SimCity General Thread

[Ak3mi]

Ehh I must of gotten the release date mixed up with another game, because of this :
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/24/simcity-release-date/

Kindhearted, altruistic mayors with plans for quality of life improvements and low taxes should plan their first week in office starting March 5, SimCity’s North American release date revealed via Twitter. European metro-meisters get a March 8 launch.

Plus

SimCity pre-orders cost $60/£45 ($80/£65 for the deluxe edition) over at EA’s Origin store.

Cry So quite far away, was looking forward to playing this in February.

[Kyuu]

By New Year's, I'll be as antsy as Kyouko (Yuru Yuri) near some Rum Raisin ice cream.

[Infinite Zenith]

Given the cost, I might just hold back until an expansion pack is released.

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by ForwardUntoDawn

Given the cost, I might just hold back until an expansion pack is released.

If that expansion pack allows larger cities, more features, etc... yea. Looking at this video: the game should be called SimNeighborhood. A whole "region" appear to have the size of a large city, where as the "cities" themselves are... well... the size of suburbs or smaller.

[Infinite Zenith]

In Sim City 4, the individual cities in a region ranged from 1 km2 to 16 km2. Those are more or less the sizes of suburbs. However, I never got the feeling that the cities in SC4 were themselves small. We'll have to see how it looks in the final game, I guess

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

I always found super-large cities a bit much to manage, they always seemed to get to a certain point and all sense of balance went out the window and the city imploded. Well for me anyway, I always did better with the slightly more spread out medium sized cities, that were a little more... architectural than just being a grid of housing, commercial and industry. I always liked the region play stuff to, trading between towns and the like. But these cities do look pretty damn small, maybe you can get bigger regions, but a city that's only a dozen or so blocks across with large towers does look kinda odd, but they are really pushing that interconnected stuff, so playing a solo region should be OK. (that region he is playing in does look really small to, which makes me thing that they are playing in a small region/map cities for demo purposes.

I'm excited for the game, but my big hangup is that it is on Origin. Which is irritating.

[Infinite Zenith]

That would account for it. The other glaring detractor: an Internet connection is required to play. If the gameplay is sufficently worthwhile, I'm willing to overlook the "needs Internet" and "requires Origin" parts

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Mr Hat and Clogs

I always found super-large cities a bit much to manage, they always seemed to get to a certain point and all sense of balance went out the window and the city imploded. Well for me anyway, I always did better with the slightly more spread out medium sized cities, that were a little more... architectural than just being a grid of housing, commercial and industry. I always liked the region play stuff to, trading between towns and the like. But these cities do look pretty damn small, maybe you can get bigger regions, but a city that's only a dozen or so blocks across with large towers does look kinda odd, but they are really pushing that interconnected stuff, so playing a solo region should be OK. (that region he is playing in does look really small to, which makes me thing that they are playing in a small region/map cities for demo purposes.

I'm excited for the game, but my big hangup is that it is on Origin. Which is irritating.

The reason why big cities were hard to manage were for several reasons.

1.) A bug with traffic. Sims would take the closest route instead of the fastest route. A mod by the name of NAM fixes that.

2.) Too many poor and/or rich people ruin a city. $$$ jobs are hard to create no matter what you do, and $ jobs only are operated by polluting crap or other seedy places. It's only natural for your city to have more wealthy citizens as you grow and fit in education and health. But no matter what you do, you can't have that many. In general, you want to raise taxes on both rich and poor, though my conscience just has me doing a progressive tax and higher population.

3.) Traffic. I used to like to draw hella intersections for my avenues because it looked cool. But it creates a traffic stop, and causes jams. Public transportation is godly in 2,3 and 4. Use it, and use it often. Subway and busses are the best but if you're creative enough to plan a railway, that's neat as well.

Also, don't spam too much infrastructure. If you can get away with tearing down some roads and highways, do it. Your city will be cleaner.

Ultimately Sim City is just heavily biased towards dense zoning. The wealth system helped push it the other way in 4, but it's pretty annoying at times.

No matter how well you play, your cities will have ups and downs. Even with max health and education, you're going to have an aging population which will reduce your workforce and your economy will dip. Those times will hurt your coffers. This is fine though, if your design is solid, it'll hold. Honestly, this comes off to me as more realistic than previous sim games, where if you set up a solid base, you can go on autopilot forever and remain consistent. In 4, development and change is dynamic and goes in cycles.

Personally, I liked having large generalist cities like in the older games. Suburbs were nice in theory, but are sorta boring. Sure they look the best since you can spread them out and have nice windy roads, but it gets old fast.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Yeah I remember getting too many $$$ citizens which then left because there weren't enough $$$ jobs to sustain them, which ended in slums, and the pollution was pretty high from the $ stuff. Usually I'd try and stick with good ol $$ cities, with a smattering of the others, and a whole city chock full of heavy industry for the $ to live off.

Subway never seemed to work for me, and I did end up using that traffic mod, NAM, I think it was called, to help alleviate things.

Basically my singular large cities ended up in clumps of Res/Com/Ind, which fed off each other. That worked for the most part.

Anyone else a fan of how this game, looks? Graphically speaking. Mechanically, they seem to have fixed up the issues with traffic and jobs and so on, which is noice. One thing I noticed with the example city, (which you mention to disliking), is how much empty space there is. I wouldn't mind it either if there were parks or trees in there, but just blank space is kinda bleh. But I keep forgetting about the modular status on the buildings, like with the casino and how he added on the hotel structure. So I guess cities will look a bit spacy until you max out those things.

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by ForwardUntoDawn

In Sim City 4, the individual cities in a region ranged from 1 km2 to 16 km2. Those are more or less the sizes of suburbs. However, I never got the feeling that the cities in SC4 were themselves small. We'll have to see how it looks in the final game, I guess

The large areas in a SC4 region -- those felt like cities, 'cause they are four times the size of the smaller areas. It actually can take a decent while to fill up one of the large areas.

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Mr Hat and Clogs

Yeah I remember getting too many $$$ citizens which then left because there weren't enough $$$ jobs to sustain them, which ended in slums, and the pollution was pretty high from the $ stuff. Usually I'd try and stick with good ol $$ cities, with a smattering of the others, and a whole city chock full of heavy industry for the $ to live off.

Subway never seemed to work for me, and I did end up using that traffic mod, NAM, I think it was called, to help alleviate things.

Basically my singular large cities ended up in clumps of Res/Com/Ind, which fed off each other. That worked for the most part.

Well I just reinstalled SC4 I would try to get a subway system working and post the save but iirc sim city 4 saves are a bit complex.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

The little jerks always seemed to ignore the subway... too good for it the self righteous bastards. Also it always irked me that there was no train graphic for subway cars moving along the rail network. Generally I stuck to buses, and had stupidly large bus networks, and trams/trains.

[Archon_Wing]

That's another bad thing about $$$; they prefer driving. Bus stops are pretty overpowered as they are in the Sim City series. As you can see, rich people are hard to keep around.

Well, there are ways to cut off access and force people to take subways and stuff though, lol

[Kyuu]

For SC4, I've used all the transportation options -- except for the monorail.

[Ak3mi]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/18/si...-ups-now-open/

Article on the Closed beta.

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/beta/info
Sign up now for Closed beta.

[Kyuu]

SIMCITY BREAKS GROUND IN THE CLASSROOM


Based on US Government data, American universities are producing barely one-third of the graduates needed to fill the growing demand for workers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). It’s a big challenge that highlights the need for innovation in how we teach STEM education to US students.

On the belief that STEM learning can be fun, EA, Maxis and the GlassLab today announced an initiative to modify EA’s new SimCity game for educational purposes. It’s a program designed to attract students to high-wage jobs in research, technology and game development.

http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-break...-the-classroom

SimCity and Education.

Nice to know the two things can go hand-in-hand.

[Ak3mi]

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/simc...nds-on-preview

Picture 5 shows the largest size map. Its a medium size map for SimCity 4, very lame

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Ak3mi

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/simc...nds-on-preview

Picture 5 shows the largest size map. Its a medium size map for SimCity 4, very lame

Ah, there you go. The real issue.

You are not building a city, you are building a neighbourhood. This might as well be a facebook game.

This is such an obvious downgrade, that I am hoping someone would make a competing product. There is a real need for a true modern simcity experience; and if EA doesn't want to provide it, someone else should.

[willx]

There's a full Kotaku review of the newest Simcity game .. apparently you can abandon your city for someone else to work on as well .. or you can pick up an abandoned city too!

http://kotaku.com/5978882/my-day-with-the-new-simcity

[SoldierOfDarkness]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Ah, there you go. The real issue.

You are not building a city, you are building a neighbourhood. This might as well be a facebook game.

This is such an obvious downgrade, that I am hoping someone would make a competing product. There is a real need for a true modern simcity experience; and if EA doesn't want to provide it, someone else should.

Probably aiming for quality over quantity.

Though is it possible for City A to supply City B with the workers?