YannickSHE

Where to start. Let's just say that I'm one of the few people out there that really enjoy CitiesXL. I enjoyed the 2009 version, and the 2011 version is much better, and as a city-builder fan, for me CitiesXL is perfect. I spent 60$ last year, I paid 3 months of Planet Offer, so I paid 75$ last year. With all the bugs the game had and the poor Planet Offer amount of players, I stopped playing for a while until the solo mode was expanded last spring, and then enjoyed the game again. When I heard the fantastic news of CitiesXL 2011, I was really hoping that bugs would've been fixed. So I bought a brand new computer 3 weeks ago, got the Metaboli version at a discount, so I paid another 25$ + 1700$ for the new computer. And to my surprise, the game is still full of bugs. I read all the technical forums on CitiesXL website, I read all the threads here, but at the end, I asked myself that question: Why do I need to be computer savvy in order for a game to work? I spent tons of dollars and a brand new computer, hoping I could just play the game. I don't care about minor bugs like road details, or highway intersections, those things I don't care. But when it comes to a point that game crashes all the time when it auto-saves, then it corrupts the city, then you can't replay the city you've spent 2 weeks on it, etc etc. I mean, it's not my responsibility to send emails to tech support, I shouldn't have to play with all the system files and I certainly don't need to start a computer programming school program just for a game to work properly. I've been playing computer games all my life, never had to go through such pain to play them. CitiesXL is just full of bugs and I feel cheated as a customer. My computer is far and beyond exceeding the minimum specs required, and we can't still play the game properly. It seems that a ton of different players are all having those problems, and we have no control or power on the situation. I just want the game to work. I just want to build cities with all the fantastic tools provided in the game. It's all I want. I never installed mods, I never played with the files, I'm not touching anything. I refuse to. Plain and simple. We should definitely think of a massive lawsuit.

Hello CitiesXLers and guests, Ok, I got rid of my technical difficulties regarding the game, and now that everything was resolved, boy I enjoy that game. I think I handle pretty well the whole game, how to build effectively, use of all rewards and I always get green satisfaction everywhere. But the whole trading part still puzzles me. I mean, I get how to trade, that I got day 1. But the whole concept on what strategy to use when I build the city towards the resources I want to exploit. Here's an example. If I start a brand new city with Oil, farms and Holiday resource. I decide to exploit holiday and oil, and I'm not bothering with farms since I want to grow a large 2-3 million people city. Everything goes fine for the sub 100k citizens, I produce lot of oil, and I want to make money on my oil and my tourist hotels. Obviously, I need to sell oil tokens to another city, and then I can get money tokens and/or exchange my oil tokens for water, electricity, waste, etc. But it comes a point that the game forces me to build big offices. Which is fine. So then I produce Office tokens a lot. I'm at 250 fuel tokens, 100 offices tokens, and maybe 25 holiday tokens. I have freight and passenger capacity so I'm fine. But when you reach 1.5-2 Million people, it gets tricky. Because fuel can't keep up, I need more and more and more of everything else (manufacture, heavy ind, water, electricity, farm, etc etc). So now, I still have space on my map. I could go ahead and build the biggest heavy industry or the biggest manufacturing or high tech neighborhood if I wanted to, but when I tried, things started to be ugly (pollution, change of jobs, offices emptying, etc etc)... I tried High tech, I needed even more tokens of everything else. I got all special buildings for fuel and offices, and now I'm stuck with finding a new resource to exploit without the benefit of getting the big buildings that will increase production. And they want more tokens of all other categories, which my fuel can't handle anymore. Also, in order to have those 200 fuels, and 200 offices, and 30 holiday tokens, and all the nice and fluffy other buildings and how expensive they are, well my budget isn't going nice either. So I mean, am I missing something? How do I achieve those massive cities, having a nice cash flow of income, having all green satisfaction, and succeeding at balancing all tokens, with the resources you are being given. On top of it, if you start a 2nd city on the planet, then you are basically obligated to start a new city that will produce heavy industry and manufacture and then i can trade with the actual big city. But for what, that new city still needs to deal with Omnicorp to get things started. And once you are too involved with Omnicorp on the big city, forget the 2nd city. Deals will be almost impossible. So then I'm stuck with a 2.7M big amazing city, I cancelled all deals with Omnicorp, I paused the game. I produce 219 fuel tokens, 337 offices tokens, and 39 holiday tokens. I have about 8 tokens of each workers, and everything else is the red at around -50 each. So technically Omnicorp is at 0 trade right now, I cancelled the deals, and paused the city. When I start a 2nd city, Omnicorp doesnt let me trade with it whatsoever. So I need the new "dirty city" to trade with the paused city. And I'm stuck. I'm so confused.

Well update on the subject ... I'm running a network of 17 cities right now, all of them have their own resource, food, offices, and other resources are sometimes within 3-4 cities. It runs pretty well. Right now, all my cities are in the +, I have surplus of tokens in every category. Any city I start, I can deal with all my other cities right away. It's pretty cool once you have a lot of cities, all with their own specific resource. I have a spreadsheet written on the side to remember who does what. Pretty neat so far.

Originally posted by: princeblowfly Hi there, I had no problems with 2009, the game was fast to me no matter how many citizens were living in my city. Smooth gameplay always. Now with 2011 it gets slowly after an hour, no matter how many citizens live in my cities. What I founf now is that, in some levels of zoom ( the ones that are farther away) gets full of poligons everywhere, as I can not see my city. I have to zoom in in order to see my city again, and if I zoom out same problem appears again. im am playing in a I7 930, 8GB MUSHKIN RAM, ATI 5870 1GB card, so I should have no problems with graffics, whether the game goes fast or slow. ANyone know about this problem??? Thanxxx quote> I have the same exact problem. All graphics are fine, everything go smooth for a while. Once I get to city population at around 1M-1.5M, when I zoom out, I have all those bleeps in the screen and the game is actually not moving. When I zoom in again, it runs, then zoom out, it bugs. Same with the postcard view, it is actually worse with the postcard view. I thought it was my computer, the graphics or any other thing, but now I think it's the game itself. It got even worse in the last few days, no matter which zoom or whatver I do, everytime I load a big city, those bleeps and flashes arrive right away. I'm just clueless at what to do next.

I might add also that I don't like how all the cities have been positioned on the planet. I want to build a somesort of a metro area, at the bottom of one continent, there's like 10 spots where I can start cities but there's only 2 different maps on all the 10 spots! This is annoying... I wish we had more variety of maps closer to each other.

Originally posted by: soltangris Why do you guys despise Omnicorp so much? This single entity is a great way to balance situations and complement your cash flow! And yes, specialization is the key. You can't start really make profits out of anything until you build at least one specialization building - the production-per-building ratio is simply too low without those. Especially when it comes to utilities, which cost money to the city and don't provide that many jobs. You should have at least one city with 3 stars in oil, arable land and water each, specialized in the respective areas. An industrial city specialized in Heavy, Manuf. ind. and energy production is also a must. After that, you could improvize.quote> It is exactly what I want to do. But where do you stop development in the city? I mean, if I start a farm/water city, do I build the city until there's 10k, 25k, 50k or 100k citizens before starting the 2nd city? Then same goes on and on with every other city. What do you usually do? You build extremely slow all the cities, and toggle to each city every 1/2 hour to re-adjust all deals?

Only screwball hit it on the nail .... I mean cmon guys, i'm not talking about a 50k city... I did dozens of cities with 50k people, and they are all self sufficient, they are easy to do, you don't need much tokens, you make extra cash like crazy, and you produce a lot of farms or water, or whatever you decided to specialize with. All this concept I got months ago, I'm okay with it. I'm talking about massive cities. And thanks screwball, you gave me some ideas about my next projects. Question though ... I always had the impression that when you have excess of tokens (lets say I sit with 70 farms, and 40 offices), if you don't trade them fast they are not performing and then farms abandon or offices leave. Is that something I had a false impression with? I mean, I would love to have all my cities specialized but if I don't trade those tokens fast, it seems that nothing is moving forward in terms of development?! Am I right on that one or no worries about it? Also... I did cancel all the deals I had with Omnicorp on my major city, but cashflow per month is in the negative now. Automatically, other cities won't be able to trade with the main big city when cashflow is negative. And that gives another challenge.

Thanks to all of you. But all of you is talking about Omnicorp. But it doesn't help me though. I'm all for building a network of cities, it's what I want to achieve with the game, I want every single city on the planet to exist and each of the cities will have their own identity. But seriously, if I start from scratch again, building a new city again, at what point do you ask yourself that it's time to make the 2nd city? ... and then the 3rd city?, and then 4th? I mean, If I don't buy any tokens from Omnicorp, that means I need the tokens from the other cities. But in exchange of what? What if the other city doesn't want to give anything to the other city. It's way too complicated. I wish I could build all the 150+ maps available. I don't think it's possible to have a functional trading system. And OmniCorp should be available for any city, It's kinda sad that once you make a lot of deals with OmniCorp, you cannot do it again with any other city.

Thank you. But you know what, I think I've solved all the problems I had with the game since 3 weeks. 1) I changed the way my computer is plugged. My computer has its own power source (where as before everything was at same place). 2) I realized that the "load" buttons are for manual savings of our games. Well, I made tests around with fake city and the manual save works! And then, from Planet, you can access the manual save from the load button instead of synchronize. Wow, I thought the only way to save the game was with the stupid autosave, but no, it does work with manual download. At least, when autosave will crash the game, I just have to load my last personal save. I'M LOVINN IT!!! 3) Also, all the manual saves I did now appear correctly into the save folder into game's folders. Everything should be ok now. Thanks for your help mark, but I kinda answered my own questions. ***I copy-pasted this from my own other thread... just in case people wonder how i got around the problems I had! Problems gone by the way ! ***

I vote to keep it natural. Put a small farming road around it, maybe a blueprint on it with park, but definitely keep it as a national park for your city.

You dont have to destroy anything. If you click on an existing station, even if that station is connected to a line already, you can start a new line or do whatever you want. All my metro lines are interconnected with each other. 70% usage.

It does looked like that when you play with the night/day cycle.

I'm using a 2 week old, brand new computer I just bought. Windows 7, Gateway DX 4840, Intel R Core TM i5 CPU, 650@3.20GHz, 6.00GB Memory, 64-bit Operating System. I hope I didn't buy a *****ty computer!!! lol ... 2 weeks ago I bought it. CitiesXL runs very fine, don't get me wrong, but after 1-1.5M people in a city, it starts to lag a little bit and the auto save makes the city crash also sometimes. When I zoom out my city to the highest, the clouds or whatever is there makes my city freeze also. I play on highest settings. When I zoom in, or when I play around the city, it's usually fine. I'm from Montreal, lived there 12 years, I'm originally from Sherbrooke. But I'm in Toronto since 3 years now. Just never changed my username.

How did you continue building the city? I thought u lost your cities with the bug you had? Anyhow, impressive work. Makes me wish the game would run smooth after 1M people. And I have the most powerful computer on the market.

I wish we could play this game without the trading system. Don't get me wrong, it's a good idea. But they just didnt do it the right way. I wish that game could be more about city-building than worrying about trading. They could've found a simpler way to use that idea... for example... when I'm on the planet and about to start a game, first of all we should be able to start our city anywhere on the planet, and then choosing the terrain we want. Then, when you click to start the city, we should be able to decide what we will produce in the city. That way, on the planet mode, we can accumulate resources from various cities, with a special menu telling you how much you are producing of each resource as a whole. No need to micro-managing. For the moment, I only deal with OmniCorp on every city, much easier.

Originally posted by: soltangris I have to say that I haven't had a single crash so far, Yannick. Granted, my largest city has only 750 000, but I haven't experienced most of the other bugs people are complaining from either. No problems with saving so far, loading, very minor problems with trading (sometimes when I buy from Omnicorp it doesn't deduct the cash right away, it does it after a several transactions). I've built only one Megastructure (Tokyo tower), but without any problems. I have encountered those clear gameplay bugs: Skilled workers Stilted houses don't fill up, some roads don't link with the roundabouts, the metro rate of use is way bellow what it should be. But that's basically it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the situation is not that dire - there are plenty of people that manage to play without problems. Of course, I'm not suggesting that you're doing something wrong! I'm just saying that the problems you and the others are having are probably easily fixable with a patch, on which Focus Home is reportedly working as we speak. So heads up!quote> Well, give me your secret then! I can't believe you played CitiesXL and that the game played without crashing after 4-5 hours. Since 2 weeks, I restart the game every 2 hours when I realize that the game is starting to lag. All those little bugs you mentioned I'm fine with them, not a problem, and CitiesXL on my brand new computer is working really well (on small cities!) ... when I reached 1.5M, and the map was almost full, that's when crashes started to happen. And then BAMMM ... last crash, the auto-save-crash corrupted the file, which was the fabulous city I was working on. So that's why I'm so pissed. Any city post 1 million, this game works really well. As soon as we are taking the game very seriously, with lots of cities, 2 million people, lots of tradings, etc etc, thats when the game starts to crash. I mean, I can assure you I do nothing wrong. I bought a new computer 2 weeks ago, I doubled minimum specs required, I installed the comp, I installed the game and I played the game. It's simple!!!! I haven't modified or changed, or tweaked, or whatever. I just want to grow my cities, and build 100 cities on the planet without worrying if I'm going to lose everything. Don't worry, you will get to that famous file corrupted. It seems inevitable when it grows.

Well, I'm all up for everything you said. That's not the point!! I will probably be one of the few that will ALWAYS encourage that game, no matter what, I think it's a fantastic game! I just want to play the game without worrying if I'm going to lose everything. I mean, I want this to succeed and be the best game ever, but the kind of bug I had 24 hours ago with the game decreased my interest by a lot. All other regular bugs I was fine with them. But now it's not even a matter of bugs, it's a matter of losing your cities. I was able to always play my cities on CitiesXL09 even with the thousands of bugs. In CitiesXL, I lost the entire city because apparently the file got corrupted while autosaving. That should be the basic real major bug that should be taken care of. Otherwise, it's pointless to play (and I'm just dying to play!!! believe me!!!)

Well .... I moved my folders away from the main folders... I uninstalled the game, re-installed, and I lost the whole document that I transferred at another place. So the magnificent city I was working on for the past 2 weeks is history. Too bad, I'm tired of this. I'm afraid to start back another city and then having the same problem again. Attention buyers: CitiesXL2011 doesn't work on a powerful brand new top of the line computer. It will work for a while, but as soon as cities are getting bigger, no computers will handle it. It's too bad, it's really a great game. I hope Focus comes with a patch or something that will fix those problems.

Well, I'm in the minority and prefer CitiesXL over SC4. But now I seriously think I'll go back to SC4. CitiesXL new version has more bugs than previous version. I mean I have a brand new computer, with the highest of everything on the market, all games work fine beside, again, CitiesXL. Now I'm about to lose the city I did for the last 2 weeks, with 1.7M people, and it was going well. But now, game crashes when I load city. I tried everything. I moved folders, I changed settings to see difference, nothing works. I'm back with original settings, I can try uninstall the whole game and re-install, but I'm not even able to locate the city I created into the Windows 7 folders. This is just great !!

Well I've got same problem since last night. I bought a brand new computer 2 weeks ago, top-of-the-line desktop with the latest technology, latest graphic card, highest amount of memory, etc etc. I paid 1700$ for the comp. Now, I've been playing CitiesXL2011 for the past week, everything went well (still having the usual bugs from the game), I didn't install any mods, didn't change anything at all. And now, all of a sudden, I try to load the only city I did so far, with 1.7M people in the city, and the city won't even load, it crashes the game right away. This is really frustrating. I love this game, and I want it to work properly, but even with latest technology computer in your hands, that game will never function properly. I will try to do the folder thing that Archangel suggested. If it doesn't work, I give up.

Well, I had all my keys and links through an email I got from Focus when I bought the game. Did you lose that email as well?

I think in order for it to work, just sell a lot of leisure and buy chunks of them too and balance your budget. With leisure activities involving tokens, it seems that satisfaction is 100% for me.

Ok. I don't want to buy a downloaded version of the game. I want to buy a hard copy of it, either in stores or on the Internet. I looked everywhere, there are no retailers downtown Toronto that will sell the game. I even looked online, I can't even order a copy of the game to have it delivered at home. Is there something I'm missing? Can anyone help me finding a place in Toronto or a website where I can order a hard copy of the game? Thanks!

Well, I think you are right bowserchomp. I paid 34.99$ + 5$ tax for the 09 version this afternoon, then I went on the CitiesXL website and I bought the reduced price version with the key I just got for the 09 version. I paid 19.99$USD no tax and I just got the whole thing installed. For a moment today, I really thought I needed the keys of the past email I got when I did the digital transfer for the 09 version (my emails were deleted, I had no key at all, that's why I was looking for the game so badly). I should have just bought the version online, but I wouldn't have had a discount. But I still overpaid by 30$... oh well, at least I got the everything I needed for me to play this incredible game. I'm so glad that we can play between our own cities, without the planet offer. And hopefully, we'll get updates once in a while to improve the little details that everybody is asking for.

I just bought CitiesXL 2009 (which has Focus & Monte Cristo names on it). I'm ready to install it. Then, if I buy the 2011 version, I've been told that it will just add new files to all existing folders, that I don't need to uninstall and re-install again. It ain't an upgrade patch I agree, but once I buy the 2011 version, it will be much easier to install having CitiesXL 09 already installed.