Tycoon games are a sub-genre of city-building games. City-building games are a sub-genre of simulation games. I'm not actually sure if there are sub-genres of tycoon games because at that level of fidelity, you get into the actual games themselves, which include, railroad tycoon, sim-ant, Rollercoaster tycoon, airport tycoon, and the like.

Right! Yes! Okay, you've given enough words that I can use to provide more context. I'm not really looking for versions of tycoon games, rather the tier 2 of collective breakdown where you'd find things like city-building, build and race, and maybe a few more. I don't know what that is. It's a level below broad categories like simulation, racing, adventure, and so on.

Edit: spelling.

Why do you need that? It's a pretty weird question to ask.

There aren't any strictly defined genres and many games cannot be confined to a single genre because they have elements of multiple genres. The genres are just rough descriptions of games, not exact science. There isn't any universal consensus as to what constitutes a particular genre.

But to get the rough idea, just open any game distribution service (such as Steam), and see what kind of division they use.

I don't have Steam or a pc. I have my phone, the categories on it aren't diverse enough to allow me to reference them casually in conversation. That being said, games are a huge part of my personality. I find it difficult to talk with people about them when I don't feel confident in my understanding of the definitions.

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Have you tried wikipedia? IIRC, they have whole pages dedicated just to naming genres of games