Jumorgan

Unfortunately no, there won't be agriculture in this release. Perhaps it'll be included as an add-on in the future though. Or depending on how the modding tools end up I could see an agriculture industry being made sometime. I hope that agriculture is an add-on or included somehow. No farms, no food. No food, no cities! Oil and other minerals are a resource, but not food?!? Couldn't it be done like the oil field or the mine, where a barn is built (on land that is prime for farming), and fields added around it, to "extract" the resource? Maybe the logistics of what to do with a "food" resource is the problem. Would it go to an industrial zone to be processed into goods? Or would it go to a neighbor city to increase its population growth? Not to mention would GlassBox be able to handle ensuring every Sim got his or her byte of food every day?

Well, I love SimCity but I am shy and rarely ever post or comment, but I thought this was really worth talking about: http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=4119695&page=1 Basically, Mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist of Arlington, Oregon posted revealing photos of herself online--she posed in her underwear aboard a fire truck. This made quite a few constituents angry, but others were proud about it. Some people thought it was another in a long-line of unprofessional decisions, but others believe the criticism is a double standard and is not related to her mayoring duties. So what do my fellow SimMayors think about this? More generally, do you think public officials have to be held to a higher standard when they conduct their private lives, or should scrutiny stop after they step out of city hall? I think I'll hear what others think first before I weigh in. Please don't forget to be gentlemen and ladies when posting, given the...um...sensitivity of the subject

Well, quite a interesting conversation! Thanks for sharing all your viewpoints. I guess I'll offer my two-cents as I said I would earlier. I think that the personal lives of public officials should stay personal, as long as their actions don't directly affect their leadership ability or taxpayer funds. However, it may not have been the best idea to mention she was a mayor on the mySpace page, or pose on a community-owned fire truck; I don't know all the details. I do think the media scrutinizes the private lives of mayors, governors, professors and similar folks (except for most journalists and reporters of course) too much, as they believe it is newsworthy if people in such professions are not perfect role models all the time. I think it's become even easier now for the news to do that because of social networking sites, cameras documenting all sorts of things that normally would be missed, and the like, and will only continue as people share more of their lives outside of work online--and as long as the media believes that all personal decisions affect work performance in these venerable careers! If she was a cashier at, I don't know, Wally K's Bullseye (I love that building by SimGoober ), no one would think that her online pictures would affect her work. Competence at work and competence outside of it aren't necessarily the same, even with more prestigious, more involved careers. Concerning knowing more details, if you are fortunate (or unfortunate b/c of the writer's strike ) enough to get American broadcast television, Mayor Kontur-Gronquist will be on 20-20 tonight at 10pm EST to share her side of the story.

Originally posted by: theyeti2001 One of the things I'd like to see if you do happen to go down the zoning path is to be able to split zone densities for better realism and then tag buildings with what zones they fit into. For example instead of having just medium density residential, this could be split into medium res-urban/inner city, medium res-suburban and medium res-rural so that the kind of aparment blocks that you would see in an inner city area don't grow in the suburbs or vice versa and rural areas may have logging camp style medium res, same with say light commercial you could have light com-urban, light com-suburban and light com-rural so that you don't get small office towers growing where all you are looking for is corner shops or farming supply depots in the inner city. with industrial you could make light industrial park zones, dirty factory zones, warehouse zones, farm zones etc so that the right kind of builings grew where you wanted and not like SC4 where you had to constantly demolish those odd buildings that just didn't fit correctly into the area you were trying to create. I think if this had been available in SC4 from the start then not so many CJers would have gone down the "plop most buildings" path and EA/SC:S wouldn't have made the mistake of interpreting this as "Players want to plop all their buildings." quote> Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head concerning the misinterpretation of "plopping all buildings". I think part of that was because when some of us (including myself) started playing SC4, we didn't realize how much taxes influence the wealth levels and how the overall region economy affects what is built too. For instance, I once had R$ walk-ups and rowhouses where I wanted nice townhouse suburbs to be because taxes for all wealths were low and neighboring cities hadn't satisfied their R$ demand (demand carries over to an extent between cities). Also, land value could've helped a bit too to get R$$ desirability. Stage levels occuring sooner or slower than expected also could cause unexpected buildings to grow...but I agree with your main point, with having even more zone type subsets within the basic RCI. In real life there are warehouse districts, for example. I really would have liked to choose between CS and CO, because the sims ultimately chose that regardless of the density. Hey Badfish30, I recently got a degree in Geography too (B.A.)! Where'd you go to study?

Google Earth is a great resource--it can give great hints on the land use of an area too, so you can zone residential or commercial where it really is. I'd also reccomend buying a paper map at a bookstore or something (just $5)--you can annotate it and refer to it easier. I'd reccomend a series of maps called "American Map", published by ADC. They should have one of DC. Highways and avenues are clearly marked, and they even show libraries, FD stations, etc. if you want to plop such stuff in the same spots. The reverse of the map should have the major roads of the whole region. I am using such a map to recreate a city quite similar to Philadelphia...I say "quite similar" because although it's a great game and there are a lot of mods, you can only be so accurate, put so much detail into SC4, like an artist painting a portrait. It's okay to use a little poetic license if need be. On the STEX, there is a mod to give train and subway cars a DC metro skin: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=3346 Best of luck & I hope to see pics when you're done! As for me, I should stop being so shy and do a city journal sometime...

Wow, that is really cool that EA wants to hear from serious SimCity fans! Just when I thought EA was going to be kind of unilateral and stuff about it, they want some input from the people, the grass roots. That's a good sign. Joexcooldude is right though, I hope they explain thoroughly whether SCS will be solely plopping or not, because no zoing at all to me would be like writing a book without any words--it's too drastic of a change