Walden95

I figure if we are allowed to use bridges with streets over normal land (land without elevation changes), we will be able to overcome a lot of these challenges. If there is a key to pull roads and rail off the ground when building roads, I'll be very happy.

I felt that this was apropiate here as this is a video containing pretty much all of the gamescom SimCity gameplay videos without a voiceover. The video is German and the first half is an overview of what was released durring the event and other information about the game. The second half starting at 1:50 in the video is where the pure gameplay footage takes place. Youtube Video Anyway, about the OP's review, that description was how I was expecting the game to feel. However, I did think that they would have a minimap in there, but mabye the interface is not yet complete.

I posted this in the wishlists section earlier believing that it would be more relevant there than making my own topic. However, now that someone did make a topic, I think that placing my comment here would be much more relevant especially because it address one of my biggest concerns. I'd love to see map creation be very flexible. I've seen the "Inside the Glass Box" demonstration video and love the ability to place, locate, and determine the quantity of natural resources. What I would like to see however is an ability to expand map sizes to infinite amounts (or a really insane number) with a warning and a recommend maximum size for sanity purposes. One of my biggest pet peeves in SC4 was that your city size was greatly limited by that Large map maximum. Even though I was satisfied at the time around release when the computer was barley powerful enough to handle required pressing and graphic power the game demanded for large cities. As time passed, computers caught up and more extreme cities could be built. However, because of the limited city sizes, one was forced to exit into region mode and select the neighboring city(ies). With my current impression, it feels that cites are no longer directly boarding one another with a gap whether it be water body, forest, or plains. I'd love for the ability to be able to further extend the lifespan of the game. In adding a scrollable size map function, I think that it will allow for several seriously unique and diverse cities and city neighborhoods. I can just imagine it now; in the year 2018-2023ish, I'll take a dive back into nostalgia, and childhood once more in playing SimCity (2013). I start up by creating my own (super-sized) map and begin. After so long, the entire thing begins to resemble that of Tokyo or Paris with an urban sprawl reaching great lengths from the city center. At this point, the idea of replanning and redeveloping several districts to accommodate the new issues on inter-city transportation, high and spread out Hospital/School usage, and pollution levels that grow ever so closer to resemble the descriptions of London and the Thames river during the industrial revolutions. I feel that this combined with the idea that your city really responds to your actions giving a relevant and lively response will really spice thing up. Different neighborhoods would require different things as time goes on. As I see it now, this will all happen on the game's release, but just on a lesser scale if SC4 medium sized cities are locked. So to wrap it up, I'm getting that although you could build a bigger city through selecting different districts in regional view in SC4 (annoying as it may be switching continuously between multiple districts, it was acceptable), I'm getting the impression that your cities will not directly border its neighbors. If this is true, I think that it might limit the player too much especially long after the game is released and the hardware becomes able to do such a thing. To add, by the time the hardware catches up, we will probably have a reasonable amount of CC/mods (with all of the possibilities of the new Glassbox) that a lot of us want to use to their fullest on a grand scale. In reality, I'm 98% sure that I will preorder the game, and will love it to death if my current vision of how the game will play is true (maybe I'm wrong?). I'm very exited and hope that this point will be taken into consideration during development.

Responding to a Maxis comment on the Reddit boards... I'd love to see map creation be very flexible. I've seen the "Inside the Glass Box" demonstration video and love the ability to place, locate, and determine the quantity of natural resources. What I would like to see however is an ability to expand map sizes to infinite amounts (or a really insane number) with a warning and a recommend maximum size for sanity purposes. One of my biggest pet peeves in SC4 was that your city size was greatly limited by that Large map maximum. Even though I was satisfied at the time around release when the computer was barley powerful enough to handle required pressing and graphic power the game demanded for large cities. As time passed, computers caught up and more extreme cities could be built. However, because of the limited city sizes, one was forced to exit into region mode and select the neighboring city(ies). With my current impression, it feels that cites are no longer directly boarding one another with a gap whether it be water body, forest, or plains. I'd love for the ability to be able to further extend the lifespan of the game. In adding a scrollable size map function, I think that it will allow for several seriously unique and diverse cities and city neighborhoods. I can just imagine it now; in the year 2018-2023ish, I'll take a dive back into nostalgia, and childhood once more in playing SimCity (2013). I start up by creating my own (super-sized) map and begin. After so long, the entire thing begins to resemble that of Tokyo or Paris with an urban sprawl reaching great lengths from the city center. At this point, the idea of replanning and redeveloping several districts to accommodate the new issues on inter-city transportation, high and spread out Hospital/School usage, and pollution levels that grow ever so closer to resemble the descriptions of London and the Thames river during the industrial revolutions. I feel that this combined with the idea that your city really responds to your actions giving a relevant and lively response will really spice thing up. Different neighborhoods would require different things as time goes on. As I see it now, this will all happen on the game's release, but just on a lesser scale if SC4 medium sized cities are locked.

I found this on SimPrograms (Article). It has recently been posted (March 2, 2012), and looks somewhat similar when compared to the concept art. I do have doubts about the video, but it did give me many ideas of how that art could be applied to the game. If the video is real, which I doubt, it looks like it will take a heck of a lot of processing and video card power not unlike that of SimCity 4 when it came out. Youtube Video Edit: Oops, looks like that video was already mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, the video is pretty cool looking, but I don't know if I can raise my expectations to that level of realism if a SimCity 5 were to be on the way.

A - Train is not a SimCity. It is very much like it in that your population centers grow along to what you do and build, but it's more like Cities in Motion. If any of you want to know exactly what the game is about, here is a review of A-Train 3 in Japan (A-Train in US) which was published by Maxis.

I should have posted this much earlier. I'm not too interested this time around. CitiesXL 2011 added some of the more necessary changes, but very little was offered besides the those things regarding trade, multiple cities of the same map, and metro. These games take a long time to play through depending upon your style and time is not always so free. Unless this edition offers a considerable amount of complete additions (metro is really only a subway), I feel that I might as well wait till CitiesXL 2015. Creating games takes time and effort; a year usually isn't enough time to create a lot of changes especially if it is a complex project. I'd rather see these new features added into the game in the form of DLC packs or expansions as it is pretty much the same game with possibly a slightly modified engine. However, CitiesXL is still a decent game, maybe not the most fun to play, but still decent. Hopefully, the developers intended this new edition to include more interactive content that makes your cities feel more alive through better feedback from its citizens and leaders. Like always, I shall defiantly look into what the game has to offer after release. I'm currently that the ski resort addon gives this new feedback to the player and that other things similar to it are added to other parts of the game. Overall, my view on the game remains positive as much of the content indicated from Monte Cristo is finally making itself into the game.

I wish that the demo was more like the Tropico 3 demo. In this demo, all you have to do to complete the mission in the new demo is win the elections. In the older one, you had to build up an industry. As long as you avoided the main goal, you could keep on trucking along and playing the game until the end date. However, the goal in the new demo is unavoidable; I believe that you can't enact martial law or something along the lines of that to get around it. If only the near end could be avoided as I believe that a lot more could be discovered about the game.

I've tried the demo. From what I've seen, Tropico 4 is much like an expansion pack for Tropcio 3 with minor features changed and tweaked like CitiesXL 2011 was for CitiesXL. However, I believe that Tropico 4 makes some of the necessary changes and also makes other not so necessary, but great additions. When I play Tropico, I never lock in place my island when I reach a good equilibrium. Instead, I expand and attempt to keep up with the pace of my island as more and more people move in or are born on it. In most games I play, it is not uncommon for the island's population to near 1,000. Higher populations usually mean more production and more profits, but also put more of a strain on resources and quality of life. On many of my smaller, poorer islands, my main exports (usually canned goods as most of them aren't good enough for Tobacco) usually diminished into nothing as the island grew out of its means. With the new trading system, I will be able to better sustain my island and better transform it into a manufacturing capital and such. The only thing I need now for my mega islands is a new transportation system. Quite a few of my islands become gridlocked to the point that even if a citizen is lucky enough to grab a car out of one of the garages (No farther than 3-4 blocks apart), they often have to abandon their car due to walking. This photo shows one of my newer islands in which I decided to play after the game had ended. Building mega islands is my usual gaming style as nearly all of the campaigns have been completed. I'm more than pleased with the trading feature. Other than trading, I find that disasters might even further spice up my playing style. If you saw the picture above, and add in a tsunami or volcano, I think that you can put the two together and find the result might be interesting. One final thing that I will mention is that I feel neutral upon the new radio system. On one hand, I'm sad that there will most likely be no Juanito. However, On the other hand, the new system looks like there could be many areas open to creativity meaning for more fun news broadcasts. The new system also appears to better notify the player of how their island is developing and feels more communal and interactive overall. On the other hand, maybe I'm just buying into a system that will begin to become annoying around the fourth game through those very same radio announcements. Overall, this game doesn't change much at all, but it does add in a few of what I consider big features which will affect the way I play. I will certainly buy this new game.

I like your ideas; they are very well thought out. Something like this could add a lot more depth to the transportation systems in the game. Too add on it, I believe that they could add a type of disaster with this. Accidents, breakdowns, and other difficulties cause vehicles, either road or rail based, to slow down or stop. Such events cause your transit network efficiency to plummet. Ways to improve efficiency would be through ordnance, (I still wonder why they don't have these in the game) increasing your emergency funding or adding more effectively placed emergency stations, or changing roads to allow for emergency lanes. Too boot, it might be cool to add a map tag or new map view to see where the most accidents are taking place so you can effectively take care of them. simple things like this would really add a lot to gameplay value.

From what was originally said and shown in the previews months beforehand, I thought it was going to be a city-builder. From just recently playing it, I can tell you it's not. It's not like the previews where you see your city expand when you click expand and see the aftermath consequences such as brown-outs after you execute that action. As masochist said, it's more of a city management game where you just make decisions on a prebuilt city.

I came up with this question about a week ago, but never got around to asking it. It's something I belive would really enhance realism even if we don't have the option to build elevated stations. Does elevated rail have an option to change appearance to look similar to or like the ones in the early previews of the game, or is it not yet and in development, or neither? Here is a photo for reference. Here is the video. (Clip located at about 0:50)

I don't see why not to support the developers of the game. They did make some big steps in improving the concept of a city-builder, but they did lack a little. We are not talking about Electronic Arts which has masses of resources to put into a game, but a small company which attempted to satisfy the city-building genre with a fairly limited supply of resources to do it with. Unfortunately, Monte Cristo wasn't able to do this as they created the PO to help to complete their vision of Cities XL as they were probably very low on money considering they closed just a few months after releasing the game. Well, I actually applaud Monte Cristo for taking that big step and I find it amazing that this game did not die. I want to support this game so that it becomes a success and that it acts becomes a role model for other companies to consider what to do when making a future city-builder. I'm going to have to assume that EA has their eyes on this game to predict whether a future SimCity is possible and what direction to push it towards wether the causal or the hardcore audiences. I want this game to become a success so that we can continue to see this genre to expand and grow better. Edited for quoted post.

Originally posted by: Asheroo As I said Walden, you can with the railways (just like you can with the road bridges) make the railway go above ground and elevated. There just aren't any elevated or ground stations (though Focus are going to look into it). What would be great is if a modder can make a railway connection with the Los Angeles Station (a landmark in the game, and was in CXL09), kind of like the road connection (how there needs to be a road connected to a certain part of the building for it to operate). By the way, as for modding, it is in doubt that Focus will release tools at release, but the are committed to opening up the game for modders soon after release.quote> My apologies for not recognizing that fact in my post. I thought I did, but what you said was what I was thinking. Having an incomplete system in which you can just make an EL or ground based system without having to go underground to make stations does take away from creating your city in my opinion. But thank you for pointing that Focus was looking into it; I really hope it is considered as this probably is one of the main drawbacks to the transit system. Thanks.