SimBurger

Question - you wrote this on that page: "The city console has already approved a 6 million dollars to go towards adding a addition 4 lanes to Highway 55 " Is that just you pretending, or is there some actual budget approval process that I am not seeing in the game? SB

What's different about expert mode, as it pertains to roads?

Another tip is to build Avatar Parks near those areas that you've zoned, but which are not filling up with houses. I built museums, schools, police stations, fire stations, and health clinics and nothing helped. Then I placed two avatar parks next to eachother, and immediately across the street, people started moving in.

The only reason I felt the pollution might be broken (or rather, that the parks are broken, as they don't fix pollution) was because of the Alert the game gives. The alert which states pollution is killing everything, "BUILD MORE PARKS!" I finally spoke to Philippe online, and he agreed that the alert was misleading. I don't know if that means parks will never reduce pollution, or that they are going to change that alert to be more clear. -SB-

Oh yeah? Well I have a really huge ..... nevermind.

While its clear that MonteCristo may wish to revisit the pricing issue with Single Players (just to get them to shut up?) ( - kidding, kidding) .... I think its awesome that they are once again proving how insanely devoted they are to the continued growth and enhancement of this game. Such a fast turnaround for an expansion pack is unheard of. My comment here goes out to all those debates I engaged in with the naysayers (you know who you are - may you hang your heads in shame) prior to release, who were complaining that 1.0 wasn't awesome enough. As I stated, its what they do after release of 1.0 that matters most, and they've surpassed my expectations, and yours. Maybe Simtropolis can make a forum for Single Player people, so that us PO people don't have to see every - single - thread hijacked into a complaining fest for "Why do they get it and we dont?" -SB-

I've noticed that its "total population" count that seems to enable higher density residential. It happens slowly and incrementally as you hit 150,000 residents, 300,000 residents, etc. What is the number of residents (or other criteria) required to enable high density Executive? I've been sitting with everything at high density (Unqualified and Qualified) for days now. Executive seems to be maxed out at "Medium" density. When will I be able to have high density Executive? Thanks SB

Well let me update this thread. I exceeded 500,000 and my Executive High Density did not appear. So Im guessing you have to hit 750,000. Ill repost - or someone else can .... -SB-

SoftcoreGamer: I agree with some of your comments. Unfortunately writing "I agree with this" over and over is redundant and annoying, so I'm going to have to respond to what I disagree with. Assume that everything else you said, I wholeheartedly support. 1) You're a good writer. Avoid "nuff said" whenever possible. 2) Lagging and Choppy. This is not a small game. The only logical way for you to say that its performing poorly would be if you or I had experience with other *EQUALLY COMPLEX* games and saw the other ones performing on average machines significantly better. Maybe someone who has such experience can comment. In my limited knowledge, this game seems like a Behemoth of real-time interconnecting functions. If there was one type of game on earth I would expect to struggle a bit, it would be one this elaborate. 3) "Basically, these pain factors are cancelling out whatever fun there is." For you. 4) "All po functionalities (incl special rewards) available offline". You can't expect this. Incentives make the world go around. It's not unreasonable nor unethical to expect Monte Cristo to retain special perks for PO players - after basic functionality is duplicated in both areas. 5) "Show sincere commitment & increase responsiveness to existing customers" - MonteCristo has been heavily involved in this site, and Philippe himself frequently jumps into the Lions Den online to chat, field questions and get input from players. I've been thanked for my input numerous times by MC staff, and they've welcomed any bug lists that I can send their way. I'm rarely online and I've personally crossed paths with MC staff at least 10 times since the game was released. On the forums, in my PM box, and on the game Chat. 6) "Monte Cristo needs to get its act together" - Yikes. MonteCristo is a very small operation with limited developers, working on something massive. Resource availability is a RELEVANT factor that should be taken into consideration when people start yelling. I don't know what type of work you do, but if you've ever managed development projects as I have, you know its a slow, miserable, painful process for everyone involved. I do this kind of crap every day of my life. Even a bug / enhancement list of 20 items can take upwards of a month just to get programmed. Even longer if they put it through proper testing. I was blown away at the bug fixes and enhancements MC spat out last week, only a couple weeks after a major release. That's an impressively fast turnaround time for any development team, especially on a game this complex. I sometimes feel like in order to appease folks like you, they kick new things out too quickly, then rely on us to be their test team. But even that is okay, because within 48 hours, several of the bugs people had reported, were received, acknowledged, and fixed by MC real-time. So from the perspective of a professional in the product / software / internet development world - MonteCristo is doing a damn good job so far. I wasn't expecting any patches or enhancements until at least 6 months down the line. They beat my estimate by nearly 5.5 months. 7) Amen on the PO Mode Pause Button request. Amen. My biggest "PAIN" is the pressure I feel to "Hurry Up" with this game. If you're playing a 20% difficulty city, you won't run into this as much. But when I physically begin to SWEAT because I can't get a road bulldozed fast enough, and the new one being built keeps showing up as "RED" - while my contracts are expiring - as I am repeatedly trying to figure out whats so bad about my terrain, or why its too steep to lay a road there - then I know a Pause button is in order. This is aside from what *I* personally believe is the true fun factor of this game. The ability to stop everything, kick it into postcard view, and walk your own streets. Truly experience your city. That, to me is the reward, and with an extremely fast-clicking never stopping clock always going, you never get to stop and smell the roses. "I'm giving this game some time to meet these expectations before calling it yet another wasted-potential Fail" - Im confounded that you'd even be comfortable coming remotely close to calling it a "FAIL". They've done an amazing job for a 1.0 version and they're actively fixing things every week. Its nowhere near a "potential fail". Its brimming with potential. 9) To those who could afford monthly sponsorship of CitiesXL team - what would it take for you to sign up to Planet Offer?" a) An involved development team - CHECK! b) A game that is 90% amazing already and in need of 10% improvement - CHECK! c) Frequent updates and patches - CHECK! d) A dirt cheap monthly price - CHECK! e) The challenge. The fun. The satisfaction of success. - CHECK..... -SB-

Post here if you want to brag about something. Thank you. SB

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle Well, I think that the wooded parks should reduce air pollution at least a tad bit and that there should be small, non-avatar, parks under "Environment" that lower pollution more quote> I agree that they should But unfortunately they don't. SB

Thank you Androv - for answering the question. LOL! SB

Great Tips. Im still convinced there's a bug in the pollution system. Simply because the alert says pollution is killing everything - BUILD MORE PARKS! Pollution is *KILLING* everything. It doesnt say "Satisfaction is lower - BUILD MORE PARKS" So saying that building a park addresses pollution by increasing satisfaction - seems incorrect. The game implies that Pollution is present, and Parks address its presence. Literally. But they don't.

Hmmm. Not really satisfied with the last two responses. Maybe you guys aren't dealing with Pollution on any large scale yet, so you're not seeing why reducing it is important. I did a test, and Avatar parks do in fact create holiday zones. But they don't reduce pollution at all. So for the game to say "Build more Parks" - its either a bug in the pollution system or its confusing, at least. Avatar parks do create holiday zones however. Two of them side by side will create a tiny little green holiday zone which you can place a Holiday HOtel on and collect money. However - most holiday hotels only generate between 600 and 900C per month. Building two Avatar parks will cost you 600C per month. So you basically decrease cash flow by 600 and then increase it by the difference - 300. Not much of a deal. I was able to get creative though and squeezed the largest holiday hotel (1090C per month) up against a smaller one with a smaller footprint (300C per month), which is generating 1390C per month for me. At the cost of 600C per month for the two avatar parks. So im up by the difference I suppose (690C). But pollution does not change. No matter what you do. Demolishing your industry just further reduces your cashflow because you have to buy it for significantly more expensive somewhere else. Demoloishing manufacturing (another big pollution cause) is even worse - nobody is selling Manufacturing on the trade screen, at all. Execept Don Madolf and he's selling it for 150C !!! per unit!

Oh - I didnt realize the patch fixed the retail issue. Maybe I can place more now. Cool! SB

Philippe was on the chat today and answered the question about whether they plan to allow indefinite contracts. He gave a very solid "no" to that. The reason that they have stuck with 5 days is beacuse they want to encourage cross-participation rather than people having indefinite contracts with just one other city. It forces people to differentiate, and allows for constant change. I understand this logic. I think they may end up extending the maximum but they wont ever enable indefinite trades. Auto-trades sound like an intelligent option as well, though they may want to encourage actual user participation as costs are involved etc. SB

For all who may have missed it: http://www.citiesxl.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1806&Itemid=128 Thanks to Monte Cristo for addressing several items that have been raised. We appreciate your attentiveness and quick response time! Looking forward to that PO mode pause button SB

Ive never been able to place more than 4 or 5 Retails without the game freaking out saying there are too many. In fact this is the only nonrealistic thing about the game in my opinion. In real life, commercial retail is EVERYWHERE. In this game, nowhere SB

The game provides an alert that says Pollution is Choking Everything. When you click on it to expand it, there is a sentence which says verbatim "You should build more Parks". Doing so does not reduce pollution. However if you notice - the ONLY item in the "Environment" tab is the "Avatar Park - a place where Avatars can meet and interact". What? What does that have to do with Environment? So maybe the "Wooded Park" (which clearly implies pollution reduction via trees ala simcity4) is not the "Park" they refer to. Maybe the extremely weird "Avatar Park where Avatars can (but never will) meet to talk" is the one that reduces pollution. SB

Guys - new BIG bug after the patch - please address ASAP: The "CITY STATUS" window on the trade screen does not show the same tokens needed as the "MARKET PLACE" window does. One says I need 4 tokens. The other says I need only 1. Please address this ASAP as this is a lot of money that can affect our cities profitability. BUying things we dont really need. Not buying things we do need. Etc. SB EDIT: Unless City Status is what you currently need, and Market Place is what you may need soon?

Pros - 1) PO mode is only $6 a month for endless hours of game play in an interactive environment. 2) The graphics are spectacular. 3) The music is not infuriatingly annoying like in SimCity 4 (i dug the tunes but after several hours I went bonkers. doesnt happen with this game for some reason) 4) The variation in maps is impressive, and fun. 5) The enhanced complexity of the game makes it more intelligent and therefore more challenging than anything SimCity4 could offer. 6) The ability to interact with others rather than only having a single player version. 7) The responsiveness of Monte Cristo on these forums, and their obvious desire to continue enhancing this game. The addition of Elites is a fun concept and adds more challenge. 9) The highways and road systems are a vast improvement over SC4 10) The fact that this game seems to focus more intelligently on real city building issues establishes it as an improvement over SC4 as well. Cons 1) 2) Leisure is infuriating for me. I dont want to build a ferris wheel that doesn't even spin. I want numerous leisure options. Elites are bored. What should I give multi millionaires to do? Lets take a look. A ferris wheel. Or a sports museum? 3) I want to see Leisure actually get used. They are always showing low impact low effectiveness and cost a lot. 4) Lack of a manual Pause button in PO mode that enables me to browse my own city without anything changing. Make it equivilent to "Exiting to Planet Mode" if you need to. That's all it needs to do. I want to enjoy my city. Walk the streets... 5) Mouse sensitivity options. Desperately need these as its still difficult to move, and i constantly overshoot my movements and wheel click spins. 6) Im sure there's more, but they've been expressed and based on the last patch, I can see Monte Cristo is working on things, so ill just be patient and let them get to it. SB Edited for innapropriate comments. Talk about the issues, not each other. --Liv CXL Forums Moderator

To Monte Cristo - some bugs in the new road upgrade popup: 1) Database label showing on the 2+2 Lanes Great Avenue (Pointing to the right --> --&gt 2) On my existing Large Avenue, the Upgrade menu shows Large Avenue again. Twice actually. 3) On the Upgrade Menu the first duplicate Large Avenue option shows a Maintenance Cost of 8C. The other shows 15C. (The standard road menu says 8C) 4) You added a new option for a road with three lanes going one way, and two lanes going the other way. This is awesome - but the popup has no "traffic flow" number to show if it has greater flow. My traffic has not become less heavy after adding it. 5) Offices are now showing the message "Lack of Passenger Services" in the popup. I think this is new. Maybe not. People are getting confused as "Passenger Services" isnt defined anywhere in the game. Might be clearer if you simply say "Traffic" or something more clear. Assuming that's what it means. 7) Pause button in PO mode where we can browse our own city without being on the clock SB [We have sorted that other problem... =]

If I am missing something, I hope someone will correct me. I really would like a pause button on the PO version of the game. Its so stressful having to race against the clock to get things done, when the clock never stops, and things change so quickly. At no point do you ever get to actually sit back and enjoy your city. At no point can you zoom down onto the street and actually walk around. At no point do you get to appreciate what you've built. At no point can you really handcraft and organize anything. Layout, structure, etc. Everything is built on the fly. In a hurry. 30 seconds of walking your own streets - you see businesses begin to fail, contract cancellations popping up, unemployment rising, food shortages, etc etc etc. Some have said you can get your city to a "status quo" and relax a bit, but I have found that not to be true. Even then, you can't go more than a couple minutes without getting behind and adversely affecting your city in some way. PS - mods - please dont let this thread turn into a discussion about people who hate the auto-pause. This is a different topic.

Just like SimCity, this game offers one, two, three different sizes for things like Power Plants. Unfortunately, unlike SimCity, this game doesn't quantify their effect on the city. At all. Whereas in SimCity, a small plant was labeled as generating 10,000 Megawatts, and larger plant 50,000 Megawatts ... In Cities XL all they say for the small one is "Generates some electricty", and for the large one:"Generates Electricity". Ooookay. There is no quantification of the differences between the two, even though they offer nearly 3 distinct sizes of power plants. The problem arose when I was told I needed more electricity for my city. The only gauge I had was a " -1" on the token. Okay so how do I meet that need and fix the problem? I am given no information. As it stands, the only descriptions we have are: "Generates some electricity" (smaller plant) "Generates electricity" (medium plant) How am I supposed to fix the "-1" with that type of info? I feel like Im operating in the dark. So to speak.

Im still learning the cash system in the game, and i am horrible at math. But can someone please explain to me why my: Income: $300,000 Expenses: $125,000 and yet my Cashflow: -$20,000 ? How can I have double the income as my expenses and yet have a negative 20k cashflow? That doesnt make sense. Remember: I failed first grade math and economics. Disclaimer: I am aware that my city services (a newly built private school and high school) are causing the cashflow to be negative. It was just a hell of a lot easier when expenses were expenses and income was income. I pretty much see zero value in my income, expenses, AND budget. The only number that seems to matter in this game is cashflow. THe others are so useless that they are basically irrelevant. With SimCity 4 I would have KILLED to have the current $14 million budget I've got right now. But there's no meaning to it. No value. I can't build anything useful because everything decreases my cashflow. Ideally I'd see double the income over expenses and be sitting pretty too - but again - that has no value because its basically ignored. Can someone explain this to me? SB