So what if a city was deleted? Possible?

[Dewm 177]

I were to build a city, and had my neighbor cities and we were all playing and having fun.. And then one day I decide to delete my city? (To restart it or something to that effect) Can you "delete" cities? and if so how does that effect surrounding economies? I mean in real life if you had a city of 200,000ppl next door and then the next day they were gone, things would be pretty messed up.. How does SC13 handle this?

  Edited February 6, 2013 by CaptCity  
Edited title to provide clarification.

[The_City_Builder 299]

I'm pretty sure the economy of the region collapses. I also think that when a city is "deleted" it's just abandoned, meaning that all buildings remain, but nobody owns the city, and once someone claims it, they basically become the new mayor.

[Dewm 177]

Ok, so you can't actually wipe a city anymore.. hmm interesting.

[Sandis_van_Great 346]

for me normaly deleting one city or big part of a city makes the economy grow hehe, demand always goes up.

[Spatzimaus 77]

If you abandon a city, it becomes a ruin that other players can take over. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from bulldozing the entire thing first if you really want to... and yes, that'd do horrendous things to the local economy, depending on exactly what your city's role was.

But honestly, what's the point of deletion in a multiplayer game? Especially if the game saves are being stored in The Cloud? ("Are we in the Cloud right now?") As long as we can transfer ownership of a tile to some other player in the game, then that's all you really need.

dzekins: That'd depend on what your city did. In SC4, pretty much every decent-sized city was self-sufficient and had a little of everything, so deleting one wouldn't do a whole lot. But in this SimCity, each city specializes, and there's just no way other cities can take up all of the slack in a short time. Maybe your city was providing power to your neighbors, or taking their garbage. Or maybe your city had the big University, and its destruction will suddenly leave the nearby towns without a source of well-educated Sims to work in their Computer companies. And so on; the point is that the loss of a single town probably WILL leave your region without some essential niche until you modify other towns to make up the difference.

[nhgriffith 179]

And that's why I'll only ever play in one of three manners:

 

a) By myself in a region where I play all the cities.

b) In a private region where only friends I personal invite play the cities.

c) If I happen to decide to play on a random public region, I'll create a city at the bottom of the totem poll.  As interested as I am in a high tech city or a trade city, I'd much rather serve a region's infrastructure and dirty industry needs so that someone else's play doesn't have a negative impact on my own.  This is the Internet, after all.

 

 

So, to every SimCity fan, just be aware.  This is the Internet.  I'm not sure what experience many of you have with online multiplayer games, because if you've been playing nothing but SC4 for the last 10 years, you're in for a rude awakening.

 

I absolutely guarantee there will be trolls.  If you're playing in a public region with players you do not know at all, don't make any single part of your city absolutely 100% dependent on something happening in another city in your region.  If the player simply quits playing, I'm sure your power deal will still continue to work.  But if they decide to grow their zoning to the point of no longer having extra power, or destroy power plants, or simply end the deal, your city will be in trouble quickly.  So just be aware.  This is the Internet.  Trolls exists.  SimCity will not be immune to the trolls.

[Vampirovibrio 43]

This is actually a very good question... Never thong of it until you brought it up. Can one "restart a city"? Like in sc4, where u restart the city and everything goes back to its pristine stage and u start off again with the starting simileons? If so, I would imagine that services like water, power and other shareable services would be impacted for the remaing cities. For example, city A currently gets power from city B. if city B mayor abandons the city and say I as the new mayor decided to take over the city but decided to restart the city as I don't like the direction the previous mayor went. Thus, power will no longer be supplied to city A. Even if I decide to build a power plant, I may decide that I don't want to share/ sell the service.

I hope someone from Maxis can see this and say whether restarting a city is possible?

[Spatzimaus 77]

And that's why I'll only ever play in one of three manners:

 

a) By myself in a region where I play all the cities.

b) In a private region where only friends I personal invite play the cities.

c) If I happen to decide to play on a random public region, I'll create a city at the bottom of the totem poll.  As interested as I am in a high tech city or a trade city, I'd much rather serve a region's infrastructure and dirty industry needs so that someone else's play doesn't have a negative impact on my own.  This is the Internet, after all.

 

Personally, I'd never even consider option C, and not just because of all of the horrible things that can go wrong with strangers.  No, it's more that if I'm playing with other people, I'd like it to be able to talk to them as I do so, even for a game that's not action-heavy.  I'd play with friends that I can voice-chat with; being able to say what specialty you're aiming for is important, and I'm sure it'd be handy to be able to coordinate services and such to prevent having more police than your region needs.  But really, it's that my guild's chat is rarely about the specific game being played, and I'm afraid I'd just get BORED controlling only a single city if I had no one to talk to while I played it.

[nhgriffith 179]

Personally, I'd never even consider option C, and not just because of all of the horrible things that can go wrong with strangers.  No, it's more that if I'm playing with other people, I'd like it to be able to talk to them as I do so, even for a game that's not action-heavy.  I'd play with friends that I can voice-chat with; being able to say what specialty you're aiming for is important, and I'm sure it'd be handy to be able to coordinate services and such to prevent having more police than your region needs.  But really, it's that my guild's chat is rarely about the specific game being played, and I'm afraid I'd just get BORED controlling only a single city if I had no one to talk to while I played it.

I tend to agree, generally. It was kind of a worse-case scenario and more listed as a warning toward anyone who was considering playing with total strangers moreso than an option I'd take. I'd personally rather control all 16 cities in a region myself than control 1 city in a region with 15 strangers.

But my ideal situation is option B. At least mostly option B. I don't mind a few strangers in my region, but I want to play with a lot of my friends. Whether they're friends I know and talk to on a daily basis or friends I know strictly online, I want to play with my friends.

I've been considering reactivating my Ventrilo server just for SimCity.

[Harlequin_666 17]

I got two things from this thread. Stay out of Dewm's region as he'll collapse your economy, and nhgriffith is ready to be our garbage dump and sewage area 

[nhgriffith 179]

I got two things from this thread. Stay out of Dewm's region as he'll collapse your economy, and nhgriffith is ready to be our garbage dump and sewage area 

I am, really. I don't think that type of city is necessarily appealing to most players to play in a multiplayer region, but I find it just as interesting as any other type of city. Someone has to do it.

And before it's all said and done, I'll have built a city with each imaginable specialization at least once each.

[Harlequin_666 17]

I think a lot of us do the same with SC4...having an industrial city next to the residential/commercial ones, off on it's own. I usually have power there and the garbage dump.

[Spatzimaus 77]

I am, really. I don't think that type of city is necessarily appealing to most players to play in a multiplayer region, but I find it just as interesting as any other type of city. Someone has to do it.

 

Exactly.  There are certain city types that I have little interest in, personally, but that are necessary for a well-balanced region.  And some of those are types that others seem to love, like casino cities, so if you can find a group of people with complementary interests, you can make a great region.  If you're not willing to play with people who have different preferences, then you'll just end up with a multiplayer region containing 16 casino cities.  That's the danger of playing with total strangers... if 16 people are asked to each make one city, how many of them would make something that really integrates well with others, and how many would just pick a type that doesn't depend on anyone else to be profitable?  And even if some of you wanted to coordinate your efforts, it won't mean much if you don't communicate regularly.  That's why I ruled out playing with strangers, entirely.

 

But the thing is, I have no desire to play a 16-city region by myself.  Besides the fact that this'd require me to create a few city types I don't like, that's just a tremendous amount of jumping back and forth to make sure each component city is developing well.  It's a lot better to manage a small number of cities, where you still get the benefit of differing game experiences without the huge micromanagement overhead.  That's why my ideal case would be 5-8 players sharing a 16-city region, where each player controls 2-3 cities; you get all of the advantages of playing small regions by yourself, while being able to specialize each city more as others will pick up any slack.

For instance, if I was sharing a 16-city area with 7 other players, I'd probably want one university/cultural town and one high-tech industry/commercial town that builds computers.  I wouldn't need to depend heavily on other cities to survive, but being in a 16-city region with other people would give me markets for my computers, students for my universities, dumps to deliver garbage to, places for my residents to go gamble.... you get the idea.  As long as we pick the space shuttle for a Great Work, I'd be happy.  And the best part is, if one player decided to drop out entirely, how hard would it be to re-allocate his plots to some of the remaining players so that they're playing 3 tiles instead of 2?  I could add a dedicated mining/power town to my previous two, and now I'd REALLY not need to depend on anyone else.  (This is part of why I'd rather start with only 5 folks, so we all have 3-4 tiles, but if someone drops out then you're down to 4x4.)

[nhgriffith 179]

I think a lot of us do the same with SC4...having an industrial city next to the residential/commercial ones, off on it's own. I usually have power there and the garbage dump.

 Yea, I'm sure almost anyone that's spent much time at all with SimCity 4 has done this. But there's a difference. You're not doing that in SimCity 4 because you want to be the mayor of an industrial city that takes care of everyone's garbage. You're doing this in SimCity 4 because you don't want pollution or garbage in your main city. How many people play SimCity 4 and say "I think it'd be fun to make an industrial city" and then go off to the side and make residential cities to fill out the jobs?

And if you were playing SimCity 4 with other people sharing a region, and you only had one city tile, how willing would you be to commit that city to a pure industry town?

But this type of town actually moderately interests me. I think the fact that a coal mine or oil drilling can fit in well with the pure industrial town is helpful, so you're not just mindlessly zoning Industrial parks, but for some reason, I enjoy filling that need that a group requires to function properly.

 

Exactly.  There are certain city types that I have little interest in, personally, but that are necessary for a well-balanced region.  And some of those are types that others seem to love, like casino cities, so if you can find a group of people with complementary interests, you can make a great region.  If you're not willing to play with people who have different preferences, then you'll just end up with a multiplayer region containing 16 casino cities.  That's the danger of playing with total strangers... if 16 people are asked to each make one city, how many of them would make something that really integrates well with others, and how many would just pick a type that doesn't depend on anyone else to be profitable?  And even if some of you wanted to coordinate your efforts, it won't mean much if you don't communicate regularly.  That's why I ruled out playing with strangers, entirely.

 

But the thing is, I have no desire to play a 16-city region by myself.  Besides the fact that this'd require me to create a few city types I don't like, that's just a tremendous amount of jumping back and forth to make sure each component city is developing well.  It's a lot better to manage a small number of cities, where you still get the benefit of differing game experiences without the huge micromanagement overhead.  That's why my ideal case would be 5-8 players sharing a 16-city region, where each player controls 2-3 cities; you get all of the advantages of playing small regions by yourself, while being able to specialize each city more as others will pick up any slack.

For instance, if I was sharing a 16-city area with 7 other players, I'd probably want one university/cultural town and one high-tech industry/commercial town that builds computers.  I wouldn't need to depend heavily on other cities to survive, but being in a 16-city region with other people would give me markets for my computers, students for my universities, dumps to deliver garbage to, places for my residents to go gamble.... you get the idea.  As long as we pick the space shuttle for a Great Work, I'd be happy.  And the best part is, if one player decided to drop out entirely, how hard would it be to re-allocate his plots to some of the remaining players so that they're playing 3 tiles instead of 2?  I could add a dedicated mining/power town to my previous two, and now I'd REALLY not need to depend on anyone else.  (This is part of why I'd rather start with only 5 folks, so we all have 3-4 tiles, but if someone drops out then you're down to 4x4.)

In general, I agree with most of this sentiment. I think the idea of playing with total strangers isn't going to be all that appealing. My original post in this thread, again, was more just throwing a word of warning out there for anyone that thought they would. But in general, I've kind of had the same plans formulating in my head as you've outlined here.

If I were playing a region entirely by myself (and I'll do at least one region this way), then I'll probably want no more than about 8 city tiles in that region. There are only 7 city specializations, and some of these can easily overlap I'm sure (the devs talked about including some of the trade specialization in their mining/drilling towns, etc). So by the time you get to 16 cities, you're getting way too much repetition for a single region--I'd rather play two 8-city regions than one 16-city region.

But ultimately, I'm looking toward playing with a smallish-mediumish group of friends. There are 3 people (counting myself) that I know for sure will be purchasing the game and will have it on day one. I kind of figured the three of us would take two city tiles each in a 16-city region and leave 10 empty tiles to invite more friends in the future.

I don't know, we'll see when the game comes out, but yes, I figured I'd probably ideally be playing in a region where each player controlled about 2-3 city tiles, and where I know everyone playing.