Cities XL 2011 Verdict so far

morriswalters · October 17, 2010

Originally posted by: Geodesic7

It's early days yet so there is still plenty of scope for improvement and I see a lot of potential in the game. I wish they had spent a bit more time getting some of the minor problems fixed before release.

Here's a few examples:

Roundabouts and roads don't align properly

Roundabouts are tiles not road sections, similar to highway intersections. They stand above the terrain.

Alignment issues with intersections and so-called fast lanes

I think these next two speak for themselves

For the previous two pictures this is a function of roads being 3d as they have length, depth and width. Minimize this by terraforming, avoid sharp transitions.

On the "English roads" these yellow boxes and look right appear everywhere there is a junction

Intersections are made of pieces and parts. the yellow boxes are a texture used to fill all intersections and could be replaced, probably. The white lines and the notation could be edited but then you would end up with the white lines going to the intersection. The first road section off an intersection is used to set the traffic lights as well as the intersection markings. But this behavior will occur at all intersections. Just for giggles, each stretch between intersections will be composed of two intersection segments and a number of street segments. The street segments will stretch to fill the space, so the ceterlines may be different in length at different intersections.

The yellow boxes even show up on the corners and bends

Player control issue. Too sharp a break will trigger a partial intersection.

This street light just looks terrible

And these street lights are just wrong

Street furniture - I'd like to get rid of all this - if you know how please share

quote>

Yep they are butt ugly, but if they release the tools to model structures you could fix them. The street furniture may be removable by changing the layout files, maybe!

Ocram's Razr · October 17, 2010

The default and American Roads work much better. The problem is that I cannot upgrade the Wide Uptown Avenue at all even though it should be able to handle, 2 lanes each direction with median (default, only one available), 4 lanes 1 way + median, 5 lanes 1 way, 2+3, and 3+3 (expressway).

ws6daveg · October 17, 2010

So having waited and not buying 2009 is 2011 worth the costs.

synthmusic · October 17, 2010

Thumbs up. This is the first Cities game i've bought. I've owned and played to death every SimCity version since playing the original on a Mac SE...

Inerestingly, the ability to run roads in any direction I choose makes it all worth while! We paid $50 on SC4 and then $20 for Rush Hour, and still had only 8 directions of road with buildings that hadn't yet adapted out of 4. It has a few new concepts, though much is straightforward and expected, for better or worse. In the end, it is an enjoyable city creation simulator.

There is definitely a bug with trading that has spun a couple cities out of control - i'll post in the issues section - but overall it's a decent play on the city building theme, well worth the 40 bucks i paid for it. I have my fingers crossed for a fix release soon. These days every company in the world releases and then releases bug fixes, so i'm happy if they in fact do so. If we're left here without some continued support then I might change my mind, but open for now.

To Focus: Acknowledge and respond to found bugs (not complaints about gameplay), and you have yourselves an ongoing customer.

Verachtung · October 18, 2010

I dont played CXL 2009. But i really like CXL 2011

The only things I am really confused about are:

-Why is zooming not stepless?

-The snapping of lots sucks. Sometime it don't works, and sometime I would like to disable the snapping to be able set lots and stuff exactly where I want to. But it seems it's not deactivateable.

-Crappy german translation. My favorite translation failure: "Der Bildungsniveau unserer Stadt ist niedrig".

-Inconvenient building of tunnels and bridges. Especially tunnels have a lot of glitches. They are under earth but sometimes I can't build stuff above them. Then I have to make them deeper. Often I become the message I can't build deeper than water but there is no water anywhere. Or I set the direction of the tunnel, and when I click it, it jumps to an other direction. And there are really ugly graphical issues at the entrances, f.e. parks and gras are in the entrance. Bridges sucks because they have to be SOOOOOOOoo high to cross the Autobahn. So I have to make tunnels instead of bridges to cross them. Why is it needed to build 200m high bridges to cross a 5m high highway?!

-Stupid rectangular highway-turn-offs and crosses. At least 50% of them are grass which you can't change or build stuff on. This looks so stupid and ugly in cities.

-Plaining terrain sucks. All buildings in a big radius get deleted and it's a weird system to plain.

-Real advertisement every 2 meters on every street.

And it's too easy. I played the first time ever the Cities XL series and I got absolutely no problems. After trading a bit I earn 60.000+ € and I only have some farms and medium density lots. When I let the game run for some minutes I swim in millions of €... no desasters, no time limits, no challenge.

But don't misunderstood me, it makes fun to build in nice 3D graphics a city, and they look great with the realistic infrastructure and farms and without the isometric grid of Sim City.

I'm very, very curious if there will be a modding community which improves the game, cause it has big potencial I think. I pray this don't get a DLC cash cow without mod support like so much other games.

Oh and its 1.000.000 times better than City Life.

BurroDiablo · October 18, 2010

Wasn't impressed by the Beta so I didn't buy 2009, but I've enjoyed 2011 so far, it's longevity is questionable if Focus Home don't give us modding tools.

However, a few things, some have already been mentioned-

- English roads look super ugly with every intersection being a Box Junction (yellow criss-cross patterns), they should only really be on high capacity roads, Avenues, Expressways etc.

- Camera needs to be more flexible

- There needs to be a way to turn snapping OFF, for roads and buildings. Building roads near the edge of the map can get very frustrating.

- 'Furniture' needs to NOT appear on roads that aren't built up. Same goes for Lightposts.

- Farms Farms Farms Farms... what's still with the perpetual ugly textures? They need a re-vamp. Give us the tools, we'll do it ourselves!

That's all I got just now, obviously there's tonnes of stuff I'd/we'd like added, but we shouldn't become too demanding, be glad this was even released at all. It could have all gone down the pan along with MC.

hunkske · October 18, 2010

Hi all, after playing with 2011 this weekend I can relate to a lot which has already been said.

For me, it's a nice game and it makes a nice change from SC4.. there are obviously some bugs still present, and I really hope there'll be a lot of custom content available in the near future.. I really don't like how eg all skilled medium housing looks too much as if you're walking in Paris - there needs to be more variation. Where are all the typical american housing buildings, or the asian.. I find this a bit a problem for lots of buildings..

I'm not into the class system either yet fully, the leisure structures are waaay to few and personally I find it very unrealistic.. It should't be the city to put of a bowling alley or a go kart complex, but the sims or whatever you call them in the Cities XL universe..

But then again, I'm really trying not to compare it to SC4 (which as you can see from above , is a little difficult sometimes lolz).

So all in all, I like the game and it makes a nice change as said before, but in no way does it replace SC4 for me.. SC4 still has that extra special for me, and a true successor to SC4 it is not, and I don't think it'll ever become that (even when there'll be more modding and custom content). It's just because the way the game works I guess..

For me a true successor would be how SC4 works now, added/modified with new functionalities like eg the bus system, (some) 3D features, etc.

But since that is not what this topic is about, I'll say FH did a great job, and so far I've enjoyed playing!

masochist · October 18, 2010

Originally posted by: Verachtung

I'm very, very curious if there will be a modding community which improves the game, cause it has big potencial I think. I pray this don't get a DLC cash cow without mod support like so much other games.quote>

There already is a modding community, and there has been for a while.

[Mod Index]

pilman · October 19, 2010

I just bought Cities XL, haven't had enough time to fully evaluate it but the last decent city builder I played was Sim City 4 and unfortunately I never got heavily involved with it, I was big into sim city 2000, Sim city 3000 seemed like a improvement in graphics. Hated Sim City 4s interface but the graphics were very detailed and you could do a lot. Sim city 4 felt like the end of the series and I could feel that just playing the game. I never played the Cities XL series but the graphics look good but it's definitely no sim city. It's nice to see a game like this after being bombarded by these horrible FPS's and RPG's, I just have to get used to building, not used to the full 3D feel.

City Planner · October 21, 2010

Originally posted by: jazyje

. I don't like achievements --- they make me feel like I'm 8 years old... Is there a way to turn those off? Lastly, the game feels snappier; however, I noticed a definite DROP in the quality of building textures and I run everything on high -- has anyone experienced that as well?quote>

Yes, thankfully Focus realizes that not everybody likes achievements. Myself probably more than others find achievements to be little more than a gimick. So, yes, you can turn off the achievements in the options panel and they won't show on your screen, nor will they even accumulate.

Building textures to me look the same as they always have, some where always better than others, some more crisp and others softer, usually the softer ones don't look right as they look like they are lacking detail, however I don't think that is anything new to 2011.

Overall and enjoyable game. Not perfect by any means and personally I'm hoping that Focus figures out their own direction to take the game and does it. I don't particularly care for MC's design, where things like bowling alleys cost the city per month, that takes any form of what we can call simulation and drops it out the window.

With that said, it's not a bad game, it's quite enjoyable for the most part and I feel satisfied with my 20.00 purchase. Obviously I hope they will continue to improve on it and put out patches, expansions and sequels to make it one of the best CB games, however Focus is going to have to put it's own Focus on the game to do that.

soltangris · October 21, 2010

Yeah, bowling allew should be a business, not a city expense. Sports complexes costing your city money make sense - after all, it's almost the same in real world. But some of the leisure buildings just don't belong exactly to their categories - the bowling alley, the go-karts, paintball, multiplex, etc.

Actually, I almost have the feeling that there was a third leisure cathegory initially - Entertainment, where all those buildings went. Then they decided two types of leisure is enough and distributed the already-created buildings among them.

In my view it should be like this:

- Sports leisure: basketball court, footbal court, jogging track, swimming pool, tennis complex, sports complex.....

- Culture leisure: library, small museum, auditorium, music school, art school (also gives some education satisfaction), big museum, theatre

- Entertainment leisure: playground, bowling alley, go karts, paintball, discoteque,

The first two categories retain their present mode of functioning (costing your city money), The third, however, is private-owned, with all business rigmarole; only that it's not zones but stand-alone buildings (like the other leisure), with different area-of-effect and unlock requirements. And it functions much like retail - with area of effect and resource demand/offer ratio, but not tradeable outside the city.

City Planner · October 21, 2010

Hmmm, I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that the 'Staples Center' in Los Angeles, CA. makes some pretty hefty tax payments to the city with all the venues that they have their from concerts to sports.

I can think of a lot of things that MC could have simply increased the costs on if they needed to have a money sink in the game like most games would, heck they could have even just increase road maintenance and then had all the leisurely type of services pay into the treasurey.

Parks would make sense that they cost the city money since they need to maintain them, with that, a jogging track would be on a park. Libraries, absolutely should cost the city money, same with Museums, music and art schools, in my mind are private enterprises, and in real life costs a heck of a lot of money to get enrolled in. Public eductation facilities like public elementary school, high school community colleges, are all things the city would pay for. Public swimming pools to me would be in parks and recreation which of course the city is paying for.

But yeah, you're likely correct, it would not surprise me if they had originally planned out a third category but somebody cut it to save the budget and or time problems which would be a shame because it just looks really well... Un-simulation to have those buildings stuffed in there where the city has to pay for them.

Still, it's okay and all if you can overlook little things like this.

omnivoreceo · October 21, 2010

I'm wondering about this too. I've got a question: Is there is a sandbox mode in this one where you can pretty much do as you wish? Or do we have the same money cheat as the last one where you can pretty much whatever? I had a hard time getting engrossed in this game, but after buying the last version I'd consider this one down the road if it meant that it'd be worth playing down the road. Seems like people think it's improved and worth it, but is it immersive and fun? I'll wait a few weeks and see what people say in a month before deciding.

Ocram's Razr · October 21, 2010

There is a built in Cheat mode that lets you set your money to 50,000, add 10 tokens of everything, etc.

October 23, 2010

Well then. I v'e read all these comments and all the ups and downs for CXL2011. Can someone please tell me if it's worth the 20/30$?

soltangris · October 23, 2010

Well, if you have CXL 2009 and enjoyed it at least partially, yeah its worth it. It's CXL as it should have been (no Planet Mode, completely single player), and besides it's priced more than fair for the amount of changes.

There are shortcommings, of course, but things could only get better from now on.

tomfoolery_79 · October 23, 2010

Update: I'm up to about 15 hours with the game. My city is 500,000+ people. After playing this amount of time, I can confirm I am REALLY enjoying it. It's really fun up until you get elites, then from elites to the 500,000 it gets difficutly, still fun, but difficult. Then at 500,000 you get higher density offices and buildings etc, that make growth easier.

I'm finding it's extremely easy to grow cities, but I'm finding it's extremely difficult to keep them happy on all fronts. Not enough water, food, waste, leisure, etc. Building items that are supposed to reduce these things don't seem to help much if at all.

TCGaz · October 26, 2010

Originally posted by: tomfoolery_79

Update: I'm up to about 15 hours with the game. My city is 500,000+ people. After playing this amount of time, I can confirm I am REALLY enjoying it. It's really fun up until you get elites, then from elites to the 500,000 it gets difficutly, still fun, but difficult. Then at 500,000 you get higher density offices and buildings etc, that make growth easier.

I'm finding it's extremely easy to grow cities, but I'm finding it's extremely difficult to keep them happy on all fronts. Not enough water, food, waste, leisure, etc. Building items that are supposed to reduce these things don't seem to help much if at all.quote>

I've been playing for about a week, started two towns and made a hash of them before starting my third town and it's going much better. I'm about where you are with 500k citizens or so. Once unlocking the high density zoning things have picked up and I'm now taking some time from straight expansion to rezone and rework the stuff I did earlier on.

Some things I've noticed so far: Leisure seems far too ineffective. It seems no matter how much or what type of leisure I put into an area the citizens are never happy with it. The rating gets to about yellow and no more and the messages saying my citizens are bored keeps popping up. It seems there is nowhere near enough leisure options and what there is seems woefully ineffective. Maybe I'm missing something.

Farming: 10 farms = 1 silo; 5 silos = 1 fertilizer plant; 50 farms = 1 fertilizer plant? And the range on that one plant isn't enough to cover all 50 farms. I converted all of my available farmland (on the Peninsula map I think) into farms, rearranged them as efficiently as I could, and was only producing enough food for about 330k citizens. That was with complete coverage of silos and as much coverage as I could get from my single fertilizer plant. Seems like the balance is a little off here. 1 silo per 5 farms might be better. I modified the fertilizer file to lower its unlock requirements and increase its range of effectiveness which helped. I haven't found the silo file yet, but if I do I'll modify that to find a better balance.

Placement Snapping: As other people have mentioned it would be nice to be able to turn it off or have a modifier key that can disable it while placing stuff. It's annoying when placing roads anywhere near the edge of the map and the road I'm laying keeps jumping to the edge to place an intercity link.

Roads: I'd like to see merge intersections rather than hard stops, especially when connecting roads to expressways. This is pretty minor on my list though. It's unrealistic at worst. Roundabouts seem odd. Since they don't seem to connect to road points (they don't snap like when connecting road to road), I can't tell if they are placed right or working, so I just don't use them. While I like the ability to define what road types to use when placing building zones, I'd like a seperate selector for N-S, and E-W roads (for example) so I can say make the N-S roads small avenues, but make E-W roads small streets. Small point, but it would save time and a lot of niggling with the build tools.

Having played most of the SimCity series, I am very much enjoying this game so far. Sure it lacks some polish and refinement in areas, but overall it is fun. If anything I need to play it less because I'm starting to dream in street grids.

TCGaz · October 26, 2010