CommodoreTech

I installed it, it never worked, I uninstalled it, now SC4 won't load. I have windows 7 64bit. I've tried all the options with it on, nothing, with almost all combinations but still nothing. I thought uninstalling it would work, still nothing. Also a desktop shortcut kept copying itself randomly, so I had the ones it created, and then one kept copying itself intermittently.

EA always seems to make a blunder somehow. They saw how forcing people online (and to pay, which I don't think EA will do) caused CXL to be a flop. I'm sure most of the current Sim City players don't mind so much about going online (I don't care too much if I don't have to pay). Some people get tetchy about it right now, but i'm pretty sure most people who are new to the market (a majority of which were probably off put or disappointed by SC4) will just see the whole online commitment as pointless chore. So many companies have tried this but I really haven't seen one that has succeeded. Second Life did will, because it is purely online and that's kinda the point of the whole concept. Farmville, which could work without being online, works because there never really was an offline version. What i'm trying to say is that I don't think it'll work because you could play Sim City beforehand without needing an internet connection. So I think most people will ask why? It's just such a blatant way of tying people into a corporate plan. The Sims is much nicer to play with all the online stuff, but I can play a decent game offline. I don't care if I do have to be online, but i'd really rather not.

I'd find it really cool, it would sync with the whole idea of Sim City beautifully. My cities would seem so much more realistic with real adverts on my billboards and hoardings. I think it would greatly improve the gaming experience, so long as it was entirely passive and didn't interrupt me or my playing. However, I don't really think the Sim City audience is wide enough for any profitable advertising in game. The Sims, yes, that sells quite a lot, home store companies could create furniture for it, (Like having a Phillips TV or a Ford car for your family). But, unless this Sim City becomes a big hit, I don't see how any company would feel they'd benefit from advertising to Sim City players. I know the current one has sold a few million copies, but this is over a decade. I don't know reallt, difficult to say.

Parking! I want my sims to have a car that they park in the street or in their drive, which I can see drives to work or the shop, is parked in a space, and which doesn't suddenly and miraculously vanish on arrival to somewhere. Parking is a major issue, especially in the often ancient cities and towns of Europe and the UK. Just because in the US there is basically enough space for it to never really be an issue doesn't mean the game should follow that. Parking along streets would be good as well. I doubt this'll happen, but i'd love it if densification happened automatically, and that I just set a few limits on development. Such as when there's a lot of demand to move into an area, big houses are split into flats, which increases population density, increases demand for public transport because there simply isn't enough room for everyone to have cars, or the existing public transport is used more intensively. And now because there are more people around, offices move into the bigger buildings and areas that are well connected to transport links increase in value because of the help they give to the economy (rather than SC4 where it seemed that only pollution, crime, education, health and aura added to land value). Thus if the economy is going well, there is constant pressure to push upwards and outwards (again rather than SC4 when it depended on how many numbers of things you had) such as in London, where this a great deal of pressure to build loads of skyscrapers because everyone wants to live there, and thus there is constant pressure to improve transport and services because of its inertial attraction. In SC4 once your city was rich enough you didn't really have to bother with anything, you could just leave it once you had a decent R$ population if you wanted to (I created many cities that were just millions of uneducated, unhealthy sims). While there was 'pressure' it didn't amount to more than riots. Stretched budgets! This would be so much more realistic! I never played with a money tree or the BSC funding ordinance, but still I found it easy to have massive budget surpluses in SC4. I think we all know that never exists in real life! I mean I don't want to be stretched to the limit, or if I am, to have some sort of government funding that will keep me out of debt but won't be endless and will itself be limited. I mean, a major city won't really run out of money (in Europe at least, I know about New York in the 1970s etc) because central government will always bail them out to some extent. Lets say you can overspend, but if you keep doing it the more annoyed they get. If they get beyond a certain limit, cuts to services have to be made and your city suffers. However i'd only want this if, when you play it properly, your budgets are fairly balanced. Any surplus goes to improving existing services or towards a big project. But if you act incompetent or stretch budgets too far (lets say you have a small town but try and build an unnecessary prestige project) then you have to be bailed out. I say this because the whole 'impeachment' thing in SC4 seemed a bit unimaginative and didn't really tell you to get your stuff sorted out, it just put you straight back to where you were. It'd also be cool if you got central government help to fund you with massive projects, like a major suspension bridge or something. Basically, I just don't want to have an account balance of billions of unused dollars after a city's fairly 'complete'. Open-ended services. Perhaps with a global budget modifier saying 'Spend $------" per person on health care, and when you have a bit more money you can increase this, but there's no real limit. The quality of healthcare is determined by how many people are in the hospitals. Maybe you have a massive 10,000 paitent hospital, perhaps, and can spend however much you want on each of their healthcare, but the 10,001st person who isn't in the hospital but who needs care but can't get a decent visit gets a 50% healthcare quality, and so do the next few hundred people. Then if it gets I dunno 10% over capacity, everyone in the hospital's healthcare quality is decreased by 10% and so on as the numbers get larger. The same with schools. It'd be different with crime. But maybe the level of crime in any given area would be dependent on education (not income, because the wealthy can commit fraud etc). Thus in an very educated (and thus likely wealthy) area you only need to provide basic coverage, whereas in a rough area you need tougher police cars, equipment etc. This sounds complicated, but I think it is unrealistic you can only spend like 3,500 (or however much it is) a month on healthcare and other services. I mean, what happened if a new drug came on the market? I don't want a random act like to occur of course, it isn't that sort of game, I just want to have no limits to how much I spend on things. If I make efficiency savings in one department then I want to move them to improve another! These are among many but yeah...

They'll never do plane crashes, because people will mod the Twin Towers and plaster videos of 9/11 re-enactments everywhere, which I doubt EA or Maxis or any of us really want to do. But I really don't want Godzilla or the fake ones. Meteor is highly unlikely and would be stupid to waste time simulating. It also isn't really the responsibility of a city government to clean it up or deal with it either. A UFO attack is also a bit silly, but I could live with it. The others I would like to be able to turn them on or off. Some games I might just want to play a city with a possible economic crisis. Some I might not find necessary, I mean, if I want to build a European city i'm not really going to have to consider hurricanes because they only occur once every few centuries in Europe. Earthquakes too, sometimes i'd like to have to deal with a city built in an earthquake zone, but others not. It's the same with most of them really, I really don't want to be forced to deal with them. Riots are unavoidable, Fires not so much. I don't know why Maxis are obsessed with having to force the player to deal with fires. Boris Johnson doesn't have to dispatch every damn truck! (Though it seems they've got rid of this in SC2013). Though still, I'd like to have a complete sandbox game if I want to. I'm sure new players would like this as well. I remember getting frustrated with SC3K when fires and riots used to pop up randomly.

I agree mostly, they are pointless in some respects. A real city creates landmarks naturally. All the landmarks in the world were created for another purpose if you think about it (The Eiffel Tower was an observation tower that just looked pretty enough to be kept. Buckingham Palace is just the Queen's house). Therefore building them with no other function is pointless and I always disliked it in the other games. Why can't a well developed CBD be a landmark in its self? That would be a really nice addition to the game. Or a busy junction with a monument in it (as per Trafalgar Sq. or the l'Etoile Junction). Or, if I redevelop an area into a large office development (as per the World Trade Center or the Rockefeller Center) it has the potential to become a landmark. Perhaps some sort of agent can be used in this? Like, lets say you have a load of tall buildings, a big church or something, and then these send out tourism agents to hotels or airports or something? Then the simulator can have a 'built-in' tourism simulation that the player doesn't have to fiddle around with much....

The idea of resource prices reminds me of Omnicorp, which reminds me to be suspicious. (Haha yes, more AHH PLEASE NO NOT MORE CXL)

I think manuals with lots of 'story' in really sell it for kids. I still have the SC3K manual (and box! remember when games came in boxes! sheesh) and I remember I used to love reading all the advisor's back stories, the tutorial and all the other information again and again. The same with the SC4 strategy guide, I read that many many times. But I don't care much for them now. I like some bit of paper in the case, otherwise it seems a bit bland when you open it the first time and have nothing relevant to read while it's installing...

We all want it to be then, but it'll end up being later... I'm sure it'll end up tormenting us and being released in like September next year...

I think this is a good idea. Perhaps the game pauses, and you do all this. If you for example (i've done this many a time) place a bus stop or something in the middle of an office block by accident, it can maybe show you that you've done so. Then if you want to undo it you could do so. It could also be useful if the plans sort of took time to happen. I mean, lets say a massive company moves its HQ into your downtown, which causes an increase in traffic, so you want to expand the road that links to it. But the office block is next to the road and requires demolition to widen the road. You give them notice, they move somewhere else, and all the jobs are kept! As opposed to the SC4 problem of demolishing a building with 6000 jobs that sorta kills the momentum of your downtown. If they could move somewhere else then it makes hte game more realistic also, as.. well, no company just vanishes when it's HQ has had to be 'remodelled'.

I think it's sort of got it's own niche, so regardless of what happens to Sim City it'll stay roughly where it is now. Though i'm sure most of it's market share is from the pent-up desire to play a 3D city simulator rather than because of how good a game it is... I dunno, it'll probably wither away...

We all seem to be losing our heads worrying that they're gonna betray our hopes and fulfill our fears! I do think though it will either be an amazing game that we nearly all love dearly, or a complete flop that only a few people like. So far, it looks nice and detailed, and seems to be heading to a nice place. We have to remember though, Societies was Tilted Mill and had nothing to do with Maxis. As Tarkus has said many a time, Maxis know what they are doing! They made the SC4 we all treasure, so they are unlikely to disappoint...

I'd really like to see this put into the game in the form of ordinances, such as emissions regulations and subsidizing public transport. This is realistic. What I fear it will be will be 'uh-oh oil is running out! build an oil well!' which frankly is not a city-building simulation issue. I want to build a city, not constantly faff around with a bloody resource interface! That is what I hated about Cities XL. No mayor has to build a coal mine, he merely permits it to be built. The economy worries about resources, it should only concern the player when the economy requires the players permission to exploit resources. I'd love it if I was the mayor of a city full of coalfields, and coal companies kept asking me for mining permits, which aroused concern amongst environmentalists, and I had to act as a mediator. Do I tell the mining company to get stuffed? Do I permit them limited mining rights? Do I tell the environmentalists to get stuffed instead? This is realistic. However, I'd detest the game if it was 'Mayor! Mayor! we're running out of coal and are completely incompetent at running the economy! if only you took care of every measly task for us!'. This again is the failure of Cities XL, you had to control a basic and rudimentary resource system that was too simple to be fun and so time consuming and irritating as well!. This is, however, what I think EA will do. If they do, then I will personally fly to California and slap them all.

The constant threat of CTDs... I know it's a legacy game and all, but it's so irritating. Though normally when I reload the city ends up better as I can correct some mistakes I made before the CTD, it's just annoying playing on the edge all the time. I just wish it had been written with modding in mind, like one of those paradox games, where you mod them masses without it turning gameplay into a house of cards. This biggest annoyance is the lack of unity in what to do about its legacy... no one can decide whether to try and rewrite it, try and make the best of what we've got or just give up... all we have is CXL, which isn't much better than sim city 4. It's only better in some areas but not in others.

 Water mod! It'll look much better. A place like that wouldn't have tropical blue water... try one of the PEG water mods.