soltangris

CXL 2012 is indeed only a DLC (they even call it that already on the official site), and nobody should have expected anything substantial to change. To be honest, we have to say that this time nobody from Focus even tried to raise expectations. If anybody expected trains and multi-core support, he has only himself to blame for being disappointed, because Focus never promised that. What they promised, they delivered- 15 new maps, many new buildings, all of them beautiful (some of them kinda weird). The Mountain and Beach buildings really look spectacular to me, who never installed the Unlocker mod - they're really unique not only visually, but also in terms of size (much smaller than everything else there is), and allow for creation of realistically-looking, albeit non-functioning resorts. Now, what leaves me angry is that even the new stuff that was added is somewhat problematic. In some cases it's minor issues like misnamed buildings, or wrong building info, in other cases it's much more serious, such as beach and mountain residences not filling up (the same problem as the Stilted houses), and other newly added residential buildings appearing always with 'Not connected to the City Hall' icon. However, we can expect a patch to fix that reasonably soon. But all these considerations pale when we start talking mods I don't know if you guys here at Simtropolis follow close what's going on in the rapidly expanding CXL modding community, but I can tell you that we're seeing stuff that is nothing short of AMAZING, and it seems to be multiplying by the week. - We've got a Residential mod that allows combining several separate buildings into a single mega-building, or row of buildings, and which is soon to be applied to industries as well; - We've got a Highway mod in the works that finally allows bifurcations and realistic custom exits - We've got the Harbour mod almost ready, which allows construction of beautiful and functional modular harbours - And of course all pales in comparison to the NEXL, which promises to change forever the way we see CXL. Seriously, if I were you, I'll forget to complain and I'll start to jump up and down, eagerly awaiting a new era of city-building That's what I'm doing, at least.

Yes, because you're the one setting the price of the trade, not Omnicorp You can basically distribute resources 'for free', or simply transfer part of city X's income to city Y without any real resource trade.

Focus just defined the price of the CXL 2012 Expansion: - 39.99 Euro for the full game - 14.99 as an expansion (that is, if you have CXL 2011) A fair price, I think.

True, these are fair expectations for a 'new' game, but I'm afraid they (Focus) don't think of it in such terms. It's more of an 'expansion' than a 'new' game. As such it will (probably) have discount for people that already have CXL 2011, so you'll have to spend less than $50.... There is still not enough info on what exactly the game will include (features, price), and the supposed launch date is coming. On the CXL forums there is something close to a hysteria in relation to this....

I'm starting this topic to inform everybody in the Simtropolis community about a persistent, but as of yet unconfirmed officially rumour: CITIES XL 2012 Here is a link for the thread from the official CXL forums. In short, various european online game sellers are beginning to list CXL 2012 for pre-order; one of them even has a description (loosely translated from Dutch): In Cities XL 2012 you build your own gigantic cities in realistic 3D landscapes. Je can build on mountains, on the beach, or in the forest and each map has it's own climate. You must develop the right combination of social services, leisure and job opportunities. Are you the ultimate Cityplanner? Where Cities XL 2011 already had many different buildings and different features, becomes even more expanded in Cities XL 2012. New buildings, better (Uhum, we didn't have it in 2011) weathereffect and a better realisation of citylife. Experience the most elaborate citybuilding simulation ever made with Cities XL 2012 for the PC! So, let the speculation begin! Personally, it makes sense for me. There are still some major elements missing in the current game (trains, for starters), and the first time a major gameplay mechanics hole (metro) was filled, it was done with CXL 2011. So, it seems Focus have chosen the path of expansions, where they work out the new major content, and sell it to us. This is confirmed by the recent 'green building' competition and some comments at its end, and also the 'What real-world buildings you would like to see next' thread in the official forums. SO we could hope to see many new buildings (as it was with 2011), bug fixes, and there are rumours about weather effects! People even hope for a multi-core support, but I won't comment on this sensitive subject. Of course, people will point out that they already paid for the game, and they expect to get the missing content for free.... well, I think not in the real world. Although this is a valid point in an ideal way of view, I don't think it has any chance of happening in our capitalist system. As I've stated so many times before, I still prefer to pay some money and get a better game that I like, than not pay anything and not get anything.

The mods over at CXL Forums have started this topic which will be updated continuously with any new (official) info about CXL 2012.

Haha no I have nearly 300,000 people living in the city, I just started the game and had it paused, so it didn't load up how many people are actually there (I'm not making 3 million on nothing XD). Also I tried the screen resolution change and it did nothing I'm not sure this would work, but.... There's and option to change your interface size (it's a slider somewhere, forgot where exactly). By doing this you could expand/contract your upper interface bars, eventually revealing more of this window. What is strange though is that the window itself looks weird... I haven't played the game in a while, but in the place of this 'See layer' buttons, you should have 'Allocate' buttons, and above them should appear tokens for resources....

OMG. I payed 60USD for StarCraft 2 + two lifetime accounts in 2 gaming zones on Battle.Net. No monthly payments. Ever! So I simply compare these 60 Bucks with that 40+40 EUROs for discontinued and failed products from MC and FHI. Blizzard worked hardly about 10 years to make a real state-of-the art (if you've seen that game). They didn't collect 60$ yearly for 2000-2010's alphas, beta's etc. I hope CXL'12 will finally be kinda "Release Candidate" of new great city builder. OK, how should I put it: You're talking about one of the greatest game developers in the industry, that has who knows what assets and whose profits are off the roof, mainly due to WoW (which, as an MMO you do pay monthly to play). - Yes, they put hard work in their games. All of which are...... surprise! - in some of the biggest-selling genres there are: role-playing (WoW), RPG-action (Diablo) and Real-time strategy (Starcraft). And , again surprise! - in order to produce the truly mind-blowing Starcraft 2 they spend.... 10 years. During which they had other titles to sustain them and support their developing efforts. But they know fully well, thanks to their fame and the huge markets they work into, that once released, the new title that they spend so long working on and polishing, will indeed bring profits. On the other hand, you have a genre in which the number of games ever released are counted on the fingers of your hands. A genre which has a very limited, hardcore audience with limited expansion possibilities. Proof? The fact that EA hasn't released Sim City 5. Actually, I've been through this argument so many times that I'm getting tired of repeating the same. So, my friend, your comparison is highly unjust. Blizzard is a financial mastodont with virtually limitless developing power, while Focus Home (and MC before it) are minuscule companies, probably fighting for their survival. You can't compare the performance and prices of those two, even though your gamer-consumer ego is bruised.

Yeah but why? Well, because they choose to work on 2012, which they will sell us, instead of working on 2011 which we have already paid for. I know, it sucks.... but it's capitalism. Yeah, Blizzard - one of the two biggest names in the industry. Whose last hit, Starcraft 2, already costs more than the average game on the market. Oh, and last I checked you needed to pay monthly to be able to even play World of Warcraft. Oh, and Monte Cristo tried that approach already, and it didn't work. For my part, I'm content to have CXL 2012 and pay for it, as opposed to not have Sim City 5.

CITIES XL 2011 Patch 1.5 The new patch is live! Download it here. - Note: For people that installed the Beta patch, there's a small problem: the 'official' patch won't displace the 'beta' patch! The game version in both patches is the same, so when you try to install the 'official' patch, you'll receive a message 'The game is up to date'. The only workaround, for now, is to uninstall the whole game, then reinstall and run the correct patch. Also, I don't know if there are any differences between the versions, but it's a good guess that there are. After all, they put a good 2 weeks of work into the final version.... I read a comment that the final version does the same things as the beta, only it does them better.

To all of the newly joined players: First of all, great to have you onboard the newest city-building game! Second, Focus is aware of the 'Memory leak' issue and they're doing their best to fix it. It's not that easy, though - they said that the problem is actually a series of problems in the coding, which ressemble a labirint they need to solve. Imagine all those hundreds of thousands of lines of code that they need to sift through in order to find the loopholes that the original programers left.... Anyway, the latest patch, which is being tested as we speak, boosts performance very nicely. It doesn't solve all the problems, of course, but the game becomes much more playable. As for a multi-threading technology, don't keep your hopes up. It will take again re-writing the core code of the game, and I doubt Focus will be willing to commit time and money to this, not unless they decide to do CXL 2012 or something. Maybe some modder will come up with something, though.

Ahhhhh, I don't know which game are you playing, or even asking about....... Subway is just another word for metro, and CXL 2011 is advertising everywhere that metro is included in it. Ergo, the game has subway, and no trains. Furthermore, if you play the game and try to build a metro (subway), it will start with stations that are underground, and comming out on ground level (as in the real world), and continue with underground tunels for trains. I don't see how you could confuse this with ground trains.

Focus Home have stated that part of the problem is due to graphic drivers on specific cards (although 'specific cards' seems to include quite a wide range of commonly found video cards). There's a small chance that if you update your drivers the problem will be fixed, but don't count on it. For a more permanent fix we'll have to wait, either for Focus to get around on working on that (unlikely, sinse there are tons of more urgent problems and updates to work on), or for the Video card companies to start including CXL in their regular updates. About the bridges: - Elevating ground to build a bridge is quite common, and you can see it everywhere in the real world. I don't see why you would complain of it in the game. You never build a bridge without shaping an initial ground elevation, after which the bridge support towers kick in. Maybe the sole exception is when the bridge spans a crevace (where the ground actually drops). So, I think this is realistic and an added challenge for your planning abilities. - I agree that the bridge tool is very inadequate for building what we call 'overpasses' (or underpasses) - it has waaay to unrealistic minimum height requirements which make your road intersections look like some inept giant's toy set. But this also has to be adressed either by Focus Home, or by building a mod. Still, this doesn't affect the fact that every bridge, or even overpass, will include some teraforming.

One point: Who's gonna start it all over? You? I haven't noticed any other game developers to be in a rush lately for creaing new city building games.

I wouldn't be surprised if the changes in the weather aren't all bad. Why wouldn't we see some areas which are currently deserts may see more rain and suddenly become arable? Why wouldn't we see some areas which are currently very prone to huge storms and flooding suddenly become drier? The reason I'm insisting that climate change is moslty, if not altogether bad, is that we have adapted to the current state of affairs, and the current distribution of arrable lands and mild climate. This means that most of the world's big cities are in reasonably mild climates, and not in extreme climates like polar or equatorial. Of course, there are exceptions, but what do you think will happen if general climate in Europe becomes worse in the next 50 years? How many peple will be willing to stay and live there? On the other hand, even if it starts raining steadily in Sahara, do you know what do we have there right know? Stones, salt, sand. How's that for arable land? Even with all the rain it could get, you won't receive anything but wet sand, wet rocks and diluted salt. You can't grow crops in that. And the formation of arable land takes... I don't know, maybe several hundreds of years? To summarize: yes, climate change doesn't mean that the weather worsening in point A excludes the weather getting better at point B. The problem comes from most of the people living in point A, not point B, and doing most of their activities also in point A. And the further problem comes from the fact that so far there's no way to tell where exactly point B will be, where the weather becomes mild. So, we can't start migrating there already.... So, I completely agree with Nonny Moose that far too many people have played the ostrich for far too long. While they worry about their reelection and the annual GDP, the planet is gonna fall apart in our hands. They need the good old kick in the rear, so they finally wake up and dedicate serious efforts to countering, or at least preparing for climate change. As opposed to speaking big words for the public, and then proceeding as they always did....

About the Highway: no, that's the way it is, unfortunately. No lanes control and limited connectivity. We have to live with it until Focus has the time/desire to develop it further. Oil platform: I never build it yet, but you can build it off-shore, in the oil patches that you'll see on certain maps; and yes, after you finish it, it should produce oil (10 tokens, if I'm not mistaken). And I don't see how you can place it by mistake - you don't build in the sea usually, and the game won't let you place it on the shore Still, if you wanna delete a blueprint, select it then hit the Delete button on your keyboard. Snowy path: I don't know what you're talking about, but I assume it's part of the Ski GEM package, which is currentl locked. You can only build it if you install an Unlocker Mod. Importing: you should be able to, if you have enough cash tokens (those you get when you have positive cashflow). If you still can't import them, then this is a bug.

Originally posted by: Breeze1965 Do all bus lines 1st stop have to be the station itself? If I lay down a large 12 line building I have to run all 12 lines with the 1st and second stop being the station itself? Thats really really dumb? so either I am stupid or the way they set that part up is stupid???? someone help me out here I also wonder about the original question in terms of taking one bus to another for a final destination will the ai do that? quote> Do all bus lines start from the terminal? Yes. That's why it's called 'Terminal', because it's the start/end point of all lines. It's the same in real world, the bus lines don't just start in the middle of nowhere. If you're so keen on having different start points, use small terminals, and place them in different points. The purpose of the Large terminal is to be in the center point of the transport network, like the hub in a radial system. And for the N-th time, YES, people/AI will change from one bus line to the other, until they get to their destination.

Yes, Jesse is right, 2011 is easier on resources, and besides it has a number of graphic options that you could tune down to improve performance (which you can't do in the 2009 version). Basically, 2011 uses the same engine, but improves it. So, if the performance is your main issue, I would recommend getting the 2011 version. You must have realised already that the 2009 was meant to be an MMO, but this failed and the online servers aren't running anymore. What's more, a bunch of content was online-only, and you won't be able to access it from the Single player. In 2011 they reworked all this so that the game is strictly Single player, with all features accessible (and some additional content that didn't exist in 2009, like Metro). Besides, now that you have 2009, you can get 2011 it with 50% discount.

I wouldn't call blocking highways until 500 000 pop stupid - did you even notice how much they eat of your city income? With a normal 200 000 you wouldn't be able to support nearly a long enough highway stretch to make any use of it, not to mention that you shouldn't have such bad traffic at that point. I would advise you to refrain from making such hasty judgements in the future. You're right on one count though - highways, or rather their current connection systems take up way too much space.

I have a 2.2 Core 2 Duo processor, a GeForce 210, and it plays fine on Medium settings. I think you'll be able to run the game, just scale down the visuals.

Why did you buy '09 version?????? There's a 2011 version which is better in every way... Still, take a look at the Technical issues FAQ sticky, you'll find info on how to update '09.

With respect, Nonny Moose, sometimes you have no choice with regards to refugees. Can you turn down couple of million people whose homes just sank because of rising sea level? Or you're gonna start sinking their boats? Or, in the case of internal immigration (for example, what happened in USA after Catrina), can you just leave those that didn't have means or relatives away from the disaster area? Can you simply say 'We don't have the money to help you, guys, so fend for yourselves'? Those are not cases of refugee traffic, where some people make money out of other's desire for a better life; those are cases when people have lost all they have on this world, and they simply can't go back to ANY other way of life. Can you deny salvation to such people? Well, you can of course, but.... is it humane?

It's funny you guys minimizing the damage the water can do. Aaaaahm, maybe you missed the last news about Brisbane? Brazil? And earlier, Bangladesh and all that? You might insist that this are isolated incidents that have nothing to do with global warming. If so, they're getting pretty regular lately, and pretty wide-spread. Much more so than anything we have records for in the last centuries. European countries are starting to get floods pretty regularly now, and each one of them means not only people dead, but also immense property damage. Now, rich countries could rebuild, but what about poor ones? Oh, let me guess, who cares about them...... Natural selection of the strongest. Now, we're not going to live to see that, but even if our far-flung descendents do.... there are still quite a few areas within 200 km of the coast higher than that. No offence dude, but how can you say that?! So, let's wiggle our fingers and continue our destructive practices, simply because the damage won't become apparent in our time????? In other words, let's condemn our grandchildren to pay for our mistakes, a?

You know, people persist in thinking that Global Warming means hotter summer, warmer winter, rain in the desert and some cities under water. That's amuzing.... There is a huge difference between the rise of the tempretures with 2 degrees and 4 - 5 or more degrees. Indeed, we probably can't prevent the former, but we can and should prevent the later.

Well, I think you're overestimating your problem. Or rather, you know what to do, but you think there's a catch - well, there isn't. Transportation for a 3 mln city is expensive and elaborate. My biggest city hasn't reached two mln yet, and is already panting with traffic even with three metro lines connecting to the industrial districts and several strategic bus lines.running in the residential neighborhoods and connecting to the metro. So, basically, I would recommend you build a metro line, or several metro lines. They have a much bigger capacity than busses, and could serve your srpawling industrial districts. Looking at your pics, I would think of three lines: 1. East-west, going through this 'U-hub' that you mention; 2. North-south, connecting to the hub 3. A 'circular' third line, going from the Unskilled district in the East through the southern industrial districts (where it connects to line 2), and ending in the north-western Unskilled district (maybe also connecting there with line 1). Then you could make several bus lines in all major districts, interconnecting whatever is left out of the metro lines. Yes, there is interconnectability in the game - citizens will jump from bus to bus (they are even willing to walk 5 -6 blocks in the process), and then to the metro. So: - "Gather' passengers with the bus lines, and - 'Bring' them to the metro, which with its high capacity will serve all industry and the CDB. At any rate you'll be spending quite some money to maintain this system, but there's simply no other way. It's also very realistic - look at all the money big cities spend on transportation. OK, they charge tickets, but most of the transport still ends up costing money, instead of making profit. Now, this is the principle. My own experience (and other people's also) shows that for some reason people don't like using the metro, especially when there's a paralel bus line going nearby. There's absolutely no reason for this, other than some sort of bug. Which should be fixed soon. - About the City Hall: There is no way to build another of the 'normal' City Hall building. However, there are two additional City Hall buildings in the Packs - the San Francisco (if I'm not mistaken) and the Tokyo City Hall, respectively in the American and Asian pack. Look into 'Buildings' in the pack, not 'Blueprints' ! They should be there already, since your city is big enough.