Centaur

Originally posted by: deanco Originally posted by: Centaur I'm making around 10,000 per turn by trading surplus to the AI. Sure, you don't get a good price, and maybe a few different AIs would make it better, but it seems to work fine for me. quote> I imagine trading TO the AI works, but for me, the option to do that usually isn't there. No green check mark. If you need something FROM the AI, good luck. Once again, no green check marks to click on most of the time. I have to literally look every few turns to see if Mr. OmniCorp has changed his mind. Usually, he hasn't. Very frustrating, not to mention poor gameplay. quote> Yeah, you're right - he doesn't normally want to sell. Not good.

Originally posted by: muttoneer Finally, the requirement for decorative areas to be surrounded on all sides by roads is a bit frustrating, quote> Yeah that is annoying. But you can put roads down, fill inside with decoration, then delete the roads and the decoration stays. A cheat, but it allows you to have large decorated areas

I had a similar problem on XP: www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm The updates run from a batch file called updater.bat. If this fails, it does so silently and you just get nothing happening. You will find the patches under documents and settings (full path is in the linked thread) - I think they should all be there. Copy them into the game folder (this is important, as they need to be able to see the current version) and run them from there - worked for me. changing Version.cfg doesn't seem to do anything, nor hacking the registry entries.

Originally posted by: deanco In terms of the game, it really appears the single player is hugely gimped in favor of the MMO part. No buses, trams, or trains. quote> Out of interest, is mass transit actuall in the mutliplayer game? From the interview, it sounded like they just hadn't got it to work and so droppped it for the first release: "Mass transit options are clearly the next step for us in the overall transportation system. Unfortunately it’s not something that we have been able to squeeze in the game for release despite our upmost effort. We thought until not long ago that the bus system could be ready for release but we were not happy with the results and decided to postpone it." Sounds to me like it's not in the multiplayer game either yet, rather than being something specifically excluded from sp. Can anyone confirm this? That aside, the roads/traffic seem to work really well.

Originally posted by: deanco After playing some more, I think the real slap in the face is the AI trading, not the missing buses and trains, although that's a cynical move in itself. The AI gimps the game way more, since he basically won't trade with you, and when he does, say goodbye to your positive cash flow. It's like they purposely made a crappy feature, to push you to online.quote> I'm making around 10,000 per turn by trading surplus to the AI. Sure, you don't get a good price, and maybe a few different AIs would make it better, but it seems to work fine for me.

It'd be nice to be able to adjust the mouse sensitivity - rotating is very sensetive and far too fiddly. I also hate the way the camera is locked vertically, unless you are at street level. Makes it very hard to determine the lay of the land sometimes. It would be nice to allow vertical panning at all times - a proper free camera. It's a shame because the zooming/maintaining frame rates is very well done .

Edit: Thanks for the replies, btw. I just extended an avenue all the way across the map and to an intercity boundry. I then plopped the hotel on it, near the city. A light blue and a dark brown line extend off into the city a good distance, but I can't tell what they represent. None of them go down the avenue leaving town. quote> I think that the brown line shows where unqualified workers are comming from, the blue for qualified workers. It's their commute to work at the hotel, same for other businesses. I think There's another colour line which looks to shows trade routes out of the city, I forget the colour though. I've stuck my hotels in amongst my offices, and they seem ok. A bit fragile, but never actually die.

All, I found that the update would download, but when I clicked on "install", the program would close and nothing would happen. Which made me quite cross. Aftter a bit of furtling, it appears that the problem is in the updater.bat file which is supposed to run the updates. A solution which worked for me is: 1 - find the update files (in C:\Documents and Settings\[Your User Name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Monte Cristo\Cities XL\download) 2 - copy them into the main cxl directory (c:\program files\monte cristo\cities xl) 3 - run them in order (they are named 1.0.3.297 to 1.0.3.315 etc, so it's pretty obvious) 4 - that's it! I've contacted their tech support so hopefully they will get this sorted for the next update.