It's time to ask the big question.

[rsc204 21,865]

The one they call SimCity (on the box without numerals) is probably the 2013 edition or referred to as SC5 (as in the fifth release).

It's either that or the archaic original version from the early 90's for your DOS PC / Super Nintendo, either way you'd probably notice if you had the very original game:

Ah - Memories

[MushyMushy 3,618]

What we all want is a sandbox where we can create whatever we decide to, ideally with the only restrictions being how much time/effort we are willing to invest in the process and not the game holding us back through limitations. Despite all the problems of SC4, to this day it still comes closest to this vision, that's why all the really serious players have yet to leave SC4 behind, not because we're curmudgeons, but simply because we can do more with the old tools right now. Should any game come along and give me a better tool kit, I would not stay rooted to SC4, but whilst Skylines looks good from the right angles, SC4 can just look plain awesome everywhere with enough effort. No one has come close to the level of detail or quality of work that we could expect from Paeng, BadSim, Vortext and countless others using these 3D games.

This is spot on. This is exactly how I feel.

---

This is probably a dumb question but I really don't know as I'm new to the Simcity franchise.

So, I'm a bit confused what generation of Simcity I recently downloaded from Origin. I got Simcity Complete Edition. Is this still the 2013 version/release? I'm reading different names for these Simcity games and I'm totally baffled. I haven't even seen this "Skyline" of Simcity anywhere. (I'm guessing it's not been released yet?).

Thanks for clearing that up for me!

Edit: Oh wait. Cities: Skylines is a totally different game, isn't it? I think I stumbled across some videos of it on YouTube.

Common references explained:

• SC4 - SimCity 4, released 2003 by Maxis/EA
• SC2013 - SimCity, released 2013 by Maxis/EA ('2013' is added by us because for some stupid reason the devs just called it SimCity)
• C:S - Cities: Skylines, released 2015 by Colossal Order/Paradox Interactive

  Edited July 30, 2015 by MushyMushy  
formatting quotes

[Ltw 401]

...simply because the PC/Windows doesn't support it anymore. Especialy with quad-core processors and new graphicscards it could take some effort to keep Simcity 4 running.

This is not true, SC4 runs just fine with no more than 10m of effort on a users part and half a modicum of PC ability. *hint* - set the following target "-CPUCount: 1 -d:Soft" for guaranteed stable operation.

I know that, I'm using that as well. But even though you can set CPUCount on 1 it doesn't have to work. I have a desktop with an Intel i5 processor on which it works perfectly and a laptop with an Intel i7 processor on which it simply doesn't. I have asked this question before on Simtropolis and I've searched forums for a solution and there are more people with a similiar problem without an easy solution. Even though solutions like setting the CPUCount on 1 or adding your graphichscard to the supported graphicscard-file could help a lot it doesn't have to be the magical solution that works for everyone. Besides, there are probably a lot of people that don't know that much about computers and don't want to take the effort to make it work properly. Those people might buy Skylines instead.

Quote

Besides, even though the citytile sizes in Simcity 4 are quite big this isn't as big as in Skylines where you can buy land and expand your city up to 36 square kilometres

Again I don't know where you are getting your information, the Map sizes in Skylines are incredibly restrictive. I find I can't make a region where there is one or two large cities with towns villages and rural landscapes around it, there simply isn't the space to do it properly (nor the mods). Not that it matters, my small towns need a mesh of motorways to keep traffic in check or the simulation falls over, where is the choice for the user to decide upon their own play style here? Clue's in the name I guess, "Cities Skylines", but not everyone wants to make large cities, it's a shame the simulator is so inflexible it makes any other style of play very difficult to achieve with a modicum of realism.

I found the tile-sizes here and here. I also read some discussions on Steam with the same conclusion. Thus it seems kind of legit to me.

However, I could imagine that Skylines is somewhat restrictive if you want to play with different cities/town in the same region. The setup is quite different from Simcity 4. Personally I prefer starting with one city and expanding this over multiple tiles but if you want to play with more cities at once I guess Skylines could be quite frustrating. Maybe there will be an update or a newer version of Cities in which they take this under consideration.

[rsc204 21,865]

Well map size is a quandary to me, I've no idea how accurate this information is, but I think scale also comes into the equation here. Here's an example of one of my more urbanised fully-developed regions using the Maxis original San Francisco Map:

Now I know for sure I can't replicate anything approaching this scale in CS, the mod for 25 tiles is a nice start, but the further so called 81-tile mod doesn't actually extend the boundaries that much further, not to mention that it takes down a high-end i7 system in the process. I can't even really show you how my fully-rendered Cardwell region map looks in one screenshot, it's so big compared to this that I'd have to scale it out of proportions just to show it. In fact even the Maxis maps for London and Berlin are huge compared to the puny San Francisco one shown here.

As for why some users have problems with SC4, I've love to delve deeper into solving that one personally, for the sake of the wider community it would be of benefit to all to try and get to the bottom of it. I find as one of the few willing to offer my time/assistance that the forums are a really bad environment for providing such support, too many cooks and all that. I do think some relevance must be made of your statement;

On 31/07/2015 at 4:04 PM, Ltw said:

 

Besides, there are probably a lot of people that don't know that much about computers and don't want to take the effort to make it work properly. Those people might buy Skylines instead.

What I don't like to hear is when people generalise their experience and condense it into something along the lines of;

Quote

For some users (including me) it gets harder to play Simcity 4, simply because the PC/Windows doesn't support it anymore 

This suggests there is an inherent compatibility problem somewhere, but the mere fact that Windows does run SC4 means any individual problems must rest somewhere with the specific users system configuration. As a long-time PC gamer and enthusiast including much direct support of such systems I'd be confident such issues could be resolved with the will/knowledge to do so. However, I find many users simply give up if it's not a simple quick-fix to resolve the problems. When I worked for AOL technical support I found many people felt the same way, if the program wasn't running in 10m then AOL was faulty. I recall one specific call where after an hour of being verbally abused for trying to help someone the problem became apparent, another application was conflicting with AOL on this PC. Upon explaining what this meant I got the response "Thanks, you've been about as much help as an ashtray on a motorcycle... <click>". Yes, I suspect Skylines is easier to run on a modern PC, that's just the nature of the beast, not least because if it wasn't, who would you sell the game to? Many of us in the SC4 community would love (and pay for) an update to resolve some of the headaches of running a 13 year old game on today's hardware, but I don't think EA care or see it as commercially viable. It's sad to think such an organisation wouldn't do the best thing possible and release the source code to the community in the future, it's just not their way. By comparison, look at how stable Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe is today, it's still got a vibrant community working upon it all these years later in ways the SC4 community can only dream of.

Ultimately though, I'm biased a little, I love and want to champion SC4 because I believe right now it's the best we have, others will rightly come to a different conclusion on which game is best. Whilst everyone is entitled to put their gaming time/money into whatever they want, I still believe SC4 has a future, being a part of the NAM team and seeing what's coming I'm excited about this future too. Such a future doesn't have to exclude any of the other city builders, I just dislike the feeling that you get here sometimes that we all need to segregate into groups based on just one title and champion it to the detriment of all others. It's fine to prefer Skylines, but that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with SC4, it's really this kind of argument I find difficult to swallow.

[Ltw 401]

Well map size is a quandary to me, I've no idea how accurate this information is, but I think scale also comes into the equation here. Here's an example of one of my more urbanised fully-developed regions using the Maxis original San Francisco Map:

Now I know for sure I can't replicate anything approaching this scale in CS, the mod for 25 tiles is a nice start, but the further so called 81-tile mod doesn't actually extend the boundaries that much further, not to mention that it takes down a high-end i7 system in the process. I can't even really show you how my fully-rendered Cardwell region map looks in one screenshot, it's so big compared to this that I'd have to scale it out of proportions just to show it. In fact even the Maxis maps for London and Berlin are huge compared to the puny San Francisco one shown here.

As for why some users have problems with SC4, I've love to delve deeper into solving that one personally, for the sake of the wider community it would be of benefit to all to try and get to the bottom of it. I find as one of the few willing to offer my time/assistance that the forums are a really bad environment for providing such support, too many cooks and all that. I do think some relevance must be made of your statement;

 

Besides, there are probably a lot of people that don't know that much about computers and don't want to take the effort to make it work properly. Those people might buy Skylines instead.

What I don't like to hear is when people generalise their experience and condense it into something along the lines of;

For some users (including me) it gets harder to play Simcity 4, simply because the PC/Windows doesn't support it anymore 

This suggests there is an inherent compatibility problem somewhere, but the mere fact that Windows does run SC4 means any individual problems must rest somewhere with the specific users system configuration. As a long-time PC gamer and enthusiast including much direct support of such systems I'd be confident such issues could be resolved with the will/knowledge to do so. However, I find many users simply give up if it's not a simple quick-fix to resolve the problems. When I worked for AOL technical support I found many people felt the same way, if the program wasn't running in 10m then AOL was faulty. I recall one specific call where after an hour of being verbally abused for trying to help someone the problem became apparent, another application was conflicting with AOL on this PC. Upon explaining what this meant I got the response "Thanks, you've been about as much help as an ashtray on a motorcycle... <click>". Yes, I suspect Skylines is easier to run on a modern PC, that's just the nature of the beast, not least because if it wasn't, who would you sell the game to? Many of us in the SC4 community would love (and pay for) an update to resolve some of the headaches of running a 13 year old game on today's hardware, but I don't think EA care or see it as commercially viable. It's sad to think such an organisation wouldn't do the best thing possible and release the source code to the community in the future, it's just not their way. By comparison, look at how stable Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe is today, it's still got a vibrant community working upon it all these years later in ways the SC4 community can only dream of.

Ultimately though, I'm biased a little, I love and want to champion SC4 because I believe right now it's the best we have, others will rightly come to a different conclusion on which game is best. Whilst everyone is entitled to put their gaming time/money into whatever they want, I still believe SC4 has a future, being a part of the NAM team and seeing what's coming I'm excited about this future too. Such a future doesn't have to exclude any of the other city builders, I just dislike the feeling that you get here sometimes that we all need to segregate into groups based on just one title and champion it to the detriment of all others. It's fine to prefer Skylines, but that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with SC4, it's really this kind of argument I find difficult to swallow.

The region-sizes in Simcity 4 are large indeed, but bear in mind that the general idea of Skylines is to build one single city. There is no concept like the region in Simcity, thus the single city-size would be bigger. For people that don't want loading-screens and just build one large city Skylines might be a better option.

You are right, maybe the problem with compatibility isn't as large as I portrayed (I have to say that I didn't make that statement with full certainty, but that's just a bit nitpicking ). However, if I speak for myself and some other people that have similiar problems with compatibility that might occur; some problems can't be solved that easily. I've searched for a solution for the problem with my notebook for half a year and couldn't find it. I've build a new pc instead (that was a nice and expensive solution as well  ).

Don't get me wrong. I really love Simcity 4, I've even built a computer I didn't necessarily need so that I could play it. But there are still some restrictions in the game that can't be solved that easily, I think that EA's lack of attention to Simcity 4 is the main cause. It would be nice if Simcity 4 could become open-source so that the community could improve it even further but since EA has abandoned the Citybuilding genre completely I don't see that happening.

I usually try new citybuilding games if they're released. I'm still really fan of Simcity 4. I've tried Simcity 2013 and even though I was pleasantly surprised by all the detailed maps and options like mining and soforth I didn't like it as a citybuilder. Skylines on the other hand is very promising. The basics are in my opinion better than they were when Simcity 4 Rush Hour was released (I'm talking about SC4 without the NAM, with the flawed traffic-simulator where a short distance was marked as 'long'). To be honest, I was easily fed up with Simcity 4 without the plugins. I started playing again when I discovered NAM and the STEX and I haven't stopped since. Comparing the cities I'm building right now with the cities I was building when I didn't have any plugins I have to say the differences are quite shocking. A similiar change might happen to Skylines in the future, problems like you've mentioned might be solved with addons or patches. Thus, I'm not saying that the one is better than the other, there are just some features in Skylines I adore, just as there are a lot of features in Simcity 4 I adore. What the future of citybuilding will bring remains uncertain. Maybe Skylines will develop another fanbase than Simcity 4 or maybe a lot of players will play both games. However, the release of Skylines (and the good reception of the game) might result into a shift in which Simcity 4 isn't the absolute ruler in the genre of citybuilding.

  Edited August 1, 2015 by Ltw  

[rsc204 21,865]

Happy to nitpick here too, there is a lot I would change about SC4, but also about CS too. I think in a few years time we'll really see how CS shapes up far more clearly than we can today, there is a lot of unfounded speculation, the appeal of 3D is certainly not lost on me either.

However, as a modder and NAM Team member my game of SC4 is as customisable as I want it to be, that's something I can't say about CS, if for no other reason than my talents and skillsets align more closely with those required for SC4 than for CS, of course that's a nice way of saying my skills are out of date .

CS is fun, SC4 really isn't so much the way I utilise it, there's a lot to be said for that, I'm sure many times more people prefer fun to fussing over the tiniest details to get everything just so, in fact that's certainly one reason for me to boot it up and play. Cities XL and me simply don't resonate that well, but I really enjoy the transport-building side more, that's just simply way more mature in SC4 than any of the other games. Probably that's mostly the result of 10 years of NAM goodness. SC2013 I never tried, now it's offline playable and more sensibly priced I would consider trying it, but I hear so much that puts me off and I believe it requires Origin which just isn't going to happen to run it. I guess it also helps I'm pretty new to SC4 relatively speaking, those who've been with it from the start are probably closer to the point of wanting a change. CS was the first DRM game I ever paid for on PC, I made an exception to a rule I generally hold dear due to my desire to play day 1. Of all the games that excited me enough to consider a day 1 purchase in recent years, CS was the only one that never disappointed.

I'd really love to get a broken copy of SC4 with all these problems myself, I could really get my teeth into it that way. Troubleshooting by remote is not an easy and often thankless task, so anyone in the Frankfurt area with problems and a fridge of beer can always get some free on-site support .

Exciting times are coming for SC4, I really hope people tune into what's happening to NAM 33 development, the pre-release is out and the huge changes under the hood are barely beginning to be seen by users. Of course, this doesn't help if the game doesn't run, hence my desire to get a handle on it. I've about 8 PCs around the house, on every one SC4 works with little more than a few configuration changes. I don't have a licence for Win8 to test anything and MS Spyware v10 (Windows) is not coming to my house if I can help it at all, but I'm not blinded by this enough to ignore their place in the world, as such it's of benefit to the wider community if these problems could be resolved enabling more people to simply enjoy SC4 along with any other city builders they may care for.

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

Regions get in the way of me enjoying the game.  I never liked them in Simcity 4, and Simcity 5 was too limiting.

I liked it when it was just one city with pretend regions around it I could connect to.  If I wanted interconnected cities, I'd play Civilization.

[dedgren 830]

If SC2013 isn't dead someone needs to shoot it and put it out of its misery.

Just sayin'.

 

David

  Edited November 22, 2015 by dedgren  

[craigibhoy1 2]

I still play SC2013, CS doesn't run well on my laptop even at the lowest level settings. Im enjoying playing SC2013 but 1 problem and that is the map size, i dont think SC2013 will die soon as people who cant run CS will still play SC2013 like i.
Altho the Maxis Emeryille studio is closed now we may see another update to SC2013 because the most of the staff have only moved to main ea studios and will still develop SC.

[mrsmartman 200]

To align with The Sims, SC2013 is marketed as the equivalent of Duplo in SimCity franchise.

[rsc204 21,865]

On ‎10‎/‎02‎/‎2016 at 7:10 AM, craigibhoy1 said:

Altho the Maxis Emeryille studio is closed now we may see another update to SC2013 because the most of the staff have only moved to main ea studios and will still develop SC.

I wouldn't hold your breath, because EA is only interested in money, they don't support products well, especially those they consider a commercial failure. SC is a dead franchise, I seriously doubt EA will bother with it again at any point in the foreseeable future.

SC13 may not die, I'm sure many will be picking it up and playing for years to come, after all it's extremely reasonably priced, cheaper than the full retail of SC4 in some places. The problem from a player perspective is that it's a dead end. There is no active or vibrant modding community behind the game, largely a result of EA's attempt to fleece people with DLC, they didn't want amateurs taking away that revenue. Which is ironic, since without the modding community for SC4, EA would surely not be milking that cash cow 13 years later. But ultimately, once you've done all there is to do, that's it, nothing transformational is likely to come along (surprises withstanding). This is the problem, games like SC4 and Skylines remain fresh by means of constant evolution. Take that away and you are left with a limited, even if enjoyable, experience.

[Sim Trekker 41]

SimCity 2013: It's dead Jim.

 

[craigibhoy1 2]

On 2/16/2016 at 6:01 AM, rsc204 said:

I wouldn't hold your breath, because EA is only interested in money, they don't support products well, especially those they consider a commercial failure. SC is a dead franchise, I seriously doubt EA will bother with it again at any point in the foreseeable future.

SC13 may not die, I'm sure many will be picking it up and playing for years to come, after all it's extremely reasonably priced, cheaper than the full retail of SC4 in some places. The problem from a player perspective is that it's a dead end. There is no active or vibrant modding community behind the game, largely a result of EA's attempt to fleece people with DLC, they didn't want amateurs taking away that revenue. Which is ironic, since without the modding community for SC4, EA would surely not be milking that cash cow 13 years later. But ultimately, once you've done all there is to do, that's it, nothing transformational is likely to come along (surprises withstanding). This is the problem, games like SC4 and Skylines remain fresh by means of constant evolution. Take that away and you are left with a limited, even if enjoyable, experience.

I have to agree they are only in it for the money but tbh if they continue with SC it will be updating SCBI as thats just purely for money, nothing like the old SC for phones i think was SC Deluxe.

[mrsmartman 200]

If there will be more SC from EA, it will probably be a newer version.

[+Guest]

Sorry to ask this,....but I was interested in playing this game for the first time and will the servers still be around? What happens if they shut them down

[rsc204 21,865]

SimCity - 2013ed has been taken offline, so I think you'll be OK. Don't forget it has Origin's DRM system. So if Origin stops existing, you are probably not going to fare well.

Similar fate for Cities Skylines, should Steam ever disappear, you'll be left without a playable game. Unless a DRM-Unlocker is provided somehow.

And before anyone laughs at me, bigger fish have fried than EA or Steam, so it's not like it couldn't happen.

[Linoa06 1,374]

I  really want to try adding a Simcity 5 town into my CSL city journal. With clever placement of towns, I may even make it look like one single entity.