That first screenshot does scare the crap out of me. It's terrible! Half the side streets aren't getting used, the main middle roads aren't being used...jesus. That is terrible AI. You see the same thing in the other screenshots. 75% of the roads empty, with 25% of the roads being congested.
Yikes.
Maybe the only Tim Hortons in town is on that road.
That first screenshot does scare the crap out of me. It's terrible! Half the side streets aren't getting used, the main middle roads aren't being used...jesus. That is terrible AI. You see the same thing in the other screenshots. 75% of the roads empty, with 25% of the roads being congested.
Yikes.
It is a moment in time.
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Educate your population with schools and they'll put solar panels on their roofs. They will generate energy during the day.
You can build a self supporting university town.
School buses can travel to other cities and pick up high school students. (grade schools are only for your own residents!)
HS graduates transport themselves to available colleges/ universities in the region.
Police and Health Care
If your ambulance made lots of trips to your neighbor's city while you were offline, it will leave your city periodically while you're playing. (because the game is asynchronous)
Why are the emergency vehicles not able to go around traffic?
It's part of the game. If you want to, you can always use 4 or 6 lane roads so that they can more reliably pass.
Police cars extend the coverage of your police station ("making more of the roads green"). they have the effect of suppressing criminal acts around them for a little while, as does the police station. Which means you can extend the coverage of your police station by adding new vehicles. It is not always necessary to built new police stations. Cars are cheaper, enabling more patrols & more opportunities for capturing criminals.
The police responds to a zombie apocalypse.
Crime can spill over from other cities.
Streets, Zoning and Traffic
Can rich sims be on low density roads?
Sure, you can get mansions, fancy boutiques, high tech industrial on low density roads. Wealth and density are independent.
Can large cities be built on dense narrow street grids with transit? Or wide roads only?
Sure, either one. If you use avenues, you can upgrade to light rail. On the narrower streets you are limited to buses.
Highways can't be built nor One-Way-Roads.
Streets can't be named.
When you put a road through terrain, it edits it as necessary (or puts in tunnels & bridges)
Traffic lights have an default timer, but will switch if there is no opposing traffic.
If you destroy an intersection with sims/cars (agents) on it, agents attempt to hop to a nearby road. Failing that they'll re-spawn at their source. Failing that they'll be killed.
Rich sims have nice cars and some will speed.
Highways will eventually clog. You'll need to add busses, ferries, trains, etc.
City Specialization, Economy and City Sets
What city specialization/big business generates the most income?
People have been making lots of money with casinos. Oil, coal, ore, etc. depends on what's going on with the global market.
If you buy the deluxe version, you can play with players who don't own it, they are able to see french/etc buildings.
Can you mix the American, German, French and English tile sets on a map?
Yes, but it's not recommended (uses a lot of texture memory).
Can you have a culture specialized city without having to purchase the deluxe edition?
Sure, there are cultural attractions in the base game.
Tourist stay in the hotels built in the commercial zones unless you put hotels on your casino, in which case they will stay there instead.
Each building has a tax value, which gets modulated based on the tax rate the player sets
Eventually (and it's a long time) a region exhausts its oil or coal, at which point it can import from the global market.
Weather, Seasons, Enviroment
Will there be weather in the game?
Just rain and haze. Pollution will make things murkier, too.
Will wind be variable direction & speed?
Yes it does -- there's a range of +/- 60 degrees from default.
Since the game have seasons and months, Will the color of the sky of sunset change accordingly to it?
No, we played around with that, but decided to just keep the day/night cycles constant.
Tree's remove pollution. They'll also die if they're in a heavily polluted environment. They don't affect land value, though. You can plant trees.
Did you notice that new buildings have small trees, and as they age the tree grow? Tree size shows you a neighborhoods stability.
Disasters
Will there be mini disasters like vehicle accidents? Yes, but not car accidents - more like fires, criminal acts, sickness, injuries, etc.
Disasters effect cars, but they won't crash into each other (physics was too expensive at a full city scale).
City size, Population etc.
How big are city maps?
2k on a side
This is tiny! I'll be finished with the game in minutes.
"We've already had people in the dev beta spend weeks on their cities, there's stuff to do! [...] sophistication of the simulation is the most important thing."
Is it possible to implement bigger city sizes later down the road? They can't make any specific promises about it. They know that this is an issue for many players and will probably look into this problem, but not for release.
What is the rough max pop you're seeing at that size?
"Biggest cities our testers have made have been in the 800,000 to 1m range."
Always online / Region
It is possible to see neighboring cities in the distance. If someone is working on it, one can see it changing.
Biggest region map currently supports 16 cities.
If my internet goes down while I play Simcity and accidentally close the game, i will lose the save game?
In that scenario, you city's save point would be when you were last connected to the Internet.
If you're already in the region you can claim a city that another player has abandoned.
Sims will move to or leave your city based on its own merits. Cities don't compete for sims.
Misc
Does putting down a ploppable sign have any effect outside of aesthetics?
Casino signs attract more tourists, the rest are purely for aesthetic benefit.
City Ordinances were converted into modules that you append to the relevant buildings (e.g. fire marshal module).
Dumpsters actually "fill up" as an indicator of the buildings trash level.
You can daisy chain parks, but ultimately one needs road access, otherwise no Sims could get there, no power, no water, etc.
Things in the beta looked good but not this good. Did the textures/rendering of screenshots get another pass or something? These look *really good!*
Nope - straight out of the game. These are the exact same textures and everything as in the beta. That's just playing with everything set to High or Ultra.
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edit: I know everyone is really excited about this game and with good reason. But I think I find myself alone on an island wanting a Sim City game that has massive maps, good graphics that can handle it (not amazing graphics) and has a very smart, very detailed sim engine where placement of things mattered.
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Well, deal with it. I wasn't cheering for Canada either way. Nothing worse than arrogant Canadian fans. They'd be lucky to finish 4th. Quote me on that. They have a bad team and that is why I won't be cheering for them.
Last edited by Brannigans Law; 02-04-2013 at 04:47 PM.
edit: I know everyone is really excited about this game and with good reason. But I think I find myself alone on an island wanting a Sim City game that has massive maps, good graphics that can handle it (not amazing graphics) and has a very smart, very detailed sim engine where placement of things mattered.
A 2km highway would be pretty worthless. You're not alone in your thinking. Honestly, inter-region play sounds pretty boring. They all seem to be connected by pre-made roads. It would be so cool if you could team up with your neighbors to build a highway or a high speed railway.
So basically you're stuck building a small community and not even a town. A few blocks of DT is more than the 2K. We'll see when it comes out what the reception by fans is like. Reviews seem to overhype things a lot nowadays. The whole Diablo thing comes to mind. Hopefully it's still good.
I have to wonder if a market even exists for a complicated City simulation game with the possibility of a very large map.
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Originally Posted by puckluck2
Well, deal with it. I wasn't cheering for Canada either way. Nothing worse than arrogant Canadian fans. They'd be lucky to finish 4th. Quote me on that. They have a bad team and that is why I won't be cheering for them.
So basically you're stuck building a small community and not even a town. A few blocks of DT is more than the 2K. We'll see when it comes out what the reception by fans is like. Reviews seem to overhype things a lot nowadays. The whole Diablo thing comes to mind. Hopefully it's still good.
Not how it feels at all.
For reference. The medium city size in SC4 is the same size as the city size at launch for SimCity.
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That first screenshot does scare the crap out of me. It's terrible! Half the side streets aren't getting used, the main middle roads aren't being used...jesus. That is terrible AI. You see the same thing in the other screenshots. 75% of the roads empty, with 25% of the roads being congested.
Yikes.
Whoever designed that roadway knows nothing about Sim City or real life.
Its not being used because it provides no benefit what so ever. Still have the same number of stop lights, no highway overpasses, why would anyone use that middle road unless traffic was so congested on the outside avenues.
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MYK - Supports Arizona to democtratically pass laws for the state of Arizona
Rudy was the only hope in 08
2011 Election: Cons 40% - Nanos 38% Ekos 34%
edit: I know everyone is really excited about this game and with good reason. But I think I find myself alone on an island wanting a Sim City game that has massive maps, good graphics that can handle it (not amazing graphics) and has a very smart, very detailed sim engine where placement of things mattered.
Yah I will be holding off until the eventual Rush Hour Expansion.
1M city size is way to small for what I would like to do with the game.
You can tell they really want to try to get new people into the game with making it relatively simple for the first go around.
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Rudy was the only hope in 08
2011 Election: Cons 40% - Nanos 38% Ekos 34%
You know what my biggest beef was with the game? So hard to place buildings on a 'snap point' along a roadway.
For example:
I would place something like 4 power plants early in the game, off in a corner, and things would go good for a long time. Then I would start running out of power. So I would end up needing to bulldoze some of the zones that were in less demand to accommodate another power plant. No matter how much I destroyed, it always seemed like it was easily twice as much area as the power plant actually needed to placed in before it would let me place it.
Why won't they let me place a building and then build roads around it?
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Whoever designed that roadway knows nothing about Sim City or real life.
Its not being used because it provides no benefit what so ever. Still have the same number of stop lights, no highway overpasses, why would anyone use that middle road unless traffic was so congested on the outside avenues.
Not at all, as I've said, I would rather start with LA over any of the other WC playoff teams. Bunch of underachievers who look good on paper but don't even deserve to be in the playoffs.
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