Discussion about City Tile Size

[Cob92 360]

2km is WAY too small. That's one strike against this new SimCity already.

[IDS2 3,428]

[...] When we make BAT's we try to make them to exact real world sizes.

except the 130% vertical scale I'll never understand why...

If we don't do that, the game's rendering engine squashes the buildings and they don't look to scale.

[tomfoolery_79 85]

Can we start a list of all the people claiming "I'm out"? Get off your high friggin horses, you and I both know you will be buying the game or else you wouldn't be on a site like this.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

2km is WAY too small. That's one strike against this new SimCity already.

I think the term city here is a misnomer. I think a playable city will have to be made up of several of these units. You can't possibly, for example, put down a realistic airport in a square 2 Km. on a side. Some modern runways are much longer than that.

It is time for us to look beyond the old SC4 model and see a new horizon. An airport, for example, might have to occupy several tiles. Failing that, no airports.

[RodC 7]

2km is WAY too small. That's one strike against this new SimCity already.

I think the term city here is a misnomer. I think a playable city will have to be made up of several of these units. You can't possibly, for example, put down a realistic airport in a square 2 Km. on a side. Some modern runways are much longer than that.

It is time for us to look beyond the old SC4 model and see a new horizon. An airport, for example, might have to occupy several tiles. Failing that, no airports.

Airports in Sim City games have never been to scale. I think you are forgetting what the original airports looked like in SC4. Sure, something like this is nice, but the stock airports would easily fit on even the smallest map tile...

[KeanoManu 42]

I don't think this will be such a big deal. It's obvious that 2x2 km won't be stand alone cities and from what we know this far they seem to have developed the regional concept.

2km is WAY too small. That's one strike against this new SimCity already.

I think the term city here is a misnomer. I think a playable city will have to be made up of several of these units. You can't possibly, for example, put down a realistic airport in a square 2 Km. on a side. Some modern runways are much longer than that.

It is time for us to look beyond the old SC4 model and see a new horizon. An airport, for example, might have to occupy several tiles. Failing that, no airports.

True. But most runways in real life are much longer than 2 km. At least for international airports.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Let us see here... City tiles are 2 kmx 2 km ... Single player (and possibly multiplayer) regions can have as many city tiles as the player wants ... The international airport in SimCity 4 fits in a medium city tile snugly (with room to the sides for commuter airport) ... Neighboring cities are rendered in the background ... Adjacent cities have a fraction of their simulation running while you are playing a city ...

It looks like Maxis might make a 1.9 x1.9 km upgradable international airport or airport zone (zones can be next to each other in adjacent cities).

I know that commuter airports do not fit in small city tiles because I tried to make a region with its airports in city tiles next to Downtown and the financial districts so you get the demand boost without the desirability drop. When I had to build the airport in a farther away medium city tile, I discovered that I could fit an international airport there. Once and only once was I able to get a region where I had a fully upgraded commuter airport (in a low end district adjacent to the main downtown (on one side the financial district with some HT on the other side a mixed use city), fully upgraded airstrip in an outer agrarian large city tile, and an international airport (not upgraded, on other side of the main financial district with a secondary financial district on the other side.

  Edited March 9, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Let us see here... City tiles are 2 kmx 2 km ... Single player (and possibly multiplayer) regions can have as many city tiles as the player wants ... The international airport in SimCity 4 fits in a medium city tile snugly (with room to the sides for commuter airport) ... Neighboring cities are rendered in the background ... Adjacent cities have a fraction of their simulation running while you are playing a city ...

It looks like Maxis might make a 1.9 x1.9 km upgradable international airport or airport zone (zones can be next to each other in adjacent cities).

Actually, I wonder how much of a step it would be to create some regional facilities? They did say that cities are boxes within a regional box. Was it said that cities are the only things in the regional box?

[Fornix 4]

Although 2x2km isn't a deal breaker for me, it's a shame if it's going to be the maximum size though. I hope they'll give us the option to determine for ourselves whether we want 1x1, 2x2, 4x4, 8x8 or heck even 16x16. Sure for most hardware these days 8x8 or 16x16 will be too much. However for those of us running quad core cpu's at close to 5ghz already, by the time we hit 2018 and might still be playing this game will probably be using 16 cores @ >7ghz. For simulation purposes even 16x16 will no longer be an issue then.

When it comes to grpahics, the hardware is there as well, definitely in the long run.

[TheRealDeadaim 38]

Doesn't bother me too much, I'd much rather have a game that functions properly. Makes a refreshing change to other games that try to over reach and have serious RAM issues.

[Vahr 343]

Right now we don't know what the tile bounds really mean besides visual rendering.

Glassbox enables the game to simulate beyond the city tile most likely (unlike SC4 which uses more of a statistical approach to approximate (by a rather large margin) the neighbors). Neighbor city says "I need 200 people in cars," current city says "OK, I can provide 150." Either way, while having to switch cities more often might be annoying, its rather minor.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I heard somewhere that heat would be too much an issue to have any single core have much more than 5ghz before heating problems cause issues (so you would need phase change cooling, possibly even liquid noble gas if you want a processor with 6+ GHz).

What really concerns me is that my method of managing the balance of utilities, population, and industries will need to be drastically changed. In SimCity 4, my regions are checkerboards of residential, clean industry, and pollution centers. Here is an example: I have a small middle class exurb with full coverage of clinics and small police stations, local branch libraries, 1 elementary school, free mayor rewards, with tax rates optimal for middle class and maybe a few middle class shops (so R$$ and CS$$ at 5% tax and everything else 20% or unzoned) with a forest (open grass areas with cheat god mode trees) around my water pump. Next to it is an industrial suburb (dirty industry, manufacturing industry, incinerators, a coal plant). Everyone gets clean water (R$$ stage 3 and 4 and large factories), jobs, employees, power, and waste services. There is virtually no chance of fire at the factors (arson and accidents from minor crimes are the major causes of fires for me). On the other side of the industry is a ghetto with density residential, 5% tax rate on R$, 20% on others, a small CS$ strip along the central avenue (only way to cross border between cities), 1 hospital, large police stations, 1 fire station with no funding until emergency, a couple of local branch libraries. All these small city tiles have 1 avenue going through the middle with most of the commuters going by train because tracks pull double duty as freight (no stations needed).

  Edited March 9, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[Tarkus 6,933]

I heard somewhere that heat would be too much an issue to have any single core have much more than 5ghz before heating problems cause issues (so you would need phase change cooling, possibly even liquid noble gas if you want a processor with 6+ GHz.

Not true. As early as 2010, people managed to overclock AMD Phenom Quad-Cores over 7GHz just using liquid nitrogen. Not sure how long the thing would remain stable, but it's possible.

I'll second Vince here, too. We also don't know what the interface will be to go between city tiles. It's possible they may work out some sort of more convenient system that will allow you to move over to neighboring city tiles, rather than having to exit back out to region view or such.

-Tarkus

[Fornix 4]

I heard somewhere that heat would be too much an issue to have any single core have much more than 5ghz before heating problems cause issues (so you would need phase change cooling, possibly even liquid noble gas if you want a processor with 6+ GHz.

Not so much, latest CPU's are quite well at achieving high clock speeds whilst maintaining acceptable temps. The i7-3820 for example can be OC'ed to around 5Ghz running air cooling, although to be on the safe side 4.6 - 4.7Ghz would be a wiser choice. On liquid cooling speeds up to 5.7Ghz have been achieved using the latest i7 series. On liquid nitrogen speeds can go much higher, topping 7Ghz on the i7 products and I believe some crazy bunch managed to achieve 8.8Ghz on the latest AMD products around november last year. Obviously liquid nitrogen isn't a realistic option though, but air and liquid cooling is. And with 5Ghz already being possible now, 7Ghz will not be out of the question 6 years from now.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

You can get a high end 4-8 core processor to run at double digit speeds if you cool it with Xenon but most consumers cannot afford that. Multi-core processors are not faster than single core processors, they can merely run more programs at the same time so a program can use more of the capacity (a 2 thread process can use 2 whole cores in a quad core processor) so they run faster but after a certain point, you don't get any improvement without a faster clock speed. Small transistor size creates a lot of waste heat, which causes noise but cooling a processor with a freezing unit (refrigerants such as chlorofluorocarbons or whatnot or simply liquid nitrogen) removes the noise, lowers the bad resistance, makes the speed skyrocket.

[BravoGreenONE 120]

I do want larger maps but id be suprised if maxis yields on this one. They build these games for the average user and the average user is not pushing the power on their comps like some of us have. On a 2x2 map i imagine that its going to be demanding enough. Larger cities just might not run very well. Though this is not the fault of maxis but they do have to be concerned with dissatifaction even if unwarranted. This is not really a game where turning down the settings is a negligible option- graphics are Large part of the game. I mean not even get into citiesxl even if it had a decent simulation because it was so drab with.such little animation.

I have a feeling that this game may have come out a bit too soon, though i may be mistaken if glassbox is as simple as claimed. Im hoping for a work of art.and bope the average computer can handle that.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I think in theory the city shouldn't be limited by any square boundary because obv rl cities have boundaries of a usually distorted nature made up of geographical and political borders. Also their size (duh) differs from one to another. Thus a standard 2 by 2 km boundary is limiting, but not necessarily a 'deal breaker' as it was with other choices a limitation in 4 too, and it would be difficult to have a whole region active at once for most computers, or to come up with an alternative solution. However my vote is for options, with the largest size allowing for at least 10 by 10 km cities. I understand that regions will still allow for larger conurbations, but many mayors have jurisdictions larger than 2 by 2 and the whole grid based system seems dated

[Ocram's Razr 964]

In multi-player mode, you might want to think of yourself as a competing colonist or city council member.

Cities XL had vibrant animations but they were mostly rather cartoony.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Maxis:[Dan] The size of our new cities are roughly equivalent to the SC4 medium sized city (2 kilometers square). That said, you can connect cities together inside a region and build out a network of connected cities - each city providing different resources and abilities to its neighbors and the region. For example, one city could be a residential suburb which provides workers every day to a nearby industrial city. The industrial city could be providing power to the suburb. You can play both of these cities yourself, or even run the entire region by yourself, or invite a friend to help out.

The problem is that we are all still thinking in SC4 terms. In SC4 even if there was a large hospital or school directly on the other side of a neighbour connection, it would have no benefit to the neighbouring tile. Each tile in SC4 has to have all its own civic resources.

The only thing that is shared 'regionally' in SC4 are things like jobs, and things such as power, water garbage, that we activate in the neighbour deals. It is quite likely and possible that in SC13 things will work quite differently regionally... for example I may not need to build a hospital or school in every tile.

The bottom line as to whether 2x2 km is big enough or not will be how the region play works... also if there is an easy way to get to your next tile, without having to save to region and reload... then that could also make a big difference. I am thinking of role playing games like Fable, where when you go to the next part of the map, you just temporarily get the "next map loading" screen (galloping llama animation?) and the next tile then loads automatically...

OK so I don't know exactly how this will eventually work out in SC13... but I think we need to hear some more information from the developers before we come to any conclusions on whether this or that size is adequate.

[alex macnamara 139]

I'm guessing that the 2k x 2k limitation is due to the increased complexity of the display, and possibly that of the traffic simulator as well. Nevertheless, the lack of a 4k x 4k option is a big downside for me. It leaves SC4 with at least one big advantage over the new SC.

I agree with this as what may be happening here. Ill further explain....this new Glassbox engine (i read the slideshows) seems like the CPU hog of the century. They are working the game AROUND the engine. Lets check some possible scenarios.

1. The worst case scenario is that this game is nothing more than a resource simulator rather than a urban planner/city builder simulation that we all have loved in the past. Might as well have this game be DOS command line only game and ditch the GUI.

2. Best case scenario is alot of what you guys mentioned in my thread..

• Progressive region loading which allows you too see your nieghboring cities on the edges so you can match the roads up.
• Possible scaling to bump the city sizes up to way larger than 2km (trust me this can be done if they scale back the Glassbox)
• And its hardware possible still to not change the glassbox at all and bump our tile sizes up using some new form of efficiency method, of course this would be discoved not too far into the dev cycle, 30% could be too early to tell.

Now someone here mentioned the airports, DAMN

Also the cartoony look doesnt bother me. Why? Because I have faith in you modders that can crank out high rez goodness!

[Cob92 360]

See, what bothers me isn't the whole idea of stuff not being realistically scaled, but the fact that whatever scale Maxis uses will probably result in me not being able to put very much stuff on a single tile. I already find that I run out of space way too fast on the large tiles in SC4, and the only way to get a million people or more in a city is to turn it into a skyscraper forest. Basically it pigeonholes you into building a New York kind of city where the only option for expansion is to build up. You can't have an LA/Houston/Atlanta-esque city because you can only fit about 120,000 Sims in a large city if the city is mostly low density sprawl.

[Larks2242 251]

I'm fine with it, it doesn't bother me, will still buy it day one.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I am not certain but I think the globals are region wide so population does not matter within cities only for the entire region so you could think of city tiles as analogous to Sims 3 houses.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

If they could allow the eventual option for larger tiles that would be great, but since regions are a multiplayer environment (even if you're the only player in them) it might be hard to have some tiles bigger than others. From my understanding the game is also based on natural resource development, and having some maps bigger than other would be unfair in that respect.

I'm expecting the "cities" to be better integrated with each other than they were in SC4. The promotional video shows two cities next to each other building a nuclear power plant together, so regional play is on their minds. I'm guessing at the very least the contract system (if that's how things are done) will be more streamlined than SC4's which imo is kind of clunky.

But we'll also have to take what they say with some game features with a grain of salt. Regional play was promoted for SC4 pretty heavily, with the main example being that you could have one city for industrial and the other for workers. But now we know how the simulator handles intercity traffic and jobs, we know that the simulator is not conducive to that kind of gameplay. But still, the region system in SC4 was successful because it basically subdivided a practically unlimited city into smaller, computer-manageable chunks.

[nashville nelson 51]

How big is a region? This will be the next take down for some people. Let´s see:

Multiplayer

1-16

16 Players in one region = 16 Cities = 4x4 Cities; Region size must then be 8x8km or 4 large SC4 maps.

I can live with this small regions and cities. I mean it´s not that this will be set in stone for every future SC title. MAXIS know we want bigger cities so they must have good reasons when they are not fulfilling this wish.

[Discombobulato 0]

See, what bothers me isn't the whole idea of stuff not being realistically scaled, but the fact that whatever scale Maxis uses will probably result in me not being able to put very much stuff on a single tile. I already find that I run out of space way too fast on the large tiles in SC4, and the only way to get a million people or more in a city is to turn it into a skyscraper forest. Basically it pigeonholes you into building a New York kind of city where the only option for expansion is to build up. You can't have an LA/Houston/Atlanta-esque city because you can only fit about 120,000 Sims in a large city if the city is mostly low density sprawl.

Technically "LA" is only a small area of the Los Angeles area. I'm sure it's the same way with other big cities. So technically speaking, Simcity isn't too far off, I think haha. A large part of San Bruno is home to San Francisco Intl airport. We can make at work, as long as we do what's said below

I am not certain but I think the globals are region wide so population does not matter within cities only for the entire region so you could think of city tiles as analogous to Sims 3 houses.

I was thinking this earlier and I'm glad you brought it up. I hope it's exactly like this, and I think it will be. I think they're going to make good decisions with this game.

[krbe 193]

How big is a region? This will be the next take down for some people. Let´s see:

Multiplayer

1-16

16 Players in one region = 16 Cities = 4x4 Cities; Region size must then be 8x8km or 4 large SC4 maps.

I can live with this small regions and cities. I mean it´s not that this will be set in stone for every future SC title. MAXIS know we want bigger cities so they must have good reasons when they are not fulfilling this wish.

What kind of maths is this?

[nashville nelson 51]

What kind of maths is this?

A region can be played with 16 players. That means there are 16 cities in one region. The square root of 16 is 4 so the region consists of 4x4 medium sized cities. Each city is 2x2km so the region will have a size of 8x8km.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

^^ That doesn't have to be neccisarily true; maybe you can invite 16 players to one region map at the max, but that doesn't mean there are 16 city tiles...

[packersfan 666]

True, SC5 should be able to take advantage of multiple-cores, but regardless, region play is key. Of course no real city can fit in a 2km x 2km space. If you are limited in your vision to one tile then I guess you have a real need for bigger tiles.