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SimCity |OT| It's not the simulation or city that matter, it's <parameter: string>

A

Amneisac

Member
I tell you, it's tough. I wasn't going to buy this for all the obvious reasons, but I caved and did pre-order before the end (mostly because all my friends are playing). Now I really do regret it. I realized it was sending the wrong message to EA about what I was willing to tolerate, I knew there would be connection problems for the first few days (I've played enough MMOs to know the game by now), but this latest wrinkle of disabling many of the game features I was most excited about really takes the cake.

We eventually got a region set up last night, but then we realized the region-sharing for the different departments wasn't working (among many other things). It's really absurd and bears the constant repeating it's gotten in this thread and other places that they have really taken things to a new low with the launch of this game. I usually laugh at the cries of disgruntled gamers who haven't been able to play the game for the first 12 hours it's been available and are throwing around contact information for the FTC, and stuff like that (not because they're ENTITLED, but just a little impatient and possibly even a little unrealistic), but things have kind of slipped into a surreal realm of complete and total confuckulation at this point.

I've got no doubts they'll work it out eventually (even if it's just because everyone will quit playing), but this is going to be a nightmare EA won't wake up from for a while. I realize the prevailing sentiment is "THEY HAVE YOUR MONEY WHO CARES NOW", but I think that's not going to hold true in this case. I think enough people have been disappointed by this launch, and it's been so widely reported, and EA and other retailers have been hit so hard with returns that it really might shake things up a little bit.

I sure hope so anyways.
 
R

RotBot

Member
LiquidMetal14 said:
You'd think it would be that simple but it goes red and the road outline sinks into the water. I haven't tried in a couple of days as I thought there was an upgrade I needed to enable me to make bridges but I will try it again in a bit.
Click to expand...

You usually need to drag it from further inland, since bridges need to ramp up first. If you try to start from a road going all the way to the edge of the river already, it will be too steep. Demolish a bit of the road and try again.
 
N

N-Bomb

Member
storybook77 said:
The achievement is Metropolis not Megalopolis and before anyone says it's still wrong.....
Click to expand...

Not talking about the achievement. There's a line on the population graph at either 90,000 or 100,000 people that says 'Megalolopis'. 'Metropolis' is way down the graph at like 10,000 people or less...
 
R

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
VALIS said:
My biggest problem in city planning is knowing how much space I need to leave for zones.

When you zone out an area next to a road, there is a little marker there letting you know how much "width" the zone needs. But once you're done laying down the zone, no idea! To make it even more complicated, each zone type (R, C or I) is a different width. I had a few nicely squared and even blocks of residential area (after several bulldozes and retries), and I just wanted to continue my nice, symmetrical street grid further north but zone it commerce.

No dice, commerce zoning is wider than residential zoning. So my nice even grid of streets needs to be blown apart if I want to connect that to a commerce zone.

This is making my OCD kick and scream. Every inch of space must be used! And everything must be symmetrical!! *pant*
Click to expand...

Hmm, I don't remember C and R being different sizes - were you maybe comparing low and medium density at the same time?

I recommend a pattern of horizontal avenues and vertical streets. This description is for a map where your entrance is at the bottom. Put one avenue right up the middle of your map, draw an avenue horizontally right at that entrance to get the spacing started, and then draw avenues at the suggested spacing. Draw your streets vertically at the single-block size. When the double size buildings start showing up, you can bulldoze every second street to free up a bit of space for extra planted forests.

-----:-----
|||||:|||||
-----:-----
|||||:|||||
-----:-----

Another option is to draw streets at the suggested distance for avenues. I did that by putting the tiniest stretch of vertical avenue I could manage where I wanted my street to go, finishing that off with a street, then deleting that avenue piece and completing the street.

To support efficient streetcars, make one big S pattern instead: (X = depot)

-----------
:||||||||||
-----------
||||||||||:
-----------
:||||||||||
-----------
||||||||||:
X---------

This gets around shortcomings in the streetcar AI which just takes a random turn at each intersection.
 
S

storybook77

Member
N-Bomb said:
Not talking about the achievement. There's a line on the population graph at either 90,000 or 100,000 people that says 'Megalolopis'. 'Metropolis' is way down the graph at like 10,000 people or less...
Click to expand...

Ahh ok. Still semantics. Most cities aren't the size of New York, Chicago, or LA. Do I want them to add the ability to at least get sizes close to those cities? Sure, but the whole "this is more like SimTown" is played out and lame.

Hell, the city of Atlanta is only 400k+, rest of the population is the greater metro area. I think if they could get cities in a region to be closer together, it would work wonders for the aestethic side of city building.
 
O

OchreHand

Member
How do you guys take screen shots without the hud and icons showing up?

Also is it possible to create a city without any industry?
 
R

Rad-

Member
How can you start over in the same city plot? I'd like to keep playing on VW3 but I want to restart my city. It has gotten a tad boring now that there's no more room to expand.

Also is it possible to create a city without any industry?
Click to expand...

Yes, my city was without industry. Just commercial and residential. Or well I had some mining but they don't take much room.
 
M

Mii

Banned
I've been playing on the Europe West 1 server since day 1 without issue. Granted, I typically play somewhere between 10pm and 3am eastern. I've had no connection issues except for a short hiccup on Wednesday. I still can't connect to NA East 2 to join the Discovery Delta 1 though. That server always shows as full.

I have a city of around 240k in a private region of my own, and I'm running into some serious infrastructure problems that I've been working through. I like how with traffic I can visibly see the traffic formations to determine what is causing the trouble. The single entrance to the city is tough though, and the problems from it reverberate throughout the city. Any suggestions on how to handle the entrance?

Also, I have started hitting water issues in my first city. Having no warning before the water dries up leads to practically my entire city temporarily shutting down. After hitting around 200k in my first city, I started work on a second city to see the impact of the two working together in the same region. Later, I'm going to try a third city acting as primarily servicing the other two. The two cities don't seem to be seeing each other; my 2nd city isn't seeing the city hall departments in my 1st city, and vice versa. Also a cash transfer from my 1st city to my 2nd seems to be somewhere in limbo. I'm not sure whats up there. I'm figuring this might be the only server problem affecting me.

I've got three street car lines running separately in my city, and its a thing of beauty. Average wait time is 10 minutes and I have nearly total coverage of the city. Buses are a total nightmare though with a 60 minute wait time; I still need to figure out how to get those working right.

I have enough education centers to cater to the city, but I think access to them is becoming a problem. I'm seeing on the data overlays that there are plenty of uneducated people even though I have full coverage of their region. I've maxed out bus capacity for each of my schools, so perhaps I should just add even more schools even though I have seats available. I'll have to experiment some to figure out how to improve access.

I sometimes have a random sewage problem. I think it might be related to my water drying up but I'm not sure. The alerts haven't made it clear the two are connected. I have the sewage treatment plants but they don't seem to work at full capacity. I don't know whats going on there.

The map size issue is way overblown. These maps are plenty large to keep anyone busy with fixing and experimenting with infrastructure to continue to grow the city. At some points I feel overwhelmed by my 1st city in terms of the number of problems arising. I'm liking the impact of no save and load on this matter; I have to live with my design decisions and face the impact on my city for better or worse. I would like to be able to inflict disasters on my city and then reload though.

The game is a bit on the easy side when it comes to funds. Even though I'm sitting on top of oil, I decided not to use it and started with classic RCI. I later added monuments (I had to have the Empire State in my skyline), a university, a recycling center, and a trading center. I'm drowning in cash most of the time. Only just recently with my 240k city have I run into negative hourly costs, but I still have plenty of transactions keeping me very much in the black. I think the developers will need to adjust cash amounts or offer some level of difficulty settings. I don't have to worry about my budget at all.

No Cheetah speed is absolutely killing me now though. It's like watching a plant grow. I'm not used to having to have this much patience with SimCity. It needs to be reenabled soon.

Basically, this game is awesome and everyone should play once these server issues get ironed out.
 
O

OchreHand

Member
DMprince, NJ born, thanks!

Rad- said:
Yes, my city was without industry. Just commercial and residential. Or well I had some mining but they don't take much room.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much what I want to do. Just don't like seeing the yellow bar so high! (or that guy in the construction hat yelling, lol)
 
B

bedlamite

Member
Raticus79 said:
Does anyone actually like it better with forced disasters? Personally, I don't find the random earthquakes and things to be more of an annoyance than a challenge. Having to rebuild things is tedious.
Click to expand...
Fucking annoying. I'm not too put out when you take out a residential building, but spending half a mil just to restore, for instance, a fully built up processor plant just because a twister happened to destroy the place is.not.fun.
 
L

Lonestar

I joined for Erin Brockovich discussion
managed to play a bit last night, joined that test "GAF West" on West 2 (I think) Think there's one spot left open.

Only have between 400 and 500 people, but banking about 1k per hour, as I slowly try to build up the city while trying not to build it "too quick"

Just need the other guys to start renting my garbage and sewage services.

The Parks are almost overpowered. 1 small $$$ level park raised the neighborhood from shanty homes to the Beverly Hillbillies.
 
S

storybook77

Member
Lonestar said:
managed to play a bit last night, joined that test "GAF West" on West 2 (I think) Think there's one spot left open.

Only have between 400 and 500 people, but banking about 1k per hour, as I slowly try to build up the city while trying not to build it "too quick"

Just need the other guys to start renting my garbage and sewage services.
Click to expand...

That's what I've been doing. It seems to be working a lot better. I've suppresed the urge to upgrade every single road now, and will try to keep some low density roads around.
 
E

EagleBurnn

Banned
The problem with disasters in SimCity and what the previous SC games didn't have is the small city size. If you have a well developed city now, all the vital and expensive buildings are going to be close together, so Godzilla taking down very expensive buildings is more likely to occur. In the previous games, there was so much land that your vital buildings were less likely prone to danger.
 
N

notsol337

marked forever
Day 4 and I still haven't been able to play for more than an hour. I wish I'd bought the game retail. I'd return it and wait for it to go on sale.
 
L

LumpOfCole

Member
My friends and I have made the permanent decision to relocate our region from North America East 1 to Europe East 2. There's no lag to worry about, and Europeans are all asleep and off the server when we play, making it a stress-free experience to get onto that server. There doesn't seem to be a downside.
 
L

Lint21

Neo Member
Spectrus said:
Has anyone had problems with trade depots? It worked fine just an hour ago, but now it refuses to import plastic for me.
Click to expand...

Mine refused to export last night. I had plenty of delivery trucks, but first the trade depot filled up, then the recycling center and ore mine. Sat there losing money waiting for the stuff to sell for several RL hours.

Then I got hit by two monster attacks and a hazmat fire. 300k in bonds weren't enough to save the city, so down the tubes it went - spent about six hours building that thing, just to see it destroyed by what I presume are bugs. I would have been fine if the trade depot was exporting like it should.

Is exporting from trade depot to global market working for others? I know they disabled the inter-city stuff, but maybe they shut off the global market as well?
 
S

Slacker

Member
I was actually able to kind of play what's left of the game for a couple hours early this morning. For those who haven't been able to play at all yet, my best advice now is to go to bed immediately when you get home from school/work/whatever, then wake up and play in the middle of the night. I can say with some confidence that the parts of the game they haven't deleted will probably work for a few minutes between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 AM. Good luck, GAF!
 
P

Phreaker

Member
DEO3 said:
How are you guys even playing? It's been three days since I was last able to get in.

(Sorry Viridian Woods #3)
Click to expand...

I just kept trying over and over last night (NA East 1, GAF-VW3). I eventually got in and played for hours. I kept getting that little alert that the servers were down and it was trying to reestablish a connection. Eventually it would go away, then come back.
 
A

Amneisac

Member
Slacker said:
I was actually able to kind of play what's left of the game for a couple hours early this morning. For those who haven't been able to play at all yet, my best advice now is to go to bed immediately when you get home from school/work/whatever, then wake up and play in the middle of the night. I can say with some confidence that the parts of the game they haven't deleted will probably work for a few minutes between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 AM. Good luck, GAF!
Click to expand...

How long before EA offers a similar suggestion with 100% sincerity I wonder.
 
A

Amneisac

Member
Neuromancer said:
Saw this on Reddit, very helpful if you want to check server status without going into the actual game.

http://harding.ae/simstat/
Click to expand...

Thing is, that's no indication of whether or not the servers are ACTUALLY working. My game constantly says the server is available and once I get into the game I can't connect or get disconnected so often I can't load my city.

Even using the in-game server browser right now (and the linked site above) it says NA East 2 is available, but when I select it and hit 'okay' it says server is unavailable and directs to me 'more info' where there is of course no relevant information.
 
N

Neuromancer

Member
Amneisac said:
Thing is, that's no indication of whether or not the servers are ACTUALLY working. My game constantly says the server is available and once I get into the game I can't connect or get disconnected so often I can't load my city.
Click to expand...
Yeah that's true. But it probably means you have a better chance of getting in at least.
 
R

RadicalRad

Member
How is anyone playing this at all? The servers are constantly going up and down within the application. I only managed to play about an hour, when i exited out to try to play with a friend I haven't been able to play at all since. It's not even prime time!

I'm assuming the international launch is going just as badly despite their promise that it would go smoothly?
 
F

flashburn2012

Member
RadicalRad said:
How is anyone playing this at all? The servers are constantly going up and down within the application. I only managed to play about an hour, when i exited out to try to play with a friend I haven't been able to play at all since. It's not even prime time!

I'm assuming the international launch is going just as badly despite their promise that it would go smoothly?
Click to expand...

That's the problem. NEVER EXIT!
 
D

Darklord

Banned
gamma said:
Do we have an EU region with a free spot going? Or does anyone want to start one?
Click to expand...

Titan Gorge 1 has free spots. I'm by myself in the corner! No neighbours, I think they ditched us.

Edit: Sigh. Kicked from the game, lost city progress, put into 20 minute queue. This sucks.
 
K

King_Moc

Banned
Game's pretty good when it works. Would be nice if the community features could be enabled though.

My city's coming along nicely. I did get hit with a meteor though.

i4Q8nc4A1UsrO.png
 
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