official SimCity (2013)

[PGHammer]

Quick question for SC2013 vets; what happens to private regions/towns you abandon? Are they gone forever or do they turn into "ghost" regions that no one can ever claim?

Gone forever.  You have to rebuild them as new private regions or towns.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Gone forever.  You have to rebuild them as new private regions or towns.

 

Yeah I did a few tests and came to that conclusion  shortly after posting but thanks for confirming it (Y)

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Update 10 with the offline mode has been released: http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/18/5521838/simcity-offline-mode-released-update-10

[PGHammer]

Update 10 with the offline mode has been released: http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/18/5521838/simcity-offline-mode-released-update-10

Yes - this feature was first confirmed (by Lucy Bradshaw) back with the release of Update 8 (pre-Cities of Tomorrow, in other words).

Because this is a free update, it does NOT require Cities of Tomorrow (sensible, as CoT is ULC that was actually included as part of Update 9), and it will work with it.

I've started my first offline region (yes, you can do whole regions offline) as what I call my Ultimate Offline Sandbox.

[TruckWEB]

Limited region size is still my biggest complain about Simcity...  Offline was never a big problem for me.

[PGHammer]

Limited region size is still my biggest complain about Simcity...  Offline was never a big problem for me.

How big do you need a region to be?

 

A twelve-city region became an opinion with Update 9 - and that is TOO big, for me, that is.  (My biggest private regions are eight cities large - Sandbox or otherwise.  And that is before offline came into play.)

 

Most of the complaints are about CITY size - not region size.  (In fact, regions aren't even an option in previous versions of Sim City - each city existed standalone and separated.)

 

Because of offline, I can now actually do more realistic regional models of real small towns and cities (suburbs, for example).

[Argi]

He probably means city size, something EA still hasn't addressed.

[HawkMan]

consider a region the city and the city a area of the city or what I think you call a "burrough". 

[PGHammer]

That is exactly how I have seen it.

 

I've even pointed out before - in this same thread - that no city started out giant-economy-size in the real world; most cities (even the largest cities extant today) started out with a small core city, that later (as it grew) started "eating" the original suburbs.  (Note that the largest PLANNED city (Brasilia in Brazil - which was a planned national capital) turned out to be a rather large failure as both planned city AND national capital; the national capital today is Rio de Janeiro - which was merely the largest city pre-Brasilia, and wasn't the original capital - THAT honor belonged to La Paz.

[Hurmoth]

He probably means city size, something EA still hasn't addressed.

EA said they won't address it either. 

 

"After months of testing, I confirm that we will not be providing bigger city sizes. The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn?t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities. We?ve tried a number of different approaches to bring performance into an acceptable range, but we just couldn?t achieve it within the confines of the engine. We?ve chosen to cease work on bigger city sizes and put that effort into continuing to evolve the core game and explore an offline mode. Some of the experiments we conducted to improve performance on bigger cities will be rolled into future updates to improve overall game performance. "

 

Source: http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/state-of-simcity

[Lord Method Man]

That is exactly how I have seen it.

 

I've even pointed out before - in this same thread - that no city started out giant-economy-size in the real world; most cities (even the largest cities extant today) started out with a small core city, that later (as it grew) started "eating" the original suburbs.  (Note that the largest PLANNED city (Brasilia in Brazil - which was a planned national capital) turned out to be a rather large failure as both planned city AND national capital; the national capital today is Rio de Janeiro - which was merely the largest city pre-Brasilia, and wasn't the original capital - THAT honor belonged to La Paz.

 

Umm.. when did Rio de Janeiro become the capital of Brazil?

[HawkMan]

Umm.. when did Rio de Janeiro become the capital of Brazil?

 

Before Brasilia :p

[Argi]

EA said they won't address it either. 

 

"After months of testing, I confirm that we will not be providing bigger city sizes. The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn?t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities. We?ve tried a number of different approaches to bring performance into an acceptable range, but we just couldn?t achieve it within the confines of the engine. We?ve chosen to cease work on bigger city sizes and put that effort into continuing to evolve the core game and explore an offline mode. Some of the experiments we conducted to improve performance on bigger cities will be rolled into future updates to improve overall game performance. "

 

Source: http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/state-of-simcity

 

That's their own fault for not having a scalable simulation.  :/

[mdtaUK]

That's their own fault for not having a scalable simulation.  :/

They designed the game to function in a particular way.  An idea they had and executed.

Now users have been asking for new features not originally designed for, and they are moaning about things they want.

 

Come the next version of SimCity they make, no doubt they will keep the feedback in mind and make it more suited to the users' tastes.

[Hurmoth]

They designed the game to function in a particular way.  An idea they had and executed.

Now users have been asking for new features not originally designed for, and they are moaning about things they want.

 

Come the next version of SimCity they make, no doubt they will keep the feedback in mind and make it more suited to the users' tastes.

In other words, EA/Maxis designed a game that a large portion of SimCity fans didn't like because EA/Maxis wanted a more social game, but fans of the classic game wanted more of that classic feel/style.

 

People who pay the pretty penny they do for these games have every right to to "moan".

[TruckWEB]

He probably means city size, something EA still hasn't addressed.

 

Exactly, and playing Simcity 4 or CityXL make it plain evident that the city size is too small.  And I'm not enjoying the region concept.

[DrakeN2k]

A city does not have a population of 200K which is what I managed to get in SimCity. A true city has a population of around 500K+

 

if they want a small map , it should be called Sim Town

[PGHammer]

A city does not have a population of 200K which is what I managed to get in SimCity. A true city has a population of around 500K+

 

if they want a small map , it should be called Sim Town

A city with 500K population is a LARGE city - small cities can have populations under 100K.

 

By your definition, some US state capitals (and I'm not talking about in sparsely populated states) wouldn't qualify as cities.

 

And even at the 200K level, managing a city by your lonesome (which is what Simcity drops on you for a single city) is a real PITA.

 

And CitiesXL - please.  The graphical component of CitiesXL isn't even as good as Sim City 4 Deluxe - without mods.

 

It's not all about the population, and even if it were, have you even any idea how HARD it is to manage a large city (in any of those gtames) and without cheat codes, hacks, etc.?

 

I've managed to get a city up to 140K in Simcity +CoT without either OmegaCo OR cheat codes - and it was a nasty nasty CHORE.  (Even then, I had to do it in Sandbox mode.)

 

My only real complaint about Simcity 2013 (from a mayoral/city management standpoint) is the unrealistically LOW cost of wind power - and I'm not even talking about pollution of any sort, let alone radiation.

 

An even bigger sin (in Sim City 4 - even fully patched), is the non-support of 1920x1080 - let alone anything taller.

[PGHammer]

Before Brasilia :p

And how did even Rio get so big that even IT is bursting at the proverbial seams?

 

It didn't start that way.

[crispkreme]

An even bigger sin (in Sim City 4 - even fully patched), is the non-support of 1920x1080 - let alone anything taller.

 

Huh? I'm running Simcity 4 in 1920x1080 without any mods. Take a look at this: http://www.widescreengaming.net/wiki/SimCity_4

[PGHammer]

Huh? I'm running Simcity 4 in 1920x1080 without any mods. Take a look at this: http://www.widescreengaming.net/wiki/SimCity_4

Technically, it's a hack - not native, and that is indeed the problem.  What is worse is that Sim City 3000 DOES support 1920x1080 - and without requiring that hack.  (I own both games, and both are playable in Windows 8.1 today.)

I have nothing against the older versions of Sim City - if I did, I wouldn't still play them.  However, I'm not so emotionally tied to the older versions that I am unwilling to take on a different (and actually tougher) challenge as far as simulated-city management, as opposed to sticking to the same old thing.

 

That's right, would-be Mayors; despite my peeves about the unrealistically cheap cost of wind power, Simcity is HARDER from a city-management standpoint despite that.  Taxation is a much larger factor in city management than it has been - and it makes sense in terms of realism - how many cities (globally - not just in the United States) have fallen to the woes of fiscal mismanagement?  (CitiesXL is the closest any previous city simulaiton comes - however, even it doesn't give you as much detail as even Simcity's budget menu, let alone the rest of the data layers.)

 

And that is, I would guess, a major part of the lack of attraction of the new Simcity to the "old hands" - it IS harder, not ot mention being different.  It's not honest escapism any more - it is too close to the real thing for a lot of the old hands to be comfortable with.

[revanmj]

EA said they won't address it either.

They also said that offline mode can't be done bacause game won't work without their servers. And yet we recently got an update with offline mode. So EA can change their minds about city size too.

[+mram Subscriber²]

This game desperately needs to pull a "Windows Vista" and just get the newer, better, liked version out NOW.

 

At this point they are desperately trying to fix the glitch.  Bigger city sizes?  We can't do that, but how about TALLER cities!  Uhh... no.   Offline mode?  Sure, but has constraints... sorry, I'm just not buying it.  It's stupid, myopic, selfish coding to fit a framework that only benefits the developer.  End users won't complain about massive cities that bog down their systems.  You know what they'll say?? "Wow, this city is so huge it's bogging down my system!  WOW!"

 

At this rate I expect the next SimCity to have system specs so small it doesn't cause lag on iPads, just "to make the customer experience good".  Screw that.  It's like having a flight simulator on rails -- sometimes you want to crash on purpose.

[Hurmoth]

They also said that offline mode can't be done bacause game won't work without their servers. And yet we recently got an update with offline mode. So EA can change their minds about city size too.

Not going to say it is impossible, but I doubt it'll happen this version. Maybe SimCity (2015). Or they may do a DLC for it, but they're going to want $$$ for it if it is even possible.

 

I tend to believe that it might be a major strain on resources. I have a 2.7GHz i7 with 16GB of RAM, but a fairly crappy Radeon HD 6630M video card and zooming in kills my system with ~100K Sims living in my city. I know this statement would be true for my system, "The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn?t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities."

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Not going to say it is impossible, but I doubt it'll happen this version. Maybe SimCity (2015). Or they may do a DLC for it, but they're going to want $$$ for it if it is even possible.

 

I tend to believe that it might be a major strain on resources. I have a 2.7GHz i7 with 16GB of RAM, but a fairly crappy Radeon HD 6630M video card and zooming in kills my system with ~100K Sims living in my city. I know this statement would be true for my system, "The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn?t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities."

 

I've always suspected they would lock larger cities behind DLC, but I think if they announced that now it would just be asking for trouble, even by EA's standards.