Sim City (2013)

[THEWOOD]

I really would love to play this game and was planning to purchase once it comes out for Mac. However, it is really taking a beating from owners. Is it really that bad??

 

[jwinslow]

Maxis did a great job.

EA maintained their sterling reputation of cheaping out on servers. The difference is other games allowed you to play offline for large if not entire chunks of it. This one computes everything online so EA's laughable history of servers prevents you from gaming.

It is shifting from gridlock to buggy.

 

[Deety]

One thing I learned from this...

Cities2012 has an upgrade to Platinum with new stuff. I think that's what is on the menu for tonight.

 

[jwinslow]

A really detailed breakdown of the various regions and towns

...Cluster A - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

1. Sawyer's Crossing - Buildable: 75 to 80% ? // Railroad & Shipping // Coal: 1, Ore: 2, Oil: 0, Water: 3, Wind: 1
Sawyer's Crossing is ready for adventurous mayors willing to cross Sawyer Creek, out to the island. Coal and crude oil deposits provide mayors with a reliable income.

2. Huckleberry Island - Buildable: 80% ? // Railroad & Shipping // Coal: 3, Ore: 3, Oil: 0, Water: 3, Wind: 1
The huckleberry bushes at the base of this island's crecent-shaped bluff lend it its distinct name. Once mayors pave roads down the hill to the rest of the island, they are welcomed with significant coal and raw ore deposits.

3. Harper Plains - Buildable: 100% ? // Railroad, no Shipping // Coal: 3, Ore: 0, Oil: 1, Water: 1, Wind: 1
Situated in the shadow of the Big Jim mountains, Harper Plains provides an entirely level site for mayors who don't want to deal with hills or rivers. This inland site has plenty of coal and raw ore for mayors to start the mining operation of their choice.

4. Thatcher Overlook - Buildable: 80 to 90% ? // Shipping & Railroad // Coal: 3, Ore: 1, Oil: 0, Water: 3, Wind: 1
The upper overlook portion of Thatcher Overlook is festooned with an assortment of coal, raw ore and crude oil deposits, giving mayors a nice sampling for the mining and drilling specializations. The lower land that bends along the shoreline has fabulous views of the river.
...

 

[jwinslow]

A good thread discussing traffic flow, complete with diagrams and detailed discussions.

Also some good discussions about turning right/left

Quick question:

Obviously on avenues, cars can't cross the opposite lanes to access buildings on the other side of the road because there is a median in the way.

However, this shouldn't be true of normal streets, as cars should be able to cross the road, and equally exit a building and trun left.
On many videos though, I've seen cars making uturns on streets (not just avenues) at intersections, which would suggest this isnt true?

Can someone confirm this? If cars cant turn left out of a building on a normal street, that would be a pretty massive efficiency problem for the traffic system...

So it definitely makes sense to have services on their own private roads, in order to minimise congestion. Obviously these would have to be high density, to force a traffic light intersection, so the service vehicles can easily turn in either direction onto the main road.

I just had a bit of an epiphany. What if the simulator is using Dijkstra's Algorithm to calculate the shortest distance between two points and using that path for Sims traveling to/from their homes? Dijkstra's Algorithm graph-based searching to find the shortest path. In our situation, the roads are the paths and the vertices are intersections on those roads. Each road has a value based on distance and this is likely weighted by the density of the road as well. The vertices may even have their own weights depending on how many roads they intersect and the density of those roads. If it's clever, it's going to try to keep to main avenues.

Which brings me to my epihpany. If the simulator is in fact using this algorithm, and you have a high-density avenue with a lot of traffic on it you might build another high-density avenue next to it but not get any help. If this happens, you should lower the density of the road with more traffic. This will cause its weight in the Dijkstra Algorithm to go up and may divert traffic to the new avenue which now has a lower relative weight, even though it is no longer the shortest path between two points.

I plan on keeping this in mind and seeing if it can help out when I have some traffic jams.

 

[jwinslow]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcEaHT9mt-Y"]Sim City additional pathfinding experiment - YouTube[/ame]

I love how when you put the second dirt road in several cars reversed out of the avenue to take the ALREADY CONGESTED new dirt road.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g418BSF6XBQ"]SimCity 5 - abysmal pathing AI even in huge congestion - YouTube[/ame]

 

[jwinslow]

EA suspends SimCity marketing campaigns, asks affiliates to 'stop actively promoting' game

Publisher Electronic Arts has suspended some of its online marketing campaigns for SimCity in the wake of ongoing server issues, asking its affiliates to "please stop actively promoting the game" until further notice.

In an email sent this morning to marketing affiliate partners, EA Origin says it has "deactivated all SimCity text links and creative and we ask you to please remove any copy promoting SimCity from your website for the time-being." The email, obtained by Polygon, is directed at affiliates of EA Origin's LinkShare program.

"To be clear we are continuing to payout commissions on all SimCity sales that are referred, however we are requesting that you please stop actively promoting the game," the email reads. "We will notify you as soon as the SimCity marketing campaigns have been resumed and our promotional links are once again live in the Linkshare interface. We apologize for any inconveniences that this may cause, and we thank you for your cooperation."

...cont'd

 

[jwinslow]

Great Works Help

do I have to have all the resources on hand stored up, or can I slowly send resources to fill the quotas for the Great Work over time? That is a $%&^! ton of storage if so. Please help, and thanks!

You pay 1 million simoleons upfront and then you have to feed it materials until it's complete. That's why it's called a Great Works. It's a work-in-progress until you give it all the materials it needs.

The Great Works are designed for multiplay. Everyone in the region can pitch in and send materials during the building stage.

Thought this might be helpful for other rookies.

 

[scott91575]

Great Works HelpThought this might be helpful for other rookies.

I paid for a great work already in the region I created (the solar farm, which I researched through my university and that cost a ton too). What I can say, making a mining city makes you filthy rich, especially if you add a processor plant and are able to supply your own raw materials (make sure you have a recycling plant for plastics). It just sits there awaiting approval. It was supposed to only take a minute. It was still sitting there "waiting for approval" when I quit last night. This game can be a pain.

On a side note, making a mining town makes late game interesting since the money it makes comes through random trade. I run it in the red on a hourly basis, and it looks like I can going to go broke sometimes. Then a big delivery of processors happens and bam, 150,000 simoleans. Yet there is one thing really ticking me off. Water is a finite resource that runs out. I am sick as hell of having to move my water pumps around the city. On my current city I have already moved them twice, and with polluted ground water you have to buy filtered tanks that 60k each. Essentially the game is set up so your city eventually fails. I have no idea what I am going to do once my ore runs out. I started building attractions, but for those to make real money I need an airport. Yet trying to fit that anywhere is a pain, and every time I have tried to do it by clearing some things out the terrain is never flat enough. I also have no idea how an airport actually snaps. Late game is really challenging, but eventually turns into one massive pain the ass.

 

[scott91575]

SIAP...

Anyone that has activated SimCity to the this point will be receiving a free game voucher from EA on March 18th. Hopefully it's not some garbage list of games.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416413,00.asp

 

[GomerBucks]

The traffic thing is driving me crazy.... The choke point is the ramp coming in/out my city. I have street call high density avenues running in what would be the most efficient possible way, but it doesn't seem to matter.... my police/fire/ems cant get within a whiff of about two blocks from the area without ALL of them converging and sitting in traffic. Also, I have AWESOME oil deposits in my region and have pumps, trucks, and storage all maxed for what is drillable, unfortunately, my trucks can't truck it out fast enough due to traffic to hit the upgrade to the petroleum upgrade that will allow a refinery. It also seems there is no way to ship it out via train or boat because those are built for passenger traffic....

 

[scott91575]

The traffic thing is driving me crazy.... The choke point is the ramp coming in/out my city. I have street call high density avenues running in what would be the most efficient possible way, but it doesn't seem to matter.... my police/fire/ems cant get within a whiff of about two blocks from the area without ALL of them converging and sitting in traffic. Also, I have AWESOME oil deposits in my region and have pumps, trucks, and storage all maxed for what is drillable, unfortunately, my trucks can't truck it out fast enough due to traffic to hit the upgrade to the petroleum upgrade that will allow a refinery. It also seems there is no way to ship it out via train or boat because those are built for passenger traffic....

Do you have commercial near your entrance? From what I have found, commercial is always the worst for traffic. Industial and residential is not bad for traffic. So I have learned to keep commercial in places that won't interfere with industrial traffic.

 

[Deety]

I paid for a great work already in the region I created (the solar farm, which I researched through my university and that cost a ton too). What I can say, making a mining city makes you filthy rich, especially if you add a processor plant and are able to supply your own raw materials (make sure you have a recycling plant for plastics). It just sits there awaiting approval. It was supposed to only take a minute. It was still sitting there "waiting for approval" when I quit last night. This game can be a pain.

On a side note, making a mining town makes late game interesting since the money it makes comes through random trade. I run it in the red on a hourly basis, and it looks like I can going to go broke sometimes. Then a big delivery of processors happens and bam, 150,000 simoleans. Yet there is one thing really ticking me off. Water is a finite resource that runs out. I am sick as hell of having to move my water pumps around the city. On my current city I have already moved them twice, and with polluted ground water you have to buy filtered tanks that 60k each. Essentially the game is set up so your city eventually fails. I have no idea what I am going to do once my ore runs out. I started building attractions, but for those to make real money I need an airport. Yet trying to fit that anywhere is a pain, and every time I have tried to do it by clearing some things out the terrain is never flat enough. I also have no idea how an airport actually snaps. Late game is really challenging, but eventually turns into one massive pain the ass.

Cool. I'll send resources.

I added an airport yesterday. It's very long, and I don't have room to use a second runway. There are cargo and passenger bay add-ons. It bothers residents, so I put it between industrial and commercial areas. Even with the cargo bay addition, it didn't really do anything, and I had a pop-up about low attraction for touristy stuff, so I shut it off and will work on that part next.

I have not yet managed to send a region invitation that actually goes through without an error message; it's a pretty broken system.

 

[scott91575]

Cool. I'll send resources.

I added an airport yesterday. It's very long, and I don't have room to use a second runway. There are cargo and passenger bay add-ons. It bothers residents, so I put it between industrial and commercial areas. Even with the cargo bay addition, it didn't really do anything, and I had a pop-up about low attraction for touristy stuff, so I shut it off and will work on that part next.

I have not yet managed to send a region invitation that actually goes through without an error message; it's a pretty broken system.

Assuming it can be built that would be great. At last check it was still trying to get approval. It would be nice to have power for the whole region.

BTW...I also researched zero pollution oil power plant stacks, so that is available for the region to use too. My two cities have also completed all the city hall add ons, and I also unlocked a few other things I can't remember (I know one is the space race great work or whatever it's called). What sucks is my first town does not see any of the unlocks I made in my second town (nice job Maxis). I really needed it too since my industry is still somewhat low tech and creates too much pollution. I really need a university, and the community college is not cutting it.

Of course I cannot get back on NAEast#2 today. The additional servers they added work fine, but I am not in the mood to start yet another town.

 

[scott91575]

Oh, and quick question, what is the plop point for the airport? In other words, what point needs to be touching a road? With a completed town I need to plan accordingly so I don't destroy a bunch of stuff for an airport that won't actually plop.