Am I missing something ?

[Sfletcher 1]

I've been playing SimCity (2013) for a few months on and off, but only recently did I make an effort to fill an entire region with just my cities. I'll admit I'm obsessed with SimCity 4, and would have liked Maxis and Electronic Arts to build on that, instead of what they actually did. With all that said I wanted to give SimCity (2013) a chance. After a few dozen hours of continuous play on one region I have some observations and questions to something things I might be missing.

 

1) Small regions. I know we have all complained about it, and Maxis now says they won't expand them, but I can't help but comment. The burden of having a small region could be eased some if Maxis would allow some form of terraforming to be added. I don't mind a hilly region, or mountains but I would like the ability to flatten parts out to be used.

2) Lots- It drives me nuts that I can't build tightly compact, grid lined streets like in SimCity 4. Again something I think has already been hashed and re-hashed, but it makes some cities look completely fake with all the wasted space. On the same token, I would love to be able to plop a building without the road, and build the roads around it.  This would perhaps reduce the amount of dead space per city.

3)Fire Departments- Maybe I'm missing this. A small fire station has one fire truck, that's fine it was like that in SimCity 4. A large fire station comes with ONE fire truck? Really? I have to pay to add fire trucks. It's simply mind boggling that this is the case.  I can understand the extra cost of the large fire station involves everything it comes with, but still rather unreasonable with just one fire station.

4)Police Departments-   Same as above applies, a small number of police cars with one station.  In most cities a fully staffed large police station should be able to handle a reasonable amount of crime in a city of 200K. The game makes this near impossible most of the time.

5)Schools- Education seems more logical, I can add modules to increase the amount of children educated. 

6)Transportation- Subway sums it up in one word. I won't even get into traffic, that's simply an uncontrolled nightmare. Traffic in these cities make my mega cities in SimCity 4 look like a joy ride and I can't understand why sometimes. It drives me nuts, and worse of all effects the issue of industry.

7)Specialization-  First issue I have is, cities don't own industries, unless you live in the PRC.  To get supplies from my mine, to my trade port, then my smelting factory, or oil refinery is a pain in the ass First off I should be able to dig iron ore from the mine and send it right to the smelting plant, without going to a trade port. Second there should be a mechanism in the global market place which allows me to direct my goods from one city to another, instead of the open market. My region should be able to support itself. There is much more to this entire problem, it just remains to be seen.

Budget/Taxes-  It seems by the time any city reaches a 100K population you are running in the red. Only industry saves you, something that seems crazy, no reason why property taxes can't pay for a cities services.

 

Just some thoughts, and questions

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

 

The burden of having a small region could be eased some if Maxis would allow some form of terraforming to be added. I don't mind a hilly region, or mountains but I would like the ability to flatten parts out to be used.

 

Yes.  Closely related, I feel that the ability to make bridges across water is underused in this game.   The "rivers" are creeks, as a real-sized river would take up most of the allotted space.

 

 

3)Fire Departments- Maybe I'm missing this. A small fire station has one fire truck, that's fine it was like that in SimCity 4. A large fire station comes with ONE fire truck? Really? I have to pay to add fire trucks.

 

4)Police Departments-   Same as above applies, a small number of police cars with one station.

 

Agreed.  With the barebones fire station you're paying top dollar for nothing but the ability to eventually add on. 

 

ALSO you should be able to move the old ambulances/police cars/fire trucks to your new facility, not have to buy new vehicles.

 

Honestly, any single fire department or police department that can't handle a 2x2 kilometer area that isn't even filled with city yet would be under investigation.

 

Not to mention, hospitals and clinics should be paying for themselves.

 

 

5)Schools- Education seems more logical, I can add modules to increase the amount of children educated.

 

I don't like the bare bones elementary school - it should fit 250, not 150.  By the time you can afford it you have more kids in the region than you have classrooms.  Your sims will complain if you can't fit the last five kids in - and real schools will just put more desks in the classroom.  There should be an "overcrowding" for schools, similar to the waiting room at clinics/hospitals.

 

 

I won't even get into traffic, that's simply an uncontrolled nightmare.

 

And it's even been improved since launch!  It's finally MUCH better - but obviously not perfect by a long shot.  "We always feel traffic is an added challenge" is a cop-out by the developers.

 

 

7)Specialization-  First issue I have is, cities don't own industries, unless you live in the PRC.  To get supplies from my mine, to my trade port, then my smelting factory, or oil refinery is a pain in the ass First off I should be able to dig iron ore from the mine and send it right to the smelting plant, without going to a trade port. Second there should be a mechanism in the global market place which allows me to direct my goods from one city to another, instead of the open market. My region should be able to support itself. There is much more to this entire problem, it just remains to be seen.

Budget/Taxes-  It seems by the time any city reaches a 100K population you are running in the red. Only industry saves you, something that seems crazy, no reason why property taxes can't pay for a cities services.

 

Yes, a thousand times.  I don't want to run my industry, never asked for the ability.  This is SimCity, not SimBusiness.

[Griffon 19]

1: Not gonna defend the region sizes or map sizes at all.  That has been over done already.

 

2: You can build a city with no extra space between buildings if you build perfect squares by using the grid lines they suggest, but I don't like the fact that you need roads to build most buildings, about the only exceptions are the ferry and train station.

 

3,4: With the fire station you're paying for better trucks and better staff (your suppose to be at least) and they allow you to add more trucks, different kind of trucks and helicopters.  With police same thing except it's more cars instead of better cars.  Btw the small police, fire, and hospitals fully upgraded can handle my cities of 300k to 400k people for the most part as long as you have a good school system.  The only exceptions for that is in my coal/ore or oil cities I usually have the large hospital, in tourism cities I have the large police station, and in electronic cities I usually have the large fire station.

 

5: Schools lower the need for for the services (fire, police, hospitals).  More educated people means less crime that usually cause more injuries and fires, also with smarter people they are not as likely to accidently start fires or get themselves injured.  Like I just said if you have a good school system you don't need as much of the other services in the city.  Also as an added bonus the more educated they are the more they recycle, save on energy, and water.

 

6: Not gonna defend the transportation at all, but the new expansion is suppose to be the solution to this and I think that's ridiculous for you to buy an expansion to fix the transportation in the game.

 

7: I like the specializations, but it is weird if you think about it that the city runs them and gets the profits or losses from them.

 

8: And I can run a city with a positive budget without increasing the taxes above 9% if I don't have any specialization buildings.  I usually go red as soon as I start adding them and building that specialization up, unless it's tourism since tourism usually gets added back into your budget and sometimes I add casinos to my other cities to get even more money, but only if I'm already getting at least 1,000 tourists without even trying to get them.

[Xenocity 343]

2: Many people even on YouTube have built near perfect grid cities. Though to be fair some cities in real  life are built to a grid system and others aren't

 

3:There is nothing wrong with the fire stations, especially when you can send them from the neighoring cities.

Small station has small fire trucks

Large station has large fire trucks, which use more water to put out fires

Fire Marshals will prevent buildings from catching fire, thus reducing the number of possible fires, so does good education

The fire bell and fire dispatch make your fire trucks respond faster

 

4: Again nothing wrong with police stations, you can borrow them from your neighbors.

Small police stations have a small radius of deployment and have longer times between patrols

Large police stations have larger radius of deployment and shorter times between patrols

French police stations have the fastest time between patrols

Crime prevention vans obviously prevent crimes as does good education

You need plenty of jail space

 

 

*Emergency vehicles do not have the right away in this game or any previous Simcity game, this allows them to get stuck in traffic.

 

6: Transportation issues aren't as bad as in Simcity 4 Deluxe (Maxis never fixed it), my cities in Simcity 2013 have very few traffic issues post update 6.

 NAM mods fixed most of the traffic issues in Simcity 4

Try playing the Simcity 4 as Maxis intended without mods

 

7: You don't have to use the global market for your region.

Oil refining in the real world goes this way: Oil drilling platform ---> Oil holding tanks ---> Oil refineries ---> Gas distributors ---> Gas stations

Mining ore goes this way: Mine --->  Holding tanks ---> smelter/coal refinery ---> end customer

Cities and regions do regulate, control and own some of the mines and buildiings involved in both oil, coal, and ore.

Cities XL works similar to Simcity

Gambling and tourism work fine for the most part

Specialization could use some tweaking

 

8: Industry and commercial are more dependent on each other in this game compared to the previous games.

You can easily turn a profit on a city with 100k+

Though the economy still needs some tweaking

 

I actually have a university city with a population of 200k+ that has a profit of 50k+ due to recycling and selling them on the global market

My casino city has a lower profit due to the ups and downs of tourism, has population of 200k+

My industry city runs a 5k+ per hour profit with a population of 100k+

My mining town isn't that big because I don't play it very often, it widly profitable.

[reReticulated Spline 69]

First off I should be able to dig iron ore from the mine and send it right to the smelting plant, without going to a trade port. 

It does this actually, you only need a trade port to have a 'buffer' or to import/export.

 

Schools: I think they went from SC4 illogical to SC2013 illogical.  

 

Police/Fire: I think that makes sense because you pay for the specialized vehicles, not the extra capacity. I prefer small spread out fire stations anyway. 

 

Traffic: Maxis has different ideas about how traffic should work then most people here. SC2013 is in a way going back to how SC4 was before mods. Short distances, challenging commute times.

 

 

The region think is also my biggest worry right now. Although a potentially 'soon' offline mode could let us do it ourselves, I have to wonder if Maxis has any intentions to create regions that feel more 'massive'. Because the game has the potential for great regional play. You can exchange more than you could in SC4 AND you can see the other cities while playing. If they do something more with it, like many people are requestion, it could be great. If they develop other stuff or stop adding more stuff, the team in my opinion drops the ball and the community needs to pick it up again. I always knew they too wanted bigger maps, but now that they found this too difficult, I'm not certain how they want to proceed. 

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

It does this actually, you only need a trade port to have a 'buffer' or to import/export.

 

 

I can't test this right now, but I'm not totally sure this is true.  I can say for sure that if you build a mine and a smelting plant the "build a trade port!" button starts blinking orange at you like mad, as if the world were about to end.

[tnobles 38]

2) Lots- It drives me nuts that I can't build tightly compact, grid lined streets like in SimCity 4.

You can, kinda-sorta, using the square roads tool. I usually draw 1x2 roads which works for R,C & I. Each of the 1x2's can have two high density and one medium for residential. Commercial will build five high density and industrial will build two medium or one high density. You still have to fight it to build the way you want, either de-zone and upgrade roads then zone or zone the entire square (rectangle) and upgrade roads.

You can gift resources to other cities. Kinda slow but, it does work.

[n74704 21]

Oh man, how long has it been since I've been here! Well I have been very off and...not as off about this new SimCity for many of the reasons you've mentioned.

 

The excuse that 'traffic is an added challenge' only holds water IF traffic was at all intelligent. I've tried so many things to avoid sheer gridlock and every time, the city seizes. See, I naively thought that glassbox was going to allow you to do some amazing things with customizing your city. But all it has done is turn my sims into a mindless herd of cattle that traverse the street, block up my intersections for hours on end, and keep my essential services stuck.

 

I didn't even care that city sizes were smaller - I love a logistical challenge and it seemed that SimCity was going to deliver that with each agent represented in this tiny cog and wheel machine. It's a new game aesthetic and I still believe if it worked...it would have been exceptional. But it hasn't worked at all and has made me distrust the game so severely that I can't actively change my strategy because of some impossibly stupid omissions.

 

1. Left-hand turn signals? Really... How does a modern transportation simulator omit an entire lane of traffic flow. This is by far the one thing that seizes my cities. I should not have to design in endless Ts to avoid oncoming traffic because the simulator is too stupid to draw rules for intersections. But even if I do, come morning the city is gridlocked because I cannot control how left hand turn signals are interpreted. If a perpendicular street never clears, that lane of traffic never clears either.

 

2. Signal Cascading programs. To combat increasingly poor signal patterns in downtown rows, cities smartly create cascading patterns that program an entire avenue of traffic signals to quickly move traffic through the centre in an organized, sane fashion. If I could control signal patterns in my most impacted areas, I could keep the flow of traffic moving in rush hour by writing my own rules for who goes when and how long. I am the intelligent being and as such, I should be able to fix the problems. This kind of tinkering is what is lacking severely in SimCity. If this is supposed to be a fine tuned machine, then why do I have to demolish large stretches of road to try something new?

 

3. Road rule exceptions for emergency vehicles - I mean cmon... This needs no explanation - the cars don't collide with one another, why have emergency vehicles adhere to reality anyway?

 

4. Custom Bus Routes. What use is a bus if the sims using it don't actually get to the stop they need? Because of the global herding mechanism in this game, busses don't run linear, planned routes - they just follow aimlessly picking up people without ever dropping them off in the right spot. This sadly goes for streetcars too...which is just mind boggling...If I could plan my routes, as once again, I am the intelligent being with a complex brain, then I could better move people around the city without wasting time getting stuck in traffic snarles.

 

5. Trade Depots are abysmal. Part of the allure of a 1:1 simulation is watching goods move through your economy. But because everything is automated and all tinkering mechanisms are wrapped in a thick layer of bubble wrap (oh goodie, I can add another truck that won't deliver anything), the excitement of running a trade empire falls flat. If this is really my business, I'd like a more active role in how I send my trucks out to deliver goods. But instead, I don't get to plan routes - and so my goods sit waiting to be picked up while my refineries close up shop because the petroleum hasn't been delivered - or worse, the power plant hasn't received a shipment in time. Now that SimCity introduced freight to this awful mess of a game, I now have to have industry in every damn city plot just so that I can collect freight. Why oh why can't I just have trade depots import freight in like any other resource?!

 

6. Increasing land value strictly by placing parks is incredibly dumb. I just wanted to have a nice park - now I have R$$$ moving in and I don't have work for them. Who thought this was a good idea? Wealthing up to the next level should be organic and based on many factors. The first - a job market to support wealthy peeps moving in. The second - increasing land values over time. The third? Ok, maybe parks. Because of this limitation, if I want a fountain in my city, I must have R$$$ around it because it quickly and predictably alters everything immediately surrounding that park - as if by magic. Add to that, there is no feeling of a patchwork neighborhood because everything levels up too quickly - and like everything in SimCity, theres no feeling of permanence and no way to get attached to any one area.

 

7. Increasing density based on street type is EXCEPTIONALLY stupid. I get the idea of streamlining, but this forces your hand in a rather ugly way - you CAN have avenues, but you cannot control density. If it were up to me, I'd like to use more avenues to manage traffic, but honestly I don't want a canyon of high rise towers on every avenue. I like in urbia (not quite as disconnected as suburbia), and two streets surrounding me use 6-lane avenues to create thoroughfares in low density neighborhoods. In SimCity, I'd have to use 2 lane streets...with an endless array of stop signs.

 

8. SimCity has created a system that solely relies on the success of its weakest component. Everything moves through roads...power mindlessly joggs through your patchwork, water and sewage do the same, all emergency services use your roads, all people use your roads, all mass transit uses your roads, garbage and waste management uses your roads, trade and specialized freight use your roads...because of this, the game repeatedly fails in an unmanageable way to the point where the gamer simply gives up. Because the roads are so wild wild west with no complex rules or organization, they set the player up by encouraging them to continue to expand without thinking of the consequences. And since there are no tools to further manage your transit system ( bypasses, toll roads, elevated ramps or sky bridges (the elevate tool doesn't count...it still creates intersections)), you're destined to fail as soon as you move into the next leg of expansion.

 

These are core game issues - not even mentioning the bigger maps debate because honestly...what good is more if what is there doesn't work? Sure you can spread the mess out over a larger map, but that doesn't solve the problem of a fundamentally unintelligent simulator.

[Griffon 19]

To @n74704,

 

You have good ideas about what needs to be added, the traffic is the most annoying thing to me in this game now (although it has greatly improved since the launch of the game).  In a few cities I have the avenue entering the city and I use (usually) two overpasses to make the avenue length longer to get more cars into the city and they only use one lane! all of them are turning left into a high density road.  They could use more than one lane to turn into that one road in real life but choose to only use one lane, blocking up traffic out past my city limits and outside the city limits on the interstate they use all the lanes possible, which blocks my trade trucks.  Not only do they need turning lanes they need more intelligent traffic lights.  A lot of traffic lights I've come to in real life allow the left turning lanes to go, the the straight away lanes then switch to the other roads in the intersection and repeat those steps.  Also my favorite rule while driving is right on red, meaning if you stop on a red light and it's clear you can go and that does not happen in this game and if it does I don't notice it.

 

Also the cars should prefer the avenues over the roads to clear up traffic a little on the roads, in SimCity4 most of the traffic went to the nearest higher density road (avenue/highway whatever is closest) then to their workplace.  In SimCity5 the traffic seems to be spread out equally over all the different types of road and usually my avenues far away from the city entrance are empty and the regular roads congested.

 

One thing I'd like them to add that was in SimCity4 was the traffic tool that showed the routes of the cars going to or from a certain building or road.

 

I've used a mod to make the service road (the road that comes with oil wells) available all the time and it really helps the trade trucks get on and off the avenue coming into my city to my powerplants and trade depots then back out faster.  I don't normally use them anywhere else, but I'm sure they could help elsewhere too.

 

Also I'd love to import freight like you mentioned, if you can export it why can't you import it as well.  My tourism cities never had any industry before, it was all residential and commercial.  Now I need to have industry to support my commercial needs and the little industry I have room for can't produce enough for my city.

 

The density doesn't really bother me, I never used low or medium density in the other SimCity games either.  The increase wealth parks don't bother me too much, at least that way I can plan out where each wealth district is at that way.  I usually only place one park in my cities anyways, it's a high wealth park with at least two expansions on it.  The high wealth is around the center of it and medium wealth is around the outside of it.  Medium wealth is also around my city hall and schools.  I also make my cities 3/4 residential with commercial scattered around and 1/4 industry.  That gives me 300k to 400k people and I usually get 80% happiness rating.

 

With the expansion they introduce drones that are suppose to make all the services fly through the air instead of using the roads and get to whatever the problem is faster.  They also allow people to buy commercial products without having to leave home, reducing traffic.  From what I can tell it looks like they use the same roads cars use except that they fly over them and have their own traffic.  The megatowers are suppose to be like complete cities by themselves and connect by skybridges.  Basically your megatowers are suppose to be self supported and self contained for the most part, which shouldn't cause any extra traffic on your roads.  Also from what I understand there isn't a need for trade trucks in the expansion either.  The resources get flown in or out when imported or exported and transported through your city in pipes.

 

And I'm sure the expansion comes with it's own bugs too.

[reReticulated Spline 69]

Good news for n74704: one-way roads are coming soon so you'll be able to direct your sims better.

[Griffon 19]

Good news for n74704: one-way roads are coming soon so you'll be able to direct your sims better.

YAY! I've been wanting one-way roads for forever too!  I didn't use them much in SC4, but I already know where I can use them with SC5.