I was spending the summer with relatives in a provincial capital in my late pre-teens. My relatives' computer wasn't powerful enough to run Simcity 3000.
So I started playing a pen and paper city-builder. I would connect multiple A4 pieces of paper and draw roads, residential, utilities, factoring and so on.
It almost sounds like my approach was bit more "user friendly" than the Sumerian Game (albeit my concept was a pure sandbox).