clowning posted...but they are not really city simulators, more like city builders.
No matter how you call them they are still great and fun games. And still better to have good "city building game" than broken "City simulator" (so far only alternative in Simcity or Cities XL)
I did not play the Anno. But there is so much simualtion in Torpico 4 that I would not hesitate to call it city simulator game. Yes, the cities are little smaller (approx 1000ppl), but the depth compensates this. And if you have the datadisk with modern times buildings, some cities looks maybe better than the small squares in Simcity.
Plus this game is multiplatform (if you prefer console, you can play on Xbox too). And at this time is on sale (I guess they are doing it on purpose :-D). So the decision to buy is nobrainer.
I mean compare this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSp5DkLVIEY
with the Simcity cities.
And if you consider the depth of simulation of the Tropico citizens...
http://i.imgur.com/kMk84jE.png
And this is just one of the four pages for the citizen statistics. here I found a second page:
http://i.stack.imgur.com/i06jE.png
but there are two more.
Simcity devs should be ashamed :-/