Things you enjoy about the game

[Androv 6]

 Time for some pro Cities XL stuff!

Specialised cities - I'm able to make a city with no pollution by trading for manufacturing goods / heavy industry goods through the public offer.

Road options - for the large avenue, I can have 2 lanes each way with a central median strip, 2 lanes / 3 lanes with no central strip, 5 lanes in one direction, 4 lanes in one direction with central median strip ... etc

Visiting other cities - if someone's made a huge city, I can see how they've set it up.  I can invite people to have a look at my city.  If I had more friends we could all have a catch up in the city and discuss whatever.

Online rankings - On Hyperion, my city Qulara is the largest producer of water, with about 3 times as much as everyone else.  My water empire funds numerous city improvements and keeps everyone happy!

Online city journal - You get a newspaper with 'articles' for your city journal updates.  You can drag and drop pictures from Google Picasa which makes things pretty easy to set up.

Customer support - I didn't enter my mayor's name right (didn't capitalise the first letter) and it was really bugging me.  Within 24 hours I had a reply to my message (nicely worded) saying that my mayor's name had been corrected.  Thanks Monte Cristo

Here's a pic from Qulara, water empire.

 

[Tysons4 68]

i like (comparing the game to monte cristos city life series)

1) the tunnels.. they were horrible looking in the beta but still fun.

2 some of the ideas about what a city builder should be. i see them trying to monopolize the cb market

3) their promises that have about the future of the game (never really got it with city life.. but now with updates who knows

4) building designs.. cl reminded me of a crayon box after awhile

5) route query (but can lag)

6) visiting cities also (but wish i could see some statistics)

7) how they got away from the socital aspect (sort of) no more crayon box looking cities

roads can be a pain... but a fun kinda pain

9) traffic variety (although a lot of emergency vehicles when i only have 1 hospital or fire trucks when i have a fire station)

10) graphics... although the camera could have been worked out of its position bind

[Rakeesh 0]

The online aspect. As much as a lot of people are complaining about it and it's associated fee, I think it's a step in the right direction. Still needs some tweaking of course.

[danny_1990 0]

I finally got the game today. And I must say, Monte Cristo did one hell of a job. It's a very fun game and I really like it!

I have a 7-day free trial of the Planet Offer, but in the end, I don't think I'll subscribe to it. Maybe in the future, when all the neat stuff they promised are available in the PO.

Anyway, what I like about this game is the wide variety of buildings, factories & companies. The road system is something that I quite like as well! Anyway, I had a little fun today, and I'm willing to post some screenshots! so check out the screenshots thread in the City Journals section.

I hereby would like to thank Monte Cristo for the game they made for us!

[Psycho_Teddy 25]

I'm so glad to see a thread like this. Thank you so much OP for going against the flow and appreciating this game for what it is!

- Economics: It's so fragile and complex, I love having to maintain a good balance between jobs, and population types, all the while keeping in mind tax revenues and the like. It's amazing, and a huge step up from SC4.

- Traffic: Route resolution seems to be a lot more efficient and realistic than SimCity. There's a lot less of the problems you saw in SC4 where 10,000 people tried to cram their suburban SUVs through one tiny side street. The problem still happens but it's only in isolated spots and is usually due to player error. Cars use main roads whenever possible.

- Visuals: This game looks stunning. It's not very pretty up close but zoom out and plop your camera on the nearest mountaintop and you'll have one of the most spectacular vistas ever.

- Trade: No longer is a city just dependent on it's citizens and their wallets, trade is a huge factor here. In order to make a thriving metropolis, you've got to keep the books balanced by exporting your excess goods and importing the ones that are lacking. Taxes won't cut it.

- Dynamic content: MC has really taken a step in the right direction by releasing content packs for the game. While we're still in the process of waiting on our first one, I'm sure that this could eventually lead to a huge and worthwhile experience when all things are said and done.

Again, thank you so much for taking the opportunity to give this game a chance. It's going to be big once MC gets more expansions out there. Mark my words.

[rhenry 1]

Originally posted by: Androv

 Time for some pro Cities XL stuff!

Specialised cities - I'm able to make a city with no pollution by trading for manufacturing goods / heavy industry goods through the public offer.

Road options - for the large avenue, I can have 2 lanes each way with a central median strip, 2 lanes / 3 lanes with no central strip, 5 lanes in one direction, 4 lanes in one direction with central median strip ... etc

Visiting other cities - if someone's made a huge city, I can see how they've set it up.  I can invite people to have a look at my city.  If I had more friends we could all have a catch up in the city and discuss whatever.

Online rankings - On Hyperion, my city Qulara is the largest producer of water, with about 3 times as much as everyone else.  My water empire funds numerous city improvements and keeps everyone happy!

Online city journal - You get a newspaper with 'articles' for your city journal updates.  You can drag and drop pictures from Google Picasa which makes things pretty easy to set up.

Customer support - I didn't enter my mayor's name right (didn't capitalise the first letter) and it was really bugging me.  Within 24 hours I had a reply to my message (nicely worded) saying that my mayor's name had been corrected.  Thanks Monte Cristo

Here's a pic from Qulara, water empire.

I really like your city. It's got a nice balance to it, not obnoxiously huge. I like the sparsity of the higher buildings.

 quote>

[JanYpe 17]

[Psycho_Teddy 25]

In sumary, THIS is why I love CXL:

[danny_1990 0]

This is not a complaint thread

[Androv 6]

He is There's a big pic of him in the manual ... being evil.

Best use for him is offloading excess industry - in may case offices - so that there's still demand in the city for that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the offices need high tech... and the high tech needs manufacturing.... so unless I build them myself I have to import them.... and then I lose money

I hope someone sets up a big city full of pollution so I can export my office services to them for a bit more than Omnicorp pays me

[Androv 6]

 Qulara has just reached 500,000 people, some more screenies

OK, I'm having fun

You can see the highway transforming into an expressway at the bottom of the screen.  On the right side are some houses for qualified workers, on the left the houses for the unqualified workers.  The large building someway up is a hotel, and you can see the city centre in the distance down the hill.  There are more low density houses in the far distance.

[DCMetro34 577]

Like, in the pics above, I would say the landscape and ability to build almost anywhere. In SC4, you couldn't even get close to the water.

[jeremy12 0]

Graphics

Road options - although i think it is lacking a bit i wish i could upgrade from a small road to regular road without destroying tons of stuff, maybe have it auto upgrade in the least destructive and have it confirm with me what it will destroy to accomplish the upgrade so if the AI makes a bad choice i can manually do it

[DazzaDazza 29]

Psycho_Teddy, that is a nice looking city

[ScaryMonkey 0]

I agree, it is nice to see something positive being said! Here's what I liked about the game (although I ultimately decided not to buy it):

-Nice looking landscapes, in full 3D

-The idea of resources playing a part in the city's economy, although I would have implemented it slightly differently.

-The ability to build bridges at different heights and have things pass under them

And my biggest one:

-The way the network determines the effective area of services; Those circular service areas for hospitals and police stations are one of the things I dislike most in SC4.

[Palpatine001 57]

Playing Neo Solaria Ill echo most of the thoughts here that I like

Thing I like the most is playing marco-economics for your city

Trying to trade my oil, food and to an extent water in return for heavier industry is one hell of a balancing act but loving it

Still hold high hopes for this game over time

[xannepan 513]

Although many have complained about dead cities I like all the little animations of when you zoom in. With ambient sound to go with these it would really improve the experience even more. I'm hopeful here. The visionary cinematic trailer shows much more animations will probably be added to the games (clouds, some from the chimneys etc).

I also definitely like the road system, which gives so much more flexibility than sc4, despite the still square lot sizes. Also much more to come here I guess

Finally, I'm beginning to like the trade system (although it remains a bit buggy). This was the biggest change in simulations depth wrt sc4 and it took some time to get used to. But once you learn to exploit it you can really improve the game experience and build cities with all kinds of varieties (industrial ones, rural etc).

[Androv 6]

I think that even though you have square lots and therefore grids are the way to go, you can *align* those grids to the landscape and get a very natural and aesthetic grid system. You can connect the grids with the curved roads as well. Or you can build a curved road to follow a mountain contour and place houses along that, which avoids the blocky nature of things as well.

[masterofflight 0]

Graphics graphics graphics! It's a huge step up over SimCity. I always wanted to walkaround my SimCities and look up at the buildings. I imagined myself doing it a lot.

I also love the non-grid format now. Curved and diagonal roads allow you to make much more intricate (and realistic) cities.

[Kciredor 0]

Once the trade system is fixed and we have a good trade going down, can't wait to see people say "I will buy all your water for pennies". just to see some cities shrink.

And i would like to see some disasters and have to have the world come together and help out other cites. or cities that want to help out, have to have competition of some sorts.

We could have monoplies, create our own companies,

[kusanagi-sama 1]

How do you guys create your city centers? Do you demolish the old center to put new high density plots there? Or do you just move the city center elsewhere?  This picture shows my city:

--AND--

Please keep images within 800x600

[Psycho_Teddy 25]

Originally posted by: kusanagi-sama

How do you guys create your city centers? Do you demolish the old center to put new high density plots there? Or do you just move the city center elsewhere?quote>

So far up to this point I plan out before I even start building.  Start your low density areas where they'll stay, and work your way towards the downtown centre you plan to build.  This makes a nice progression up to the tall buildings and looks extremely realistic if done properly. If you look at this dscreen, I started my town on the far end of this shot, and worked my way to the coast, where I knew I wanted my high density stuff.  No demolishing required.

[EDIT]: In your case, I would take the medium density buildings and work them all the way out to the coast.  Once you get the population to handle Hi Density, put those along the coast in a concentrated area.

[masochist 111]

What do I like?

The visuals - Not only do I like the way the game looks, but also the shots you can take, and the various angles you can get to take your shots.

The roads - Road layouts can be complex, and it doesn't take ages of going through menus and tab-cycles to get just the right part.  Also, as Androv pointed out, the roads allow for a multitude of custimization options--one ways, uneven number of lanes, etc.  And assuming that MC hasn't abandoned the Multi-Lane tool, there's more to come on the way .

Other cities - I REALLY like visiting other people's cities.  I get layout ideas when I do, and I can get some really good shots of them...it's like being a tourist in a virtual world!  For example:

I took that shot in Psycho_Teddy's city San Milan (see the post directly above this one ).  It's something that I think this game has going for it, that you can freely move about in another person's city, offer advice, give accolades, etc.; in this case, San Milan is built on the exact same type of map that I am building on, and I've gotten some ideas on how to get up some of the more steeper hills, and also how I might run a coastal highway (which I've been wondering about for a while). 

It even helps to look into other people's cities if you have contracts with that city and you want to check if it's doing all right; a million bankrupt offices might be indicitave of an unstable economy.

There are more things I like about CXL, but that's enough.  It's not SC4, sure, but it's not a bad game at all.

[kusanagi-sama 1]

Originally posted by: Psycho_Teddy

Originally posted by: kusanagi-sama

How do you guys create your city centers? Do you demolish the old center to put new high density plots there? Or do you just move the city center elsewhere?quote>

So far up to this point I plan out before I even start building.  Start your low density areas where they'll stay, and work your way towards the downtown centre you plan to build.  This makes a nice progression up to the tall buildings and looks extremely realistic if done properly. If you look at this dscreen, I started my town on the far end of this shot, and worked my way to the coast, where I knew I wanted my high density stuff.  No demolishing required.

quote>

I do a bit of planning, but what you are doing there is essentially what I've been doing as well.  See the two pictures I posted above.

[Psycho_Teddy 25]

Originally posted by: kusanagi-sama

Originally posted by: Psycho_Teddy

Originally posted by: kusanagi-sama

How do you guys create your city centers? Do you demolish the old center to put new high density plots there? Or do you just move the city center elsewhere?quote>

So far up to this point I plan out before I even start building.  Start your low density areas where they'll stay, and work your way towards the downtown centre you plan to build.  This makes a nice progression up to the tall buildings and looks extremely realistic if done properly. If you look at this dscreen, I started my town on the far end of this shot, and worked my way to the coast, where I knew I wanted my high density stuff.  No demolishing required.

quote>

I do a bit of planning, but what you are doing there is essentially what I've been doing as well.  See the two pictures I posted above.

quote>

Then I think you've got the right plan, just give it time

[kusanagi-sama 1]

I should mention that I do enjoy the graphics and the challenge of trying to create a city and all the options available to the game, but it still needs some work though.

[SimBurger 0]

1) The visuals can be amazing. I had to buy a new computer but I kicked out $$$$ for a Velocity Raptor and now - wow!

2) I just love that Monte Cristo bothered to improve Sim City. That alone I give them amazing credit for. Sim City is one of those games that could evolve into a real world - life size virtual reality game as the technology improves, where you walk through your own city and do all kinds of crazy crap. If they can perfect this game, and keep it going, one day we may be in a living breathing virtual city. I was beyond bummed when Maxis/EA just gave up, and the SimCity creator started making "SPORE" instead. Spore! Give me a break! (sorry)

3) Support and follow up. The fact that Monte Cristo is here , in person, putting up with all the annoying whining and never-satisfied end users (including me sometimes), while remaining professional and civil, is amazing to me. The fact that they are here at all is amazing to me. Companies never do this. Ever. They're always this lofty, untouchable, unknowable figure. Lets do our best not to wear out their welcome by b*tching too much ok guys? I always said what matters most is what they do after version 1.0 is released. Because its version 1.1 and 2.0 that are the real thing. Whether they listen to our bug reports, and prioritize our enhancement requests. They seem to be doing just that and they deserve huge praise for it. To you guys who are emailing and not getting responses. Give them a break - they just released a new game worldwide. They probably have over 8,000 emails to answer.

4) I love street view - being able to walk through my city. Its a dream come true. The one thing I always wanted from SimCity. Now if they could just give us a pause button in Planet Offer mode, so we can take time to really walk around and see things. MC if you're listening - one of the BIGGEST joys and most fulfilling aspects of this game is the ability to zoom down and walk your own city streets. Get a feeling for it. The visual. Please ... please consider adding a pause so there arent businesses failing and work that needs to be done every second of game play.

5) Visiting other cities is awesome but the avatar navigation needs to be fixed. Once that's done, going on a "trip" to other places will be another huge highlight of this game.

-SB-

[masochist 111]

Originally posted by: SimBurger

5) Visiting other cities is awesome but the avatar navigation needs to be fixed. Once that's done, going on a "trip" to other places will be another huge highlight of this game.

-SB-quote>

Abandon your avatar.  When you go into a different city, click on either of the two camera views in the "View Options" and it'll let you look around the city just as if it were your own.

[Palpatine001 57]

Right some tips on planning

There are two ways you can go about this in building a "city centre" (high density one), you can either carefully plan it or go ad-hoc (piecemeal planning and building).

Now the ad-hoc method in my academic opinion is more realistic when comparing to older real world cities where you notice how time and democracy has lead to a rather quilt work of development (see most USA cities ) but it can be a costly exercise when that gentrification (urban renewal) is needed later on.

Planning ahead like teddy has done above does allow for a more smooth city and saves cash when doing urban renewal later on but in again my academic opinion, is not quite as realistic compared to the real world usually.

Now teddy has given hints on Planning ahead model, that is you think very far ahead and often leave large open spaces for future high density development as your city grows - but you need to be disciplined to do it.

For the ad-hoc model which I used for Solaria in SC4 and now in Neo Solaria in XL it means you start low density and you expand outwards in low density creating a urban sprawl, as your city begins to have high enough "mass" then you can either place higher density zoning on virgin soils or like most cities you redevelop older areas - yes that means the bulldozer and rezoning and away we go. The catch is and this was a draw back for Solaria, DO MAKE SURE you have an idea where your infrastructure is going and leave space for it, otherwise you pay mega $$$ for demolishing houses and then placing that highway, or you create an ad-hoc network which is incomplete and gives your citizens grief in commuting.

Hope this helps

If you need more planning advice, flick me a message

[Androv 6]

For planning, I build a road between two points on the map - where I imagine an actual road would have been before the city started. This road is a 'simple' road. Generally curved. I build my town hall somewhere in the centre of that road - this will be the centre of my city. I lay out small rectangular grid zones to start with, with maybe 6 - 8 blocks per zone. Use small roads and simple roads. Try and place industry a little way away, except for 'office' industry which I cluster around the town hall. I don't go for increased density until the city is at least 50,000 - 100,000 people. Most cities that I've visited don't even have row houses until they're quite large (in Australia that is). I'm happy to use the medium density offices as they don't really get that high, at least compared with the low density offices. I'm finding now that this planning mode has given me what feels like a very realistic city, but at the same time generates *HUGE* headaches for future traffic problems and road placement. Especially since the map I'm using is nearly all mountain. No highways at all for me, unless I feel like demolishing half of downtown! Even the expressways I've placed have required extensive use of the bulldozer tool Finally, when the city gets large enough, I'm ready for high density offices and residences. The office buildings give you the proper skyscrapers, but if it doesn't look great you can hit 'delete' and another one grows instead I find that using my old central grid area gives me less usable space, but perhaps a more realistic skyline.

Here's my mayor in avatar mode (standing on a hotel roof!) looking towards the CBD.