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So long as it doesn't require a paid subscription to not break it'll do better than CitiesXL. :V

Stark wrote:So long as it doesn't require a paid subscription to not break it'll do better than CitiesXL. :V

It's async communications so the devs claim it won't instantly die if you lose your connection.

The SC4 'community' is up in arms about this, of course.

The article is a bit loose around what 'requires' actually means for this; sounds like the CitiesXL stuff, but htey could easily use that as simultaneous copy protection as well. With any luck a connection drop will just give the user a notification that xyz won't be updated/online/unlocked until the conneciton is back.

Stark wrote:The article is a bit loose around what 'requires' actually means for this; sounds like the CitiesXL stuff, but htey could easily use that as simultaneous copy protection as well. With any luck a connection drop will just give the user a notification that xyz won't be updated/online/unlocked until the conneciton is back.

Seeing as it's EA/Origin, it sounds like it's being used for DRM as well as keeping the game-world economy updated. But yeah, hopefully it won't go "connection dropped? No game for you!"

Stark wrote:While that's true - especially with the self-contained 10-block perfect cities you can tile the map with - the requirements for dicking around in SimCity and playing a multiplayer game are pretty broadly different. I mean in Europa 1400 if you didn't choose thief you were intentionally crippling yourself... but it was still fun managing hobbits. It doesn't work that way if you're actually interacting with other people.

I think even in a sim toy thing like Simcity the toy is more fun if you actually make decisions about stuff. Even if those decisions aren't win/lose like in a game where there's a goal and failure state setup but just provide different subsequent problems to solve. (plant X pollutes more, so if you choose it you need to subsequently do Y or Z to solve pollution, for instance.)

Can you actually 'lose' Simcity? I thought you just hit milestones or solved problems in timelimits etc. but some the market is certainly not 100% grognards, I'm not sure how important it is. Sure, more viable options is good, but it's not like the Sims isn't a trivially easy and broken excerise in repetition and yet 'successful'.

I mean once you know how it's broken/the right way to play it sucks, but I doubt most people ever find out. I didn't know about the city-tiling thing when I played in the 90s. :v

I don't think it has a fail state, but it does consist of a series of problems to solve. How do you make a city that makes money, how do you grow to/beyond certain sizes without pollution/traffic/godzilla causing everything to crawl to a halt and people to leave in droves.

It turns out those are trivial to solve in the old games, because the games are really primitive, but they're still problems to solve.

And that's the sort of thing the new one wants to focus on, giving players a sequence of problems to solve without needing to devolve to a fail state. Service management, like power generation, is one of those potential problems. Ideally also there will be sufficient variation that the optimal solution for that problem for a small city will be different to that for a large one, meaning that the problem has to be solved more than once from different angles.

Absolutely - and I think the level of maturity of the 'genre' has improved, if the non-SimCity Simcity games are anything to go by. I'm not sure the scale issue (where any problem has an ideal solution that always works) has changed, though. I mean Tropico is a good example of a city game that is way,way too easy and the debs clearly have no idea how to make t more rewarding or challenging.

If you're playing SimCity to 'win', you shouldn't be playing SimCity.

phongn wrote:

Stark wrote:The article is a bit loose around what 'requires' actually means for this; sounds like the CitiesXL stuff, but htey could easily use that as simultaneous copy protection as well. With any luck a connection drop will just give the user a notification that xyz won't be updated/online/unlocked until the conneciton is back.

Seeing as it's EA/Origin, it sounds like it's being used for DRM as well as keeping the game-world economy updated. But yeah, hopefully it won't go "connection dropped? No game for you!"

Seems to be that way:

GameSpy wrote:Yes, you will have to register an Origin account in order to play, and yes, you must be online at all times while playing in order to start playing. EA has confirmed that you will not be kicked out if your connection is interrupted.

So if the connection drops you're good. But if you're not connected when trying to start, sucks to be you I guess. Storm knocks out Internet for a few days? Find something else to play.

I do rather despise this direction games are going, as well as the whole "bundled with Steam/Origin/whatever even if bought elsewhere" thing. If I want Steam/Origin/whatever I'd get it, being forced into it by a game blows.

But well, this seems to be the way games are going, so unless there's a metric fuckton of consumer outrage (yeah, like that'll happen) I guess I'll have to break down eventually...or just not play any modern games. And this makes me sad.

Re: Losing at Sim City

It was actually sort of possible to lose Sim City 2000 - if you rely on powerplants that need replacing every 50 years.

Essentially, your city needs to produce enough money so that it can replace the power plants every 50 years, otherwise the city comes to a crashing halt (as the manual states, Sims are electronic life forms and need power to live). While you can take a loan (bonds) to replace the power plants, taking a loan makes it even harder to earn money because you also have to pay a regular interest rate so all it does it to start a death cycle (because eventually you're not allowed to take any more loans).

It's not a big deal if with the lower difficulty setting, because you have a substantial initial budget, but it's a major issue at the harder difficulty settings. At the highest difficulty setting all your starting money was raised by loans so you're already paying for a substantial interest payments from the start.

All this is avoided with the hydro plants however, since they never need replacing.

While I understand that some people play Sim City to make an "ideal city", it does actually have a money management system behind it that you need to keep watch over. It has no "win" condition, but it definitely had a "lose" condition unless you're happy with a completely empty city full of abandoned unpowered homes.

Do people really play for 50 years? In 2000 you ran out of things todo long before that.

Stark wrote:Do people really play for 50 years? In 2000 you ran out of things todo long before that.

Actually, yes, I've seen plenty of cities hitting well over 50 years, especially if you aim to build a huge cit that fills the map. The fastest speed setting exists for a reason.

Also... You've never built the Arcologies or Fusion plants? They were kinda cool.

Of course you could just SCURK a giant city into existence, but where's the fun in that?

In SC2000 you really could "lose"

If the city went in the crappy too much, the Citizens could "vote you out of office"
You got this message showing riots and the game quite and went to main menu

As for "Winning"
For me, 'Winning' in SimCity is about building and maintaining a certain type of City.
I like to make what I think of as "Bonsai" towns. Carefully pruned and maintained cities.

It is actually quite easy to build an ever expanding, ever sprawling city that just gets bigger and bigger.
The rear skills in trying to make a city, say, under 15 or 10,000 people.
The game WANTS to grow, it seems to feed of growth. It works best on expansion, zoning new houses, new commercial areas, etc.
Forcing it to maintain within a certain size takes a lot of work, and I considered it a real challenge.

Personally I want to know how or if they are expanding the buildings and architectural styles.
In SC4, you could "Force" the game to only build in a certain style. I usually picked 1900 to 1940 styles.
I really REALLY hope they are keeping this feature, as well as making it "work" this time.
One thing I noticed is the longer you played, the more the game wanted to push in more "modern" buildings. Even set on 1900's, when time passed the 50's I often found the game entering more ansd more buildings from more modern times.

There's certainly quite a lot of positive reinforcement that encourages you to build a bigger city in Sim City 2000. All of the monuments (including a mayor's statue) are awarded based on population.

I wouldn't say that making a small city is unfeasible though - as the big issue with these cities is really the power plant replacement issue. They usually don't make enough money to replace the plants when the 50 year mark hits (at least without sacrificing basic services), and these power plants tend to be even more inefficient than their listed value because there's often a lot of excess wattage that you end up not using.

That's why hydro was really the best - no replacement issue (you essentially print free money forever as long as the city has a positive balance after paying for basic services) and you can build them in small increments so you can produce just enough power to meet your needs, instead of wasting wattage. The only problem with hydro is that it's not space-efficient, but with a small city you'll have a lot of extra space.

Fusion and other advanced plants only really make sense in huge cities - because the huge cities can easily generate enough revenue to replace these plants regularly, and space is a much bigger concern when you've filled the entire map.

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BTW, has anyone here actually managed to make a legitimate Corporate HQ from a high-density Commercial area? I was never able to pull it off, but I heard it was possible (albeit really tough) and you needed an excellent transport network (including highways or subways) to pull it off.

Zinegata wrote: =====

BTW, has anyone here actually managed to make a legitimate Corporate HQ from a high-density Commercial area? Heard it was really tough and you needed an excellent transport network (including highways or subways) to pull it off.

Not sure what you mean by "Corporate HQ' are you just talking about the largest class-5 commercials? in which version?

Crossroads Inc. wrote:

Zinegata wrote: =====

BTW, has anyone here actually managed to make a legitimate Corporate HQ from a high-density Commercial area? Heard it was really tough and you needed an excellent transport network (including highways or subways) to pull it off.

Not sure what you mean by "Corporate HQ' are you just talking about the largest class-5 commercials? in which version?

Yeah, it's the giant tower that appears in commercial districts only (SC2000). I've seen some in the scenario cities (the ones with an ongoing disaster and you have to rebuild) such as the volcano one, but I was never able to get one myself.