Sim City V

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Brannigans Law

I don't think I'll be even bothering with it when it comes out. The tiny map size is really disapointing and limits what I want to do with this game. What's the point of a city creating sim game when you can make a city that's a super dense central park?

The question is what would you be willing to give up to get bigger cities? They've clearly had to balance depth of simulation with scale so that it works well on current systems.

I'd argue it's going to be more enjoyable to get better and more detailed emergent behaviour from a higher number of simulation elements than a less sophisticated model that allows you to deal with a larger area. Keep in mind - increasing the size of the city plot squares the amount of data and elements you are simulating - it's not a simple 1:1 correlation between CPU requirements and city size - it increases by a power of 2.

Assuming the city size is limited by the available/targeted CPU horsepower for running the simulation, the only feasible way to allow for bigger cities would be to slow down the rate of virtual time, so that you could do more calculations per virtual day/month/year - and I'm willing to bet people want to watch their cities grow at a reasonable pace; this is Simcity, not Civ 6.

Different strokes for different folks - I'm not saying your desire for larger cities is wrong, but at the end of the day, I do think the developers would have put careful consideration into which was more important, and the higher emphasis on simulation fidelity won out, based on the average system requirements they were targeting.

[metallicat]

Well unfortunately the computer has been purchased. I trusted my friends advice, so perhaps he's wrong. I'll get the game and see how it goes. Thanks for the help and the offers though, guys.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

It's not the greatest video card in the world.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php
Not the worst either, but it's certainly down there.

Jesus christ that list is dumb. In what world is a 580 better than a 7970, a 690, or a 590?

Passmark is the worst benchmark.

Anandtechs comparison list is best place to go.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU12/372

[TorqueDog]

^ Great site except it doesn't list oilers_fan's video card, so for the purposes of the discussion, it's useless. No matter which way you look at it, the GT 620 is a lower-end card, which is the point I was making.

oilers_fan, don't worry about it, worst case scenario, you upgrade the power supply and video card in a couple months. [shrug]

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

^ Great site except it doesn't list oilers_fan's video card, so for the purposes of the discussion, it's useless. No matter which way you look at it, the GT 620 is a lower-end card, which is the point I was making.

oilers_fan, don't worry about it, worst case scenario, you upgrade the power supply and video card in a couple months. [shrug]

That's because it barely qualifies as a video card, which is unfortunate.

[Madman]

So Cities XL Platinum was just released on Steam today (85% off for current Cities XL customers). It looks like it's simply new buildings and some bug fixes, but an update none the less.

One key feature listed: "60 gigantic maps"

An obvious dig at the new SC5 maps.

[Kavvy]

sorry if already answered, but what is special about this "Limited Edition"?

http://www.amazon.ca/Electronic-Arts...0211626&sr=8-1

Thanks!

[photon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity...game)#Editions

Just means you get a physical and digital copy. Lame.

[photon]

Is there a limit on the # of regions one can create?

If not then I'm creating as many regions at it will let me, all producing oil, to try and crash the oil economy.

If there is a limit, and oil's a finite resource (which they've said you can buy off the global market if you run out), how do they propose to prevent infinite inflation as the resource becomes more scarce (since people can't just make more regions)?

[metallicat]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

That's because it barely qualifies as a video card, which is unfortunate.

Yikes.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by photon

Is there a limit on the # of regions one can create?

If not then I'm creating as many regions at it will let me, all producing oil, to try and crash the oil economy.

If there is a limit, and oil's a finite resource (which they've said you can buy off the global market if you run out), how do they propose to prevent infinite inflation as the resource becomes more scarce (since people can't just make more regions)?

Viridian Woods has 16 playable areas, 11 of which have oil. So if you want to play as Daniel Plainview that's the region you want.

From Wikipedia: Lead gameplay engineer Dan Moskowitz stated, "If you've built up an entire city on the economic basis of extracting a certain resource, when that resource runs out your economy will collapse."

But this article says, "Since the global market is partially a player-driven economy, Librande is already assuming some users will try to disrupt the market for pleasure and profit. His team is preparing accordingly. Safeguards are being put in place against extreme market manipulation, such as assigning maximum and minimum price ceilings to each commodity. This means the price for any one commodity will not rise above or fall below a predetermined amount, regardless of market trends."

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by oilers_fan

Yikes.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desk...specifications

Here's the scoop: It's basically what they throw in office PCs so they can run dual monitor setups out of the box. It has very minimal processing power, but works great as a media decoder. It uses a max of 30 watts of power, and doesn't use a PCI-E 6 or 8 pin power connector, which means it's so low powered it gets all it's juice from the motherboard.

Now here's the "good" news. According to ASUS's website, it has a whopping 350 watt power supply (greentext, it's tiny).

Basically, with that power supply unit, the best card you could upgrade to is a GTX 640, which pretty much brings you to your power limit. That 640 is $90 after rebate, and generally not recommended. It is significantly better than a 620, but so is a 260 you could buy on kijiji for $50 (but that would need a bigger power supply anyway).

What sucks is all the video cards that will give you acceptable performance (650, 650ti, 7770, etc) at a moderate price point ($120-$150), need a PSU that's just a smidge bigger than a 350 watt (all list a 400 watt minimum). Memex sells an acceptably cheap 430 watt PSU for $45, and an acceptably cheap 500 watt PSU for $60, so to break it down:

A 640 is a $90 upgrade, a 650/7770 @ $120 (7770 is better at the price point) + a 430 watt is ~$165, and a 650ti @ $140 + 430 is ~$185.

No matter how you slice it though, a 620 will be disappointing, especially since you have a quite good CPU.

[metallicat]

I'm incredibly unhappy that I'm already looking to have to upgrade the video card. But I'm not going to do anything yet, I'll be going with what I've got, since its bought and paid for, and see how this game runs. I'll go to my friend with the complaints after that.

[photon]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

But this article says, "Since the global market is partially a player-driven economy, Librande is already assuming some users will try to disrupt the market for pleasure and profit. His team is preparing accordingly. Safeguards are being put in place against extreme market manipulation, such as assigning maximum and minimum price ceilings to each commodity. This means the price for any one commodity will not rise above or fall below a predetermined amount, regardless of market trends."

Boo!

[Nehkara]

Errr... nm, what PsYcNeT said.

[Kavvy]

There was an expansion pack offered free by Amazon if you ordered back in January, which I missed the window on. Did anyone order? Can anyone tell me what I am missing out on?

Thanks photon for the quick wiki explanation for the last question, I did check it for this one, hopefully I didn’t miss it!

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by oilers_fan

I'm incredibly unhappy that I'm already looking to have to upgrade the video card. But I'm not going to do anything yet, I'll be going with what I've got, since its bought and paid for, and see how this game runs. I'll go to my friend with the complaints after that.

Well you barely paid $700 for it and you got pretty good specs other than the video card.

[worth]

And you learned a valuable lesson. Ask CP first.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by oilers_fan

I'm incredibly unhappy that I'm already looking to have to upgrade the video card. But I'm not going to do anything yet, I'll be going with what I've got, since its bought and paid for, and see how this game runs. I'll go to my friend with the complaints after that.

I wouldn't be too upset. Its not like the existing card added a lot to the cost of the machine. The real loss is the power supply, since there is not much chance of upgrading the card to an acceptable level without upgrading it as well.

Plus, there is a chance that it was play it on low settings.

If you do replace them, you could sell both on Kijiji for $20-$30 pretty easily.

[Finner]

Originally Posted by oilers_fan

I'm incredibly unhappy that I'm already looking to have to upgrade the video card. But I'm not going to do anything yet, I'll be going with what I've got, since its bought and paid for, and see how this game runs. I'll go to my friend with the complaints after that.

I might have a free videocard you can have at home.

I upgraded about 6 months ago to a 6870.

I can't remember exactly what I upgraded from but I think it was a 6650 or 6670, but i'll doublecheck when I get home.

If it's good enough you can have it for free.