sims aren't cookie-cutter in their design...at least, if they are meant to be realistic, they won't be.

Life is complicated. A sim game should reflect that. There may be some fixed "rules" about what produces what, but they are probably general rules and not 100% guaranteed to produce the same result each time.

I found sim games annoying because if you located residential zones too far from commercial and industrial, nobody would live there, but in reality, a whole city could be residential and have people commute 20 miles or more to a solely industrial city for work each day. Lots of the "rules" didn't follow what I'd expect should work.

I also tried guides before. What is also hard is for me to focus on the game for more than 10-15 mins in a session.

I find that a lot of simulation games are certantly not straight foreward as other types of games. I've played SimCity 4, Civ 5, Football Manger, The Sims and more recently, Game Dev Simulator.

Its hard to say what skills are an advantage. There's a lot of logical thinking involved like Resourse management, Time management and as well as long term planning.

Like a favorite of mine SimCity 4 gives you a limited size map, a limited budget and tools to construct as creatively as possible on or in ground. A big part is to balance the budget with taxes, balance the RCI Desirability, Mayor Approval, etc. and to grow the population as large as possible. These all need some budgeting skill, resource management and so on.

Another is Football Manager. Even though I have no interest in football itself, it's often a deep simulation strategy. You start as a low or non-league manager looking for a job, getting that, you are tasked to budget training/buying players. You earn money through league success, sponsorships and such. You also need to please your board members, player morale, injuries and all sort of details. The game gives you 20 or so years depending on the title to become a successful premier and World Cup manager and retire when at the top. There's also pitch tactics and strategy involved that needs good planning skills.

Is it due to my bad aspie planning skills?
How do you think they can be overcome?

What if the particular game has no guide on strategy?
I am thinking of playing TV Manager (the original from 2000, not the sequel).

Any lack of skill can be trained and practiced to some extent. I used to have poor planning and time management skills. I learned the skill because I had to for educational situations. It was adapt or fail. There's potentially learning materials out there to develop general planning skills.

For obscure or unpopular games that are unlikely to have guides, best thing to do is to play it, see what works and move on to the next bit. I did this often with SimCity 4, see what layout yielded the best population or budget, stuck to it and adapt accordingly to any changes.

With some simulation games, the best tactics are what actually works in real life. Very possibly like a game like TV Manager, a good research method could be looking into The television industry to see what works there and apply it to the game, possibly what worked with actual TV at the time of the game release,could mirror that in the simulator. Not always work that way, but it could be one direction getting into the game.

Do you recommend the Network Addon Mod fix for SC4?

And the original TV Manager game context is set in the early days of television-the 1950s. The game objective is to fulfill ad contracts in between chosen movies, series or live events and earn money to expand broadcasting to areas over a country map. The game has no music (except for smooth jazz music in the beginning) or fancy graphics.

Never heard of the NAM fix for SC4, but I've looked into it and I think I would recommend it if you've got a good grasp of mass transport in the game. Otherwise I may try that addon myself some time.