Discussion about City Tile Size

[Vladislav Feoktistov 2]

Hello there! Here is an official screenshot of the region with one city built. I belive this one shows fully developed map with little or no space left. To be honest, I'm really upset with this fact, but I still want to buy this game. Hope is the second SimCity in new series (or expansion pack) will feature bigger maps.

fake. no regional highways or train tracks

Well, this is the link http://www.simcity.com/en_US/media/screenshot. Maybe they are experimenting with regional transportation system to make it not premade but editable.

[grugor 60]

My apologies. The mountains look like minecrafts at a distance. Im not really sure what this sceenshot is supposed rto be tbh

[mapboy 106]

As the edge of the city is curved, whereas we know the boundaries to be square, it can be concluded that it is not fully developed to the edges, but I would think it is close to being so.

[SoftcoreGamer 352]

Actually the relative position of the city in the last region pic looks a bit like the "specialization" city on the right on this pic (posted by Pyanodon in the transport thread). Another accurate official source guide to visualize actual 2x2 city tiles on a region.

Similar-scale widely-separated city plots have been featured on official trailers and pics.

You decide if such 2x2 "cities" are realistic.

  Edited October 28, 2012 by SoftcoreGamer  

[Frode789 70]

That image is concept art, thus tells us nothing at all about scale/sizes. It's just an artists impression, not a screengrab from the game.

  Edited October 28, 2012 by CaptCity  
Let's direct comments toward the topic, not other posters.

[SoftcoreGamer 352]

Actually, based on a few items on the image, the details of highways and the great works airport specifically, it is quite certainly an in-game actual-scale image with a watercolor wash treatment.

The fake concept arts do not show any finalized buildings. This one above is different, obviously done much later... I may post some as reference but I am no longer sure if what is kosher here anymore.

To their credit Maxis have been honest about the size of the cities either in measurement or visually.

[Chriz1977 4]

I've played SimCity since the first one came out. I loved each one and still does. I also are concerned about the limited city size. I think 2x2 is to small to make it a realistic city.

I have had a few goes at CitiesXL aswell and even if its no SimCity its still a ok city simlator. CitiesXL is also in full 3D and still manage to do 10x10 km. Simcity may be a better looking and have a more complex engine, but still... That is a 1/25th of the size (4 sq km against 100 sq km). That's a huge difference!

One thing that would help in region play was if you could link or lock ie 4 or 6 region tiles to be your city. Let say you call these "New York" and each of the tiles will be districts in this city. Then you can have more options to make your larger city more homogeneously and thus reduce the need of larger single tiles. Then you also could have a regional view of these larger cities with population and so on as well of the regional overview pr tile.

[DmainEvent 195]

One thing that would help in region play was if you could link or lock ie 4 or 6 region tiles to be your city. Let say you call these "New York" and each of the tiles will be districts in this city. Then you can have more options to make your larger city more homogeneously and thus reduce the need of larger single tiles. Then you also could have a regional view of these larger cities with population and so on as well of the regional overview pr tile.

I like that idea. I mentioned a similar permutation in a couple of these tile size threads. Hopefully somebody over at maxis is paying attention.

[Odainsaker 2,136]

Contiguous maps to loosely represent sprawling cities makes sense up until we hit the Origin cloud storage limit of 100MB per game per account. How many fully developed cities that save size limit allows for remains to be seen as we do not know at this time what kinds of filesizes the new SimCity will have. 16 cities seems reasonable as an expected minimum as that still allows one account to maintain one full region with each city save taking up a just 6MB, but that still means the largest contiguous maps we could maintain would be a 4x4 grid made of these smaller tiles, and that single agglomeration of 16 cities would be the only region your could play on your account. I tend to suspect any vaster grids of such continguous maps would likely be impossible given the cloud saving size limits, and that we would first need the game to drop cloud-only saves, which would also very much undermine and lead to the reversal of the online-only aspect.

dobdriver spoils us with his wonderfully enormous maps, and in truth, CitiesXL really did as well

[SoftcoreGamer 352]

I tend to suspect any vaster grids of such continguous maps would likely be impossible given the cloud saving size limits, and that we would first need the game to drop cloud-only saves, which would also very much undermine and lead to the reversal of the online-only aspect.

dobdriver spoils us with his wonderfully enormous maps, and in truth, CitiesXL really did as well

Interesting theory. Dropping Origin saves will miraculously return more than just large map size but almost every single feature loss people are moaning about.

As to the "reversal", not necessary as those who like multiplayer could continue to play on the small maps. Those who like offline sandbox get to build sprawling cities and use their online account as a 3D showcase. I have always wanted to visit and walk around other player's cities in 3D and Planet Offer achieved that before it died thanks to certified MP idiocy. I've always envisioned SimCity going online as a world tourism cities depository which will overcome the limitation of 2D city journals. As to loading the larger offline sandbox maps online for others to visit, this is could be solved by merging and compressing the whole map + buildings into one single large 3D object without playability.

Just a thought..

[cirugo 1,889]

Hello there! Here is an official screenshot of the region with one city built. I belive this one shows fully developed map with little or no space left. To be honest, I'm really upset with this fact, but I still want to buy this game. Hope is the second SimCity in new series (or expansion pack) will feature bigger maps.

fake. no regional highways or train tracks

Well, this is the link http://www.simcity.c...edia/screenshot. Maybe they are experimenting with regional transportation system to make it not premade but editable.

They have said that cities don't exist in a bubble...this city looks like more of a bubble than anything I have ever seen in any city builder up to this point. As has been said before, the small tile size could be lived with if the tiles were contiguous (among other things that need to be fixed). I have no idea what it is that is limiting their capacity to do this but they need to fix it. Small tile sizes plus discontiguity is just not workable.

[Urban Cartographer 601]

I agree with Softcore Gamer and cirugo with this.

Cities do not have pre-determined sizes. Cities can annex other cities. Cities can be amalgamated. Spaces between cities (if they are very close enough) will be filled in.

The upcoming SimCity game does not reflect this reality. If it were, then New York City would not be New York City. It would be Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, with each "borough" consisting of multiple cities and between them is undevelopable land.

[VeritaScientia 150]

Cities do not have pre-determined sizes. Cities can annex other cities. Cities can be amalgamated. Spaces between cities (if they are very close enough) will be filled in.

Right on there.. New York City grew to its size by annexation of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. I would love to see something like this, since it's very realistic. It'd also provide a mechanism for people to take over an abandoned city, merging the management first, and working towards accumulating land to merge the cities into one continuous municipality.

[grugor 60]

[London-b 90]

It's not SimChineseConceptCity bro.

[VeritaScientia 150]

What is that a picture of?

[grugor 60]

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/29/china-great-city

[VeritaScientia 150]

Oh, that makes sense now,

The article talks about how the Chinese are trying to create model towns on 1.3 square km plots of land.

I'd still like to see expandable cities.

[Arangarx 20]

EA is going to try and support as many computers as possible. It is smart business sense, why spend millions developing a game for only a limited amount of machines when you can make a lot more sales without drastic compromise of gameplay.

Lets face it, SimCity has always been a game first. My hunch is that *most* (not all, just most) people who want the larger city are less interested in the game of Sim City are more interested in a virtual painting canvas and have used SC4 with cheat mods and plop able everythings to make the game work that way. They want more space to paint on while the simmers want a deeper simulation even if it is at the cost of city size.

This is exactly what is going on. The new SimCity feels like it is being built to appeal more to simmers than to sandbox city builders. The ones who seem the most upset are the ones who prefer the latter.

I for one am glad to see SimCity going in the direction it appears to be going.

[zimmie 521]

I don't think I belong in either of those categories. I would like to see more of a compromise between those two elements and meet somewhere in the middle.

  Edited October 31, 2012 by zimmie  

[Arangarx 20]

I don't think I belong in either of those categories. I would like to see more of a compromise between those two elements and meet somewhere in the middle.

Which, in my opinion, is what they're doing. It's a compromise. They're not building a pure "paint a city" sandbox that some people want and those people are really upset about it. In the end I just wish the beta would come out soon so we can see exactly what the game is like. I won't be any happier than the others here if the added simulation depth and activities for me to do don't make up for some of their design decisions to not include certain older features.

I think part of the problem is that people here can only see what SimCity doesn't have and focus on that because they don't have enough information about what the game does have. Only once we actually have the beta in our hands will we see if that's truly due to a lack of depth as some here would claim or if they're just playing their cards close to the chest. I hope for the latter and that once we can actually play the game we'll find a game with a good depth.

[Frode789 70]

They could have toned down the simulation dept a little, so that we could have had 4x4 tiles! And then when they figured things out and improved the engine, we could have gotten deeper and deeper simulation.

[zimmie 521]

I don't think I belong in either of those categories. I would like to see more of a compromise between those two elements and meet somewhere in the middle.

Which, in my opinion, is what they're doing. It's a compromise. They're not building a pure "paint a city" sandbox that some people want and those people are really upset about it. In the end I just wish the beta would come out soon so we can see exactly what the game is like. I won't be any happier than the others here if the added simulation depth and activities for me to do don't make up for some of their design decisions to not include certain older features.

I think part of the problem is that people here can only see what SimCity doesn't have and focus on that because they don't have enough information about what the game does have. Only once we actually have the beta in our hands will we see if that's truly due to a lack of depth as some here would claim or if they're just playing their cards close to the chest. I hope for the latter and that once we can actually play the game we'll find a game with a good depth.

Well in my opinion I think that that may be their intentions but my perception at this point is that they are over-compensating if that's the case and the balance is swinging heavily to the simulation side of things at the expense of the creative, artistic side of things. And in fact they are selling the social and simulation aspects as being the creative, artistic and really the core aspect of the game. I feel like we may be missing out on the part of being an architect with enough variety to keep from getting bored in the end. And I am not even so sure that it's not so much the simulation aspect of the game but more the social aspect of the game that is the culprit. And the small tile size without the ability to compensate for it with seemless tile connectivity is, if not the largest, then certainly one of the largest disappointments because of this imo. We'll see. Only time will tell. Like a lot of doubters, I would love to be wrong and have this game surprise us all.

[zimmie 521]

And also, I just wanted to point out, and this just may be my own perception but, I think why small tile size combined with the inability to create contiguous tiles to make up for it at the very least is such a big issue that alot have a hard time getting past is atleast in part because it doesn't fall in line with having a good "core" game to start with to envision it getting better from the modding community down the line.

[SoftcoreGamer 352]

New video from Amazon.com confirming projected map size, relative distance of so-called cities from each other, the looks and feel of the "region" view, and the implication of preset highway/freeway connections between so-called cities.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=tsm_1_tw_s_vg_mdi5w6?docId=1000856141

[Eshy 2]

Some of the citys in the image look vairly big if you ask me like brabmle overlook but most people dont think so,but for a 3rd city it is huge.

[Bookitty 63]

I know this information is about a month old, but so far no one has mentioned it. On the Simcity Insider, an article discussion about the great works feature, but near the next to last paragraph, they talk about increasing city size.

Even when the International Airport is complete, it still needs support to stay open. Running an International Airport isn’t cheap, you know. It can pay for itself (off of runway fees), but it’ll need significant supplies of regional energy and workers to operate. But it’s worth it. The Great Works aren’t just regular buildings. Large jumbo jets will bring in bellyfuls and bellyfuls of tourists. Far more tourists then your (formerly) small city can handle. You can’t let all those poor passengers sit out there with nothing to do, can you? I thought so. You’re going to need something to help get them in and around. Those highways are looking pretty crowded already. And your attractions have gotten awfully crowded. You’re going to need a much bigger city…

I think no one has mentioned this because everyone thought it was a useless article about the great works feature…

Link is right here...

http://www.simcity.c...ional-airport

[Kilgry 13]

Haven't seen the video before; thanks for posting the link. It's the first video were I'm feeling a bit more confident in the possible city sizes.

[grugor 60]

Some of those cities on that vid can only build on half of the tile size as the rest is over a cliff in mid air. i cant figure out why anyone joining a region would pick one of those sites.

[Hamish 1,370]

Let's keep the discussion on topic, rather than on each other.