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Post by Eorl @ 05:22pm 05/03/13 | 455 Comments
The next big city simulation title is nearly upon us, and with it a range of new and improved gameplay mechanics that many gamers fond of the SimCity franchise will be eagerly awaiting. From various tweaks to a brand new construction engine titled GlassBox, the newest SimCity (not to be confused with the original) is set to offer a whole new take on the open-ended city- building series.

While it may seem like we had all the time in the world to really understand how SimCity works and what it will offer to the players, these types of games really shine in the long run. What is on offer to begin with though is nothing short of fantastic and really shows the potential that it has.
Reviewing SimCity is a rough gig. Not because there’s anything wrong with the game, far from it. Rather SimCity is a beast of a game that won’t reach its full potential until it’s been out in the wild for a little while post-release. The mechanisms in place to dynamically default you into cooperatively living with other players is a gem of a direction for the franchise, and half the time you don’t even realise you’re doing it.
Check out our SimCity review for the details.



simcityausgamers review





Latest Comments
Tanaka Khan
Posted 05:35pm 05/3/13
Looking forward to this one.
TiT
Posted 05:40pm 05/3/13
Yes mine is pre ordered hopefully i get the key tomorrow from CJS cant wait!!!
Tollaz0r!
Posted 05:45pm 05/3/13
This being an EA published game I'm terribly afraid it will be peppered with DLC, with valuable game mechanics held back purposely for for selling as DLC. In your play through did you find anything which alludes to this possibility? The other thing I'm afraid of is will the inevitable DLC fracture the community, so that people with one set of DLC can't partake with other non-DLC cities nearby.



Also, I thought it was bad form to start sentences with And and But?

Kharak
Posted 05:48pm 05/3/13
Who has the best deal on this game at the moment? I'm keen to have a go if I can get it relatively cheap
eski
Posted 05:54pm 05/3/13
This being an EA published game


Even good games have all the fun sucked out of them with this oh-so-precise marketing process. Here's a review for a product you can't have. Its really f*****g awesome! WELL GUESS WHAT! You cant have it! I BET YA WANT IT NOW. B****. Because that's all you are to EA. A little b****. And you love it. Now go buy my DLC.

As a kid I was always looking forward to games maturing, but as an adult, reality bites.
ravn0s
Posted 05:53pm 05/3/13
This being an EA published game I'm terribly afraid it will be peppered with DLC


they're releasing bigger cities as DLC.
trillion
Posted 06:04pm 05/3/13
eski seems slightly preturbed
Tollaz0r!
Posted 06:09pm 05/3/13
Really? Bigger cities, do you mean you have to pay for DLC which gives you more space to build your city in? That is crap if it is true, as the review mentioned lack of space being a bit tight.

Anything else? The sole reason I have not pre-ordered this is because I want to see what DLC shenanigans EA are planning with this what could be an awesome game.

I hate the idea of having to buy DLC just to keep playing the game with others...
Ice9ine
Posted 06:32pm 05/3/13
Bloody hell, another $79 I didn't budget for.
Phooks
Posted 06:41pm 05/3/13
grad size of your city’s stake in the land. The ides is,


someone was tired when writing this methinks ;p
Newgo
Posted 06:53pm 05/3/13
Eb games lists 2 dlc's already. $10 each for building packs. One for france and one for germany. Just landmarks that boost tourism I believe. Collectors edition comes with at least england. Cant remember if its those 2 aswell.

I have a preorder. Looking forward to it.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 07:19pm 05/3/13
Those kinds of DLC's I don't mind, as they aren't game changers more cosmetic. It is game mechanic additions that seem almost ripped from the main title just to be sold as DLC that I'm apprehensive of. EA are nasty when it comes to DLC.

I will test my patience and wait to see what EA flings at people upon release. As hard as that will be.
TiT
Posted 07:50pm 05/3/13
I bought mine from http://www.cjs-cdkeys.com/ for under $50 will be getting key sometime tomorrow so i can download.

Also bought the extra upgrade DLC for $20 from here. http://store.origin.com/store/eaapac/en_AU/pd/productID.260623100

Edit: Looks like prices have gone up, i think the cheapest place is videoezy online
Eds
Posted 08:41pm 05/3/13
Damn you tit, I ordered from the first link lol.
Pirroh
Posted 08:59pm 05/3/13
Dayum, Videoezy has Metro Last Light for $35.
Trauma
Posted 09:06pm 05/3/13
deeper
Posted 09:16pm 05/3/13
Yeah I gave Steve was as pressed for time writing this review as he was play testing the game - pleased to see that you think it's worthy though.

I always loved Simcity as a youngster so I'll pick this up once the price drops for sure. No real rush on getting it at release personally.
ravn0s
Posted 09:17pm 05/3/13
pathetic
infi
Posted 09:20pm 05/3/13
Woohoo, I'm pumped!
Khel
Posted 09:29pm 05/3/13
ctd
Posted 09:48pm 05/3/13
lol Trauma. f*** that
Newgo
Posted 10:27pm 05/3/13
warning on that cjs site, they can be dicey. many times ive seen people have to wait till after release to get theyre cd key. they sell more than they have quota for.

ive had both good and bad experiences with cjs. and check their prices. they arent always cheaper. check your exchange rates (GPB - AUD)

ORIGIN has a digital deluxe version for $99 tha has the game plus the limited edition (heros and Villains addon - IMO a pretty awesome extra :P) and the 3 dlc's (london, France, Germany) whether or not its worth 100 for a digital copy is up to you as a buyer. just my 2 cents :P
koopz
Posted 10:51pm 05/3/13
yeah I'll boot back into to the Windows partition to play this for sure..

$42 from VE

scottjames12
Posted 11:18pm 05/3/13
Always on connection required? Server busy? Can't play the game I just bought because of EA's ridiculous DRM? Requires Origin? Obviously EA aren't changing their ways any time soon. I WAS looking forward to this game, but I'm not giving EA a cent of my money until they stop doing this crap.
Resonate
Posted 11:27pm 05/3/13
My only real issue wih the drm is what will happen in the future if the servers go offline? I still pre-ordered it regardless because i love sim city.
TiT
Posted 01:14am 06/3/13
warning on that cjs site, they can be dicey. many times ive seen people have to wait till after release to get theyre cd key. they sell more than they have quota for.ive had both good and bad experiences with cjs. and check their prices. they arent always cheaper. check your exchange rates (GPB - AUD)ORIGIN has a digital deluxe version for $99 tha has the game plus the limited edition (heros and Villains addon - IMO a pretty awesome extra :P) and the 3 dlc's (london, France, Germany) whether or not its worth 100 for a digital copy is up to you as a buyer. just my 2 cents :P


Good to know, I've bought 3 games from them now, FIFA 13, Tomb Raider and Simcity. Received FIFA and Tomb Raider straight away but got both after release. With Simcity have been told keys are arriving on the 6th (europe time) so will see :)
Raven
Posted 11:56am 06/3/13
What's the deal with shipping from Video Ezy? I ordered from them a lil while ago - figure "meh, it'll get here when it gets here" - order and forget. 8th is Friday, I assume it'll be shipped out some time after that, not to arrive in time for the 8th?
Or are they sending out digital codes before to keep people happy?
Raven
Posted 02:48pm 06/3/13
Annnnd EzyDVD hava cancelled my order for LimEd. Yup, they decided "nope, we got too many orders and we're only telling you this now". Thanks :(
ZeeDoktor
Posted 02:48pm 06/3/13
There's no way in hell I'm giving EA my money for this game. Between the always online stuff and the limited build grid that's enough of a deal breaker for me. What happens years down the line when the player base has died down and EA decides it's not worth their money to continue running the servers but I still want to continue playing a fantastic game that I paid for. No thanks, with EA's history of shutting down servers I think I can settle for playing older Sim City titles. Sick of games using always online rubbish for what should be a single player game.
Darkhawk
Posted 04:33pm 06/3/13
"Also, I thought it was bad form to start sentences with And and But?"

Not if you're a journalist. Read newspapers, everyone does it.

I played the beta (the first one anyway) and I loved it. Staying at home this weekend!
TicMan
Posted 06:15pm 06/3/13
I just bought from CJS and it took about 2 minutes (including new account, anti-fraud confirmation, etc).
thermite
Posted 06:29pm 06/3/13
I bought from CJS a couple days ago and it says:

No keys are currently stored on our online system for this game. The admins have been notified of this, and will replenish the keys within 12 hours! You will be notified by email when the keys have been replenished and are ready for collection! If you are trying to collect a pre-order key for a game that has not been released yet, then you can expect Autokey to be replenished approximately 2 days before the release date of the game.



I also had to go through all this bulls*** with confirming my phone number, which is a real f*** for me because I don't have any phone reception. I hate anything to do with phones.
TicMan
Posted 07:25pm 06/3/13
Which version did you get? I bought the limited edition INSTANT DELIVERY NAOW! option because I wanted to play now, but then Origin said I have to wait until tomorrow.. :(
paveway
Posted 07:27pm 06/3/13
yeah i got all barred up thinking it was today

it's tomorrow :(
Tanaka Khan
Posted 07:41pm 06/3/13
Well my preload is happening as we speak, all I care about is if I can play it this weekend, then I'll be happy :)
Whoop
Posted 07:55pm 06/3/13
Well my preload is happening as we speak, all I care about is if I can play it this weekend, then I'll be happy :)

Server busy; Next rejoin attempt in: 4h 39m 36s

lololollolo
natslovR
Posted 07:58pm 06/3/13
FRANCIS IS PISSED - SIM CITY LAUNCH
Dazhel
Posted 08:05pm 06/3/13
My only real issue wih the drm is what will happen in the future if the servers go offline? I still pre-ordered it regardless because i love sim city.


It doesn't matter to EA what they do with the servers in the future now, they've already got your money.

The answer is though, that they pull the plug on a regular schedule so you better hope they release an offline patch out of charity:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/03/ea-announces-server-shutdown-for-14-games-citing-dwindling-player-numbers/
http://au.gamespot.com/news/ea-shutting-down-online-services-for-12-games-6401956
ravn0s
Posted 08:12pm 06/3/13
polygon dropped their review score from a 9.5 to an 8 because of the server issues.
XandraX
Posted 08:12pm 06/3/13
Does anyone know what time the game will unlock for us?
Whoop
Posted 08:22pm 06/3/13
ahaha that dude sounds like a southpark character
Tanaka Khan
Posted 09:02pm 06/3/13
So are people having trouble with the preload? Mine took no time at all.
TicMan
Posted 10:34pm 06/3/13
What preload! I added my key to Origin and all it does is tell me to wait until the 7th of March.
kos
Posted 10:49pm 06/3/13
Does anyone know what time the game will unlock for us?

My Origin says Available March 7, 2013 00:01, I assume that's local time so it's probably 12:01am on the 7th local time everywhere.
Wrecktim
Posted 11:20pm 06/3/13
francis is a sphere
Thundercracker
Posted 11:30pm 06/3/13
It unlocks 23:01 Brisbane time. Hopefully the oceanic servers hold up
WirlWind
Posted 03:12am 07/3/13
When a man that is so fat he has to shop for t-shirts at the military surplus camping isle tells you to fix your s*** and get it together, you know you done f***ed up.
Tanaka Khan
Posted 06:40am 07/3/13
Well while getting ready for work, I tried to give it a shot, loaded up, went to an update screen, once I hit 100% it asked me to restart. Loaded up again and straight on. Now I've had a taste I have to go to work...should have left it til the weekend like I planned!
Nitro
Posted 09:35am 07/3/13
Dazhel
Posted 10:10am 07/3/13
Ahh the old gem "you never get a second chance to make a first impression"
Zapo
Posted 10:12am 07/3/13
I very quickly started to create my first city this morning - then work called :( BOOO! I will play it tonight though :D
Raven
Posted 10:25am 07/3/13
So given that VideoEzy have nerfed my order, where should I look to buy it from? Steam? Some physical store? Suggestions people!
ravn0s
Posted 10:43am 07/3/13
you can't buy it off steam. you can only get it from origin or a cdkey site.
Nitro
Posted 10:57am 07/3/13
I'm also looking for somewhere to buy a CD key. I say this with my card in hand, somebody take my money god damn it!!
TiT
Posted 11:00am 07/3/13
I originally bought mine from CJS but they screwed it up. So now ive sent them email to cancel the order and bought my directly from Origin, it was more expensive but less hassle and it works
TicMan
Posted 11:00am 07/3/13
I bought it from CJS - very quick.

Loaded it up this morning, took bugger all time as it's a small download (~2gb?). The US & Europe servers were either Busy or Full while Oceanic was Available. Clicked on that, bam straight in and started playing.

Initial thoughts are the controls are a bit odd and the location of menu items.. I got a popup saying I could build a coal mine but took forever to work out how to find where I could buy it. Road creation seems a little whack too. I dragged a road up to an intersection and it wouldn't let me build. I had to go through the intersection or make some weird angle road. Also annoying is you can't build over a road (ie: dirt to paved), you have to demolish it first.

That's the first 30 minutes done. I see the potential with multiplayer cities and things and it looks pretty damn cool actually. Can't wait to get on it a bit more over the weekend.
thermite
Posted 11:58am 07/3/13
still no love from CJS, but i didn't choose the Instant Delivery option, because you know, the game wasn't out when I bought it
Strik3r
Posted 12:05pm 07/3/13
CJS are currently showing it as 'out of stock' anyway
arkter
Posted 12:10pm 07/3/13
It's funny how they have gone to all this effort to protect their game from piracy, yet there are fully playable pirated copies floating around already. Stupid EA.
eski
Posted 12:24pm 07/3/13
Even more funny is that right now the pirate copies are probably more playable than the game itself
Zapo
Posted 12:25pm 07/3/13
Ticman, you will learn to love the new road systems with the grids which help placement and the different roads, curves, cubes etc.. Road are REALLY important in SimCity because the potential density of buildings is linked to the type of road you have. Some roads can be upgrade, others have to be demolished and then new, higher density roads built in it's place.

Also, land value is very strongly linked to features such as gardens, parks, sporting facilities etc. So as long as you're not building it next to a sewerage plant it's pretty easy to get higher income residential, commercial or industrial areas.

That's my two cents :)
eski
Posted 12:46pm 07/3/13
Havent been able to log on all morning. Dunno why, everything else seems to be working so I assume it's the servers.

If you're thinking about buying this I would either wait a week or avoid it entirely.
Ospi
Posted 04:40pm 07/3/13
TicMan
Posted 04:55pm 07/3/13
Haha nice, took a few seconds to get it. In saying that, I haven't had any connection problems at all on the Oceanic server.
Infidel
Posted 05:58pm 07/3/13
I learned something here, ended up buying it on origin for 59 euros. those cd key shops were out of stock or what not. Turns out stores are selling box copies for 45 euros ....
paveway
Posted 07:45pm 07/3/13
still waiting for my key to be released by cdkeys.com.au........ wtf
thermite
Posted 07:49pm 07/3/13
don't worry, aussie servers have crashed, no point
Spook
Posted 07:52pm 07/3/13
drm fails super hard, yet again.
TicMan
Posted 07:54pm 07/3/13
Just fired it up, had an error about not authenticating, hit retry and now the game is loading - Oceanic server.

Also add me on origin, TicclesAU, for like minded fun time building cities.
Resonate
Posted 07:55pm 07/3/13
Don't worry Pave, you'll just have this screen to look forward to.

link
infi
Posted 07:59pm 07/3/13
my ezydvd order got cancelled and these funds are now in the international money market earning roughly 1 cent per day.
thermite
Posted 08:04pm 07/3/13
CJS are pulling s*** like this on facebook:



CJS CD Keys shared a link.
10 hours ago
We've just managed to get some instant stock (multi-language including English, French, German and many more) for SimCity. It's £39.99 for standard edition and £45.99 for Limited Edition.

If you already bought and want to upgrade to this, then do the following:

1: Post your order ID in this thread to get a refund to store credit

2: We'll refund your order to store credit

3: You can re-order your game and pay partially with your store credit

4: collect instantly on Autokey.

http://www.cjs-cdkeys.com/products/SimCity-Limited-Edition-CD-Key-for-Origin.html


It's the exact same product as the one everyone ordered, except it's sourced from a different country, or the story could be bulls***. Bottom line: if you're willing to pay more on top of your current order, you'll get it first. Sheisters!
paveway
Posted 08:11pm 07/3/13
teq is pretty much pulling a Francis rant at me on gchat about not being able to play lul
parabol
Posted 08:24pm 07/3/13
CJS are pulling s*** like this on facebook

I keep telling people that CJS are shady bastards. They take your money but screw you over on release date with changed terms and conditions.

Never ever pre-order from them. Only buy from them as a last resort if you can't get a game from somewhere else, and only after release date.
TiT
Posted 09:13pm 07/3/13
No CJS are doing that cause they got delievery from there POLISH distrubtor and normally the Polish ones come with English as well. But EA did the nasties and only gave them German, Polish and another language.
TicMan
Posted 09:38pm 07/3/13
I ordered the Limited Edition (Instant Delivery) from CJS and had my key within 2 minutes.. It came at a premium though, was AUD$70.
Dazhel
Posted 09:46pm 07/3/13
Fake, but lolworthy just the same:

rUvSn7L.jpg
arkter
Posted 10:22pm 07/3/13
^ rofl
trog
Posted 10:31pm 07/3/13
Copping the occasional abusive email from people once again accusing us of being dishonest or not having any integrity because we didn't change our score or whatever. Really?

Steve played this game well in advance of the general release and his review was based on his experience, which was of course flawless.

I'll post more on this tomorrow, but as always the reviews can't please everyone; from what I've seen people that are actually playing the game are really enjoying it.
TicMan
Posted 10:46pm 07/3/13
"Not enough places to ship freight" - wtf?!@

troggles - forget the douchebags, game is awesome!
arkter
Posted 10:53pm 07/3/13
Copping the occasional abusive email from people once again accusing us of being dishonest or not having any integrity because we didn't change our score or whatever. Really? Steve played this game well in advance of the general release and his review was based on his experience, which was of course flawless. I'll post more on this tomorrow, but as always the reviews can't please everyone; from what I've seen people that are actually playing the game are really enjoying it.


" dishonest or not having any integrity " is a bit over the top. But a bit of a penalty for the abysmal launch wouldn't hurt, even if it's just a note on the review.
eski
Posted 11:06pm 07/3/13
Steve played this game well in advance of the general release and his review was based on his experience, which was of course flawless.


Steve's experience was based outside of the reality available to gamers. There is literally no way for us to connect to the review servers and access the experience Steve and other reviewers had, so what relevance does the score have to us?

Considering that people are making buying decisions based on your recommendations I would say that it warrants further thought. Further to that, your reviews get included in metacritic and can have a direct impact on developer income. You can call it opinion all you want, but there are very real consequences to the number that goes at the end of the review (sadly way more consequence than any of the actual words)

If you guys can wait before publishing the review, and take the subsequent hit to traffic, then your criticism will be more valid. If it's a matter of getting to press before anyone else, then you've absolutely got to expect people to question your cred.
thermite
Posted 11:06pm 07/3/13
can you have more than one review?
I mean games change as patches and updates happen, maybe there should be several reviews
trog
Posted 11:07pm 07/3/13
Further to that, your reviews get included in metacritic and can have a direct impact on developer income.
Metacritic do not change their scores after they're published - the places that did change their scores do not impact Metacritic rankings. This is intentional Metacritic policy.
If you guys can wait before publishing the review, and take the subsequent hit to traffic, then your criticism will be more valid. If it's a matter of getting to press before anyone else, then you've absolutely got to expect people to question your cred.
Yep. We probably would have added a note to the review at least, but Steve's away at the moment and I don't want to edit his review without having played the game. I'm sure as hell not going to edit the review solely to placate an angry mob.

It's important to note that it's not possible, in a review, to capture every single way a game might fail to deliver the same experience that the reviewer got. The score is a reflection of the game at that particular moment in time. Some games will get better, some will get worse - that's what the comments on the review are for and we'd always advise every user to read them.

I think the game Steve played will be basically the game everyone else is playing in a week or so. Launch week is always a problem for multiplayer games.

I'm personally stunned anyone bought this, a single player game with an online requirement - if I'd reviewed it, it would have been like "0/10, requires always-online for DRM purposes". I don't know what people were expecting.

What will happen after launch week - are all these places who dropped their scores going to raise them again? How do people feel about that?
infi
Posted 11:08pm 07/3/13
Given the online DRM is a mandatory experience, reviewers have an obligation to update their scores if new information comes to hand regarding the online experience after launch. The game can't be considered in a vacuum.
trog
Posted 11:09pm 07/3/13
can you have more than one review?
I mean games change as patches and updates happen, maybe there should be several reviews
We have talked about this, and have done it for some - I think WoW? I'd love to do it like that but we don't have time to review even a good fraction of the games we get.

The review should be taken as "this is our experience at the moment in time we played it - YMMV depending on a lot of factors". In this case the big factor people are pissed about is the availability of the service. I see that as a tiny, tiny blip in the lifespan of this game (...assuming they don't turn the servers off after a year :).
trog
Posted 11:11pm 07/3/13
Given the online DRM is a mandatory experience, reviewers have an obligation to update their scores if new information comes to hand regarding the online experience after launch. The game can't be considered in a vacuum.
If people still are struggling with actually playing the game in a couple of days I will ask Steve to revisit his review and amend it to point that out.
Viper119
Posted 11:17pm 07/3/13
I wish I could buy this on Steam.
Eorl
Posted 11:19pm 07/3/13
CJS aren't too bad, they are just one of the more popular sites now and thus get a truckload of people causing orders to sky rocket. Though that is pretty annoying to be charged extra just to get it earlier when its the exact same product.

I bought a key this morning from CDKeysHere and they've just posted on Facebook that orders will be in tomorrow morning. No biggie for me, few friends are "trying" to play at the moment and it keeps booting or crashing them. Also have a new account now on Origin, add me if you'd like to play: froodleoodle.
trog
Posted 11:20pm 07/3/13
(My favourite part about this is in between all the rage about how terrible this game is, the rest of it is people trying to figure out how to buy it as quickly as possible)
fpot
Posted 11:29pm 07/3/13
Where's the ARMA 3 review huh?
ctd
Posted 11:30pm 07/3/13
I watched the totalbiscuit review and aside from the launch server BS it looks like a downgrade from previous simcity games. You can't modify the terrain which pisses me off and the city size is so small you are limited in what you can do in one city. What if I want my city to have a f*****g Alcatraz?

Might wait for the 'game of the year' edition on this one.
eski
Posted 11:33pm 07/3/13
What will happen after launch week - are all these places who dropped their scores going to raise them again? How do people feel about that?


How many points is a good launch worth?

There's an article on Joystiq that talks about games as both a product and a service. The product here, SimCity, is sound enough, but the service has been a near complete failure so far. How to review such a thing?
arkter
Posted 11:41pm 07/3/13
ITT: trog gets mad!

nerd-rage.gif
Eorl
Posted 11:53pm 07/3/13
(My favourite part about this is in between all the rage about how terrible this game is, the rest of it is people trying to figure out how to buy it as quickly as possible)
We must have our game and be angry at the same time! While I would have liked the launch of any online-only service to be disaster proof and to take a note out of Diablo 3's launch, I just don't think it would be feasible or possible really. Sure they could up the servers to begin with and then slowly degrade them when numbers became more reasonable, but I'm sure that would increase the cost of short term operations which you clearly don't want.

Look, Steve's review was on a product that was obviously fenced off from what many are viewing right now. Is the score reasonable? I'd say so considering its based on his view of the game from what he has played. Its a representation of what it was like when he played it, and hopefully what it will be like after the initial surge of players. I prefaced the review by saying that "it may seem like we had all the time in the world to really understand how SimCity works and what it will offer to the players, these types of games really shine in the long run."

Should games be reviewed again after a cooling down period? Yes I'd love to see new experiences put back onto old reviews or at least a "where are we now" styled review. Can we do it? Maybe, its hard because as trog said we are pushed on what we can do, and sometimes only a fraction of what we are given to review is actually reviewed. Should we go back and edit the score/review to reflect current feelings on the game? It'd be nice, and we may do so, but wouldn't we then have to again go back afterwards and re-do the review to reflect new changes?

I think what we can do is keep everyone as up-to-date as possible with any kind of troubles the game is having, like the post that I did yesterday. We also encourage comments as well like trog mentioned, because then you guys can express what you think instead of keeping it close-minded.
Resonate
Posted 11:59pm 07/3/13
So I have managed to get the game running and I've reached the tutorial section with the pre-populated city.. The only problem is that it will not let me do anything nor does it give me any instructions to do anything. The only thing I can do is play with the camera.
TicMan
Posted 12:04am 08/3/13
Part of the solution might be a community driven rating. Get people authenticated via FB, allow them to post (once but can change it at later stages) an agree or disagree against the 'official' score. If you wanted to be fancy, throw in the ability to make a short comment (160 twitter style limit).

This gives a user rating and gets AGN tapped into the social side of its user base by allowing people to repost/share/etc on their wall.
Viper119
Posted 12:08am 08/3/13
Gamespot do a Gamespot Score and a aggregated Users Score, they also ref Metacritic.

http://uk.gamespot.com/simcity/platform/pc/
fpot
Posted 12:11am 08/3/13
Reviewing games is a tricky business I reckon. If you are reviewing a movie, book or album then you read, watch or listen to it once or twice and you have pretty much experienced everything it has to offer. However games like Skyrim, New Vegas or any game with a branching storyline requires hours and hours of gameplay before a reasonable opinion can be formed. Even regular linear type games require far more time than a movie because there might be some game crippling bug, or niggles that take a while to see hidden under the surface dragging the quality of the game down. This level of scrutiny is in direct competition with getting the review out there quickly which is important because most places that do game reviews are a commercial entity and timeliness is a factor in bringing in the page views.

Now I am not quite sure how the industry works in regards to reviewers receiving games early so they can get some time in before a review can be as accurate as possible. I am assuming it is quite common but if a publisher knows their game is a bit buggy or is of below-par quality then I'd imagine they'd be quite reluctant in letting reviewers get a headstart. Also, if a game is an AAA title and the publisher suspects that it is going to be a massively popular hit, they might be reluctant in handing out early copies in fear that it might get leaked and take a bit of the gloss of their world premiere.

Review revisits are a worthy idea I reckon, but is there any commercial interest in reviewers doing them? 'SimCity reviewed!' is a link some people won't be able to click fast enough because it's a controversial game as well as the continuation of an incredibly popular series. People want to see what this new thing is all about. In a months time when the construction dust has settled will people still care? By that time word-of-mouth has probably done the job a re-review intends to do, and anyone who has sat and waited for a bit to see how a game turns out would probably be happy to rely on that I think.
WetWired
Posted 12:27am 08/3/13
It sounds like Steve played and reviewed the game whereas some of you seem to want him to review the service.
fpot
Posted 12:51am 08/3/13
I just read the review and the main focal point is that it encourages co-op play and that there is heaps of potential for persistent and expanded gameplay to blossom in the future yet there was no explanation of the gameplay mechanics behind it. Why does it encourage co-op play and what persistent and expanded gameplay can we expect?

And the always-on DRM could have at least been mentioned. I reckon there should even be an always-on DRM section yes or no with every game reviewed because it's the suckiest thing ever. I'd never buy a game that had it unless I absolutely had to.
Dazhel
Posted 01:25am 08/3/13
We must have our game and be angry at the same time! While I would have liked the launch of any online-only service to be disaster proof and to take a note out of Diablo 3's launch, I just don't think it would be feasible or possible really. Sure they could up the servers to begin with and then slowly degrade them when numbers became more reasonable, but I'm sure that would increase the cost of short term operations which you clearly don't want.


Wow, you talk about getting mad and then spend the rest of the paragraph apologising for EA.
EA served up a pile of poo, plain and simple. It might be playable next week, who knows.
You'll still need a constant connection to a server next week to play a single player game though.
Trauma
Posted 02:09am 08/3/13
Where's the ARMA 3 review huh?

I was going to say that you should not review alpha/beta, but then again they are taking cash for it. I guess the rules have to change. WarZ got reviewed while being an alpha, but they charged up front and had a cash shop so it was totally justified.
fpot
Posted 02:13am 08/3/13
Well not necessarily a review, but something. It's the top selling game on Steam right now and is going to be one of the biggest game ever when the full version is released, I reckon. Best to get on the ground floor.
Infidel
Posted 06:56am 08/3/13
I can understand why people are pissed, their infrastructure sure isnt scaled up for the release date. At the moment I can't seem to get on, All servers around the world are full, Oceanic 1 is the only one with spots but it still doesnt let me on.

I don't mind though, instead will go do something else, I'm sure it will be fixed some time.
Raven
Posted 08:00am 08/3/13
I gave in and went down to EB and just bought the packed collectors edition last night.
Got home at 7:00.

It was 8pm before I even had an Origin account created.
Then it had tons of updates.
Then it froze on one update.
Then it gave me "permission denied" when I tried to click the link showing me what updates were available. I figured that was because I wasn't logged in, so I logged in - got yet another different denied error page.
The updates finally finished at 10pm, but then I couldn't connect.

I just went to bed, CBF.

last edited by Raven at 08:00:34 08/Mar/13
TicMan
Posted 08:51am 08/3/13
Stupid f*****g game - despite having a 2 yr old and an 8 week old I was up until almost 2am playing it.. this morning I'm a broken man.

I have one more game criticism and that is the city size is tiny! I have 30,000 sims, everything in demand, all the usable area zoned and they are all after low density instead of high.
Zapo
Posted 08:57am 08/3/13
Ticman what are your roads doing? Remember I said before it's all about the roads!
TicMan
Posted 08:58am 08/3/13
Most are high density, some of the outer areas are medium. I even tore down some buildings and put in an avenue - which is holy s*** annoying to do. The road laying isn't very easy with vague errors about intersections, angles, etc.
Zapo
Posted 09:04am 08/3/13
Hrm! I have NFI. I know when i was playing the beta I got to mid tier housing.
Hogfather
Posted 09:05am 08/3/13
I have 30,000 sims, everything in demand, all the usable area zoned and they are all after low density instead of high.

The idea is that you are supposed to create specialised 'cities' within the region, as a residential-based city could provide workers to supply demand for a more industrial connected city, and a tourism (lol, cairns) oriented location could be their partytown.

The problem is Glassbox, with all the shiny new detail comes performance limits for mortal computers. Its possible they will patch in larger than 2x2 cities in future for higher end rigs, but for now they're catering to the midline.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/22/sim-city-size-restriction-explained/
TicMan
Posted 09:11am 08/3/13
I started building another city in the region but it was annoying I had to "load" it instead of just zooming in and start using it. It would've been nicer to have the coherence of just flipping over to it to get building instead of a loading screen.
Hogfather
Posted 09:14am 08/3/13
I started building another city in the region but it was annoying I had to "load" it instead of just zooming in and start using it. It would've been nicer to have the coherence of just flipping over to it to get building instead of a loading screen.

Yeh not saying its a good compromise, but it is what it is and there's a reason for it.
Eorl
Posted 09:18am 08/3/13
Wow, you talk about getting mad and then spend the rest of the paragraph apologising for EA.EA served up a pile of poo, plain and simple. It might be playable next week, who knows. You'll still need a constant connection to a server next week to play a single player game though.
I'm sorry I came across like that, I was more so being sarcastic at the start. I hate online DRM just as much as the next guy and wish it was never implemented on a singleplayer game, however I just don't think in the server retrospect it would be financially feasible to just up server count for a week. I may be wrong here though and it might actually be cheaper to place new servers in for launch days but that still doesn't make this situation acceptable.

Anyway I'm still awaiting my key from CDKeysHere though apparently its expected later today. For anyone that does have the game, are the servers holding up now or still terrible?
Zapo
Posted 09:19am 08/3/13
Servers are still woeful.
TicMan
Posted 09:26am 08/3/13
They aren't great, a couple of retry attempts here and there and a message in game saying you've been disconnected (but you can still play).

I managed 6 hours of play time yesterday despite the dramas. One thing I did notice was when the game intro scene is loading, if I hit esc straight away, then I'd get the server disconnected method but I waited 5 seconds and started hitting space and never saw it again.
Hogfather
Posted 09:49am 08/3/13
Really glad I was a cheap bastard and went the video ezy route, with a bit of luck the game will be reliably playable by the time I get my copy.

Edit: though it still says 'not yet released' on the order status ;)
mongie
Posted 10:44am 08/3/13
Yeh, I tried last night, finally got on, but then my connection failed half way through the game and it basically froze my pc.

Hopefully this arvo the servers are working and I can get some good play in.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 10:47am 08/3/13
Amazon have pulled Simcity from its stores due to overwhelmingly negative scores. About 700ish scores of 1, has given the game a 1.2/5 average score. I suspect EA called to have it pulled to stop any more 1's coming into the picture.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 10:49am 08/3/13
O and Metacritic has a professional score count of 82/100 and a user score count of 1.7 (17/100). People are not happy indeed.

Glad I didn't pull the trigger and get this, as my concerns regarding EA as a publisher have rung true in a spectacular way, now it just needs DLC that should have been in the original game. I'll be a sad panda indeed if they release a DLC that includes larger city sizes..
trog
Posted 11:03am 08/3/13
The last thing I wanted to add before I went to bed was, if you are really pissed about this the correct action is to just get a refund. Although EA are apparently refusing to do refunds from Origin purchases (I cannot believe that policy will be enforced though if you push hard enough; in Australia I imagine they certainly can't get away with it.)

Vote with your dollars.

edit: doh, can't embed twitter stuff. Who wrote this crappy forum!



last edited by trog at 11:02:57 08/Mar/13
natslovR
Posted 12:19pm 08/3/13
Does the origin receipt list GST and have an ABN?
Hogfather
Posted 12:21pm 08/3/13
LOL straight from reddit:

WUVQujm.jpg

Seriously though, assuming they get the servers sorted out and its reliably playable I'm ok with always-on DRM, and the game itself sounds like fun for the price so I'll let me order arrive. I can imagine having paid a premium for it (like seventy bucks for an origin key) and being unable to play it would be rage-inducing though.
ravn0s
Posted 12:22pm 08/3/13
just a heads up, don't do a chargeback through your bank. EA will ban your origin account.
thermite
Posted 12:52pm 08/3/13
so they wouldn't let you play any other games you paid for? chargeback those too...
Hogfather
Posted 01:01pm 08/3/13
so they wouldn't let you play any other games you paid for? chargeback those too...

Not sure if you can just chargeback to any point in time...

edit: lol, becoming more confident the servers will be ok when my order ships..

WROwiF7.png
eski
Posted 01:02pm 08/3/13
hahah polygon just lowered their score again..... to a 4
ravn0s
Posted 01:07pm 08/3/13
holy s*** that's insane. they give their reasoning at the bottom of their review page

tl;dr because of the server issues and the stripping of features to try and stabilize the servers.
TicMan
Posted 03:51pm 08/3/13
Game wasn't loading, servers down, etc. Thought that I should probably finish off some work anyway, grab a coffee, hit "retry" and now I'm playing again :(

So little work going to be done.
natslovR
Posted 05:26pm 08/3/13
AusGamers lowered their score from 9.4 to 9.3 because EA are refusing to refund Australian consumers for a defective product even though that is illegal.

JUST KIDDING. It's still 9.4 highly recommended!
thermite
Posted 06:19pm 08/3/13
that's a really good point, EA's business practices are unlawful, or if that's too strong to say then at least very unfair to customers, surely this should affect the score.
Rdizz
Posted 06:36pm 08/3/13
link

Thats what you get for pre ordering! man so many suckers. Its like buying a car you have never seen, and just hoping its ok because of what you have read on the internet.
ravn0s
Posted 08:06pm 08/3/13
gamespot just gave it a 5/10
Monkeez
Posted 01:35am 09/3/13
Ahh great, so I got the Digital Deluxe Upgrade Pack but it turns out cdkeys.com.au were selling the standard edition, so I cannot upgrade my game. Surely there must be some way of getting a refund for the upgrade? I can't even use it.
Khel
Posted 02:43am 09/3/13
Changing the score seems dumb, the game is still the same game they thought was worth an 8 or a 9 or whatever, cos I'd imagine that score is based on the content of the game and not the authentication service. Not that these problems should be ignored, but I would have thought it'd make more sense to leave the score the same and put a big note at the top of the page saying something like "We do not recommend you buy this because it doesn't currently work, so wait a few weeks if you want it".

Adjusting the score seems like pointless grandstanding, cos its not going to change on metacritic anyway. If they want to give it a low score because of the DRM then sure, fine, thats a very respectable stance, but why didn't they do that in the first place? The DRM was always there.
Infidel
Posted 03:54am 09/3/13
Yes, but it was not apparent how inaccessible it would render the game, till now Khelly.
BladeRunner
Posted 05:59am 09/3/13
I would have a go at a demo if EA had one to download.
Bah
Posted 11:08am 09/3/13
but why didn't they do that in the first place? The DRM was always there.
But it worked while they were reviewing it.
"We do not recommend you buy this because it doesn't currently work, so wait a few weeks if you want it".
This game is awesome! But dont buy it because its s***.
Obes
Posted 01:52pm 09/3/13
Changing the score seems dumb, the game is still the same game they thought was worth an 8 or a 9 or whatever, cos I'd imagine that score is based on the content of the game and not the authentication service.

Whatever khel...

If the score they gave included a component of end user experience (ie. was it fun), then how can they no downgrade it ?

How fun is sitting at screen not playing it ?
I'd say a 0.
So if say 20% of the time you can't get into it... it should take a 20% hit on its score if not more!
Thundercracker
Posted 03:08pm 09/3/13
Game has been playable for me last night and today. Pretty fun game :) My main gripe is how small the plots of land are. Other than that its all good.

Anyone keen for a qgl region?
paveway
Posted 03:15pm 09/3/13
yeah definitely in for a qgl region

and i'm the same there just isn't enough room in these pissy little areas

add me on origin - paveway-3
TicMan
Posted 08:12pm 09/3/13
Throw me down for the QGL region - TicclesAU is my origin nick. Let me know what server you select. FWIW - I've been playing on "Europe East 1" since last night and it's been fairly well OK. At the moment it looks like there's no impact on performance (lag) if you select the non-Oceanic server.
paveway
Posted 08:14pm 09/3/13
I've been playing on oceanic 1 and 2 all day without a problem
groganus
Posted 09:12pm 09/3/13
Played on one of the euro servers all day with out a hitch, had some great times.


Saw someone post on reddit about modelling a design off "future city" wen't onto wiki and it sounded like a plan so I smashed one out with great success..

jdNWtLu.jpg
paveway
Posted 09:23pm 09/3/13
i keep getting to a point where it just keeps asking me for more residential and i can't build anymore and the density just won't keep going any further that about the middle upgrade

also with this QGL region, are we playing properly? i'm not that keen on sandbox with the hax and s***
infi
Posted 09:42pm 09/3/13
i haven't even played it yet pave but guessing from past simcities you may be missing infrastructure to enable more dense living like more sewer and power etc.
paveway
Posted 09:46pm 09/3/13
nah everyone is sorted for power and water etc

you need to increase land value which then gets development happening and densities increase but f***ed if i know what else i can do the city building areas are so small you don't have too much room for big s*** like football fields everywhere to increase land value
TicMan
Posted 10:10pm 09/3/13
Limit zoning residential, that way it forces them to increase density. Add parks and s*** to increase land value.
TicMan
Posted 10:11pm 09/3/13
Also did we get a server and region going yet?
paveway
Posted 10:21pm 09/3/13
Do you mean limit as in just stop building it or is there some setting i can change

Nah we'll set something up tomorrow
natslovR
Posted 10:24pm 09/3/13
I don't have the game, but something I read or dreamed the other day says your roads affect residential density, you may just need to put in more expensive roads
Raven
Posted 10:27pm 09/3/13
Played for an hour tonight, then it couldn't connect to the servers to save the game - even when I wanted to stop playing and exit. So I've lost an hours worth of gameplay, or so.
TicMan
Posted 10:48pm 09/3/13
pave - just don't zone for it. Let them convert the density over time. As natslovr said road density also impacts the area so get them up to high density roads when you can. The fun is when you need to demolish large blocks to put in avenues :(
ravn0s
Posted 12:07am 10/3/13
apparently EA is giving a free game to everyone that bought simcity.
kos
Posted 01:02am 10/3/13
Whatever khel...

If the score they gave included a component of end user experience (ie. was it fun), then how can they no downgrade it ?

How fun is sitting at screen not playing it ?
I'd say a 0.
So if say 20% of the time you can't get into it... it should take a 20% hit on its score if not more!

Should they then put the score back up once all the server issues get resolved? I think it's a lot to ask of reviewers to have the review always correct in real time.

It should definitely be made clear that there are serious issues at launch, I just don't know if the score is the way to do that. If I was a reviewer I'd probably just make it very clear that the review/score was a gameplay review/score only and that there it had become apparent that there were other issues at launch that would affect your ability to access that gameplay.
Eorl
Posted 01:53am 10/3/13
Also did we get a server and region going yet?

We should do this, a QGL/AG region for all us wannabe mayors. See who wins, left or right side views. I think max size is 16 cities but I may be wrong there.
Zapo
Posted 07:11am 10/3/13
I'm going on leave on Wednesday I'm just going to avoid playing until I get back. I've found I can log in, but any regional play is just awful with far far too many delays.
Thundercracker
Posted 10:04am 10/3/13
Add me, ProfessorShade

I'll set up a region.

On Oceanic 2 server (1 was busy this morning)

Region is called "QGL", has 7 city plots and 1 great work, all are connected. Invite only so get on!

I think anyone can invite, just sent one to paveway & ticcles.
TicMan
Posted 10:31am 10/3/13
Have to invite me again, I hit the X button which deletes the invite instead of the notification ..
Monkeez
Posted 10:40am 10/3/13
i keep getting to a point where it just keeps asking me for more residential and i can't build anymore and the density just won't keep going any further that about the middle upgrade

Yeah, I was having this problem too.

If anyone wants an extra neighbour my Origin ID is MonkeezCat, add me!
Strik3r
Posted 10:41am 10/3/13
can I get an invite - Strik3r_aus
qmass
Posted 10:52am 10/3/13
say no to grids

49noTWi.jpg
paveway
Posted 10:54am 10/3/13
yes unfortunately my engineering brain doesn't do anything else but grids :(
Tollaz0r!
Posted 10:55am 10/3/13
So how is the actual game, when you get to play it. How does it compare to Simcity 4/ Simcity 2000?

Eorl
Posted 11:01am 10/3/13
Wow that looks pretty sick qmass. I just received my key today, had to gain a refund from one store so went to another and got it straight away :S Added whoever I could so don't be alarmed if you see frodgerdodger in your city.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 11:04am 10/3/13
Eorl, where did you get your key from? I'm looking at potentially getting this. Only if the server issues settle down though.
Inept
Posted 11:29am 10/3/13
Would appreciate an invite to region as well - ineptx
Monkeez
Posted 11:31am 10/3/13
Anyone able to invite me to the QGL region?
paveway
Posted 11:33am 10/3/13
tbh i think the qgl region should have been the biggest map we could get i'm sure we'll find 16 people
Monkeez
Posted 11:37am 10/3/13
Why don't we start a new one then?
paveway
Posted 11:43am 10/3/13
i can't seem to see anywhere where i can invite people to the qgl one
Monkeez
Posted 11:46am 10/3/13
I'm making a new 16 slot one now, I'll invite anyone that wants in.
paveway
Posted 11:54am 10/3/13
i'm just going to hang off until we get more people involved and we can start one that is certifiably THE qgl region i've already started one city under qgl region and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere

Eorl
Posted 12:41pm 10/3/13
Toll, bought it from CDKeyHouse, seems to be the only one in stock and got it instantly.
Thundercracker
Posted 12:54pm 10/3/13
The 16 slot ones look a bit different in that only 4 of the cities are linked together by road or rail. Ill invite people to the 7 city region but if you guys think we will get 16 people ill abandon and join the 16 city game.

It took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to invite people to a region :/
paveway
Posted 01:01pm 10/3/13
how do you do it? i can't work out how to

unless i'm not able to invite to someone elses game
Crakaveli
Posted 01:11pm 10/3/13
Just tried to buy a key off there Eorl, paid the money but didn't receive a key..

Nevermind, got it.
Thundercracker
Posted 01:28pm 10/3/13
"Balls Deep" is open, so you won't need to invite. People can just join.
paveway
Posted 02:37pm 10/3/13
This is retarded an open server is stupid
Strik3r
Posted 02:48pm 10/3/13
I started an oil town in Balls Deep. Got everything cranking ok, but its really hard to get your Petroleum HQ to upgrade. You need to generate 160k of mining profits in a day. I've got 2 maxxed drilling stations with pretty good efficiency and I'm only up to 90k. Given the size of this oil deposit, you would pretty much need to cover the whole thing with drills to get 160k. I would have to wipe out a pretty big chunk of my industrial area to redesign the whole thing, so I may switch to a trade city.

qmass
Posted 04:05pm 10/3/13
I haven't done an oil town yet so I dunno if you can but:

is there any way to pause transport of oil and stockpile it so you can release the flood gates and sell it all off on the same day?
WetWired
Posted 04:18pm 10/3/13
I'll definately join the QGL map when I get a copy, I'm waiting til the server issues die down though
Strik3r
Posted 07:18pm 10/3/13
is there any way to pause transport of oil and stockpile it so you can release the flood gates and sell it all off on the same day?


Ahh, I did not think of this. Yes, you could use trade depot's to do this.
TiT
Posted 07:19pm 10/3/13
ill join in!! use oceania 2 server its faster!!! also the only thing i hate about the game is raw materials die, i always run out of water and if i try to do oil one the oil disappears before i get to do anything with it
Monkeez
Posted 07:51pm 10/3/13
What do you do when you run out of water? As in, there's no water in the ground left.
WetWired
Posted 07:54pm 10/3/13
Head up guys, if you have purchased and activated sim city before march 18th you will get a free EA game http://kotaku.com/5989630/ea-will-give-a-free-pc-game-to-anyone-who-bought-simcity?tag=simcity-disaster_watch

so even if you buy now (which I likely will) you can still get a game.
Obes
Posted 08:43pm 10/3/13
Should they then put the score back up once all the server issues get resolved? I think it's a lot to ask of reviewers to have the review always correct in real time.

What a dumb argument.
This is release. Don't review on an alpha or beta, and don't make excuses for unexpected uptake. Don't compare an mmo to wow on release ... cos wow ain't on release. Review on beta is not current.

Be ready for release or get the f*** out. EA is not some tin pot start-up running from some basement.

It should definitely be made clear that there are serious issues at launch, I just don't know if the score is the way to do that.

What other way is there ? No one reads all the blahblahblah. People read what interests them. Perhaps if the first line of the review in large type bold underline and maybe that amazing old flash tag was "This game has issues at the moment don't buy yet" ? ...
kos
Posted 03:03pm 11/3/13
What a dumb argument.
This is release. Don't review on an alpha or beta, and don't make excuses for unexpected uptake. Don't compare an mmo to wow on release ... cos wow ain't on release.

No, that is a dumb argument. I 100% agree that EA should have done better, but this isn't about what EA should have done, it's about what a game review should convey to the reader.

I wouldn't want to think that an amazing game is terrible just because it has a botched release. I'm not a psychotically impatient hardcore gamer that takes time off work to play a game 96 hours straight as soon as it's released, I can happily wait a few weeks for things to get sorted out.

If the game is fun and has good gameplay I want to know that from the review, I can find out about launch server issues from the news.
Monkeez
Posted 09:23pm 10/3/13
I'm finding it pretty hard to specialize in anything, I'm always running out of space and then either have too little residential, commercial or industry. I'm trying to make money from mining and the daily earnings you need to upgrade are insane. Needed a nuclear power plant to power everything, then I ended up getting rid of my university cause there wasn't enough room. Now my nuclear plant is unsafe cause it has no skilled workers. Argh so stressful.
Thundercracker
Posted 10:13pm 10/3/13
Good tips page: http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9345736.page

Includes a solution to the water problem.
TiT
Posted 10:26pm 10/3/13
Yeah I find I run out of water and once i get enough Oil and Coal to refine it, i run out!
skythra
Posted 10:37pm 10/3/13
Changing the score seems dumb, the game is still the same game
Huh?
EA's decision to remove certain features of the game in order to attempt to stabilize server performance has resulted in a dramatic change to the way SimCity is played and, in my experience, has not stabilized the server situation.

I think your argument has some holes, and doesn't hold water. You should revise your argument. It is unstable. Perhaps edit out the words which don't make sense. I will change my response if you change your argument.

3/10
paveway
Posted 10:53pm 10/3/13
I must be doing something wrong everyone else in balls deep has full skyscrapers and i'm stuggling along big time for cash with buildings upgrading at a snails pace

So f*****g sick of being told i need residential
TiT
Posted 11:41pm 10/3/13
so ive got a few of my cities on 200k but then i just die cause it cost too much to look after the transport and everything dies cause roads are pack even though evey single road on the map is 6lane with street trains on them.
Monkeez
Posted 11:50pm 10/3/13
Managed to get 2 million simoleans tonight, got mining and trading set up but then all else went to s***. Nuclear power plant had a meltdown, ran out of water, needed more workers.

So I decided to unleash Godzillas and earthquakes on the city then start fresh. It's been pretty hard without water, no one nearby seems to have any to sell either.

Ah well, I'll get the hang of this game someday.
shad
Posted 12:00am 11/3/13
Have you considered dispensing egg timers to your citizens to reduce shower times?
SquarkyD
Posted 12:27am 11/3/13
caved and bought the game, how do i get in on the QGL map?
Jboy
Posted 01:05am 11/3/13
Meh, it's sad at how many people support always online drm like sheep.
qmass
Posted 09:35am 11/3/13
messing around with terracing

Vt3xvAa.jpg0rneRUh.jpgEsZEpmA.jpg

It is even willing to get denser by pushing back into the mountain side.

pi65JU4.jpgdMsF5v4.jpgbg4AG62.jpg
Monkeez
Posted 08:58am 11/3/13
Meh, it's sad at how many people support always online drm like sheep.

You can't deny that it's DRM, but a lot of the online features provided are so central to the core game you can understand why they've done it this way. I think the game would be much duller (and harder) if you didn't have neighbours to share resources with.

I haven't had any issues with the servers as yet anyway.
trog
Posted 09:00am 11/3/13
goddamn ^ those screenies look awesome
Beanith
Posted 09:07am 11/3/13
Q: Help! I'm running out of water, what do I do?
A: It's been acknowledged that rain is supposed to fill your water back up, but that system is currently broken. The best way to have infinite water is to plop a sewage treatment plant next to the tier 2 water pump (unlock this with the dept of utilities attached to town hall) with a filtration pump on top of polluted water. This provides unlimited water to your area


Wow, that's messed up. Still kinda cool though
reload!
Posted 09:55am 11/3/13
caved and bought it because everyone seemed to be playing. oceanic servers full. poo.
TicMan
Posted 10:23am 11/3/13
I'm struggling in balls deep, it took forever to get above 30k population and when I went to bed last night I was at about 70k. I couple of problems I found;

a) My construction workers couldn't get to their building site. The stupid f****, all 20 of them, just drove around one block constantly. I demolished the buildings they were going to (building sitting on 0%) and the workers disappeared. New buildings appeared and I went from 25k to 40k within a few minutes.

b) I tried to be fancy with my city and make curvy rounds and s*** - except it meant buildings couldn't grow in density.. lots them. Ended up demolishing most of the curvy rounds and went back to good old fashioned grid.

c) The map I've got is pretty dongs with a big cliff face in the middle of it. I started my industry there which means all the air pollution goes straight over the city. Just before I wound up I started knocking out that industrial area and replacing it with residential. My pop then zoomed up again as I had new land to use *and* the air pollution was leaving the main city.

d) No water - I'm surrounded by water ffs and no water. Stupid game. (will use that tip mentioned earlier).

e) I have good income from manufacturing. But no room to spend it on buildings.. so I have to make the decision to specialise on one thing and stick it out. That's probably going to be manufacturing and trading so a bit of demolishing is to be done today to get that back on track. This now relies on region play which isn't working that great at the moment.

But still enjoyable testing out theories and seeing how they unfold.
TiT
Posted 10:29am 11/3/13
dont upgrade your mayor mansion thats how you get more people into your town, its gets way to crowded over 200k
Raven
Posted 10:42am 11/3/13
d) No water - I'm surrounded by water ffs and no water. Stupid game. (will use that tip mentioned earlier).


Are you the kind of guy who would get stranded on a desert island and go "no problem, there's water right there!" and die drinking the seawater?


Biggest problem I keep having in game is I have too many rich, educated sims, and not enough cavemen :( Industry keeps b****ing because they can't find any workers as a result. This is a pain.
qmass
Posted 11:10am 11/3/13
Eorl
Posted 11:29am 11/3/13
I must be doing something wrong everyone else in balls deep has full skyscrapers and i'm stuggling along big time for cash with buildings upgrading at a snails pace

So f*****g sick of being told i need residential

Don't worry Pave, I'm the same in my region. Friend makes about 10 million a day and yet I'm still struggling with 4,000 residents and only just building avenues. Though he went full mining and rushed it really quickly so he could afford to build another city on the side so maybe that has something to do with it.
TiT
Posted 12:14pm 11/3/13
Thanks for all the Tips, maybe we should create new Threat with all the cool little guides
Raven
Posted 12:36pm 11/3/13
Here's my tip Pave:
placing two of the $2400 Plazas, Nature or Formal parks together will bring almost all land up to high value. Then make sure all the surrounding roads are high density where you want the skyscrapers.
that's a pretty reliable method for me to get skyscrapers - add education, health etc to make them better.
TiT
Posted 12:39pm 11/3/13
Yeah another Pro tip is to start of with Avenue and have less intersections and roads as possible this will help with traffic. Also because low wealth residents dont use all the land u can put parks in between them and continue them along in the middle then remove the parks when they are undesirable
natslovR
Posted 12:58pm 11/3/13
Anyone caving and buying it needs to check this thread about buying Limited Edition for AUS$27 from India's Origin.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 01:19pm 11/3/13
No longer works NatslovR, was just doing it now. Simcity has been removed from the Indian Origin Store. Damn it.
paveway
Posted 01:33pm 11/3/13
so it really is as simple as just needing big parks to increase land value

i always try and run a ring road of basic avenue at the start of the game so later than can be upgraded to cover most of my city for street cars
TiT
Posted 01:41pm 11/3/13
my last map i had no high ways just High Density Streetcar Avenue and i stil had Transport issues
Raven
Posted 01:44pm 11/3/13
On a slightly off-topc Reddit-related thread thing:

WetWired
Posted 01:49pm 11/3/13
I went to order from https://www.gamekeysnow.com to get a copy but I can add it to the cart, but on both chrome and IE when I hit checkout absolutely nothing happens. No sale I guess
TicMan
Posted 02:12pm 11/3/13
So I did the water trick - worked a charm, city is now sitting at 85k and rising. Despite having a -24,000/hr deficit in the budget I'm pulling in enough from manufacturing to keep on living. I think I'll start pulling down the big industry, replacing it with manufacturing plants and using trade depots to buy all the goods in. Want to save up about 1mil in the kitty before doing that though!

Pave - parks increase land value which increases the type of resident (medium/wealthy). They have a smaller effect on happiness as people go there when they can't afford to shop. Other things that help with happiness is low taxes, low crime, good health coverage, etc. Also lowering residential taxes to 8-9% helped me out at the start.

Probably the main thing though is time, put it on cheetah mode and just wait :)
Eorl
Posted 02:26pm 11/3/13
my last map i had no high ways just High Density Streetcar Avenue and i stil had Transport issues

This could be an AI issue because I've noticed some cars will just completely ignore a road and thus cause issues with factories not getting enough people.

If I was to try for a medium to high rich population, I'd still need low income earners wouldn't I for factories to supply the shops which give jobs to medium income earners right?

Also Tic, Cheetah mode doesn't actually work, its only Turtle and Llama speed at the moment which is annoying and hopefully they turn it back on.

I'm actually having a bit of trouble with my first city, though to be expected considering I didn't know how the heck to build roads and space (I've got a giant strip between two roads that no one will build in despite being zoned). My population is at roughly 10,000 but most of them are turning into medium income earners and as such my industry is going to poop. Maybe I should open up a trade depot and import for factories so they can supply the huge amount of shops I'm making now for medium income earners to work at.
eski
Posted 02:23pm 11/3/13
you mean llama mode :P
Hogfather
Posted 02:25pm 11/3/13
Despite having a -24,000/hr deficit in the budget

F*****g Labor Party all up ITT
Eorl
Posted 02:27pm 11/3/13
F*****g Labor Party all up ITT

Hah pretty much. My second city (which was just made for poop and water supply) is nearly bankrupt but everyone is happy. Clearly a Labor thing.
Monkeez
Posted 02:34pm 11/3/13
Despite having a -24,000/hr deficit in the budget

Yes, I found that too. I was about the same but bringing in a ton of money via metal and alloy sales. Then it all went to s*** when my residents were too wealthy and too educated.
TiT
Posted 02:36pm 11/3/13
tickman have you got picture of your city? How is your city with lots of industrial isnt the air pollution bad?
TicMan
Posted 02:37pm 11/3/13

Yes, I found that too. I was about the same but bringing in a ton of money via metal and alloy sales. Then it all went to s*** when my residents were too wealthy and too educated.


I'm converting it into processors which sell for $67k a crate - have 3 factories pumping it out. At the moment all the materials are made in the town (coal & ore mine with smelting) so it's not too bad. Once it dries up though, I'm f***ed.
TicMan
Posted 02:44pm 11/3/13
How do you do screenshots? Print screen didnt seem to do much..

The industry is actually getting smaller, replacing a lot of it with residential. The air pollution is bad but it's unavoidable with the mines so I'm kind of capped with trying to attract wealthy people because of it. Over time I'll slowly move the industry away from where it is now into another part which doesn't have wind blowing across the residential area.
Eorl
Posted 02:56pm 11/3/13
Tic, try shift F10 I think. Also there is an option in-game to disable UI and mouse pointer in screenshots.
Yes, I found that too. I was about the same but bringing in a ton of money via metal and alloy sales. Then it all went to s*** when my residents were too wealthy and too educated.
Do what my friend did, force them to become low income earners. Only place in low income parks, make sure they are close enough to the factories and mining areas and just outright make them unable to progress further which includes bare minimum roads.
Raven
Posted 03:56pm 11/3/13
Default keybind for screenshot is 'C' isn't it? and 'V' for video? Someone test, I'm at work ;p
TicMan
Posted 05:35pm 11/3/13
Dammit, was all ready for a screenshot and then *another* disaster happens. I've had 2 lizards, UFOs, meteor shower and now an earthquake.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 05:38pm 11/3/13
And you didn't screen shot that!?
Eorl
Posted 05:47pm 11/3/13
Annnnd there goes our region. Apparently it is now corrupt, my friend lost hist $10 million mining city and I lost my two cities worth half a mil each. Cool.
fryzeegunner
Posted 06:17pm 11/3/13
WHAT HAPPENED EORL!?!?!?!
Tollaz0r!
Posted 07:07pm 11/3/13
Oceania 1 & 2 is full.

Which is everyone playing on?
Tollaz0r!
Posted 07:10pm 11/3/13
Is, are, whatever.
Inept
Posted 07:10pm 11/3/13
Just got on Oceania 2 fine
WetWired
Posted 07:18pm 11/3/13
Ok I just picked it up from jb on the way home. Is there a qgl map?
TicMan
Posted 07:32pm 11/3/13
vDD9ulp.jpg

There she goes! Also had another Earthquake .. :( At least it's helping demolish buildings so I can redo my road grid.
Dazhel
Posted 07:31pm 11/3/13
heh, it's the QGL minecraft story all over again... didn't map corruption kill that one too?
Tollaz0r!
Posted 07:31pm 11/3/13
Alrighty I'll make a QGL region on the Asia Server since Oceania seems continually full..
Tollaz0r!
Posted 07:34pm 11/3/13
QGL Asia is the Region name, 16 cities. Open to public, for now.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 07:42pm 11/3/13
Cool, I have nothing but a blue grid background. Seems the only way around it is to reinstall by downloading :/
Whoop
Posted 07:51pm 11/3/13
so can you actually play with friends and make your little people do stuff with each other? Like can you create a town full of pyromaniacs and just watch them all try to burn down your mates' houses?
Crakaveli
Posted 07:56pm 11/3/13
no, the multiplayer game is weak as s***. Its limited to trading resources.
natslovR
Posted 08:38pm 11/3/13
In case you are wondering why building parks works so well, it's because building parks keeps pedophiles away, raising land value.

Since the Indian Origin thing doesn't work now, I guess I'll just wait it out.
qmass
Posted 08:47pm 11/3/13
Someone on SA pointed out that Adelaide is a simcity 5 region - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Adelaide_DougBarber.jpg

There are some area
Eorl
Posted 09:04pm 11/3/13
Hah, sorry should have clarified that it was a separate region, not the QGL/AG one. Multiplayer is pretty much limited to resource sharing, though your criminals will flee to other cities which I found out the hard way. Friend had a city that kept producing arsonists who would come to my city and burn down buildings. Wasn't very fun, but eventually I got a police department and they mostly got caught.

I've created three cities so far, however this is currently my "main" city.

41IkBRJl.jpg

kHwINdhl.jpg
reload!
Posted 10:00pm 11/3/13
played three times at various points today, oceanic was never available.
I guess it makes no difference to gameplay but europe, america and asia feels dirty :/
Tollaz0r!
Posted 10:30pm 11/3/13
Well my first city was a learning experience. Sucks to live In Tollopolis, such poorly designed districts and roads and whatnot. Still it did alright.
WetWired
Posted 10:32pm 11/3/13
Can I get an invite to the QGL map? origin is "WetandWired"
TicMan
Posted 10:36pm 11/3/13
Fired up an Arcology on Balls Deep - will see how that pans out as I need workers. I reckon I'll claim another city soon and start giving that a go.
qmass
Posted 10:39pm 11/3/13
curves curves curves curves curves curves...

I'm mad about curves!

Pjzm8Av.jpgDhSH8AT.jpg

Lets you easily plan into 100K plus cities with low traffic though

Vc74Yg9.jpg
Eorl
Posted 11:45pm 11/3/13
I tried curves in my new city, can't really get my mind over them though because it feels like I'm missing out on wasted space.
Viper119
Posted 11:59pm 11/3/13
The cities all look super small, I'm a bit torn on getting this.
TicMan
Posted 12:39am 12/3/13
F*** this game in the ass, finally getting somewhere and my entire road system is red

:(

Edit: Actually f*** it hard. I've got about 2mil of goods sitting in the trade depot waiting to sell but they aren't moving so subsequently I've gone broke..
Eorl
Posted 08:53am 12/3/13
The cities all look super small, I'm a bit torn on getting this.

I thought that at first as well, but if you get a nice super flat surface you can fit in quite a lot. This new SimCity seems to be more reliant on neighbouring cities, in that you'll design each city to be specific to your needs. Making a mining town and need more low income bodies? Develop a city where that's all they do. Need more goods then your city is producing? Make another city and have it fund your development.
WetWired
Posted 09:21am 12/3/13
What type of roads do you guys all start with?
Tollaz0r!
Posted 09:36am 12/3/13
My cities are making leaps and bounds in design each iteration.

The first city was what can only be described as an abomination.

The second city, I toyed with curved and circular roads and learned about how the road system affects things like hospital/fire/police and education cover. I had a couple of circles within circles that only had one connection, that is a bad idea, traffic wise it was fine. However it decimated the facilities cover.
Oh and whilst I thought about it I figured it wouldn't matter so much, I built the majority of my commercial and about 1/2 my residential downwind from the industrial zone. Turns out (I think) this makes people b**** about germs everywhere. The air pollution was pretty poor for half my city.

WetWired, I've found to get my head around planning I use dirt roads to begin with as I like to lay a fair bit of road down to map out the area. Add my parks and other land value stuff then zone up.

So my next city is going to have an Ally down the guts, that will eventually work into a curve connected by branching high density streets, similar to a spine. Industrial will be upwind and at one end of the ally..

Fun game, pitty I can't play in Oceana at the moment, it's always full :/

TicMan
Posted 09:43am 12/3/13
I did a Campbell last night, raised taxes to 20% to cover my production c*** up and my town went from 130k to 50k. Fortunately it gave me good reason to demolish most of my buildings and rebuild a decent road lay out, zone system, etc but it's still bloody well broken!

I have an avenue running from the highway down into the guts of my town and this is *jammed* the entire length. After zooming around a bit I found one truck trying to do a u-turn at the highway entrance causing a jam there and a fire truck/bus combo jamming it at the bottom.

Speaking of fire, police, buses etc - they are useless. They get stuck in traffic jams, cause traffic jams, stop in the middle of the road and don't move, etc. I've had to demolish roads and buildings to clean up the mess.


Turns out (I think) this makes people b**** about germs everywhere. The air pollution was pretty poor for half my city.


Yeah this was my mistake, now all they do is complain about the germs.


Fun game, pitty I can't play in Oceana at the moment, it's always full :/


I don't know if it's the servers being funky but I switch to any other server, login, go back to Oceania 2 and 50% of the time I can login without a queue. So I just keep doing that a few times until I can get in.
taggs
Posted 09:49am 12/3/13
Lost my 100k city last night. I had just started a 2nd city in the region, went to go back to the original one and got an error message saying city processing check back later. Tried to get into it via main menu and got en error saying it needed to roll back to a working version. Did that but it rolled back to a blank city.

F*** :-(.
WetWired
Posted 09:50am 12/3/13
Anyone else wanna start a Qgl map on Antarctica for the times Oceania 2 is full?
Tollaz0r!
Posted 09:58am 12/3/13
I can't even click on Oceana 1 or 2 to even join a queue. It just says server is Full and is grayed out. I hope they don't mean the-server-is-Full-of-players-with-a-city-and-there-is-no-room-for-another-player-at-this-time,-come-back-next-year kind of full.

Wetwired, I'll join an Antarctican QGL map, it would be awesome if their servers are localised and the server is actually in Antarctica.
WetWired
Posted 10:02am 12/3/13
Yeah I'll start one at lunch if no one else already has.

Also is there an undo? I'm constantly plopping down stuff in the wrong spots
Tollaz0r!
Posted 10:31am 12/3/13
Bulldozer is your Undo ;)

Wetwired give us the name of the region when you do and I'll join it tonight. Make it private otherwise it can fill with randoms really quickly. QGL Asia filled up super quick, d'oh!
Eorl
Posted 10:45am 12/3/13
Yeah I'll start one at lunch if no one else already has.Also is there an undo? I'm constantly plopping down stuff in the wrong spots

No undo button sadly which gets really annoying. There is kind of one on roads, if you hit R when the road function is selected you can upgrade them but its free to downgrade.

My new city is leaps and bounds ahead of my old one thanks to knowing what to do now. Having one looping avenue around and then off-shooting it with high density streets works wonders, because everyone has to go through the avenue to get to shops and jobs so they will always pass by. Its also great placing a education centre along the avenue because everyone is now educated. Only problem now is air pollution but should be able to fix that with cleaner solutions.

I want to build a new city based on a part of my living area, would be cool to grab a map of Taringa and see how it works.

moKJEkbl.jpg

w1fV4FDl.jpg
thermite
Posted 11:21am 12/3/13
Its also great placing a education centre along the avenue because everyone is now educated.


Yeah so on my way to work I drive through 3 school zones, thanks mate


lol I dunno, I got a refund for this bulls*** and I'm playing Tropico 4 instead


Regards,
El Presidente
TicMan
Posted 11:22am 12/3/13
Saw this post on Reddit which summarises what I'm starting to find in game and also what a lot of other people are saying about roads;


I've logged ~12 hours of play, using two successful cities in tandem. Here's the most important thing I've learned about roads and traffic:
When two roads meet to create an intersection, priority is typically given to the cars on the higher-density road.
In other words: the more equally-or-more-dense streets that intersect a main road, the more time cars on that main road spend stopped.
So, it doesn't just matter what layout you use - it also matters which roads you choose to upgrade. Since cars automatically prefer the highest-density roads available, making every road high-density will only help alleviate traffic in the short term.
In the long term, upgrading selectively (effectively building "highways") is the best way to reliably manage traffic flow. Utilized correctly, it allows (well, it actually forces) more cars to travel along a preferred path over a longer distance without interruption, freeing up the roads-less-traveled for those who truly need them.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCityStrategy/comments/19si6i/city_layouts_to_combat_traffic/c8qww5u
Tollaz0r!
Posted 11:59am 12/3/13
This is what I'm liking about the game. I do feel I miss the old public ordinances from previous SimCities like, paying a monthly cost to educate people to be more water efficient, legalized gambling and all that stuff. They were nice band-aid pollutions for quick fixes on pollution/budget/whatever.
groganus
Posted 12:01pm 12/3/13
Has a region been started on Antarctica yet?

Keen to play with others :S
WetWired
Posted 12:21pm 12/3/13
nope, but you could start one, I won't be able to start til about midday so if someone wants to get to it before me just post the name here
groganus
Posted 12:42pm 12/3/13
Ok, I created one on Antarctica.

Add CharlesGrogan
WetWired
Posted 01:15pm 12/3/13
can you invite me? WetandWired
groganus
Posted 01:22pm 12/3/13
Done, the friend system is s***, i didn't even know i had a pending invite till i checked back in the thread...
Tollaz0r!
Posted 01:28pm 12/3/13
Sweet I'll join it this evening. Leave me a nice plot of land please ;D
Eorl
Posted 01:33pm 12/3/13
Send me an invite (frodgerdodger) as well if you can Grog, I'll jump on and claim a piece of land.
Monkeez
Posted 01:48pm 12/3/13
Send me (MonkeezCat) an invite too please!
groganus
Posted 01:49pm 12/3/13
Your not showing up Monkeez, are you on the Antarctica Server?
Monkeez
Posted 01:53pm 12/3/13
Do you need to join the server before you can get an invite? That seems a little odd. I'll hop on tonight and see if I can get an invite then.
TicMan
Posted 01:54pm 12/3/13
Who had the airport on Balls Deep? It's gone now and I can't make any helicopter fire fighters :(
Monkeez
Posted 02:00pm 12/3/13
Who had the airport on Balls Deep? It's gone now and I can't make any helicopter fire fighters :(

I did, it should still be there though? Maybe it was the one in my other city that I destroyed.

That's one thing that confuses me, there doesn't seem to be any way to transport goods between my two cities, it's like they're too far away. Having an airport with a freight hanger in each didn't let me do it either. I wanted to ship 90% of my money to my new city to give it a head start bu there was no way of doing this.
groganus
Posted 02:10pm 12/3/13
Depends on the region, most regions are split up to 4 and you can only transport between the nodes... if that makes sense.

It's kind of stupid.

On top of that there is still huge lag between transporting stuff between cities... so if you send it off, expect it to take a while to get there.
TicMan
Posted 02:17pm 12/3/13

I did, it should still be there though? Maybe it was the one in my other city that I destroyed.


It's gone now, I rebuild my fire station and the helicopter option was no longer available.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 02:17pm 12/3/13
Groganus, my nick is Tollazor

I haven't played on Antarctica so I may not show up yet.
Monkeez
Posted 02:18pm 12/3/13
Depends on the region, most regions are split up to 4 and you can only transport between the nodes... if that makes sense.

Yes, that makes sense. I could send it to one city all the way across the river though. So maybe if you could be bothered you could slowly pass it on until it gets to the city you want, that's pretty annoying though.
Eorl
Posted 02:29pm 12/3/13
Cities are connected either by rail or highway, however if you build a airport or boat system I believe you can transport goods through that, though I'm not sure. Only those connected by highway can receive your sim, emergency service and dump trucks.

Claimed my area near Grog's, will be interesting to see how it goes though I won't be caring about water shortage that's for sure.
TicMan
Posted 02:57pm 12/3/13
Once I added the trade depot and shipping freight terminal I could send/receive stuff to all the cities that I don't have a highway too. Emergency services and buses are not included. One f*****g annoying part of my city is that I have a rail line but it connects to the great works site and mongies 985125th city he started and abandoned that has like 5,000 people.

So I have massive traffic to the other two cities which I don't have a rail link to - s**** me off as my roads are congested.
groganus
Posted 03:01pm 12/3/13
ahhhhh.... Classic Mongie.
Eorl
Posted 06:39pm 12/3/13
So, I guess I have suicidal Sims? Wouldn't blame them, the traffic is pretty bad. The AI in both Sims and the traffic is just terrible, hopefully it can be fixed because I can foresee my city burning down due to stupidity.

G174Hx6l.jpg

NRc0h9Dl.jpg
TiT
Posted 11:30pm 12/3/13
hahaha erol thats gold!!!

add me Bushy_Squirrel
paveway
Posted 07:57am 13/3/13
so you are bushy_squirrel, i was wondering who that was

man you've been pumping some hours into this game
BladeRunner
Posted 08:30am 13/3/13
I need someone to convince me to buy and play this. It looks alright. I did play one of the SimCity games a long tine ago. Would be cool if there were visual themes you could apply to your building/city like sci-fi or gothic. If it has those options I would probably pick it up just so I can have a sci-fi or cyberpunk looking city.
Monkeez
Posted 09:06am 13/3/13
The new land I'm playing on is having massive congestion problems on the roads, took quite a while for my trucks to actually get out to deliver stuff to the global market. To fix it I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to demolish a while bunch of roads and start again.

I think a lot of my problems could be solved if I could make some of the roads one way only.
WetWired
Posted 09:22am 13/3/13
I have massive congestion on the road in to my into my city, before it even reaches my borders. I have no idea how to fix it. I have not 2 train stations going out.
TiT
Posted 10:36am 13/3/13
so you are bushy_squirrel, i was wondering who that was

man you've been pumping some hours into this game



haha not really i left it on for like 3 hours one time while i went for sleep lol came back with a bit of money :)
Eorl
Posted 10:39am 13/3/13
SO5Dfaj.gif
Tollaz0r!
Posted 11:01am 13/3/13
My traffic, for the most part, has been fine.

I did find the best idea is right from the start, make your highway link an Ally (lowest grade ally) that runs down the guts of your city (more like town lol).

Then make sure that there are no intersections close to the entrance of the highway and no streetcar crossings and whatnot.

So far, I've found the train link is useful only if you are pulling in workers or shoppers. They also only pull it from places that have rail links I think.

Buses make a huge difference to traffic, pop down a bus depot, fill it up with buses and put bus stops all around the city, particularly residential (not high wealth tho).

Have a look at the traffic in detail where it is jammed and see if there are any repeating offenders.

I'm not sure what to do about those people doing U-turns all the time, retards. 1 way roads would rock.
eski
Posted 11:10am 13/3/13
I dont think the visible traffic is actually causing the traffic problems, just illustrating them. It's like the computer calculates that there is a high traffic area on one of your roads and then orders the little cars to endlessly drive around there.

The simulation is actually really hard to understand coming from the past games.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 11:13am 13/3/13
O some pro-tips I've found:

1. When founding your city, before building it look at your region and see what your immediate neighbors need and what they have. My latest city saves soooo much money by importing power and water and sending sewage off to them. It is about 17K population bringing in $8,000/day + coal mining operations on top of that.

2. Someone in your region needs to build a university. It is needed to get tech levels of industry up plus unlocks a bunch of stuff. I poped one in my industrial city (Toll Industries) and all my industry is now high tech plus it is bringing in heaps of students from the region (yay trains). So its educating the whole region. Not sure of what the flow on effects of that will be.

3. When starting your city, don't be afraid to take out bonds. Those ally's really need some serious cash.

4. Your resident wealth has a big impact on your city and the region. Be sure to match your requirements, ie little need for high wealth residences in low tech industry.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 11:16am 13/3/13
Eski, from what i've read about the game I thought the cars were actual entities going from point A->B and directly lead to traffic congestion's. The old simcities used statistics to populate the roads. Not so now.
Monkeez
Posted 11:23am 13/3/13
I dont think the traffic is actually causing the traffic problems, just illustrating them. It's like the computer calculates that there is a high traffic area on one of your roads and then orders the little cars to endlessly drive around there.

Either way doesn't that really amount to the same thing?

My firetrucks got stuck for hours in a bottleneck near the entrance to the city while across the other side houses were burning down. I think simulates peak hour too, most of the day my traffic is ok but come 8am if there's a fire, s***'s going to get burnt down.
thermite
Posted 11:32am 13/3/13
I don't know how you can have fun in this game with that tiny playing area, you get to build like half a suburb. Should just call it "Sim Locality". I don't know how you can have fun, and I'm not willing to pay the 80 bucks to find out. So glad I got a refund.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 11:36am 13/3/13
It really is the actual cars. The reason why it has 'peak' hour is because people are traveling to/from work in your city and from/to other cities.

Also, sometimes it takes a few in game sim hours/days to clear the traffic after you alter the road system.

Sometimes it is just you looked at the traffic when you had a big influx of moving trucks or construction trucks (density upgrades and stuff).
Tollaz0r!
Posted 11:38am 13/3/13
Thermite, that is because your city co-exists with those around you. You don't have to build a city that has it all. For instance Toll Industries has mainly industrial with some residential. I'd ditch the residential if I could by my neighbors don't have enough population to send me.. Monkeez
thermite
Posted 11:41am 13/3/13
That's... no...
I'm unsatisfied with that explanation.
Eorl
Posted 11:44am 13/3/13
I don't know how you can have fun in this game with that tiny playing area, you get to build like half a suburb. Should just call it "Sim Locality". I don't know how you can have fun, and I'm not willing to pay the 80 bucks to find out. So glad I got a refund.
Eh, I'm enjoying what I've played so far which is about 30 hours or so. There are definitely some quite atrocious bugs that should not have left testing but in saying that I'm still having fun with what I've got. Luckily I only paid $46 so it doesn't really bother me as I've more than got my time from the price.

The sizes are small, and they are annoying. You can quite easily cap out a "city" in at least 3 hours of playtime or less if you rush the design/screw it up but I reckon a bigger size would just cause more issues right now due to the traffic AI being so terrible. Hopefully when they fix it we can start to see things function properly and then get larger sizes. For now though, there is a big emphasis on multiplayer and using multiple cities to function as one. Its something new that I quite enjoy and was foreign to begin with but I'm slowly picking up what needs to be done.

From my understanding after reading Reddit's SimCity section, the traffic and civ AI is simply agent based, and that each agent will be created outside a house and go to the closest unfilled job position and then be "deleted". It will then create a new agent outside the business which will look for either the closest empty house or shop and go there. Repeat the process in loop and that seems to be what is currently going on.

This is what is causing massive traffic congestion because agents are simply finding the shortest path to the closest job/house/shop and just congregating in one giant puddle. There is actually no distinction between any of the AI, they all act like even the water/electricity and poop. If you watch the electricity or water grid, you'll notice sometimes it will just continuously loop around until it fills a spot. This is what happens with civ AI and vehicles, they just loop until they fill a spot. Apparently this is fixable with the programming language that they use by adding a weighting system, though that would increase the amount of data being sent so it is unknown what fix will be made.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 11:45am 13/3/13
That is OK, however if you're not playing the game and do not wish to please keep out of the thread ;)
fpot
Posted 11:49am 13/3/13
I have heard that the Glassbox thing isn't all it's cracked up to be and Sims might leave one building in the day but then after work go home to a different one. Anyone observed this?

Also, has there been any reference to a rebigulator which is a concept so ridiculous it makes me want to laugh out loud and chortle?
Eorl
Posted 11:52am 13/3/13
The system is basically this fpot, in that the "agents" all just congregate in a conga-line until they are "sucked up" into empty jobs/house/shops.
Monkeez
Posted 11:55am 13/3/13
I'd ditch the residential if I could by my neighbors don't have enough population to send me.. Monkeez

If you want I could try ditching my industrial and stick to residential and commercial? Maybe I'll specialise in tourism or gambling. The only thing is it's hard to know exactly how much you need, is there a way of finding this out? How many workers your neigbours need exactly?

When I first started out it was telling me I had unfilled mid wealth jobs, so I created more mid wealth residential areas, then those people complained about a lack of shopping, then I created more shops, then I needed more mid wealth jobs. This process seemed to repeat itself until I just gave up on pleasing them all.
fpot
Posted 11:56am 13/3/13
Damn, I thought each Sim was an individual and had their own house/workplace to go to.
eski
Posted 12:11pm 13/3/13
Either way doesn't that really amount to the same thing?


No, people here are talking like the poor AI is causing the traffic problems, when I think the looping cars are just an illustration of local traffic density. I have no basis for thinking this.

edit - After reading that article Eorl posted it would seem that this isn't the case.
Dazhel
Posted 12:12pm 13/3/13
all just congregate in a conga-line until they are "sucked up" into empty jobs/house/shops.

That's a somewhat apt metaphor for life, really.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 12:25pm 13/3/13
Monkeez, don't go commercial. My other city has plenty of commercial, plenty too much it seems. We could both do industrial as the demands for industry tend to come from commercial. Ideally if we could ship industry to the cities that need it, that would be great.

To check the more detailed demands of employment and stuff use the regional view and click on the buttons at the bottom (like workers) and then on the right hand side, click the various buttons for low/medium/high wealth and look at the bars that appear over the cities. That will tell you who wants what and so forth.
arkter
Posted 01:03pm 13/3/13
played most of last night, driving to the office today and getting stuck in traffic gave me an eerie feeling about existence. I was waiting for someone to click expand on the road in in front of me but it didn't happen.

A question you guys might be able to help me with - I have a very high density city, everything is skyscrapers now and I keep finding myself in a situation NEEDING other cities, I've had to create a second city to cope with garbage, sewage and electricity, but then that brings it's own set of problems... trying to manage duel cities somewhat takes the fun out of it for me. Am I doing it wrong or is this how it is intended to be played?
paveway
Posted 01:07pm 13/3/13
So its educating the whole region


don't know about that, playing in balls deep i didn't start getting any education or tech leveling until i got my own facilities and the other cities in the region all would have had a uni before i did
Tollaz0r!
Posted 01:12pm 13/3/13
A high density city cannot support itself efficiently. The idea is that your neighbors build cities that compliment each other. Hence why the game is heaps better when you know the other people in your region and can communicate with them.


Also for people with traffic management issues here is th probable reason why:


I built one long road across the map, and added some jobs in the form of a coal power plant and some industry about 3/4 of the way along the road. I then built a small bit of residential at the end closest to the jobs, and a large amount of residential at the end of the road FURTHEST from the jobs.



When 6am/pm rolls around it's commute time. Roughly half of all the people at work will leave instantly, with the rest leaving gradually after that. The problem is that when all these people leave work they all head for the closest house with space for them, which happens to be the small residential area. So you have 100s of workers heading for a few houses which fill up instantly, leaving the rest of the people to drive all that way for nothing and have to head all the way down the other end of the city back through all of the traffic where the larger residential zone is.


What this means is that you can cause a big pile-up of dense traffic because it is doubleing up with a lot of traffic that went one way then came back to add to the traffic coming out.

The answer is to design your city knowing how traffic agents flow. Instead of how you think they should flow.
Eorl
Posted 01:29pm 13/3/13
That's what I found with my second city, in that all my residential is grouped and sorted so that they HAVE to all drive past commercial and schools in order to get to their jobs either at the commercial or industrial sections. I don't have as much congestion now thanks to my main "hub" pushing people through, however my bridge that I posted before gets a lot of congestion because to the left is the industry strip. I'm tempted to pull that out though and see if I can survive without industrial strips and whether this will cause less congestion.

This is the problem that I was talking about before though, in that the agent AI is so simplistic that they are just filling "empty" spots. In SimCity 2004 each agent had its own job and house and would commute between the two (three for shopping) until they moved out/died/got fired. In this new SimCity this isn't the case because they simply "fill" what they can get, causing mass congestion and unfilled jobs/meltdowns because any sim can fill any spot.

Hopefully if (and when) this AI is fixed it will cause a more unique flow, in that Sims will know where exactly to go and you won't have low income earners/non-educated Sims filling up random jobs that they are unqualified for. If they worked like SImCity 2004 the example that you have Toll with one road would not have as bad congestion, cause the people dedicated to the bottom housing would go there after work, while the top housing would go there.

Also people are figuring out that there is a very high shadow population after 500 combined citizens (workers and shoppers), with large cities supposedly gaining 10 shadow citizens for every real citizen.
eski
Posted 01:45pm 13/3/13
In SimCity 2004 each agent had its own job and house and would commute between the two (three for shopping) until they moved out/died/got fired.


There were no agents in Simcity 4, everything was just based on stats. There were no citizens or workers living in your city and driving the simulation. Just traffic density, population and demographics stats.

It's also what I'm getting at here. Don't assume that the animation of the agents is accurately representing the simulation.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 01:46pm 13/3/13
I've done some digging in the simtropolis threads turns out that the Agent system may not be complete or that the things EA/Maxis 'turned off' affects the agent system.

For instance Industry and Freight doesn't really do anything to commercial.
Sure commercial will accept the freight, however it doesn't need it.

Trade Depot's and other freight storage buildings simply accept freight, then that freight decays over time. This simply makes the industry happy and builds up.

It is entirely possible to build a city with only Commercial and Residential, with no industry in the region at all (and no other cities) and the commercial stores restock daily as if they received freight.

My guess is that commercial is supposed to need freight, however due to the massively overpopulated servers maxis patched in band-aid fix.



It explains a problem I've run into. My best city, Toll Industries, is almost 3/4's industry, and it is caining along nicely. The idea was the freight I made would ship off to other cities that have a freight shortfall. It sort of did that, however I noticed something odd. I didn't build much commercial at all, just a little tiny bit scattered around to keep people happy that shops are nearby (certainly only low density).
However my demand for freight has been increasing and matching my production of it. Yet I have nothing to use freight.

EXCEPT: I've also been building trade depot's to store the freight, thinking it would leave from there to the regional cities. Instead it seems the Trade depot's create an artificial demand for freight and just feed it into tiny blackholes so it disappears over time. Thus all the freight my city creates, get used up by the trade depot's and none is left for neighbours.

Since the intercity stuff seems to not be updating at a regular pace my guess is this was patched in to allow cities to run well. I do hope this is the case and will be 'fixed' soon.

I'm going to destroy 2 of my trade depot's that are accepting freight and close down my airport and see if my freight starts shipping to other cities or my entire industrial complex dies...
Hogfather
Posted 01:49pm 13/3/13
My video ezy order ticked over to dispatched today - does the game reliably work yet?
eski
Posted 01:55pm 13/3/13
Instead it seems the Trade depot's create an artificial demand for freight and just feed it into tiny blackholes so it disappears over time.


Trade Depots sell freight on the global market, wouldn't that explain where your good are going? You should be seeing regular payments in your budget. I wonder if this was switched off at some stage.....

Hog - Relatively stable, but still hasn't had essential features like Cheetah mode patched back in. It also still feels broken to me, but I can't quite put my finger on why, hence the discussions here trying to understand how it works.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 01:51pm 13/3/13
Hoggy, you can play however the economy of the cities/region seems to be a bit broken, as per my post above.

Time will tell if it was a band-aid fix or just a fundamentally flawed game design...
Eorl
Posted 01:52pm 13/3/13
There were no agents in Simcity 4, everything was just based on stats. There were no citizens or workers living in your city and driving the simulation. Just traffic density, population and demographics stats.It's also what I'm getting at here. Don't assume that the animation of the agents is accurately representing the simulation.
Ah I see, always though they were individual Sims but they are indeed just statistics.
My video ezy order ticked over to dispatched today - does the game reliably work yet?
It works now, a lot better then the launch. Region trading is still slow though, but I jumped onto the test server and it worked flawlessly with surrounding cities pouring jobs into my industry city. Hopefully they can patch it all up and it should be good to go.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 01:55pm 13/3/13
Eski, that is the idea of where commercial gets its freight from too. However there is no in-game explanation or mechanism for it.

There are options to build coal/ore/stuff addons to your trade depot and then you have the option to use those resources locally or put them to the global market, however there is no option for basic freight.

As I said, I'll get rid of those trade depots later tonight and see what happens. It could be that poor documentation is to blame.

Perhaps locally sourced freight has commercial building pay more in tax revenue, whereas if it gets it from the magical global market the extra cost is taken out before you get tax revenue?
Tollaz0r!
Posted 01:56pm 13/3/13
O, as for basic freight I never, ever receive a 'global' payment or any form of payment for it. I simply get happy industry and grow and pay more tax.
eski
Posted 02:00pm 13/3/13
When you build storage lot areas in the trade depot, it says that it trades them on the global market, ie - all the people who are buying s*** outside your region. If they can't get leaderboards working, then I honestly can't see that feature being enabled at the moment, at least as the game describes it.

I suspect it's doing what you said earlier and just sticking the freight into some black hole. Hopefully it still pays you for it :S
Eorl
Posted 02:02pm 13/3/13
Oh another thing from more reading, the shadow population doesn't actually increase your tax revenue. So say you "have" 50,000 residents, its only taxing the actual amount which could be anywhere from 500 to 50,000. I'm going to do some tests tonight to see what kind of reaction to traffic congestion and general attendance I get if I only build for the actual population and not the shadow population.
groganus
Posted 02:05pm 13/3/13
These are my tips and tricks for playing.

Firstly slow down... Its easy to rush in and build out a city really quickly, but you are much much better off building your city slowly.. Start with a small residential area, business and industrial, Have it running smoothly, wait till most of it becomes medium density before building more, this can be harder to do the more you play, but trust me, regardless of your "skill level". Taking it slow is the right way to play.

When you start a new area, instantly switch to the different maps and check what resources you have available, what way the wind is blowing. Plan ahead but don't starting acting on it.


Ignore the stupid pop ups.. learn to check the details page on the populate screen... read whats there and work with that.
Those pop ups are either delayed or crazy. Checking the details often will help you manage your city a lot better.

My list of how things should be built... residential, industrial (small areas, again start off slow,) commercial, power, water, sewage (again you might not need those if your region has some established places you can feed off... save money and use those if you can).
Then medical center, fire station, education, then police (why education before police you may ask.. educated sims are less likely to get into crime, plus it gets your student sims something todo rather then just sitting there doing nothing, plus it increases happiness a lot more then police do).
Once this is up and running i will then start expanding into transport.. Trains and ferries and buss (look at your region, check what other places are doing.. don't put down a train station if no one else has one.. but do if they plan to.. talk to the other players).. doing transport early on will allow you to run train tracks to a suitable area rather then just plonky it on the train line where you can fit it (i bet you have all done that).


Once this is running how its intended, then i expand.

Constantly check power and water and sewage, just click on the button and make sure everything is green, if it hits yellow start upgrading ect.

You will find if you let your city grow slowly and upgrade as it's need everything will become a lot easier to manage.

And yes, if you are playing in a region with other people, check the needs of that region and build based on that... you will f*** up everyone elses time if you just go in willy nilly and start building what ever.

When playing with another region do use there power and water, it starts off pretty cheap if will give you plenty of cash to get your emergency services in place (which will be the first thing that you really need).

If your having traffic problems choose the time of day when to expand and expand slowly... A mass amount of trucks moving citizens in will f*** your day, if you decide to expand at 6am for example, things will just get ugly.

If you need a big cash boost raise taxes to 20% for 2 in game hours, depending on your pop of course, this will give you a big increase in cash without seriously impacting sims mood, this is a much better alternative then bonds.

Stay away from tech unless your sims are educated and you have the hazmat addon to the fire station (your day will not be fun).

You don't need to spend big to get your sims mood up, lower taxes to 8% and they will soon start building UP! parks are good and all, but instead of using them to increase happiness directly, use them to fight crime, or improve areas that are of low land value for pollution reasons ect,


I have no magic tricks for trafic congestion short of build less intersections, don't be affraid to remove roads and change things up, sure its annoying todo but its necessary, you can't effectivley future proof 100% so expect it to happen.

Using these tips i can build a pretty sizable city of 100k sims really easily, its around that mark that i need to change alot of things and i will rely on other people in my region to help with power and water...ect


Oh one other tip, say you want to do over, but you don't want to abondon your city... once again raise taxes but for a lot longer, then delete delete delete... this will give you a huge starting bonus and an empty city... don't use bonds or else you are already starting out with a debt.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 02:16pm 13/3/13
I disagree on the bonds, if your city is busting out $4,000/hr and you want to build big shiny things, getting a $100,000 bond only makes you pay around 300/hr in repayments, income easily absorbs that.

The same goes when building up your city from the start. The amount you pay back your bonds pails compared to the extra tax income you get from all those extra zones you plopped, plus the ability to quickly plop utilities and services.
TicMan
Posted 02:17pm 13/3/13
So here is the summary of McTiccles.

- I have about 8.5mil in the bank. A deficit of -70k/hr but my electronics processing pulls in phat staxs, about 1.5mil/month.
- Population is >= 80% happiness and sitting around 105k
- At a a guess my zoning is about 80% residential, 15% commercial and the rest is utilities.
- I started the Arcology great work and last night had sent the first lot of materials to it.

My biggest tip for traffic is to look at it like the game pathing is not broken, instead the agents don't have the capacity, like humans, to think of alternative routes. Instead they just bank up and up and up and cause the traffic jams. The number one things that cause traffic jams are traffic lights.

At the entrance to my city I had a 4-way intersection with a high density avenue and traffic both ways was backed up forever. I demolished that and made a curved (coal mine in the way) high density avenue all the way into the guts of my town. I removed all crossroads and traffic is now free flowing.

So next problem is traffic jams in the city. My city is a grid square with the outside a high density avenue. Crossing across is high density roads. This wasn't working at all, instead the guys would jam up one corner of the map as they were trying to get to the tourist areas and university in that part.

To fix that, I basically removed the last street tile of each crossing high density road - now the avenues have no traffic lights. The agents are now forced to go around the city, on the high density avenue, and they then exit the high density roads near the tourist areas and universities.

My biggest flaw was thinking intersections and high density everything was the answer. You have to mix medium & high roads with the avenues to create good traffic flow. Also destroy half your bus stops and strategically place them along a route you want the bus to take, make sure that they are on high density roads/avenues so when they stop they don't block traffic behind.



If they can't get leaderboards working, then I honestly can't see that feature being enabled at the moment, at least as the game describes it.


This is how I make money! Fat lots of money :) Creating processors from the plastic in the recycling center and alloy from my smelter is an easy way to kick start your profit. Once you have that factory pumping along, you can then go into making computers and TVs which just cause ridiculous amounts of profit. I've now destroyed my smelters and am relying on imported alloy and still make a lot of cash.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 02:20pm 13/3/13
Also there is a trick that enables you to build overpasses. It is a bit convoluted and can be expensive, however the end result seems very useful indeed. Why not have overpasses as an option I don't know..
groganus
Posted 02:25pm 13/3/13
If they add stuff like overpasses ect as DLC I will be pretty upset, but the only reason I can think they excluded them was to add them as DLC later on....

This is how I make money! Fat lots of money :) Creating processors from the plastic in the recycling center and alloy from my smelter is an easy way to kick start your profit. Once you have that factory pumping along, you can then go into making computers and TVs which just cause ridiculous amounts of profit. I've now destroyed my smelters and am relying on imported alloy and still make a lot of cash.


Pretty much the only way to make huge cash is with trade, Computers and TV are flavor of the month, but fuel is also profitable.

It's very much worth nothing, that if your region lacks resources there is nothing stopping you from using the global market from importing what you need and building from there... one thing you can't really do is import low and export high...
TicMan
Posted 02:29pm 13/3/13
I think it's an effect of the global market not functioning correctly. Instead of having fixed prices it should be player driven. Instead Maxis just assigned a price so the components to build are less than the built component to sell - winning!
reload!
Posted 02:50pm 13/3/13
not being able to sell basic freight s**** me to tears. the other infuriating thing is having factories close due to having nowhere to ship freight when there is an empty freight depot next door.
on the surface everything seemed to be more or less working on release it is becoming increasingly obvious how outrageously broken some aspects of the game are. beats the f*** out of me what they actually tuned in the beta stage.
TicMan
Posted 02:54pm 13/3/13
I've had timing problems with the trade depot (ie: full cargo stores and gear not moving) but eventually all the goods move through it. Check where your delivery trucks are, where they are going and if you have enough to get around all the industry for collection?
TiT
Posted 02:55pm 13/3/13
so curious, is it fine to go from no schools to a Uni?
reload!
Posted 02:55pm 13/3/13
and yeah, completely f***ed traffic ai aside, the lack of road options is ridiculous too. the fact you could have one way roads in simcity 2000 and not here makes no sense to me.
groganus
Posted 02:56pm 13/3/13
I think the global market is functioning exactly how it should, it just suffers from delay due to server lag. In fact i remember reading somewhere (i think reddit) where maxis said that they values on the global market will only fluctuate 5% either way.

This doesn't overly bother me, I think a more involved global market would distract players from the city building/management side of things.

I believe trade ports ect are designed as a way to assist in exporting/importing faster.. which makes sense, as from what i saw on the leader boards it was all about these related values.
groganus
Posted 03:01pm 13/3/13
so curious, is it fine to go from no schools to a Uni?


From my experience schooling is better off as upgrading as you go, or else attendance will be low.

Students are of varying ages, so you will get some attendance, but it will be maximized if you have a school, high school, then uni/community college.

Also note the community college works the same way as a university, it will educate adult sims, and it's quite cheap, if you are looking at research though to unlock things a univerisity is required (and it will cost you a lot more to run).
TiT
Posted 03:53pm 13/3/13
I was reading groganus that if you have high school you can demolish the primary school
groganus
Posted 04:17pm 13/3/13
I haven't tried removing a primary school after placing a high school, but it would be worth checking out.

Check attendance of primary school, place high school, remove primary, check attendance of high school, check education level of city.
Eorl
Posted 04:23pm 13/3/13
You can have just the university if you so please, apparently the game doesn't discriminate on age or education level.
Inept
Posted 05:13pm 13/3/13
When I upgraded from a trade depot to trade port and got the appropriate storage facilities for it, man did I get a surprise when I set up my imports. If you're importing goods into your trade port, it will keep importing goods until the storage is full, so make sure you have the initial outlay for that. I looked off my screen for 30 seconds and it had eaten like 1M and left me with 100k (god alloy is expensive to import).
WetWired
Posted 07:08pm 13/3/13
No. I skipped all schools completely and went straight to uni. No one was using it I had like 3 people a day using it. I now have a school and I have maxed out my unis dorms that I have at 1300
Eorl
Posted 07:28pm 13/3/13
No. I skipped all schools completely and went straight to uni. No one was using it I had like 3 people a day using it. I now have a school and I have maxed out my unis dorms that I have at 1300
Hmmm, maybe you require at least lower grade school level citizens to go into a uni? Where was the uni actually placed though?
WetWired
Posted 07:35pm 13/3/13
Hmmm, maybe you require at least lower grade school level citizens to go into a uni? Where was the uni actually placed though?

Right in the middle of residential
eski
Posted 07:40pm 13/3/13
you only have a certain number of students in town, perhaps the students were already attending another school?
reload!
Posted 08:23pm 13/3/13
Started a new town with no schools and built a community college when pop was ~10-15k, had 1000 students within days.
Thundercracker
Posted 08:34pm 13/3/13
http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9345736.page says


Q: Education is expensive. How should I go about this?
A: One set of extra schoolrooms is enough in the grade school to be able to unlock the tier 2 education facility. Once you gain the high school, you can close down and demolish the grade school; same with the high school to tier 3 upgrade to university. The game doesn't discriminate the age of sims, just wealth class, so by this time your sims will have progressed to the higher wealth tiers. You should only need one wing of dormitories for your university. Once maximum education and tech buildings have been reached, you should power this building down for later use.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 09:20pm 13/3/13
All my schools fill up very quickly, I'm also usually importing students from neighboring regions. I have full school buses and pepper my residential area with school bus stops. I guess some of these go off to other regions and pick up students.

MY University filled to 1000 the first day it was running, there was a huge need for it. Then almost all my industry in the same city is lvl 3 Tech, sending freight to the magical blackholes and making money. I wan't a business like that, the hardest part is making one of those mini-black holes..
Monkeez
Posted 11:42pm 13/3/13
Trying to do that unlimited water trick and this dips*** keeps coming up saying that people are getting sick, either place a new one on clean water or invest in a filtration system. I already have a god damned filtration system! People are getting sick though, NFI.
TicMan
Posted 11:46pm 13/3/13
Did you remove the default basic pump? I had the same problem until I noticed that..

Really struggling to crack 100k pop even with 0% taxes. I'm guessing a pure residential/commercial city isn't possible :(
reload!
Posted 11:51pm 13/3/13
did you delete the basic pump that comes with the building?
lots of utilities with upgradeable modules come with the basic unit and you add additional upgrades. edit the pump station and then bulldoze the basic pump, replace with a filtered module.
reload!
Posted 11:54pm 13/3/13
heh, yeah tic this was a big moment for me when I realised you could do that :p
same goes for things like wind or solar plants, delete the basic starting one and have all upgraded modules.

what I wouldn't give for a ctrl-z feature in this game.. the number of times I've wasted 60k+ f*****g up the placement of something that I have absolutely no choice but to redo... rargh!
Monkeez
Posted 12:54am 14/3/13
Nah, didn't know you could do that. It seems like the problem has sorted itself more but I'll delete the basic pump if it starts happening again.

The limited space thing is starting to annoy me. It doesn't take long at all to fill it up and when that happens your options become much more limited. I think an ideal size would be twice the length and width, so four times the surface area; it would allow for much more creative city design and planning.
TiT
Posted 10:22am 14/3/13
Little Tip. THe HQ for metal, oil, trading etc. still work and can be upgraded even if turned off so you can save money.

Also has anyone done oil mining? Ive got 3 of them pumping and i cant get the first milestone with the HQ anyone else have? also how many process factories do you need to have to make heaps of money?
TiT
Posted 10:26am 14/3/13
Did you remove the default basic pump? I had the same problem until I noticed that..Really struggling to crack 100k pop even with 0% taxes. I'm guessing a pure residential/commercial city isn't possible :(


Ive had 200k with that many people, make sure you upgrade your mansion etc that how land value goes up
TicMan
Posted 10:28am 14/3/13
Is the milestone the same as electronics, which is a daily profit? What I did was stop exporting for a day, let all the cargo warehouses fill up and then when the game clicked over at midnight opened it back up for sale. It was the only way I could get my electronics to turn over the needed money for upgrade.

I made enough profit with one processor factory however at the time I was creating my own plastics (recycling) and alloy (smelting). I had a coal and ore refinery for the smelting so didn't have to import.

Now I have 2 processor factories, one TV factory and one computer factory and import all the materials (recycling contributes about 3-4000 when I use something like 30,000 daily). This generates enough income where I don't even worry about plopping down a computer factory, realising it's in the wrong spot and demolishing it .. the money earned is utterly stupid!
Tollaz0r!
Posted 02:45pm 14/3/13
Well I'm going to ratchet my tax rate on Toll's Exchange to 20%, get lots of cash and drive everyone away and start that city-a-new. It has significant traffic issues at only 20k residents and now I'm armed with much better knowledge of the roads system. >:D
eski
Posted 04:48pm 14/3/13
The big money making factories that you can place feel really out of character for the series. The way they directly generate resources rather than adding to the city budget make the game feel a) like an RTS and b) like some sort of socialist paradise where all the industry is owned by the state, very much at odds with the economies of the previous games.

Ive managed to make a single city, the only one in the region, convert it all to high tech, high wealth, built a bunch of processor/electronics factories and the money is rolling in. Its just plain grids, but there is pretty much no traffic even with 150K pop. High wealth must not generate traffic, I had far worse traffic at 50K pop.

Kinda over this game , I dont see any reason to keep playing. Every city I make ends up the same. It feels like a shallow imitation of Simcity that is much more focused on being a game, and less about simulation.
groganus
Posted 04:09pm 14/3/13
Yeah, I believe they would of added far greater challenge if they had randomly generated terrain and resource placement. Instead we have these very generic maps and an easy instant win.

Whats probably annoying me most about the game is that it has some serious flaws from bugs to imbalances and the dev's have acknowledge s*** all about them...

Ignoring the launch problems (which personally never affected me).. the game is broken, some of this s*** would of been discovered if there stupid beta wasn't limited by an hour.

Also I hope websites re-think there policy on reviewing a game based on the pre-launch experience, as I bought this game based on reviews and it sold it to me pretty strong (Ausgamers included) and whilst most of my disappointment is directed towards EA and Maxis I do feel slightly cheated by the review sites in which I trust the opinions of.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 04:47pm 14/3/13
I think the main issue regarding challenge is how Industry and Commerce are not strongly linked.

It should not be possible to build up a commercial/residence city with no method of receiving freight. Nor should you be able to run industry/residence without having somewhere REAL to send you freight.

I can see what maxis is attempting to do and really hope they get there soon.
I want to see the global supply/demand for all freight to respond to the changes in the server. Including basic freight. It may even be doing that, however without being able to look that information up DURING CITY play it is hard to respond to.

My industry/residence city is going gang-busters, 20K population bringing in $10,000/hr. All my freight goes into Depot's to disappear, presumably to the 'global market' Now in my region there is very large demand for industry across many cities, however I export none of my industry directly to them. I would imagine regions across the server are similar, LOTS of demand for freight. So global demand for freight would be very high.

The global import/export makes it super easy mode to do anything. It almost negates needing neighbor cities. The global supply/demand should be both more expensive to buy from and take longer to send/receive goods. Thus making import/export to neighbor cities far more important. It would also make pure residential or RC/ RI cities only work if the region supported it...
eski
Posted 04:56pm 14/3/13
As a simulation it's a joke.

I do feel slightly cheated by the review sites in which I trust the opinions of.


Yeah, it bothered me that Trog was suggesting we vote with our money, all the while hosting a massive buy recommendation for a broken game.
Monkeez
Posted 04:55pm 14/3/13
Yeah, once you get a good city set up and you're bringing in lots of money there isn't really much else to do.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 05:00pm 14/3/13
It's such an easy fix, with presumably far reaching effects.

Each dwelling/apartment should require rent/mortgage to be paid. If the Sims don't have any cash they eventually get kicked out. Thus a Sim MUST have a source of income otherwise cities can't go very much.

It already tracks cash flow so why not do that. Perhaps it will be patched in.

However a full Residence city with no supporting cities in the region should NOT be able to grow like that.
Eorl
Posted 05:08pm 14/3/13
According to the SimCity Reddit, people are already figuring out the modding capabilities which should make things interesting. Apparently it also uses similar modding tools to The Sims 3 which should hopefully speed things up.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 06:11pm 14/3/13
Whilst modding it would be cool. How do you get that to work with Regional Cities? Unless we can run modded Servers, modding SimCity 5 what accomplish much.

I really do like the concept they have going, it just needs tweaking.

It really seems the game wasn't completed yet, maybe 85% game logic, art/sound assets at 99%. As far as EA was concerned it was playable and releasable. Hopefully Maxis is working on patching in the rest of the functionality, so more logical interaction between C and I and requirement for R to have money.

I really don't mind how there are no real Sims, it is more about the buildings. As far as the building is concerned as long as someone paid rent on time it is all good.

If residence were required to pay rent/mortgage it would require that industry employ them and industry receive its money (some of which flows to the resident houses) from commercial who in turn receive it from sims, a big circle. Mining would be the beginning of the region cities to generate money to be fed into the ICR cycle.
Throw in the global market to alter where cash goes/come at a macro level and the game would be much more interesting and dynamic..
Tollaz0r!
Posted 06:13pm 14/3/13
So really the bottom line with what is wrong with SimCity is that Cash doesn't seem to have an impact on the game.

Cash should be the main driver for increasing density, along with happiness to modulate it.

At the moment, happiness is the driver for density and in a way happiness generates money. ???? WTF
es
Posted 08:19pm 14/3/13
Raven
Posted 08:57pm 14/3/13
Regarding the whole 100% residential cities not needing any commerce or industry, maybe they're selling people as slave labour? That would have both the commerce and workers covered...
WetWired
Posted 09:27am 15/3/13
Is anyone else experiencing massive income fluctuations? During the course of a day I can go from a +3000 income to a - 10000 deficit which cripples me as I turn s*** off to compensate.
infi
Posted 01:07am 16/3/13
Finally been getting into this. The only word of advice I can offer that hasn't been discussed already is: leave plenty of room around your government buildings. I have gotten into the habit of making government precincts even so that these buildings have plenty of room for expansion. Same goes for utilities. Fun game. Add me on origin infi_XD
TicMan
Posted 08:26am 16/3/13
So McTiccles had a pop of about 80,000 all high wealth and land value was high. The population was not increasing at all. After asking around on Reddit it looks like high wealth buildings don't accomodate as many sims as the low wealth slums.

So I demolished all the residential, took out all the parks and things that increase wealth and after 10 minutes the population was a tad under 200k.

My goal for a city was to have a no industrial, high wealth and high population but it seems like you can't achieve the population part of it.

In other news, the Balls Deep arcology is almost finished phase 1!
infi
Posted 05:25pm 17/3/13
With the the university, if the first upgrade comes at 1000 students but the uni's opening capacity is 800 how do you get to the first unlock level?
Eorl
Posted 08:53pm 17/3/13
Just keeps getting better, apparently even the region-wide online gameplay can be done in an offline mode now. Will be interesting to see if a full offline mode can be done via mods.

So far I'm enjoying it still, started a new region in that very flat wooded area, building a new Gotham 2.0 and trying out some different road designs in sandbox. Its definitely more effective to plan out where your roads are going to be instead of doing it on a whim, less traffic congestion until they fix it.
kos
Posted 10:11pm 17/3/13
With the the university, if the first upgrade comes at 1000 students but the uni's opening capacity is 800 how do you get to the first unlock level?

The upgrade comes at 1000 students in a day, the University has 4 class periods per day which can all be up to and a little bit over the University's capacity.
ravn0s
Posted 09:25am 18/3/13
something for you guys to look forward to.

Tollaz0r!
Posted 09:52am 18/3/13
Yer that has me a bit worried.

I can understand F2P games having in-game stores were you can by one of buildings or whatever (I personally don't like that and don't play those games), however a fully paid up front game like SimCity should not have these micro-transactions in them with game changing effects, or really cosmetic ones.
Expansions packs, cool. DLC not as cool, but if they have enough content for the $'s, cool. Single building micro transactions, NOT COOL.
eski
Posted 10:48am 18/3/13
Haha, that's the reason for all this always online stuff. I bet that you wont be able to get that free game without at least having to see an ad or two for their DLC.
arkter
Posted 12:35pm 18/3/13
Yeah, once you get a good city set up and you're bringing in lots of money there isn't really much else to do.


Yeah I am finding this too, I have a city that runs at -70k/hr but is making well over 5mil a day from TVs... I walked away from the city and did some work on the yard, came back a few hours later having made close to 60mil without a problem... entirely self sustainable. Only thing that happened was an earthquake that destroyed my police station.. but it still kept working anyway? weird.

I am now just gifting money to new cities and buggering around with cool designs and building all the great works things- I think that is going to wear off quickly though.
eski
Posted 01:16pm 18/3/13
The last two times I've played have resulted in the city processing error and rollbacks to the save I had when I started, ie, my last two play sessions have resulted in zero progress.

Is Steve working on a piece about this? He is yet to comment on his review and seems oddly silent when there is so much here that bears discussion.
WetWired
Posted 01:30pm 18/3/13
is anyone else on the Antarctica server unable to load their cities? like eski I've had a lot of issues with rollback and now I can't even load my city, it either fails to load with a warning or sits on the load screen for 10 mins before I kill it.
TiT
Posted 03:19pm 18/3/13
ive given up on this game until they fix the bugs, i cant make enough money as my delievery trucks keep getting stuck with traffic, maybe i doing it all to fast
Raven
Posted 03:21pm 18/3/13
is anyone else on the Antarctica server unable to load their cities? like eski I've had a lot of issues with rollback and now I can't even load my city, it either fails to load with a warning or sits on the load screen for 10 mins before I kill it.

Not on Antarctica server, but down here in Melbourne today may as well be in Antarctica.
kos
Posted 07:54am 19/3/13
EA's announced the free games SimCity purchasers can choose from. It's a pretty uninspiring list, but still better than I was expecting them to offer.

Which games are available?
Battlefield 3 (Standard Edition)
Bejeweled 3
Dead Space 3 (Standard Edition)
Mass Effect 3 (Standard Edition)
MOHW (Standard Edition)
NFS Most Wanted (Standard Edition)
Plants vs. Zombies
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition


More info about it all here: https://help.ea.com/article/simcity-something-extra
paveway
Posted 07:55am 19/3/13
dead space 3 - nice
Eorl
Posted 09:12am 19/3/13
Do not get Medal of Honor. It is a dead game with no support what-so-ever, which is a shame because it had such great potential. Oh man Plants vs Zombies!
WetWired
Posted 09:28am 19/3/13
Dead space 3 for me
Tollaz0r!
Posted 09:29am 19/3/13
What server is everyone playing on?

I really hate the in-game friends thing. Origin, will say Blah is playing SimCity but it doesn't say what server. You jump into a SimCity server only to have 0 friends playing.



I find this game no challenge at all, well apart from having well flowing traffic. It is just wayyyyyyyy to easy to make money and pretty much any city combination grows.

My latest city I'm focusing on building Medium and High Wealth workers that commute to other cities that need them, so it is about 80% residential with a corner that is mining Coal and recycling to pay the bills, and then some.

I totally ignore the RCI bars as they are totally broken. For instance my city has zero demand for commercial, yet my commercial is doing just fine and any commercial zone I plop down gets filled almost instantly.

Sims really need to pay Rent, after taxes. That would make a huge difference I think, as you would really have to make sure your sims are earning enough from your city/region otherwise it just wont grow.

The game is just plain too easy.
Monkeez
Posted 10:12am 19/3/13
Think I'm going to have to choose Dead Space 3 too.
trog
Posted 10:19am 19/3/13
Yeah, it bothered me that Trog was suggesting we vote with our money, all the while hosting a massive buy recommendation for a broken game.
... he said, in a thread with 400 comments mostly people talking about how much fun they're having playing the game
WetWired
Posted 10:21am 19/3/13
We have a region called Dirty Delta on Antarctica server
trog
Posted 10:22am 19/3/13
You know what I would want if I'd bought this game and was pissed about the issues? FREE GODDAMN DLC. Give me more content for the game that I'm f*****g playing, don't palm off a bunch of older games that I might not even care about.
Monkeez
Posted 10:37am 19/3/13
You know what I would want if I'd bought this game and was pissed about the issues? FREE GODDAMN DLC. Give me more content for the game that I'm f*****g playing, don't palm off a bunch of older games that I might not even care about.

Yes, getting free DLC would be more ideal. I think the base game is fun but lacks depth; it's quite easy to lose interest quickly. This could be remedied with significant gameplay altering DLC, though I'm not sure I'd pay for any as I think the $70 I paid for this game should be giving me more features to start off with.

I don't know the source of that image of the microtransactions, but the $14.99 for a ship kind of worries me.
eski
Posted 10:50am 19/3/13
Wow, thats not a bad list of games.

EA CEO has stepped down.

he said, in a thread with 400 comments mostly people talking about how much fun they're having playing the game


To be fair, about 10% of those are me yelling about stuff.
arkter
Posted 10:42am 19/3/13
I don't know the source of that image of the microtransactions, but the $14.99 for a ship kind of worries me.


Think of the extra tourists though!
Raven
Posted 11:17am 19/3/13
I've never played a Mass Effect game before. Worth wasting my credit on, or should I just get SC4 deluxe?
ravn0s
Posted 11:38am 19/3/13
it's best to have played the first 2 mass effects, so i suggest getting a diff game.
Thundercracker
Posted 12:47pm 19/3/13
I already own most of those games lol. That'll learn me.
infi
Posted 03:36pm 19/3/13
The last two times I've played have resulted in the city processing error and rollbacks to the save I had when I started, ie, my last two play sessions have resulted in zero progress.


ditto, it's driving me up the wall!
WetWired
Posted 08:19pm 19/3/13
I can't load my city and when I view it on the dirty delta region we've been playing on in the region view it shows up empty with no buildings :(
koopz
Posted 09:24am 20/3/13
the game is still sitting here in it's box waiting for this to be fixed.

didn't someone come up with an offline mode hack yet?
Thundercracker
Posted 12:15pm 20/3/13
There is a hack, but you can't save your game.
TiT
Posted 06:43pm 20/3/13
i dont know what game to get Dead space 3 or mass effect 3 or need for speed most wanted???
groganus
Posted 07:34pm 20/3/13
I got NFS:MW i have an issue with accepting a game that's part of a series...

Anyway, new patch today which i'm about to give a whirl....

Want to know about the most recent updates to SimCity? Keep checking back for patch updates!

Update 3/18/2013 - Update 1.7

General:
All units and buildings can now be demolished using the bulldoze tool.
Performance improvements for low spec systems.

Traffic Improvements:
Tuned traffic congestion and fixed some intersection traffic issues.
Emergency Vehicles will drive in empty lanes to get around traffic at intersections.
Emergency and Delivery vehicles get priority over regular traffic when leaving garage.

Server:
New Server will be added this afternoon (PDT): Asia 2!<?quote>
https://help.ea.com/article/simcity-patch-notes
Tollaz0r!
Posted 08:04pm 20/3/13
So they fixed the traffic problem, which ironically is/was the only real challenge of the game.

So now there is no challenge. I hope they certainly sort that out.


Not sure which game to get, I'm thinking of Dead Space 3, of NFS:MW. IS NFS any good?
Obes
Posted 09:38pm 20/3/13
This game is s*** compared to it's ancestors.

Khel should give it 12 out of 10.
TiT
Posted 09:54pm 20/3/13
So its out of dead space or Need For Speed
TiT
Posted 05:37pm 21/3/13
Leaning towards Need for speed many people play this online?
arkter
Posted 05:41pm 21/3/13
Glad the traffic is fixed, but I feel like they added 100 more bugs in the process... now all of my cities are effectively useless as my cash hub city is kaput. Trade Port won't import or export anything... tried demolish and rebuilding etc and still no joy. Casinos are still bugged to hell as well lol. Hopefully they hotfix this.
Obes
Posted 09:08pm 21/3/13
The only way to hotfix this game is called Sorbent.
Eorl
Posted 11:50pm 21/3/13
Grabbed Dead Space 3, enjoyed the other two in the series so give this one a whirl.
3x0dus
Posted 12:13pm 23/3/13
can i get an invite if there is spare spots : sud0x
Mordecai
Posted 02:01pm 23/3/13
Had a fire last night right across from my fire station. Trucks went out on to the street, up the road to the intersection, did a u turn, back down the road, past the place that was on fire, took a right, went to the intersection, did another u turn to finally get to the right place. What a convoluted way of getting there.
TiT
Posted 02:21pm 23/3/13
i think i might be doing something wrong only have populations of 200k and only have streetcar roads everywhere still massive amounts of traffic, i have 2 double decker bus stations and full street cars happening :(
eski
Posted 02:23pm 23/3/13
Build another streetcar depot?
paveway
Posted 09:59am 24/3/13
is it just me or is there something broken with this whole system pretty much lol

industrial needs unskilled workers -> the only way to grow your city to get like 200k population is to increase density across the whole area pretty much -> increasing density requires you to increase property value which attracts high wealth skilled workers -> industry goes out of business because there isn't any unskilled low wealth workers left
groganus
Posted 10:28am 24/3/13
Yes, the system is incredibly broken,

You can increase low wealth density by decreasing taxes rather then placing parks...

But the game still lacks an incredible amount of balance.
paveway
Posted 10:37am 24/3/13
also I just witnessed something hilarious then

a fire alert pops up that there is a hazmat fire in one of the industrial buildings, so I look over at my hazmat fire truck and sure enough he pops out so i'm like sweet - he drives over the other side of the city to a low income house that is also on fire, stops at the house for less than a second and then drives off back to the fire station and both the house and the industrial building proceed to burning down completely

winning
TicMan
Posted 11:00am 24/3/13

increasing density requires you to increase property value which attracts high wealth skilled workers


I thought density is related to happiness. If you increase property value, you increase the wealth of the sims. The problem is that high wealth sims don't build high population buildings. A high density low wealth building will have more population than a high density high wealth building.

I confirmed this as my city was about 80k with all high wealth people. I destroyed all the things that increased land value (parks, etc) and watched all the bogans and derros move in. My population is now about 220k.
Raven
Posted 11:11am 24/3/13
Yeah, density and wealth are two distinct variables, it just seems easier to get high-wealth high-rises. Just because something is high-rise doesn't mean anything about the wealth. High-wealth high-rises (and all buildings) have different designs to their low-wealth counterparts - which are typically higher density. So a 50 floor 4x4 high-wealth might have half as many citizens.
Raven
Posted 01:16pm 25/3/13
Dear Maxis,

Why are my sims so stupid, and so incredibly lazy?

I don't know about you, but I walked 1km to primary school, and 3km to high school. Every day. For six-seven years of each.
Can you please explain to me why it is that basically none of my sims are willing to walk greater than a distance of about 10 houses before they give up on any hope of education? And why, oh why, must they require busses to get to school - and school busses at that? Is it so inconceivable that a child might take another public transport system to get to or from school?

Similarly, can you explain sims complete disdain for highways? I get that there's this two-lane regular street right there that is more direct, but have you actually ever done that in practice? Taken small roads that constantly cross major roads, rather than using a parallel major road or highway? It would seem this is the preferred choice of sims. Here in Melbourne, a good example of this is the Western Ring Road, which is a 5km longer router (5.5 vs 11km) than taking another main road, but it's still quicker. This seems to be something which never occurs in Sim City.

Further, on what planet does a city of 150,000 require 50-floor high-rise buildings? My local council, at last census, had 154,000 residents. We also have planning restrictions that only allow three story buildings with special conditions - yet skyscrapers seem to be a common occurance, and requirement, for any Sim City to reach such populations.


May I suggest that your Sims are idiots, and that zombies might produce a more functional society?

Sincerely,
A frustrated player.
infi
Posted 01:19pm 25/3/13
the mechanics of this game are definitely not right. needs a lot more tweaking. and i enjoyed the old elevated highways with onramps. it's not so fun without them.
arkter
Posted 01:19pm 25/3/13
^ count your blessings that those are your biggest problems in the game lol
Raven
Posted 01:28pm 25/3/13
and i enjoyed the old elevated highways with onramps. it's not so fun without them.

Yeah, and WTF is with only being able to build expensive or high-volume residential on a multi-lane road? That's just asking for both traffic chaos and accidents.
Tollaz0r!
Posted 01:38pm 25/3/13
I've got my pre-patch traffic under control. I had to use dodgy tricks to create overpasses, however by doing that I had much better control of in/out points onto my major highways. This made a huge difference, it looks ugly as hell as well, but it works.

I haven't really played post-traffic-patch because I'm scared that the MASSIVE-SUPER-EASY-MODE that is SimCity 2013 will provide absolutely no challenge. As I said earlier, the only challenge in this game was managing your traffic when you got big cities and only because the traffic system was broken.

So now there is practically no challenge.
infi
Posted 02:10pm 25/3/13
There is heaps of challenge once your city goes over 120k imo, as the cost of services bleeds me dry.
arkter
Posted 02:36pm 25/3/13
There is heaps of challenge once your city goes over 120k imo, as the cost of services bleeds me dry.

Recycling center > export alloy and plastics, then use them + import material to make tvs once you have the trade HQ upgrades - enjoy infinite money and no challenge at all.
TiT
Posted 03:38pm 25/3/13
my problem is i cant export fast enough as my trucks are stuck in traffic for days
arkter
Posted 04:20pm 25/3/13
my problem is i cant export fast enough as my trucks are stuck in traffic for days


Yep - I think it's a bug. My city was making millions every day until 1.7 "fixed" traffic problems.

TicMan
Posted 09:11pm 25/3/13

Yeah, and WTF is with only being able to build expensive or high-volume residential on a multi-lane road? That's just asking for both traffic chaos and accidents.


Don't zone on your avenues. Zone on the opposite road so the entrances to those buildings aren't on the avenue and traffic entering/exiting won't f*** it all up.
paveway
Posted 09:26pm 25/3/13
thing that is also pissing me off is the origin friend list thing in game shows a completely different thing to the out of game origin list

so where is everyone playing these days? what server?
3x0dus
Posted 10:08pm 25/3/13
Struggling with population issues, how long is it taking people to get 200k pops?
infi
Posted 12:09pm 26/3/13
Dear Maxis,

Why are my sims so stupid, and so incredibly lazy?


I tracked some of my sims last night and one idiot went around the block 5 times before getting fired. She only had herself to blame.
TiT
Posted 12:23pm 26/3/13
Struggling with population issues, how long is it taking people to get 200k pops?


normally just over 1 hour, once you have approval raiting of 75% and create Manor for Mayor its just keeps jumping up and up
Hogfather
Posted 12:26pm 26/3/13
I tracked some of my sims last night and one idiot went around the block 5 times before getting fired. She only had herself to blame.

haha
Raven
Posted 12:13pm 28/3/13
I was pretty confident that when Yahzee got around to doing a review on Sim City he was going to tear it a new a******.
I was surprisingly wrong.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/7053-SimCity

Yeah, he went way beyond that benchmark.
Dazhel
Posted 12:42pm 28/3/13
This is why I love Yahtzee's reviews.
If a game is good or a development studio succeeds at trying new or interesting things it'll receive moderate praise while at the same time pointing out some of the bad bits. If a game is s*** or the devs/publisher try to get away with serving a turd on a silver platter he'll go off at it (and rightly so).
paveway
Posted 01:28pm 28/3/13
who is still playing here? and what server are you playing on?

i want to play with other people as i can't be f***ed building multiple cities just to be able to survive and i start public games but no one ever joins i suspect because the game finder is completely munted and i can't ever find any regions that aren't full on it
Raven
Posted 02:11pm 28/3/13
Unless there's already one created, I might set up a new region on O1 tonight for us people here.
I shall call him... Ausgamia.
paveway
Posted 02:14pm 28/3/13
balls deep was the last one i know of and it died in the ass after a few days - that was early on though
Hogfather
Posted 02:21pm 28/3/13
Claiming a spot on Ausgamia
Strik3r
Posted 02:24pm 28/3/13
I'll take a spot too !
TicMan
Posted 02:43pm 28/3/13
I'm still going in Ballsdeep, my city is charging along! But I'll start a new one in new region. Send me an invite pave!
Hogfather
Posted 02:55pm 28/3/13
If you don't already have me on loligin I think I'm HogfatherAU
Tollaz0r!
Posted 03:24pm 28/3/13
I join Ausgamia, I got the s**** with trying to find where everyone is playing and just stopped.
Raven
Posted 03:44pm 28/3/13
I think the issue with BD was that it was on another server some CBF switching to?

If you all want to PM me a username, I'll send you details/invites when I get home.
Strik3r
Posted 03:55pm 28/3/13
I can't get on O1 atm - server full =o
paveway
Posted 06:02pm 28/3/13
add me on origin if you haven't raven: paveway-3

Hogfather
Posted 08:05pm 28/3/13
O1 is full WTF is this bloody region we're sposed to be playing on
ravn0s
Posted 09:10pm 28/3/13
paveway
Posted 01:10pm 29/3/13
so pick another server go oceanic 2 or something
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