SimCity

Someone gave me a key last night while I was watching a stream.

Game is pretty fun. After playing it pretty much cemented my decision to buy. I messed around with the inter-region play as much as I could in the hour limit and I can see it being quite fun, especially with bigger regions(beta one only has 3 city spots + great works). Will be interesting to see how it works with friends or even on the global scale(since you can buy commodities from the global market, not just the region). Do I wish I could just use the entire region map and build a city, yes but it's not built like that and no use crying over spilled milk. I do hope for bigger regions(maybe 10+ claimable cities + greatworks) to be able to really build a big metropolitan area.

The simulation aspects are fun, having to watch wind direction and speed, for pollution and wind power, watching ground pollution, water pumps based on the water table and trying to balance population density vs land value. Upgrading system is great, instead of just planting new medical, fire, police, school buildings, you upgrade the existing structure and add more vehicles to it to increase range/productivity, also bus stops for things like schools, bus stations etc. A ton of stuff was still unavailable so will be curious how much deeper you can take a city/region. I think its a perfect mix of complexity without being overly complex or tedious, though this is with limited beta.

I got the e-mail for a key like a day ago, but only noticed it 1 hour before the event ended. That's shitty. They should hand them out before the fucking event begins so I can prepare.

so whats the best deal on pre-orders right now?

I don't know.

I've been watching these. I don't know if someone already linked them. There is a series of videos, but this one shows some good stuff, and it's bigger than some of the other city plots.


It looks like there is a lot of interaction, and the map size isn't quite smurfish. He makes his roads very tight though. I'd leave yourself much more breathing room, especially for service buildings. City Hall, Fire, Police, Health, Education, etc. all can be upgraded and that takes quite a bit of space.

yeah big part is figuring out the size of your "blocks". When you go to lay a zone it will show you how "Deep" the zone goes, or how big the building can get(not counting merges). I do think it also depends on the road type the zone is connected too. Dirt road = small buildings and goes up from there.

Funny watching him build. He puts a lot of plaza's which turn housing into mansions. At one point he put 3 of them down in his residential area and lost 3.5k people because so many houses merged to 1 mansion. Though the mansions turn into high wealth apartments later.

Will be interesting to juggle.

Speaking of which, I'd really like to be able to ban shit like low density high income housing (mansions), or alternatively, ban high rises. It's not like the latter hasn't been done extensively IRL.

But if it's easy enough to prevent or encourage what you want through gameplay then hacking in ON/OFF switches may be superfluous.

I don't like mansions generally. I want skyscrapers 99% of the time.

Agraza_sl said:

Speaking of which, I'd really like to be able to ban shit like low density high income housing (mansions), or alternatively, ban high rises. It's not like the latter hasn't been done extensively IRL.

But if it's easy enough to prevent or encourage what you want through gameplay then hacking in ON/OFF switches may be superfluous.

I don't like mansions generally. I want skyscrapers 99% of the time.

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You can control this fairly well through clever game play. As cinge mentioned different road types determine the allowable density. If you don't want highrises, then simply place two lane roads instead of giant avenues. In terms of mansions vs middle income homes, you can control this by manipulating the land value by placing fewer/more parks and amenities nearby. The game includes really awesome interactive maps that illustrate things like land values and density really clearly in realtime so you can definitely keep tabs on it.

We must pursue economic warfare against one another. God wills it.

This is the kind of stuff I'd like to do in an MMO, with a fantastic setting. I hope it performs well, but that runs against my instincts about Maxis's products.

Agraza_sl said:

Speaking of which, I'd really like to be able to ban shit like low density high income housing (mansions), or alternatively, ban high rises. It's not like the latter hasn't been done extensively IRL.

But if it's easy enough to prevent or encourage what you want through gameplay then hacking in ON/OFF switches may be superfluous.

I don't like mansions generally. I want skyscrapers 99% of the time.

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Remember though, those low density high income mansions turn into high density high income buildings(think big skyscrape condos). A city full of these, with high education and high tech I think will be awesome.

Tuco_sl said:

So does it make sense to have an FoH community region or are the region/cities so small that people would prefer having control of the entire region / sharing it with only a few people?

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I'm guessing you'll be able to play in multiple regions with and without your friends. Its seems likely that we'll be able to play together in a few different FoH regions as well as our own private regions separately.

Tuco_sl said:

I know I'm becoming increasingly accepting of the size of the city.

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Just like you've become increasingly accepting of a dick in the mouth.

Pancreas_sl said:

Tiny maps, always online requirement, shallow systems, poor technology utilization... this doesn't sound like SimCity, more like... SimSHITTY!... am I right... am I right. C'mon it's ok to laugh.

But honestly, That's depressing as hell. The map sizes are barely bigger than what you might find in The SIMS. Eventually all maxis products will converge into one format that focuses on an area the size of three city blocks. Here you will be able to customize everything! From what drugs the vagrant living in the alley is addicted to, to how aggressively the police harass poor people who wander too close to the Mayor's House. You can even raise property taxes each year to pay for public works projects that constantly come in over budget and behind schedule. Projects that were pushed through the council by special interests that don't even live in the communities that end up paying the bill.

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Tuco_sl said:

General, are you going to be playing SimCity with us? It'd be the chance you've always wanted to show us your ruling capacity.

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I would shit all over you and these mongoloids no doubt, but this game looks like a piece of E-toilet's ass.

I always suck at these SIM games, but I'm always a sucker for them.

General Antony_sl said:

I would shit all over you and these mongoloids no doubt, but this game looks like a piece of E-toilet's ass.

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pussy