New Strategy Video

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I really like that video but the city looks mismanaged. Also, continuous cities seem to be impossible but if I remember correctly, regions can contain any number of any arbitrarily sized box so an expansion pack might bring larger regions and larger city tiles.

--Ocram

[dancanman 8]

Here's some of my thoughts on the trailer and observations, with approximate timestamps. enjoy!

0:09 Watch the city money, Income per turn, population and demand values fluctuate as the timelapse goes by. zoning seems to have little to no effect on the money supply. Also, lots of nice HUD elements! https://i.imgur.com/WJrH4.jpg

0:21 Some buttons turn red, possibly indicating the need for new infrastructure in that category? (overburdened roads, no hospitals, need more power?)

0:37 Gambling HQ dialogue has a power button (turn off to save power/reduce crime w/out destroying?, cup icon which shows profitability vs friends, world or your other cities, upgrade button, and hammer/saw icon [destroy?])

1:03 Upgrading a building does NOT stop time (?!) Blue number in the upper right corner of upgrade popup seems to indicate max number of that upgrade that can be placed on each building. Upgrades have upkeep costs, and add to population (or jobs maybe?)

1:18 Upgrades are built, and the clock does not stop, but cash on hand and cash per hour does not change. bug? plopped upgrades can be turned off separate from the casino itself https://i.imgur.com/F6mBv.jpg

1:26 HUD Buttons have changed again, some are now orange, others are red. I like my previous theory even better now. Street and building lights turn off when the power goes out, traffic lights appear to still function

1:35 Traffic seems to be glitching through the trams going into the depot, which are still running even with the power being out. hmm Massive traffic jam in this area

1:47 Transition to region view is light years faster than SC 4. Region appears to have money count separate from individual cities. (much higher, in this case)

2:03 At least (note the arrow in the right hand side, rail maybe?) six street types (two-lane, low density, four-lane medium density, four-lane high density, four-lane divided medium[?] density, six lane high-density, six-lane+tram high-density[density predictions based on sidewalks]). Certain types of roads can be upgraded (button on the far right) 4 high cannot. Next to region button, there are different road-laying modes, which polygon claim are "curvy, for smooth continuous arcs and 90 degree turns; simple straight roads; city block roads, which create rectangles that allow buildings to develop back to back against each other; and freehand or "wiggly" roads, which players draw freely across landscapes and is useful when creating switchback mountain paths or roads that hug coastlines." source road-laying guides can be turned on and off. https://i.imgur.com/IY9vQ.jpg

2:06 money seems to be a big issue here, as a section of road that supposedly costs §3,561 to build only subtracts 425 from the city coffers. All construction animations are gone, and streetlights and sidewalks are added, ever without nearby zones (unlike SC4)

2:13 Nuclear Power plant description says it requires "large amounts of water" and "educated sims", yet the only visible hindrance to building it in an empty city is a lack of money. hmm. has the mysterious people icon again, jobs maybe? educated workers? Nuclear costs §300/kW-h, Coal costs §60/kW-h

2:21 Coal power plant claims to cost §22,000, but after plopping, the treasury is reduced by §21,252 (§49,575-§28,323). Even after the plant is placed, the city income is still zero. Ploppable upgrades have no effect on money.

2:40 Highway interchange is visible, but outside the city limits, meaning the highway cant be edited.

2:42 Power is already flowing between the two cities on the map, without any neighbor deals being initiated. Game info confirms that the powers is being sold, and that there is a "72 MW" excess of power being generated. There are three stacks at the powerplant, each generating 24,000kW-h, for a total of 72,000kW-h being generated. overkill much?

2:50 I count ten city plots visible in the region, with two additional great works plots. Note that Stallion run claims it needs power even though earlier dialogue boxes claimed it was being sold. Whats the meaning of the shield icons, I wonder?

2:53 Power is now being exchanged, but there is no charge listed.

3:09 The origin overlay is terrible Photoshoped(the scaling is all wrong, and there is no user header https://i.imgur.com/XzP5J.jpg), and the mouse is being moved while he's typing. Really, maxis? Note that "DanMaxis" joins the region without ever being invited, lets hope that's Maxis being lazy replicating the overlay...

3:25 Multiple data layers available when the power menu is open, Power, pollution and radiation.

3:29-3:35 A taxi goes into the casino driveway, then turns around suddenly and goes the other way. Also, there are circles around every vehicle that passes under the mouse, probably to facilitate the follow-cam. we see later. graffiti on buildings due to high crime, a nice touch.

3:44 Two types of police stations, and 8 types of criminals on the data layer of varying degrees of urgency (apprehended low green, Embezzle[r] high orange, Shoplifter medium yellow, Mugg[er] high orange, Tax Eva[der] medium yellow, Arson red urgent, Robber[] high orange and Murder[er] urgent red.) Massive lack of tense agreement on the labels.

4:01 All traffic on the center road that goes from top to bottom of the view is making a u-turn at the topmost intersection. odd..

4:18 Even though the crime rate is high in some areas, there are no successful crimes each day, according to the info panel. Also, bulldozing a building did not cost any money, neither did placing the police station., or any of the ploppables. The first ploppable, the "dispatch tower" makes police response time "instant!", while the helipad increases the vehicle speed to 60 mph.

4:28 At the top of the hour (3 AM) the city coffers depleted by §1277, even though the city income per hour has remained stable this entire time at +§2,274/hr. are ploppable costs spread out over time?

4:36 clicking on a vehicle, and then its item name sets the camera to follow the vehicle. neat!

4:51 this overlay seems to be fake too, as AGAIN, the mouse moves while typing. sigh...

5:00 4 disasters, maxis? really? Meteor shower, earthquake, random/unknown and tornado. Tornado pop-up has a typo (...as mayor you have full and compete accesss...).

5:14 Destruction effects are pretty weaksauce, but it's still in progress, right? destruction effect on the road where the meteor landed. The presence of fires in the city made Sim happiness go from max to minimum instantly. Fire trucks from miles away arrive instantly, and all try to respond the the same fire, one one truck arrives on scene,they all pathfind to the next closest one. The last firetruck gets lost.

5:47 The region population is "441", while the population of the focus city has stayed the same, at 1,025. Dan did expand the other city, to the point where there are skyscrapers and what appears to be a golf course around the coal powerplant (?!?!), but his city is significantly smaller than ours. completeley nosensical population report, unless there is a whole other region that is develops, AND the population scales differ between cities and regions. Also note that the complete mayor UI stays intact in region view.

AAAAND Done! Phew!

Final Thoughts: - The money system appears to be totally bonkers at the moment. If this game is coming out in march, maxis have a LOT of work to do. OR -ALL UI elements were faked/put in place for demonstration purposes. The region population number is wildly inconsistent. I see a population of zero the first time we're in region view at 1:53, 10,555 the seconds time at 2:55, and 411 the final time at 5:45

Inconsistencies, like the population, income and RCI demand never changing lead me to believe that this is the answer. please god, let this be the answer. -Regions are super small, and don't line up exactly, making high-density cites look incredibly dumb from the region view. Silly design decision by maxis.

There's a lot of meat here, and the glassbox engine looks great, but I think the decision to have non-contiguous, smaller cities combined with the cartoony UI will off-put at LOT of hardcore simcity fans.

[guitarmatt99 27]

It looks like it is very quick and pain free to cross between cities in the region and the city sizes look about right in my opinion. But I was hoping for more cities in the region, it looks like you only have 4 cities + 1 Great Work per region to work with.

There seems to be lots of mods on the 'plopables' well a lot more than I expected which I'm really excited to play with.

But I think a big one which will calm down a lot of people ranting about the multi play is they have really shown that we have control over our regions in the way we choose who to play with or keep it all to ourselves.

Hoping they show us the university research capability's and the mining of raw metals soon!!!!!

There is going to be up to 16 players on one region so im guessing this means 16 cities. They must just be in the testing of the game.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

That GIF picture is OK but that pipe is a sewage pipe, and that icon means sewage treatment, not terrain paints.

--Ocram

[RyanMorgan95 144]

I just wish city lots were adjacent, rather than having gaps. I wouldn't mind 2x2 maps if this was the case.

[Cob92 360]

I agree with what another poster has said here. Regions should be composed of adjacent 2x2 tiles that can be developed either into cities or Great Works. Or at the very least, there should be some adjacent tiles, so that I can just claim the next city over from my main one to build my suburbs, rather than having to expand into a remote plot of land with no connection to my other city. Also, cities in close proximity to one another should enjoy trade benefits vs cities on opposite ends of the region.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

1. Looking at the modules, I wonder if those smokestacks to the right were more efficient at coal consumption to electricity production ratios or are lower polluting, or both? I wonder if there is a way to make oil power plants cleaner? I see that natural gas is missing. I think that natural gas drilling should be added in an expansion pack where they provide the natural gas and helium resources while increasing the likelihood of earthquakes and emit some ground pollution. I also think that there should also be "meltdown proof" Generation IV nuclear reactors in the game, possibly as a university research program in an expansion pack.

2. There needs to be an option to turn down saturation in the game.

3. Some of the UI numbers indeed look messed up.

4. I think that a U-Drive-It Mode looks like it would be easy to add in an expansion pack.

--Ocram

[TommyWebster 7]

Cheers @guitarmatt99 , I was just coming online to take back my mention of small regions, they released this image yesterday on their Facebook page...

[snick25 384]

Anyone notice the population? At the beginning, the time-lapse shows skyscrapers being built at a population of about 800. At about 1:47, we see the whole map, filled about halfway with skyscrapers. The population is around 1,000.

So, figuring a map filled completely with skyscrapers, you'd probably get a max population of 2,500-3,000 (and that's assuming some of the highrises in the video were commercial).

This is even worse than I thought it would be.

In SC4, you normally wouldn't get your first midrise until you had at least 1,000 people. Now, in this new game, you get skyscrapers at 800 and the biggest cities you can build may be as low as 2,000. Wow. I guess I should've been expecting this, considering the size of the maps, but still. Wow.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

The region map had a buggy population count. Also, the population density has been made more realistic to American standards instead of Asian standards. This means that instead of cramming 10 people in an apartment unit, only one person occupies it or something like that.

--Ocram

[Bookitty 63]

Anyone notice the population? At the beginning, the time-lapse shows skyscrapers being built at a population of about 800. At about 1:47, we see the whole map, filled about halfway with skyscrapers. The population is around 1,000.

So, figuring a map filled completely with skyscrapers, you'd probably get a max population of 2,500-3,000 (and that's assuming some of the highrises in the video were commercial).

This is even worse than I thought it would be.

In SC4, you normally wouldn't get your first midrise until you had at least 1,000 people. Now, in this new game, you get skyscrapers at 800 and the biggest cities you can build may be as low as 2,000. Wow. I guess I should've been expecting this, considering the size of the maps, but still. Wow.

It's called DEBUG mode (closely related to God mode/cheats.), stats don't matter, especially when they are purposely setting up situations to show off certain features. Watching every little aspect in this video might be over analyzing?

Anyway, I don’t know if anybody is aware on how the in-game economy works, or how skyscrapers grow. Density is controlled by roads now, not population anymore…

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/road-to-SimCity-success-blog

That gives the option to control density without the reference to city size.

For example:

1. You could have a city of 200,000 people, but all the buildings are small 1 story houses.

Or...

2. Have a population of 5,000, and then have giant skyscrapers.

These options could go either way.

5:00 4 disasters, maxis? really? Meteor shower, earthquake, random/unknown and tornado. Tornado pop-up has a typo (...as mayor you have full and compete accesss...).

Dont' forget the strange monster thing from the E3 video.

Inconsistencies, like the population, income and RCI demand never changing lead me to believe that this is the answer. please god, let this be the answer. -Regions are super small, and don't line up exactly, making high-density cites look incredibly dumb from the region view. Silly design decision by maxis.

There's a lot of meat here, and the glassbox engine looks great, but I think the decision to have non-contiguous, smaller cities combined with the cartoony UI will off-put at LOT of hardcore simcity fans.

There are so inconsistent is because it's DEBUG MODE.

[agustin89 1]

I have the disturbing and sad feeling that this game will be closer to "sim city societies 2" than "sim city 5"... plus it looks like an improved facebook game (glass engine apart)...

I'd like maxis to lean towards macromanagement, but it looks like they are still into micromanagement (sims style)...

Being able to customize every public building (or even casinos), but not being able to build regional networks (highways, trains), is frustrating to me... that's something the modding community already had... here in simtropolis you can find every building you possibly want... there's no need to add a limited building modding feature ingame...

I don't feel (hoping I'm wrong here) that this new sim city will add a lot to already existing games like cities XL (in terms of city simulation)... I'll have to wait for reviews, but definitely I'm not pre-ordering this game..

[grugor 60]

I agree with what another poster has said here. Regions should be composed of adjacent 2x2 tiles that can be developed either into cities or Great Works. Or at the very least, there should be some adjacent tiles, so that I can just claim the next city over from my main one to build my suburbs, rather than having to expand into a remote plot of land with no connection to my other city. Also, cities in close proximity to one another should enjoy trade benefits vs cities on opposite ends of the region.

They have explained already why they cant put city tiles beside each other on the SC forums. Its not going to happen and would look stupid when you cant make connections between tiles yourself or not being able to see traffic on the adjacent tile

As for the population, the region screen shot above shows a region population of 373,217 with 8 of the 16 tiles occupied

[JaceTwice 115]

They have explained already why they cant put city tiles beside each other on the SC forums.

Just what is the reason exactly anyway? It's one of the few things I haven't been able to reason out for myself.

[fatbuster 44]

They have explained already why they cant put city tiles beside each other on the SC forums.

Just what is the reason exactly anyway? It's one of the few things I haven't been able to reason out for myself.

Here's what MaxisSparks wrote on the official forums:

We experimented a lot with this. It's what we started with. The (extremely) frustrating reality was that if cities sit right up next to each other, then they either need to be simulated for real, or they look lifeless. Neither was acceptable. If we simulated them for real, then we would have to make the cities ridiculously small. (We are giving the CPU a crazy workout with the sim!) We pounded on it for a long time, but in the end the best solution was to push the cities just a bit apart.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

Cheers @guitarmatt99 , I was just coming online to take back my mention of small regions, they released this image yesterday on their Facebook page...

This isn't the region view, it's the lobby. Seriously, watch the strategy video they released recently, that shows the proper region view and thankfully it is much more what we're used to. Secondly, thats the max region size, 16x medium or equivalent to 4x large SC4 size cities - that is pretty damn small.

[JaceTwice 115]

Here's what MaxisSparks wrote on the official forums:

We experimented a lot with this. It's what we started with. The (extremely) frustrating reality was that if cities sit right up next to each other, then they either need to be simulated for real, or they look lifeless. Neither was acceptable. If we simulated them for real, then we would have to make the cities ridiculously small. (We are giving the CPU a crazy workout with the sim!) We pounded on it for a long time, but in the end the best solution was to push the cities just a bit apart.

Interesting. I guess that also confirms that 2km x 2km maps is actually a performance related issue.

Anyway, the new strategy video looks pretty good. I like that time is a factor to take into account for your cities. It seems like you really have to approach city building differently in this game compared to SC4.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

I'm glad they've come out and said that, but I have to wonder if the reason they can't push the CPU is because they're not aiming to be particularily high spec, it can run on an intel core 2 duo 2Ghz IIRC and 2GB ram. Most PC's have had that or much more for many years now.

[DmainEvent 195]

They have explained already why they cant put city tiles beside each other on the SC forums.

Just what is the reason exactly anyway? It's one of the few things I haven't been able to reason out for myself.

Here's what MaxisSparks wrote on the official forums:

We experimented a lot with this. It's what we started with. The (extremely) frustrating reality was that if cities sit right up next to each other, then they either need to be simulated for real, or they look lifeless. Neither was acceptable. If we simulated them for real, then we would have to make the cities ridiculously small. (We are giving the CPU a crazy workout with the sim!) We pounded on it for a long time, but in the end the best solution was to push the cities just a bit apart.

This in my mind is not an excuse. They are falling into a trap which is not necessarily the case. They could have LAYERS of simulation that kick in when certain conditions are met. Like I have explained in numerous posts, they could break up their simulations into a minimum of 3, and up to 6 different layers. With the lowest layers doing the most expensive calculations. Your layers would be Metro-Region, City, District. You could throw in neighborhood after district, or you could slide some other layers between Metro-Region and City and City and District, but no matter. Each layer would develop organically (this could apply to borders as well). The scope of your view would determine what is simulated and what isn't with the Metro-Region always being simulated. For instance, if you are in a district view (in other words, your camera is positioned so you can only see several blocks of your city at once), All glassbox calculations for that district are run, same for the City, that you are in (city calculations aren't as onerous and would include high-level things like budget, taxes population etc). When you are at a level where you can see your entire city, Each district is frozen in a 'state'. That state informs the simulation calculations at the city and Metro-Region level. That state would include key metrics that would update each district so that it continues on a 'trajectory'. That trajectory could be static, negative, or positive. Graphical updates for that district will be suspended while in viewing city mode until it come into focus at which point the simulation catches up. So while your at the city level, district or neighborhood level simulation calculations aren't being run, saving your CPU and memory. Major details on what get's simulated and when is best left to architects who are closer to the code then me, but this is the general idea of a progressive simulation. This is essentially what happened in the region mode of simcity 4. Minor simulation calculations where done in the Region view, while your cities were frozen in a certain 'state' that informed the region simulation. Once your city was again in 'focus', the city would continue on it's trajectory if you didn't do anything to alter it. It worked for simulation purposes and it helped you to create massive metropolises without having a negative effect on your cpu, or memory. Why they didn't expand on this concept and instead abandoned it all together is beyond me. They could have made city bounderies form naturally with this kind of logic. Instead of a city being defined by a square, you are shown a region view map and you just pick somewhere to build. This takes you down to the neighborhood view. When you hit certain metrics the neighborhood is defined (what these could be could include population, or simply size metrics, etc... you really have to get into the nuts and bolts to figure this out though). When you have built so many neighborhoods a district is defined. When you have so many districts, that certain CPU constraints can no longer be met, you have a city. All cities no matter where they are located could make up your metro region. Whether all cities are contiguous or are separated by a couple of miles of highway or even geological features like mountains or rivers. The people at maxis I feel were very short sighted when they designed glass box. They should have had all these things in mind when coming up with the simulation to ensure smooth loading of each layer and also to ensure that the simulation would be as efficient as possible. I am afraid that they didn't even give a progressive simulation even a thought. I feel like they need to go back to the drawing board or we the fans need to come up with our simulation around these principles.

[ArtemL 14]

This in my mind is not an excuse. They are falling into a trap which is not necessarily the case. They could have LAYERS of simulation that kick in when certain conditions are met. Like I have explained in numerous posts, they could break up their simulations into a minimum of 3, and up to 6 different layers. With the lowest layers doing the most expensive calculations. Your layers would be Metro-Region, City, District. You could throw in neighborhood after district, or you could slide some other layers between Metro-Region and City and City and District, but no matter. Each layer would develop organically (this could apply to borders as well). The scope of your view would determine what is simulated and what isn't with the Metro-Region always being simulated. For instance, if you are in a district view (in other words, your camera is positioned so you can only see several blocks of your city at once), All glassbox calculations for that district are run, same for the City, that you are in (city calculations aren't as onerous and would include high-level things like budget, taxes population etc). When you are at a level where you can see your entire city, Each district is frozen in a 'state'. That state informs the simulation calculations at the city and Metro-Region level. That state would include key metrics that would update each district so that it continues on a 'trajectory'. That trajectory could be static, negative, or positive. Graphical updates for that district will be suspended while in viewing city mode until it come into focus at which point the simulation catches up. So while your at the city level, district or neighborhood level simulation calculations aren't being run, saving your CPU and memory. Major details on what get's simulated and when is best left to architects who are closer to the code then me, but this is the general idea of a progressive simulation. This is essentially what happened in the region mode of simcity 4. Minor simulation calculations where done in the Region view, while your cities were frozen in a certain 'state' that informed the region simulation. Once your city was again in 'focus', the city would continue on it's trajectory if you didn't do anything to alter it. It worked for simulation purposes and it helped you to create massive metropolises without having a negative effect on your cpu, or memory. Why they didn't expand on this concept and instead abandoned it all together is beyond me. They could have made city bounderies form naturally with this kind of logic. Instead of a city being defined by a square, you are shown a region view map and you just pick somewhere to build. This takes you down to the neighborhood view. When you hit certain metrics the neighborhood is defined (what these could be could include population, or simply size metrics, etc... you really have to get into the nuts and bolts to figure this out though). When you have built so many neighborhoods a district is defined. When you have so many districts, that certain CPU constraints can no longer be met, you have a city. All cities no matter where they are located could make up your metro region. Whether all cities are contiguous or are separated by a couple of miles of highway or even geological features like mountains or rivers. The people at maxis I feel were very short sighted when they designed glass box. They should have had all these things in mind when coming up with the simulation. I am afraid that they didn't even give a progressive simulation even a thought. I feel like they need to go back to the drawing board or we the fans need to come up with our simulation around these principles.

Well, why don't you send a CV to Maxis then? I'm sure such a smart guy will be a welcome addition to any game dev team.

[guitarmatt99 27]

Cheers @guitarmatt99 , I was just coming online to take back my mention of small regions, they released this image yesterday on their Facebook page...

This isn't the region view, it's the lobby. Seriously, watch the strategy video they released recently, that shows the proper region view and thankfully it is much more what we're used to. Secondly, thats the max region size, 16x medium or equivalent to 4x large SC4 size cities - that is pretty damn small.

In strategy video #2 they did use this terrain, if you look to the far left corner of the map that is the area they used so is this saying this is the only map available?

[Bookitty 63]

This in my mind is not an excuse. They are falling into a trap which is not necessarily the case. They could have LAYERS of simulation that kick in when certain conditions are met. Like I have explained in numerous posts, they could break up their simulations into a minimum of 3, and up to 6 different layers.

But I think those layers would have to be running in the background all the time to keep up with the simulation. Maybe that's why Maxis is saying they would have to simulate the cities in real time.

Here's what MaxisSparks wrote on the official forums:

We experimented a lot with this. It's what we started with. The (extremely) frustrating reality was that if cities sit right up next to each other, then they either need to be simulated for real, or they look lifeless. Neither was acceptable. If we simulated them for real, then we would have to make the cities ridiculously small. (We are giving the CPU a crazy workout with the sim!) We pounded on it for a long time, but in the end the best solution was to push the cities just a bit apart.

I guess that settles it...

[Mithrik 562]

Cheers @guitarmatt99 , I was just coming online to take back my mention of small regions, they released this image yesterday on their Facebook page...

This isn't the region view, it's the lobby. Seriously, watch the strategy video they released recently, that shows the proper region view and thankfully it is much more what we're used to. Secondly, thats the max region size, 16x medium or equivalent to 4x large SC4 size cities - that is pretty damn small.

In strategy video #2 they did use this terrain, if you look to the far left corner of the map that is the area they used so is this saying this is the only map available?

Most likely they just don't any others right now.

[DmainEvent 195]

This in my mind is not an excuse. They are falling into a trap which is not necessarily the case. They could have LAYERS of simulation that kick in when certain conditions are met. Like I have explained in numerous posts, they could break up their simulations into a minimum of 3, and up to 6 different layers.

But I think those layers would have to be running in the background all the time to keep up with the simulation. Maybe that's why Maxis is saying they would have to simulate the cities in real time.

Exactly. That is why you limit their complexity to help save the CPU and memory. I want to just say that doing something like this would require incredibly complex threading logic and it's not something you can just throw together in a couple of months. I am not even certain glassbox was designed to take advantage of this sort of thing. Probably not. That is probably why they couldn't hammer it out. I feel like the entire game is based on the sizes of the maps which it really shouldn't. The developers just didn't think hard enough or far enough ahead. Or maybe they did and it was just to ambitious for EA to fund. Who the hell knows, but this game could have been much better with a little bit better planning.

As far as putting my resume into EA, that is not a bad idea. Unfortunately most of my programming skills are in .net and Java. They probably need a coder more familiar with C++ or other languages that translates into machine language without the need for a virtual machine like .net or the JRE... Although I have done C++ work, it was more to write unit tests then developing actual code. As they say though, if you are a true coder, you are language agnostic. Which I adhere to, all I am saying is that I would never make it through interviews.

[croxis 150]

Sounds like what you guys are talking about is Level of Detail simulation. The further a city is from the one you are playing the more the simulation is abstracted. For many games this works awesome. Once I start thinking how it would work for SC2013 the more issues I run into.

The big catch is the multiplayer component. Lets say you and a friend is playing two adjacent cities. You are online but he isn't. If his city is simulated, even in a reduced form, bad things can happen in his city that he wont know about until he comes online. Like his economy crashing, or downtown's land value falling apart. Unintentional griefing.

[snick25 384]

Anyone notice the population? At the beginning, the time-lapse shows skyscrapers being built at a population of about 800. At about 1:47, we see the whole map, filled about halfway with skyscrapers. The population is around 1,000.

So, figuring a map filled completely with skyscrapers, you'd probably get a max population of 2,500-3,000 (and that's assuming some of the highrises in the video were commercial).

This is even worse than I thought it would be.

In SC4, you normally wouldn't get your first midrise until you had at least 1,000 people. Now, in this new game, you get skyscrapers at 800 and the biggest cities you can build may be as low as 2,000. Wow. I guess I should've been expecting this, considering the size of the maps, but still. Wow.

It's called DEBUG mode (closely related to God mode/cheats.), stats don't matter, especially when they are purposely setting up situations to show off certain features. Watching every little aspect in this video might be over analyzing?

You're right. I guess we might as well just not examine these new videos or look at those new screenshots at all to see how this new Sim"City" works. Great Idea.

Considering the size of these maps, I would be surprised if the densest of cities did surpass 5,000 people.

[F2CMaDMaXX 12]

They already answered that, couple of hundred thousand for a single city.

[Skyrunner27 23]

Anyone notice the population? At the beginning, the time-lapse shows skyscrapers being built at a population of about 800. At about 1:47, we see the whole map, filled about halfway with skyscrapers. The population is around 1,000.

So, figuring a map filled completely with skyscrapers, you'd probably get a max population of 2,500-3,000 (and that's assuming some of the highrises in the video were commercial).

This is even worse than I thought it would be.

In SC4, you normally wouldn't get your first midrise until you had at least 1,000 people. Now, in this new game, you get skyscrapers at 800 and the biggest cities you can build may be as low as 2,000. Wow. I guess I should've been expecting this, considering the size of the maps, but still. Wow.

It's called DEBUG mode (closely related to God mode/cheats.), stats don't matter, especially when they are purposely setting up situations to show off certain features. Watching every little aspect in this video might be over analyzing?

You're right. I guess we might as well just not examine these new videos or look at those new screenshots at all to see how this new Sim"City" works. Great Idea.

Considering the size of these maps, I would be surprised if the densest of cities did surpass 5,000 people.

He never said anything about not looking at the new features. All he said was you might be looking to hard. It's Dev mode my second favorite game Kerbal Space Program the devs can turn off gravity, or teleport to a certain orbit. Any statistical information for now is null. Did you notice Dan's city Skyscrapers popped up right away. Meaning we don't now when a population will be great enough to have a skyscraper.

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They have explained already why they cant put city tiles beside each other on the SC forums.

Just what is the reason exactly anyway? It's one of the few things I haven't been able to reason out for myself.

Here's what MaxisSparks wrote on the official forums:

We experimented a lot with this. It's what we started with. The (extremely) frustrating reality was that if cities sit right up next to each other, then they either need to be simulated for real, or they look lifeless. Neither was acceptable. If we simulated them for real, then we would have to make the cities ridiculously small. (We are giving the CPU a crazy workout with the sim!) We pounded on it for a long time, but in the end the best solution was to push the cities just a bit apart.

That's not an excuse, that's a design floor. If they didn't build the game on an inferior design they would even have these issues.

They have their glassbox engine, it does what it does…now they just need to keep tweaking it to get the best out of it.

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It is a really good reason. You can visually isolate an active city from a region, like sc4 did (to which people will then complain about not being able to see neighboring cities), as well as prevent terraforming on city edges with cities you don't own. It will also make city switching jerky like in sc4 instead of seamless in sc2013. Lots of people will complain about that.