Cities XL single player hands on impressions

[kusanagi-sama 1]

I don't have a problem with having to be online when activating the game. You activate Windows online, why is this such a problem with the game?

BTW, I registered the game on the CitiesXL website with my key that I got in the e-mail (that many people never read the invoice stating the key would be in an e-mail once the game was shipped), will there be a problem activating the game once I get it in the mail and install it?

[deanco 0]

Originally posted by: knightrider

Originally posted by: deanco

Nobody in beta commented on this?

quote>

Every issue you have, plus all the issues that can be found in other threads, were brought up in the beta, ad nauseam.

quote>

This.  This speaks volumes.

[Centaur 0]

Originally posted by: deanco

After playing some more, I think the real slap in the face is the AI trading, not the missing buses and trains, although that's a cynical move in itself. The AI gimps the game way more, since he basically won't trade with you, and when he does, say goodbye to your positive cash flow. It's like they purposely made a crappy feature, to push you to online.quote>

I'm making around 10,000 per turn by trading surplus to the AI.  Sure, you don't get a good price, and maybe a few different AIs would make it better, but it seems to work fine for me.

[Centaur 0]

Originally posted by: deanco

In terms of the game, it really appears the single player is hugely gimped in favor of the MMO part.  No buses, trams, or trains.  quote>

Out of interest, is mass transit actuall in the mutliplayer game?  From the interview, it sounded like they just hadn't got it to work and so droppped it for the first release:

"Mass transit options are clearly the next step for us in the overall transportation system. Unfortunately it’s not something that we have been able to squeeze in the game for release despite our upmost effort. We thought until not long ago that the bus system could be ready for release but we were not happy with the results and decided to postpone it."

Sounds to me like it's not in the multiplayer game either yet, rather than being something specifically excluded from sp. Can anyone confirm this?  

That aside, the roads/traffic seem to work really well.

[gabry85 2]

^^^ Mass Transportation is not yet ready, but it will be only exclusive to the PO. If you want MT in a single-player city-building game, you got to look elsewhere. No workarounds, no short-cuts, no bypass, nada, zero. Just forget it. Ain't gonna happen. It can't be any simpler.

Heck, even SCS had buses and subways...

[JakeMD 107]

Correct, Mass Transit will not be in the Single Player.

[tonymustang302 0]

Originally posted by: michael63000

Monte Cristo stole my money quote>

I agree 

[geparden 0]

I don't get why you're all complaining so much!? Cities XL is great game. Agreed, it is not Simcity 5.. but WHY should it be? It is an INDEPENDENT game!! YES, it "lacks" one single feature that was present in SC4 (mass transit), but it ALSO has a lot of different and new features! People, look at the opportunities not the limitations.

PS. If you're unsatisfied with the game; Monte Cristo clearly states that the game is made in open files to allow extensive MODDING ! (In order to satisfy EVERYONE)

[tonymustang302 0]

can someone make a money tree?  Everything was going awesome in my game then all of a sudden i put down a oil field and im down 24,000 a month.

[kusanagi-sama 1]

Originally posted by: tonymustang302

can someone make a money tree?  Everything was going awesome in my game then all of a sudden i put down a oil field and im down 24,000 a month.

quote>

Those don't exist in the game?  Also, trade the excess on the market.

[deanco 0]

Originally posted by: Centaur

I'm making around 10,000 per turn by trading surplus to the AI.  Sure, you don't get a good price, and maybe a few different AIs would make it better, but it seems to work fine for me.

quote>

I imagine trading TO the AI works, but for me, the option to do that usually isn't there.  No green check mark.  If you need something FROM the AI, good luck.  Once again, no green check marks to click on most of the time.  I have to literally look every few turns to see if Mr. OmniCorp has changed his mind.  Usually, he hasn't.  Very frustrating, not to mention poor gameplay.

[LordOscar 0]

Don't expect more in solo mode.

I'm surprised they didn't put a sign like 'my trades are way less expensive in Planet Offer, you should give it a try'

[Abart 0]

Originally posted by: Shanie

You have to give them a couple days on shipping and handling. You should have went digital download if you wanted it today (on Steam). They've been processing orders the last 5 days.

quote>

I see you talking about steam..

Is the game launched via Steam ?

Since deanco wrote in his first post that it appeared you need an internet connection to play the game.

A while ago i bought the latest game in the Total War series and was very frustrated of the game's dependancy on Steam to launch, and Steam need a internet connection to work properly. Had alot of problems with this since i dont always have a connection.

It's my opinion these kind of games must allow you to play offline and not depend on a frustrating program as Stream to launch the game.

[deanco 0]

Originally posted by: Abart

Since deanco wrote in his first post that it appeared you need an internet connection to play the game.

quote>

I was wrong about one thing in that post, I'd like to correct the error.

Yes, you must be online at least once to create an account, otherwise you can't play.  Not a big deal.

But the game will launch if you don't have an internet connection.  The launcher tries to connect, if it can't, the option to play single player is presented.

[nyirog 0]

hey guys, i bought this game and i ve a question: can i use railroad station in singel player mode (i know i can use it in planet offer mode when i ll pay for one month or more)?

-sorry for my english-

edit: i found the topic, sorry for that :S

[ElmoAssasin 0]

Originally posted by: Attila464

If only MC had taken a hint or 2 from their beta forums quote>

Yeah. Thinks were going to be muuuuch better for MC and for the players if MC had actually listened to the numerous warnings and complaints in the game forum and the beta forum.

Sadly, the players are hugely disappointed, and I don't think that MC will get a lot of gain from CXL.

I don't understand what happened, an year ago everything seemed so perfect, but somewhere in the beginning of 2009 or so MC started to slowly ruin the great ideas they had about a new type of a city builder...

By the way, I bought the game mainly because it was cheap - just £25. I was playing the beta and I knew what I was buying, so I wasn't that excited about it. And now I remember how I was extremely eager to get my hands on the game an year ago when I learnt about it. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm crashed as soon as I tried the beta.

Hopefully, when the major issues are corrected and the public transport is embedded, the game may be as good as I thought it would be. So, a message for those who still hesitate about buying the game: wait, and read what the people who have it say. And hope that MC will stop screwing everything.

[Naviss 0]

I posted this in another topic that was just closed. I wrote it in a reply to that thread but I guess it took me to long to post, Cause when I tried to the topic was closed hahahaha

I know this is more less a band wagon for hate against MC, But for what it's worth I'm going to stick around and see what happens before I bash a company that already has had a rather poor rep. They have been the only company to try a city building game for awhile now, And have alot of grand ideas! The question is will they support it and make it happen?

I'll 100% and totally agree the game was released about a year to soon. An I honestly feel MC ran out of money. But I'm more then willing to put a for extra bucks to see if I can help and their idea's and plans finally come to play.

I really feel in about 6 months or a year the game will be amazing, From all the extra content and so on. But time will tell.

Over all they have alot of work to do with patches which 3 released already and more soon to come I hope. The extra content seems to be coming soon, With this news post from today on the site;

What the future holds...

October 9, 2009, 6:10 pm

Planet Offer brings many benefits to players, and not the least of them are content packs which will be delivered on a regular basis to bring new features and content to the game, based on community feedback. For example, many players have pointed out Cities XL mostly allowed cities with a very modern feel to them, which is why we are preparing a series of medieval buildings that will bring more variety to the game and allow the realisation of a small historical downtown.

Now that the game is officially released, let's have a quick first look at what the Planet Offer has in store for the future of your cities...

First content pack:

* Medieval pack: 10 residences, a hotel, a shop, a restaurant, a plaza (decoration zone), a church and a 2-lane street.

* The map of Rio de Janeiro featuring the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer.

* Sponsored Content: a Ford dealership producing real Ford cars

* 3 Megastructures: the 'Glass Gherkin' from London, the Tokyo Imperial Palace and Alcatraz.

* A new farm model.

Second content pack:

* Chinatown pack 10 residences, a hotel, a shop, a restaurant, a plaza (decoration zone), a temple and a gate.

* A realistic map of Manhattan featuring the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and the road network.

* Blueprints: three new stadiums (football, baseball and American football).

* New maps.

* An animated ferris wheel.

Third content pack:

* A comprehensive bus system: create your own bus lines and place each bus stop

* A selection of new roads inspired by roads from US, Britain and other European countries

* A selection of different service vehicles from different countries (police , ambulances, fire brigade)

Sounds exciting! We will see!

[groth1175 0]

Ive played it for a couple hours now, and If I could offer any suggestions for what I would like to see, they would be as follows.

A far more in depth ability to manage the economy, taxation, funding ordinance ect.

I terribly miss disasters.

a few more building types "Every large hotel was identical"

but most importantly the ability to modify a terrain to your liking (For offline users of course)

That being said, its a very pretty game, the Terrain is the nicest i've seen in any sim, Im very hopeful that future updates will make it really great.

[LordOscar 0]

The extra content seems to be coming soon, With this news post from today on the sitequote>

How nice from you to post specific PO extension packs in a solo mode topic.

[Audacitor 0]

I won't put in my two cents about a game without letting people know where I'm coming from. If you don't care about that, skip to the green text.

I have a long but shallow history with city builders. When I was kid, I managed to make a fully self-sustained megalopolis in the original SimCity, and I loved SimCity 2000, especially it's tight integration with SimCopter. After that, not much happened. I didn't touch a city builder again until SimCity 4, which ran extremely slowly and buggy on my last not-at-all slow Macintosh (and still runs slowly on my current early 2009 MacBook Pro).

When I first saw Cities XL, I didn't pay much attention to it; just made a mental note of it. I didn't read the forums, I only read a few a blog posts and so on. When MC started dropping game play videos I got really excited and pre-ordered.

Let me say also that I abhor Windows in all its forms save 7, which I haven't tried yet. Until CXL, there was no trace of Microsoft in my house, but I wanted the game badly enough to install XP. (No, I didn't buy a multi-hundred dollar copy of Windows for CXL, I used a long forgotten disk my office purchased so we could use ancient and archaic finance software that our bank was compatible with. When we switched to a different bank, we deacticated the XP machine and kept the disc for future use. Now, several years later, the office didn't need it so they gave it to me on request.)

And now my impressions:

I'm very dissapointed.

Graphically, the game looks great, and for any other city builders that are released in the coming few years, CXL will give them a run for their money, especially when it comes to maps.

But the tools for building your city aren't that great. I'll start with roads. Breaking out of the grid is nice, and when you first start playing with it, visions run rampant through your head of trying out unusual city layouts. You can't wait to wind lots of curving roads through your city while still managing great space efficiency.

Forget them. You can make curved roads, yes, but you can't make precise curved roads. Want a nice circle? You'll have to settle with your best approximation. A uniform sine wave? Even harder. You don't get any control over the curve itself at all, you just pick a series of points and CXL does what it thinks is best. Want to draw a road parallel to that one over there? Unless you made it with eight orientations mode, no dice.

And things get worse once you have an extablished infrastructure. Let's say you've got a nice retail zone you built with the block tool sandwiched between some medium density residential and your heavy density downtown area. To connect them all, there's a small avenue running from end to end. It wasn't always like this, of course. Your residential area used to be light, and your downtown area didn't exist, which is why you have only a small avenue. But now they have lots of traffic going through them, and your retail area is swamped in the crossfire; your small avenue isn't enough anymore.

I hope space efficiency isn't something you care about, because if you want to expand your small avenue, you're going to demolish it and a whole row of retail establishments to make room for the new big road. And once you put in the new road, you'll have space left over between the road and the next row of retail establishments. All that wasted space.

If you want to avoid this you could designate a couple streets as one way, but that's not what you had in mind, is it? If you want good space efficiency and an appropriately-sized infrastructure throughout your game, you can't have it.

CXL takes you all the way out of the grid; you don't get any of the benefits of grid based layout anymore, and that's pretty pathetic. Cities and grids and upgradable road systems all come together to create space efficiency in the real world. But not in Cities XL.

The block placement tool is very constrained. You can make blocks of two lots by three lots, and that's it. No where can you set it to 2x2, 1x2, 3x2 or anything else. Another barrier to implementing your layout idea.

Farms, oil fields, waste dumps and other things defined by a polygon cannot be snapped into a pefect grid or circle or equilateral triangle.

Even if it did have mass transit, it's still not the epic evolution I thought it would be. The simulation is fine, the representation is fine, and the game is perfectly setup to store all the information needed to define a truly non-linear yet intelligently designed and space efficient city, but the suitably complex tools you need to articulate your ideas are scrapped in favor of easier and less capable tools for the casual player.

Before the release, I was positive I was going to subscribe to the Planet Offer purely for the new content, but without the tools to use them properly, I'll pass.

I also agree with mmmfloorpie:

These games have

never

been about multiplayer MMO garbage. They are about

singleplayer

! You lock yourself in your room for a month and painstakeningly sit there and perfect your city. The more intricate and nuanced that the sim is, the better. I don't want a game that is "dumbed down" for casual players or that is focused on the online portion. I want a complicated game that has lots of options and takes weeks (if not months) to complete.

Right on. Can GEMs do that?

[bluetooth 0]

Originally posted by: deanco

The middle mouse wheel rotate is way too sensitive.  The slightest motion sends it spinning uncontrollably.  Nobody in beta commented on this?  If somebody finds an .ini with this setting, please let me know.

quote>

I might be able to help you with that. I had the same problem in another game, the only thing I had to do was to uninstall my Logitech mouse/keyboard software. After that all worked fine.  >>

[tonymustang302 0]

Acutlaly the more i play it, the more i like it.  I think if they merged simcity 4 and this...the game would be insane.  Curved roads, fill in parks into empty spaces....cmon, i like it...i dont like how you cant have railroads etc etc.

[Jeiman2008 21]

     I first heard about Cities XL in it's early design phase, and like many of you, I was very excited about the game.  At the time I was playing SC4 and really getting into looking at the City Journals section here.  I've seen and tinkered with a lot of custom content and generally played the heck out of SC4.   Naturally I have some high hopes and reasonable expectations of a game which claims to be the next generation city builder.  I knew no matter what I'd probably be buying Cities XL.  The game just looked so ... awesome during development.  So I pre-ordered Cities XL, and as release date came nearer my heart began to sink.  I was hearing a LOT of negativity about Cities XL.  All signs seemed to point to impending disaster and botched release.  Now that i've played the game for a few hours, I have to say that Cities XL has definately fufilled my expectations, if not quite lived up to all of my hopes for the game.

    First,  It is a bit frustrating to have to register the game to play.   After downloading my Pre-Order from Direct2Drive (which took about 15 hours)  I got the game client up and running, and am of course prompted to register, which I do.  Thirty minutes later I finally got my confirmation email from Monte Cristo and was able to login.  Can I play now?  Not before I get this 300mb patch.  Ok so the patch only took about 10 minutes.  Not a huge deal.  The first thing you're prompted to do is create your avatar for online play.  I could really care less about my avatar, at this point I just want to play the game.  I rushed through creating an avatar and am presented with the tutorial next... Can I play now?  No the game holds my hand a bit through a few tutorials after which I'm finally presented with the option to play a city.  I decied to take them up on the seven days of free Planet Offer, and created my first city online.  This whole process from unpacking my download to actually being able to start playing the game was more than two hours.  I must say I was a bit turned off at this point, however I was still optomistic and hopefull that once I started a city of my own i'd really get to see the meat of the game.

     Finally!  I've founded my first Cities XL city, Las Estrellas.  Remember when you first tried Sim City?  I don't know about you but I lost a good amount of sleep as a teenager staying up late tinkering with my cities when I should have been doing my homework because the game was so damn addictive.  That's exactly kind of experience I was hoping for from Cities XL, and boy did I get it!   Keeping in mind I've only played this game for about 5 hours, I have hardly even begun to delve into the depth of budgeting, trading, or any of the online trade/token options available; I simply could not put it down.  That bieng said, Cities XL in general seemes to be slightly on the unpolished side.  The interface while functional, is a bit clunky.  At times I found myself wondering how to find specific information about zoning and demand.  How do I know how much farmland I need to support X citizens?  How many jobs is this new industrial zone going to provide?... What's this big red button do?  To be fair, I did not complete all of  the tutorials, the interface in general  just didn't feel very intuitive to me.  Laying down roads and zoning was fairly simple, although it took a lot of playing with to figure out how to get my roads and zones exactly how I want them.  I tend to shy away from a cookie cutter or gridwork kind of road/zone layout and was very happy to find that it was very little trouble bending and turning roads any which way I want.  The biggest bummer for me when comparing Cities XL to Sim City 4 was that the buildings don't really go through much of a construction phase, they just pop up in a few seconds.  I think it adds a little something to see things like movers and cement trucks pull up to the lot while it's under construction.

     I'm not going to get too much into planet offer, as I really haven't played with enough if it's features to make a call on it.  Planet View looks really cool.  It's nice to see all the trades going around the planet.  It's also nice to have some people to talk to and ask advice in chat.  By far the coolest thing was bieng able to explore other people's cities.  A screen shot only shows you so much, and doesn't really compare with actually using the game client to see someone's city.  Do I think planet offer is going to be worth a monthly fee?  Again too early to tell but my initial thought is a month or two may be worthwhile.  I do appreciate the sense of community they are trying to bring with Planet Offer, however currently it doesn't seem to be robust enough to warrant paying for.  So the verdict on PO is wait and see.  My hope is Monte Cristo will make enough money to do away with a subscription fee and come up with something more reasonable like expansions, or perhaps introduce some form of ad revenue to pay for the servers.

    

So the bottom line:  Is Cities XL worth $40?  In my humble opinion yes.  As I said, I feel like i've gotten at least what I expected.  The game is quite fun to play, and it looks beautiful.  It reminded me right away of why I liked Sim City so much.  Cities XL surely has a very similar kind of addictive gameplay.

I hope this has helped you to decide weather or not you want to try Cities XL.  Good luck and happy building.

-Jeiman

[Ocram's Razr 964]

The last time I checked, Europe had faster and cheaper internet than North America. If someone is complaining that they cannot afford internet, they could use their laptop to go to a cafe with internet (which are in every developed nation and some transitional ones also). Of course if one does not have a laptop, one could get 1 month of internet and register during that month. If one cannot afford one month of internet, then what business does one have to use an internet forum and buy an expensive game?

[ElmoAssasin 0]

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle

The last time I checked, Europe had faster and cheaper internet than North America. If someone is complaining that they cannot afford internet, they could use their laptop to go to a cafe with internet (which are in every developed nation and some transitional ones also). Of course if one does not have a laptop, one could get 1 month of internet and register during that month. If one cannot afford one month of internet, then what business does one have to use an internet forum and buy an expensive game?quote>

Well said!

But I would disagree that all of Europe has faster internet than North America... I have lived in 2 European countries for over an year and have travelled a lot around Europe and the USA. I can honestly say that there is no worse internet than the one in the UK. And the internet in Germany is much more expensive than in most European countries and the USA...

[Omniassiah 3]

Realize that not all Internet are equal. Some people have bandwidth limitation. others may have access to forums and websites through University/Job connections but non http/email ports are blocked. Often getting 1 month of internet is impossible, in the US that is going to cost you an average of $240 for one month of internet since after you cancel you'll have a $200 cancellation fee for not finishing your contract. Internet cafes are about the only viable option and if you don't own a laptop that can run CXL, but instead play on a Desktop, taking your desktop to an internet cafe to activate a game is going to be ugly. While Windows does need to be activated they at least provided a toll free number to call them up and do a phone activation.

[JanYpe 17]

[deanco 0]

Originally posted by: bluetooth

Originally posted by: deanco

The middle mouse wheel rotate is way too sensitive.  The slightest motion sends it spinning uncontrollably.  Nobody in beta commented on this?  If somebody finds an .ini with this setting, please let me know.

quote>

I might be able to help you with that. I had the same problem in another game, the only thing I had to do was to uninstall my Logitech mouse/keyboard software. After that all worked fine.  

[deanco 0]

Ah, that's funny. I wrote a reply to bluetooth, and the forum ate my post.

Interesting. Let's see if this one works.

Ah, must have been a blip.  Ignore.

[gutterclub 2,729]

My initial thoughts are that I like it, and think as a straight out hte box game it is better than SC4 vanilla.

A few things I'd like to see

Different zone sizes, every buidling is the same size.

Better options of parks etc, they are a bit too generic at the moment.

More landmarks available from the off.

Choice of building styles, really liked that with SC4.