Technology

[AdmiralCrunch 11]

Will technologies be static, or will they change? IE, at the beginning, would you have fusion power stations and plasma garbage disintegrators (both i'd like to see in CU ) or would you have to research them/wait for appropriate date? Will there be a timeline?

[Mr.YGuy 0]

I hope not. I think it would be better to be able to start a city in the 1800's and recieve all new technologies as they were invented in the real world. It's more fun that way! I really don't like the fact that in SimCity 4 we seem to start in the year 2000 and we have everything already. It took away a certain fun element that was very important to me.

[ExiL3 10]

dude there is a thread for this called "Cities Unlimited" Questions and Answers with Monte Cristo, where you actually will get an answer to your question! Why make a totally new thread out of it?????

take care,

[Nevets13 27]

That is actually a thread discussing a Q&A with monte cristo, not a thread where monte cristo is suppose to answer your questions. Phillipe supposedly read all threads, and will answer what he can. There is no reason to keep posting in that one thread, it is getting pretty rough to find anything you want to find it in. I see no reason why we can't start making separate threads on different topics.

[Romaq 18]

Breaking into topic threads helps the flow of discussion on a topic. I'm not really following the Q&A thread because I want to address particular topics of discussion while not focusing on others.

Pertaining to technology levels, I'd prefer the city simply presume modern day technology with 'old stuff' we can plop and 'new stuff' we MIGHT be able to plop as rewards. You can't access a county fair without some running farms. You can't access a space port without some tech buildings in place to support it. I think reward chains are an important way to look at it. But saying 'we all start in 1801' isn't a City Builder game, it's a 'civilization' game.

[Androv 6]

I did like how you received the newspaper articles saying "Such-and-such a city has installed ", and then you could build it in your own city. SC4 just seemed very 'modern-day' with no technological advances... kind of like Groundhog Day.

It looks like SCS will have everything available once you 'unlock' it with a certain amount of societal energy. City Life also had buildings which required you to have a certain number of a particular culture group or city size to unlock. I don't mind 'unlocking' things, but I think it should be somewhat restrained by a timeline - not "Oh look, your Sims are so clever that they discovered fusion power in 1843" - unless they're SUPREMELY clever I suppose.

[Romaq 18]

The forced timeline issue changes it from a city builder to a civilization growth game. Is that more of what you are looking for?

[Androv 6]

Cities are about change over years, decades and centuries. The arrival of new technologies and city building concepts is why cities like London and New York need to rely more upon subways than newly built cities in Australia and the outer suburbs in most areas. So if you start your city being able to build 'tiny cramped road' or 'slightly less cramped road' as the only option, then you will encounter the same issues city builders did when they realised 'Hey, we can plan a grid with wide avenues.... oh bugger we don't have space!"

I think it adds more realism to the city building game than SC4 which was stuck perpetually in 2003.

[Romaq 18]

Perhaps, and there's room for differing interpretations of what one wishes in a city. The problem with explicit time-lines, as I see it, is that if I wish to build Bellingham, the city I live in TODAY using TODAY's tech, I want access to all of it NOW. If I can't have it NOW, I want the cheat code. If I can't get the cheat code, I'll hack at files until I have it. If I can't get it by hacking away, I'll let my city lie follow on high speed for a couple of weeks, if necessary, until the timeline counter hits whatever mark to make it possible.

I do not think that such would be strongly desirable in a city-builder game. And, as a city builder, there is the implication that you want to build 'today's city using today's tech.'

That still leaves the choice of NOT plopping down modern tech. That also leaves hope that Monte Cristo would provide the means to explicitly block 'modern' buildings from spawning in zones. It leaves the option for an enduser to reset the calendar to a specific date. There are too many SciFi City Journals that would likely want to use '400 FL (From Landing)' as their calendar date. Landing, of course, being when the colonists arrived.

There is a great deal of room too for Reward Chains. You don't get high-tech spawn or plops until you meet certain requirements. You need the high-tech workers. You need to have the education system. Some buildings may be set 'zone spawn only'. You may SEE them, but if you don't have them spawn in a zone, you can't plop them, and you don't have the rewards further down the chain.

Cities are about lots of different issues. And I think there's room to look at how your particular City Inspiration might be met without precluding the City Inspiration of others, myself included.

[Androv 6]

Ideally I'd like to see different start times for your city - Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, ... ?modern..., Futuristic. You would have different techs available in each time frame. So for industrial, you'd have lots of industry, lots of people, but limited sanitation options. There would also be limitations on what roads were available.

However, this gets back to the 'way too complicated to implement without making other areas of the game suck' category, so I don't think we'll see it. But by having the techs stratified in such a way, you could start your city in the 'modern era' with all the modern techs, and not have to 'unlock' anything. Or there could be a freeform mode where all the techs are available (nuclear-powered catapults ftw).

I guess my idea sounds a bit too much like 'Age of Empires' or similar games :-P

[saltandsauce 0]

i have a solution for both of you : simply have what they had in SC2000 which was to enter a starting date before you underwent the city starting process simple

[lasergoat 0]

I really like the Simcity 4 method where time starts at zero then counts up from there making it easy to tell how old my city was at a glance. And I prefer keeping the focus loosly on a modernish city than trying to recreate fantasy or historical cities. I also liked the mixed system of time related rewards, requirements meet rewards, and conditional rewards and think its a better system than a system of one or the other.

[rctshack 182]

I like the stating at zero also, i don't want to be stuck in 1920... i want to be stuck in 20... or 35 or 80. I would like the option to start with lesser technology, or more.

[Romaq 18]

Options are good. I like options.

[Sap59 3]

i would like to have it where technology is available within its own realistic time.

[830point35 8]

The advent of the car would be a great technological advance for the game. Before the birth of the car, you could make a very walkable, dense, mass transit-dependant city, and then as cars come about and people start to prefer them, you have the difficult choice of punching roads through your town or testing your ability to keep the ancient town center. Like a lot of european cites.

[rctshack 182]

I don't know if I would like the game starting with no cars... but I do like the idea of the game working perfectly well without needing any cars... at least in downtown. I would love to have a really condensed downtown with only a few really good mass transits working. Maybe with only a grand avenue through it.

[dasilva 3]

This thread is quite interesting... I personally never really thought about this technology question when playing a city builder game. I used to play a lot Civ games and this took a real place as you usually started -3000 BC in the game design. Maybe what you are trying to express is you'd like to get some sort of reward system to get access to some of aspects of the game?

[gabry85 2]

It's like rewards, but the only requirement is reaching a specific year along the timeline so you'll get nuclear plants only after 1945. It was applied for ordinances also.

This was a SimCity 2000 and 3000 feature. In SC 2000 in particular, there was some kind of fictional technology buildings such as the Archologies.

[Sap59 3]

Rewards are always cool. :-)

I just like the idea that if say i start a city within a certain time like for example 1899 anything available technologically from that point in time and older should be available and as time goes on new technolgical advances would become available but the only problem that i would see of this is you would have to have different models of every classification over an endless time span so most likely this wouldn't be feasable.

My only problem with this all is to see modern day cars driving around during earlier periods of time like seeing a 2007 vehicle driving through town of a 1920 time place.

[Androv 6]

I think some people like having goals when playing a city builder and so they enjoy being able to 'unlock' certain buildings. So to get a nuclear power plant you need to have a certain population and perhaps a specific number of wealthy/knowledgeable sims in the city (eg: SC4, City Life).

Others like an approach where you have the technology available at a certain time in history, prior to that time you can't build it. Eg: No nuclear power stations before 1950 or so. (eg: SC2000)

Others like just being able to place whatever they like to make their city with no restrictions. Especially if they are trying to recreate a certain area or just have fun making a big city. I guess this is like SC original which didn't have any restrictions on what you could place (nuclear power in 1900 yay)

[amdinside 2]

Androv, Everyone wants something a little different and I fall into your last category of wanting to be able to create a city rather than worry about what technology is available or how to unlock features even though it is nice to get those rewards as you build your city. How hard would it be to give everybody what they want? An option to start at a specific date with timeline related technology. Another option to play the city mayor and manage a city earning (unlocking) rewards as you progress and an option to be able to plop any buildings at anytime and build your city without worrying about running the city or having the technology match the time. I don't think it would be that hard to put these options in the same game so players can have a choice in what they want to get out of the game.

[MayorTim 16]

Personally, I think that this would be a wonderful feature, as long as it can be turned off. Sometimes I don't like waiting for rewards, or I find the reward requirements don't match with what I'm trying to do with my city, so I simply use the cheat in SC4 to get it painlessly.

If this sort of "timeline" thing was included, I also think architecture should change through the decades (again, with the option of being turned off) something like the building styles in SC4, only greatly expanded and actually functional.

[gabry85 2]

Originally posted by: MayorTim Personally, I think that this would be a wonderful feature, as long as it can be turned off. Sometimes I don't like waiting for rewards, or I find the reward requirements don't match with what I'm trying to do with my city, so I simply use the cheat in SC4 to get it painlessly.quote>

Completely agree. I remember in the older SC's I left empty lots until I got the building unlocked...