I actually got hit by a tornado in one of my run throughs. Never even looked at the manual disaster menu since it was hard enough getting my population up running the game clock at full speed with medium density road everywhere.
I actually got hit by a tornado in one of my run throughs. Never even looked at the manual disaster menu since it was hard enough getting my population up running the game clock at full speed with medium density road everywhere.
Yes. You can do this manually.Originally Posted by Moraven
What you can't do is load an old savegame from earlier, before the disaster.
In fact, you can't save & load at all.
I'm not sure. As said, the EULA says there is an NDA, but when I did a google, the forums showed open discussion on the game, with the comments "talk about it", where as images/videos were banned. So I've got mixed messages. I'll search the forums again to see if I can see the proper NDA rules (it's there, just been so busy).
Bummer.
Either way, after reading a lot of the posts on the EA forums I canceled my pre-order. The maps are small, the visuals overtly cartoonish, the DRM scheme a no go for me, and the forced social/online component is not warranted in a game like this. So no, I certainly won't be purchasing SimCity Societies 2... erm I mean SimCity 5.
I have a feeling this title may flop.
Here's an interesting compendium of information compiled by a reddit user:
Education
- 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 [2] 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.
Also: Looks like we're getting microtransactions.
:'( legitimately sad.
See page 9:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/121736732/...Simcity-manual
Double ugh. It's a testament to my love for Sim City games that I'm still quite excited for this despite all the apparent negatives.
EDIT: To temper that, a lot of the bullet points in smash's list are nice to see.
Last edited by Splynter; 04-02-2013 at 10:34 PM.
I take photos of space and talk about it sometimes: http://ofspaceandthings.tumblr.com Also, I am making a game for which there is a development log: http://elegythegame.tumblr.com/
To be fair, I think a lot of city-builder/simulation games have lots of microtransactions. The model just fits the genre, not that I'd ever utilize them.
A lot of lovely tropical nations have bloodthirsty dictators, too. There's just something about beautiful sunny places and the United Fruit Company...
If only there were some way that you could buy a game that has micro-transactions, and then not buy any of the micro-transaction content...
Whoa, whoa, whoa, we got a case of status dramaticus here! Just calm down, no, wait, I said calm down, it's okay... such rational thinking can be cured, trust me. No, shhhh... you're just a little panicky, we all know that there's no way you can possibly do that. Shh, shh, it's alright, they'll keep buying their stuff.
No but seriously, this. Unless they happen to start ripping out core mechanics with the deliberate intention and turn it into a true "pay to win" (not "pay to avoid grind") this isn't a huge deal. Wait until we know what's happening.
Hi Soldant, yes it's true that no one is forced into buying DLC. I agree with you there but I don't think that's what most people complain about when bemoaning DLC. It's certainly not what gets to me.
As I see it, and to hear devs talk about it, DLC is a cynical business tool to increase the Lifetime Value of a product with the Minimum Desirable Product and increase the Average Revenue Per User by taking advantage of common human behavioural patterns. It won't affect everyone of course but enough to make it profitable which is the only motivation that really seems to be driving the production of most DLC.
It's just business and there's nothing horrific about it but I think it rubs many people up the wrong way. It certainly doesn't make me feel like a valued customer. I think the people who complain most bitterly (like me :oP ) are those that are to some degree tempted by it all and so feel a bit manipulated.
Edit: Which is not to say I think it's evil or anything, or even wrong. I don't really like the model and would prefer substantial, loving crafted expansions but I see why DLC exists.
Exactly, why spend money creating a mod infrastructure when you can spend it creating sale-able goods?
Also: Pay to Avoid Grind can be just as potentially game-destroying as Pay to Win, if 'incentivising' sales becomes a high enough priority. See: iOS
Last edited by Smashbox; 05-02-2013 at 02:44 PM.
Looks similar to what's in the Sims 3, so not that suprising I guess.
I loved Sims 2 (The simulation side was the worse I've ever seen in a game, but I love the building tools. It's lego. I plaid most of it in "pause" :P ). I've not even taken a single look at Sims 3.
Likewise with Sim 4 to 5. Although I did give Sim 5 more of a chance than Sims 3 ever/will/would got.
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