SimCity: Regions

[jigsaw 227]

So, was no one happy with SC4 unless you played the largest tile?

i only ever make regions with large tiles

[London-b 90]

Yeah, I only make regions with large tiles, but then I also make the regions bigger. That way I can make areas full of large cities, countryside, villages, and towns. I love it!

[snick25 384]

So, was no one happy with SC4 unless you played the largest tile?

When I play SC4, I usually build on large tiles.

But the major difference here is the ability to connect them side-by-side to form a seemingly seamless, larger city over multiple tiles. You can't do that in this new game.

Of course, that's only in region view, and it still feels lacking, in a way. CXL is even better - allowing you to build and fit a relatively large city on one map.

[poshbakerloo 186]

The thing I am not happy with is the fact the city tiles seem to not be joined! You have 2x2Km then a huge gap between! How can you make a large city? I wouldn't mind the small tiles if they were at least continuous so to form one large city when viewed from the region.

[Spatzimaus 77]

i only ever make regions with large tiles

I'd usually make maps with a handful of 4x4 cities, each surrounded by at least a dozen 1x1 towns (some of which would be adjacent to multiple 4x4s). Those towns would be markets for excess water, suppliers of dirty power, places of heavy industry, and occasionally a massive trash dump. (Basically, everything I didn't want driving down the value of my big cities.) The 4x4s would border each other, barely (as in, 1/4th of one edge would be in common), but the vast majority of connections would be to/through small towns.

It was completely an abuse of how SC4 handled your other tiles, and I'm actually glad the new SimCity is modeling other cities more actively to prevent this sort of thing. I'd be okay with the new SimCity doing away with the idea of small tiles, as long as they allowed SOMETHING to be happening in between the large cities. (Small towns, suburban sprawl, farms, and so on.)

[zimmie 521]

The thing that gets me is that their reason for the empty spaces is because having the tiles join seamlessly made the tiles that aren't being played at the moment seem lifeless and just didn't look right because of the inability to simulate all the tiles at once. And that is logical, but what isn't logical to me is that the green empty space looks better than a lifeless continuation of your city? Personally, I'd prefer the lifeless city as opposed to the empty space.

[snick25 384]

^^ Same here. That's pretty much the way it worked in SC4; you'd work on once city at a time, and when going back to region view, that one city was now further developed than the others. It was no big deal, just go in and develop the other ones. As far as I know it worked well for most people...

[Spatzimaus 77]

Personally, I'd prefer the lifeless city as opposed to the empty space.

I'd prefer "fake" activity to a lifeless city. Sure, the moving objects within the actual cities should be meaningfull, but there's no reason you can't put small, self-contained towns (or suburbia sprawl) in those empty green spaces. You wouldn't need to simulate actual movements of workers, police, etc.; just put generic buildings down in some basic pattern, draw random cars on the central roads, and you're done. The illusion of population, without the processing overhead. (And since it'd be purely graphical, and have no impact on gameplay, it could be something the user could disable if the graphical strain proved too much for their machine.)

So in the early years, put a few small towns in those empty spaces. As your city grows, it'd quickly overshadow the towns in importance, but they could grow a bit as well. Once your city reaches the boundary of its map, the game could start generating a generic suburban sprawl into the new area, eventually absorbing those towns. The end result would be something like Los Angeles: a small, concentrated downtown area surrounded by a tremendous metropolis containing what had once been a bunch of nearby towns. As mayor, you'd only control the core of the city, but your "metropolitan area" would include a lot of areas with their own mayors, police forces, schools, and so on.

And if they eventually DO increase the city sizes and/or region size, this sort of approach would seem to be easy to translate.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I think that having the empty space replaced with farmland would be optimal. It would provide valuable resources (food) and have minimal simulation usage.

--Ocram

[jacksunny 741]

^And it would look a lot better.

[snick25 384]

Yes, I've taken to calling it "SimVillage". Honestly, since most large towns are bigger in area and population than what one can build in SimVillage.

[poshbakerloo 186]

With these gaps on empty land, won't a region just look like random square of city dotted around with empty land between?

[cirugo 1,889]

With these gaps on empty land, won't a region just look like random square of city dotted around with empty land between?

yup, that's why this is a such a big deal to so many people.

[poshbakerloo 186]

As long as the region tiles are all joined up like in SC4 then I won't have a problem! Having gaps between them all is silly and means that you can't make anything more than a mid size town. What is the point of rail and motorways in separate 2x2km 'cities'.

Get rid of the gaps and I will be happy.

[PGHammer 5]

Yes, I've taken to calling it "SimVillage". Honestly, since most large towns are bigger in area and population than what one can build in SimVillage.

Older towns, yes.

However, the trend in new development (established towns as well) is toward regionalization and zoning (similar to theming in SC 2013) - for the simple reason that real-world communities are not bubble communities; they exist as part of a wider region/county/state. A region will have a *flavor* different from another region (even in what may be the same county or, in the case of larger cities, the same city - Washington, DC or even New York City are prime examples - in the case of New York City, look at the differences between Brooklyn and the Bronx, or between either and Queens) - the *village/borough* concept is actually drawn from the real world.

I'm actually expecting there to be more data available in SC 2013 than in SC4 (which is not exactly easy to manage on a whole-large-city level) - for that reason we as Mayors may actually be glad of the smaller village concept.

If you get the chance, talk to a mayor of a small town - find out exactly what he has on his plate on a daily basis. (If you know of a town or city that also has a city manager, that's another person whose ear you should bend - a manager and mayor have overlapping responsibilities, and are required to work together to keep the town or city running smoothly; it's something that SimCity has implemented in the Advisory Council, which dates back to the original Sim City). Do you REALLY want to drown in Information Overload? (There are times that SC4 threatens to do just that - that is why there is a limit to how large I would let a city there grow.)

[Essex 322]

Yes, I've taken to calling it "SimVillage". Honestly, since most large towns are bigger in area and population than what one can build in SimVillage.

Older towns, yes.

However, the trend in new development (established towns as well) is toward regionalization and zoning (similar to theming in SC 2013) - for the simple reason that real-world communities are not bubble communities; they exist as part of a wider region/county/state. A region will have a *flavor* different from another region (even in what may be the same county or, in the case of larger cities, the same city - Washington, DC or even New York City are prime examples - in the case of New York City, look at the differences between Brooklyn and the Bronx, or between either and Queens) - the *village/borough* concept is actually drawn from the real world.

I'm actually expecting there to be more data available in SC 2013 than in SC4 (which is not exactly easy to manage on a whole-large-city level) - for that reason we as Mayors may actually be glad of the smaller village concept.

If you get the chance, talk to a mayor of a small town - find out exactly what he has on his plate on a daily basis. (If you know of a town or city that also has a city manager, that's another person whose ear you should bend - a manager and mayor have overlapping responsibilities, and are required to work together to keep the town or city running smoothly; it's something that SimCity has implemented in the Advisory Council, which dates back to the original Sim City). Do you REALLY want to drown in Information Overload? (There are times that SC4 threatens to do just that - that is why there is a limit to how large I would let a city there grow.)

I love the way you use EA marketing tools in your comment.

What SC4 info overload? I find SC4 too simple and was looking for a challenge in SC2013 but what I get is something called "Simvillage 2013",

Why can't they give us a choice tough? Even if I wanted it to be as "modern" planning wise as you want it to be, why can't I make it the old ways? Why does it need to be predefined anyway?

[macvirt 361]

Yes, I've taken to calling it "SimVillage". Honestly, since most large towns are bigger in area and population than what one can build in SimVillage.

Older towns, yes.

However, the trend in new development (established towns as well) is toward regionalization and zoning (similar to theming in SC 2013) - for the simple reason that real-world communities are not bubble communities; they exist as part of a wider region/county/state. A region will have a *flavor* different from another region (even in what may be the same county or, in the case of larger cities, the same city - Washington, DC or even New York City are prime examples - in the case of New York City, look at the differences between Brooklyn and the Bronx, or between either and Queens) - the *village/borough* concept is actually drawn from the real world.

I'm actually expecting there to be more data available in SC 2013 than in SC4 (which is not exactly easy to manage on a whole-large-city level) - for that reason we as Mayors may actually be glad of the smaller village concept.

If you get the chance, talk to a mayor of a small town - find out exactly what he has on his plate on a daily basis. (If you know of a town or city that also has a city manager, that's another person whose ear you should bend - a manager and mayor have overlapping responsibilities, and are required to work together to keep the town or city running smoothly; it's something that SimCity has implemented in the Advisory Council, which dates back to the original Sim City). Do you REALLY want to drown in Information Overload? (There are times that SC4 threatens to do just that - that is why there is a limit to how large I would let a city there grow.)

I love the way you use EA marketing tools in your comment.

What SC4 info overload? I find SC4 too simple and was looking for a challenge in SC2013 but what I get is something called "Simvillage 2013",

Why can't they give us a choice tough? Even if I wanted it to be as "modern" planning wise as you want it to be, why can't I make it the old ways? Why does it need to be predefined anyway?

Heavy on the marketing indeed Besides, very US centric in terms of approach. In Europe neither urban nor regional development can be compared there, it is based on completely different principles and methods.

It's almost funny.

[RyanMorgan95 144]

Older towns, yes.

However, the trend in new development (established towns as well) is toward regionalization and zoning (similar to theming in SC 2013) - for the simple reason that real-world communities are not bubble communities

You're right, real-world communites are not bubble communities, which is why this image pisses me off:

Why can't city areas touch? Since the maximum number of cities in a region is 16, we could have a 4x4 block of cities (8x8km). Then you can have a few spots for Great Works on the exterior of this block. If Maxis can't do this because being in the active city and having to also render the neighboring cities uses up to much horsepower, why not have fog surround the active city? If Maxis could do this, the shambolic city size wouldn't be such an issue, and the player(s) can control different "districts" of a 64km square city (not quite a metropolis but still)

[Builder5000 7]

They say they are looking into realistic SImulation, but Cities the size of a Suburb. Is that realistic?

[Spatzimaus 77]

You're right, real-world communites are not bubble communities, which is why this image pisses me off:

Except they ARE "bubble" communities; it's just that instead of grass, the bubbles in real cities are separated by low-density residential/commercial areas, a.k.a. "sprawl". If you took that picture, and replaced the green areas with standard cut-'n'-paste suburbia, it'd look just like a real-world city. While people have used New York as an example of how a city can consist of five distinct boroughs (and generally physically separated ones, at that), the better example here is Los Angeles since there's no rivers separating each part. You've got downtown L.A., with some skyscrapers and stadiums and such, and it's clearly the core city. But you've also got Burbank, Pasadena, Long Beach, Anaheim, Santa Monica, and so on, each with its own central business areas and each with its own specialties, and all are connected by meaningless sprawl and a highway network. In most American cities, the suburb areas aren't legally part of the core city, and so don't contribute to its taxbase or draw on its police/fire/schools, so it makes sense that the mayors of the "cities" wouldn't control them.

So, if they were to fill those green areas in between with small towns that eventually incorporated into suburbs of your growing cities, it would match the reality of modern large cities extremely well. It'd be purely graphical, with no effect on gameplay; the 2x2km area you play would be the core of each borough, but the actual city would include areas you have no control over. As a purely graphical thing, it'd be something players could enable or disable at will depending on their machines' capabilities. And it'd look much, much better in screenshots.

[macvirt 361]

For that to look like a real world city it depends entirely on what continent you live Ever been to Europe? There are entire regions and countries here where there is no such thing as bubble cities

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

SimCity2013's biggest possible region:

* Maximum tiles in region: 16

* One and only available tile size: 2048m x 2048m

* Maximum area: 16*2^2 = 64 sq. km.

That tile size is inexcuseable, sorry thats is no space to build a city, it's ridiculous. That alone is make or break for me, it's unworkable.

Yes, I've taken to calling it "SimVillage". Honestly, since most large towns are bigger in area and population than what one can build in SimVillage.

Yeah this is heart breaking for me, was so excited, until I read the stesp back the series is taking, why launch a new game that takes so many steps back for a series?

[KingGab 59]

I felt the need to create an account and post a picture of what I think, the community WANTS !!

(I would of done the whole region byt you get the point )

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/594/regionview2.jpg/

can somebody explain how to host image on these forums ????

[grugor 60]

I felt the need to create an account and post a picture of what I think, the community WANTS !!

(I would of done the whole region byt you get the point )

http://imageshack.us...egionview2.jpg/

can somebody explain how to host image on these forums ????

[flyer2359 92]

I felt the need to create an account and post a picture of what I think, the community WANTS !!

(I would of done the whole region byt you get the point )

http://imageshack.us...egionview2.jpg/

can somebody explain how to host image on these forums ????

That looks 30x better!

I think for filling in the space they should have 3 or 4 options (even though I doubt this will happen at this stage in the game):

1) Fill in the blank space with city, like you have in that picture.

2) Leave it blank

3) Farm land

4) Suburbs

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

Except they ARE "bubble" communities; it's just that instead of grass, the bubbles in real cities are separated by low-density residential/commercial areas, a.k.a. "sprawl". If you took that picture, and replaced the green areas with standard cut-'n'-paste suburbia, it'd look just like a real-world city.

Although the size limit of each city is quite restrictive, what concerns me more are these vast areas of abyss between them. These gaps are very unrealistic, and would prevent uniform development across multiple cities. Like Spatzimaus said, what we have are multiple business districts, with a definite lack of urban sprawl.

However, the reason I think these gaps exist is because of connectivity issues with multiplayer cities. Just think, in SC4, making transportation links with other cities was done with relative ease. This was because you had full control over the other cities in your region. Since multiplayer allows different players to manage their own cities in a region, actual physical neighbour connections may not work. For example, if you connect a road to a friend (in a neighbouring city), it may not link correctly to their road network. The gaps between cities may therefore allow the simulation to process these connections correctly.

Hopefully this will be addressed for the single player mode, where there will be full control for all cities in a region. The ability to create a sprawling metropolis over multiple city tiles was one of the great things about SC4.

No matter how in-depth the GlassBox simulation is in gameplay terms, without regions being accurately structured, then it is taking a step back in terms of realism.

[Spatzimaus 77]

Since multiplayer allows different players to manage their own cities in a region, actual physical neighbour connections may not work. For example, if you connect a road to a friend (in a neighbouring city), it may not link correctly to their road network. The gaps between cities may therefore allow the simulation to process these connections correctly.

There's really no question about this; they're not going to allow players to place highways, or the main rail lines, or rivers, or anything else associated with intercity connections. Even if you're in a purely single-player environment, those major roads were a problem in SC4; either you zoned for the highways from the start, or you had to shoehorn them in after the fact, with a whole lot of rezoning just to make sure all of the plots still connected to roads and such. This new SimCity is a lot more dynamic with its zoning. Given that, the gaps between cities aren't going away; it's just a question of whether, graphically, there's something between the two. If you can get the sprawling metropolis feel you wanted from SC4, but with the current region sizes, would it really be a problem?

As for flyer2359's list, it doesn't have to be a "choose one" thing; the way I'd envision it is more graphically oriented. That is, the player chooses from a few levels of "fill realism" to display on his own screen, and other players could choose entirely different options without it affecting anything of gameplay. For instance, imagine three levels of detail:

HIGH: At the start, the game places small towns at certain pre-set points on the region map, generally two or three near each city site. (Remember, the regions are premade by Maxis, so there's no need for a complex algorithm here; a developer would just pick a few dozen likely spots along the local highways and rivers.) In between these towns are a bunch of farms. As the populations of the cities grow, the nearby towns also grow, although not nearly as fast as the cities. Much of this growth comes at the expense of the farms, since farmland is rarely as profitable on a per-acre basis as suburban development. Once a town grows large enough to overlap the border of a city site, it becomes a suburb of that city with generic sprawl. The game will show generic (not procedural agent-based) activity within each town, and as the town grows you'll see cars moving back and forth between the town and the outer parts of the nearest city. These towns also wouldn't have actual crimes, fires, etc. that require agents of any kind. (Note that this movement is purely cosmetic; for every car going out, there'd be one coming in, and the city would not gain or lose money as a result because these cars wouldn't use actual agents.)

MEDIUM: Same as above, but the growth algorithm would be much simpler; cities and farms wouldn't steadily grow, and would only update to a more developed pattern at pre-set intervals. That is, the first ten years use pattern A, then the next twenty use a more developed pattern B, and so on until you eventually reach the final "sprawl" pattern after a typical amount of time has passed. While there'd still be fake activity within the towns, there'd be no movement between the towns and the cities.

LOW: The current green gaps, with absolutely nothing between the cities, or at the very least just generic versions of the pre-placed towns that never grow and have no activity. (Only recommended for laptops with weak graphics.)

Bottom line, if they do this right I think we can get something that captures that sprawling feel of SC4, while retaining the small, specialized "borough" design of the new game. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing argument, where the only acceptable outcome is to get the SimCity 4 region model.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Why not have working farmland in the regional space. It would produce a valuable resource (food) without using many agents. You must remember that "what you see is what you sim" so sprawling suburbs would be impossible.

--Ocram

[Urban Cartographer 601]

I really like your idea, Spatzimaus. It would provide an option to fill in "blank" terrain between cities if players have high specs, while allowing the current option for those with weaker specs. It is a win-win.

[Skyrunner27 23]

Why not have working farmland in the regional space. It would produce a valuable resource (food) without using many agents. You must remember that "what you see is what you sim" so sprawling suburbs would be impossible.

--Ocram

I actually like this Idea in my town the actual city part fits into the 2km x 2km limit but the the rest of the city limit is taken up by farms