Kredit

Originally posted by: knightrider Originally posted by: Kredit Thing is, you're not "the government", you're not even "the mayor" (even if it's what you're called in-game), you're a lot of things rolled in to one. Mayor, developer, trade unionist, architect, etc. etc. This is not supposed to be SimMayor or SimGovernment It's about "building" a city in a way that's both challenging and enjoyable. Not about defining the tasks a mayor should or should not do. Bottom line: Gameplay ALWAYS trumps realism. Always. Most of the rest of your gripes seem to be details and finetuning. Yes, the amount of retail needed is a bit low, I agree. They'll probably tweek that at some point. However, why that specific shop went broke? Dunno... polution? traffic? wrong kind of shop (discount store in Elite area)? That's what makes CXL interesting. It's not just "I need 10 of those for 5 of those and then I can build 2 of those again". quote> I agree that when there is a conflict between gameplay and realism, gameplay should win. Good gameplay would mean that when I perform an action, the game responds in a way that is consistent with what you would see in the real world. The game is not based on any sort of real economics and instead follows arbitrary rules like a board game. Even video games that are based in fantasy have some root in reality. Not every game has a realistic physics engine, but when there is a task in a game that requires you to stack blocks or jump across a gap, and the physics of the game are so totally off that you have a hard time controlling it, pretty soon you are taken out of the fun. If enough of the game is compromised, you might just quit playing all together. Similarly, CXL takes control away from you in some areas while also giving you responsibilities that shouldn't be yours. I can agree the argument that you are more than a mayor. Urban planner, engineer, architect... I can see all that. Hotel owner? How does that fit in? Bowling alley proprietor? What? If the city owns these businesses, which are businesses just like any other, then why doesn't the city own all businesses? Every game has a background story, even if it is a subtle one. Who am I supposed to be? If I am not "the government" then why do I have control of taxes? Am I god? If so, why can't I terraform or build a farm wherever I want? It's clear most of these "gameplay" choices were not really made for the sake of gameplay, they were either made for the sake of the little trade window, or to make up for shortcomings in the game's simulation. quote> Good points. It is a bit unclear which role exactly we perform. I don't think we're hotel owner, rather I see us as laying out development plans for the city. This is what happens in real cities as well. The city decides where they want new businesses to start etc., an entrepeneur will apply for a license to open a certain business. In the hotel example, I ("the city") decide that it would be good to have some more business hotels. So I assign a certain area and encourage developers and investers to open a hotel there. Same with housing. Most housing won't be built by the city, but the city decides what type of house goes where. Most important point, I think, is that the discussion should be about whether or not something makes for good gameplay, not whether or not it's completely "realistic". In regards to the "background story", I'd say that as far as that's concerned you are considered the "mayor", but a game where all you do is sit in meetings, read report after report after report, cut a ribbon now and then and shake hands with the queen/president on special occasions would not be much fun I think. It's the same as the "is it an mmo" discussion: It doesn't matter. "Is it good?" is what matters.

Originally posted by: mrdazza_460 Government don't zone buy wealth they zone buy density, the desirability of the land tells you what wealth the zone is. If I zone unqualified workers near the beach, sorely the rich people would eventually drive up the price of the land because every one wants to live on the beach. So it would then become a rich suburb. In CXL this dose not happen, it just stays the same, in real life and in "most" places around the world the government do not make business contracts with other cities that involve forcing people to go work somewhere. Unless you are in the Amy or something but that is completely different. In real life if you can't find work in the city you live in, you move, you don't fly half way around the word each day to go to work. governments rally don't have much control over where hotels and how many hotels are in there cities, of courses to start up a hotel business you gave to go though planning, but ultimately if it is in a bad spot or there are too many in the city, it is not the governments problem, it the person who own the business How can you buy water from a city that is not even in the content as you, how dose it get there, How can fuel make sense, what are they making and for what, there aren’t any petrol station in CXL so they cart be making that. where are thy getting the raw product from and what is it, what fuel doses a factory need anyway apart form electricity, what is fuel, petrol, gas, .[/u And in CXL there is not enough retail, I had a large city in the Beta yet all my shops where going broke, how is this possible?. Why, your Sims don’t seems to spend there money on anything, Your Sims complain there is not enough retail, then when you place it near the homes it goes broke, and there still complain about it, WHF, ether they wont it or not. quote> Thing is, you're not "the government", you're not even "the mayor" (even if it's what you're called in-game), you're a lot of things rolled in to one. Mayor, developer, trade unionist, architect, etc. etc. This is not supposed to be SimMayor or SimGovernment It's about "building" a city in a way that's both challenging and enjoyable. Not about defining the tasks a mayor should or should not do. Bottom line: Gameplay ALWAYS trumps realism. Always. Most of the rest of your gripes seem to be details and finetuning. Yes, the amount of retail needed is a bit low, I agree. They'll probably tweek that at some point. However, why that specific shop went broke? Dunno... polution? traffic? wrong kind of shop (discount store in Elite area)? That's what makes CXL interesting. It's not just "I need 10 of those for 5 of those and then I can build 2 of those again".

Originally posted by: panthersimcity4 Two words: Planet Offer.quote> Actually, I think the problem is in the inclusion of Solo Play. It's more than obvious MC designed this game with online play in mind. And although the online options are limited at the moment, I think there's lots of potential here.... However, because PO is "optional" and a traditional offline mode is included, two things happen: -"Traditionalists" will dislike the PO on general principle and stay away from it. -People will be unclear on what the game is: Is it an online game, with monthly fee, that you happen to be able to play offline if you choose, or is it an offline game that you can play online as well? And that's a problem. Because what this does is create two seperate "communities", with different wishes and expectations... So you have to try to please 2 groups, with basically still one product. In my opinion, they should have made a choice and stuck with it... Either make a traditional offline city builder, or take a chance and release an online city builder, subscription mandatory and only online play. Not this "we want to make it an online, sub-based, game... but we fear a lot of the players won't want that, so we'll sell it as an offline game as well... but of course we do want everyone to play it online and pay the sub, so we will make the online game more appealing!" I can completely understand why they did this. Releasing it as online-only would have been a BIG risk. Not including online play would not be an option (I know the majority here thinks MC wants this to be online because they can milk it for more cash then, but I tend to think that they simply thought it would add an extra dimension to city building, making it a better game... thus selling better and making them more money, of course ). So they compromised (I'm sure Marketing and Develepmont had some fun meetings on the subject ) and released it the way it is now. Compromises, while sometimes necessary, are seldom a good thing for quality...

Yup, you can get rich by trading Omnicorp buys at 16.6 and sells at 150, which means they make 133.4 for each token they "sell on". You could basically do the same, but undercut them a bit .So for instance, continually have buy orders up for all resources for 20c/t and sell orders for 100c/t... Imagine you have 5 holiday tokens to sell. Sell them all at 100 = 500c. You then buy 25 new tokens with this cash, which you sell for 2500c, etc. etc. etc. There's a risk though... if you can't sell the tokens, your city will run into the ground Though you can always sell them to Omnicorp, but you won't profit then. Also, I haven't tried this myself yet, but can you buy tokens you don't need? (i.e. can you put up a buy offer for Waste when you have +10 tokens already?)

Originally posted by: mrdazza_460 Lets see what is made up Zoning by wealth people trading leisure, The way hotels work in the game The way water, fuel and so on work in the game a fire, polices, that don't acutely do anything an education system that doses not do anything but make people happy The way your people stay poor though there hole life and never evolve. I could go on and on quote> I agree that some things are not completely realistic, but the way zoning works seems fine to me... it's not so much that the same people stay "unqualified", but if they become "qualified", they move to a "qualified" area, because they can afford to. And there's no "people trading", but if your city has more people than jobs, they need to find a job in another city, and vice versa. Services are weird in the sense that you don't need all of them, at least not at the start. A small starting village doesn't need anything, but once the city starts growing the need for services increases. If you check the satisfaction for each service, you can see which households use the service and which are not "covered" enough. It seems to be quite an intricate system, though unfortunately not one I completely understand yet... It's not so much that education "only" makes people happy, all the services and the level they are provided on influence people's satisfaction, so if there's no fire dept, but there are schools, people will be unhappy about fire prevention but happy about education, on average they'll be "half-happy". Because everything is measured in "satisfaction", this provides an easy way to compare all kinds of statistics. Leisure is starting to make more and more sense to me. If you check commerce buildings, you'll see bars and suchs. Leisure is simply city-funded culture and sports. You don't really need to build any, but they can make your citizens a bit happier... Businesshotels seem quite logical to me. It's a bit weird that you can only build holiday hotels in designated areas, but I guess that's more a gameplay decision (i.e. Holidays as a resource) than a logical one. Water, fuel, waste, etc., all seems perfectly logical to me... Anyway, to reply to the OP: I don't think so... This is my first city builder in 10 years. I only did the first step of the tutorial and then started my first city. Yes, I had to figure a number of things out and I have made a few mistakes, but overal the basics aren't all that complicated. The trade window was bugged a bit a the start, which made it practically unuseable, but it's much better now, and I can hardly imagine anyone who's familiar with computers having trouble figuring out how it works...

Couldn't agree more with the OP! It's all about balancing, everything's interdependant. I found this out (the hard way) a couple of times during the building of my first city Got it over 900k now, and still growing, and still learning all the time. However, it became even more important when I tried to make a second city.... It simply failed! Completely! All the money gone before I even reached 5000 citizens After 5 tries I finally figured out what went wrong with the other ones... Expert mode! I turned on expert mode when my original city was at something like 300k pop, and at that point it was ok. But starting new cities, I would rush too much (note: I thought I was taking it slow and doing the same things I did with my first city...). Yesterday I started one with expert mode turned off... and it's off to a good start I was watching all the stats real close, and it's amazing how quickly small changes work through everything

In the Netherlands (where I live), there's public transport in every city, town, village, barn with a road attached, etc. But, that's public transport, not mass transport... I wouldn't call a bus holding 80 passengers "mass transport", though I'm not sure where I would draw the line...

Originally posted by: loopmystery Originally posted by: wondergreat P2P trading, online chatting, visiting other cities and getting togther through the avatars can be counted "multiplayer online" features. The real problem is, if these features justify a subscription model without a more interactive mechanics which would affect the growing of player's city. Base on the beta experience, we will see if this model works after 2-3 months, maybe sooner.quote> This. The trade feature is the only multiplayer element that has gameplay consequences. An MMO must be something more than "a single-player game with one multiplayer element". Yes, Second Life is technically a game. But MC shouldn't have marketed the game as a "next generation city builder" if it actually meant "next generation social game".quote> But what if they think the "next generation of city builder'" is an Online city builder? I agree that the multiplayer facets are limited right now, but they are there.... I'm sure they'll evolve and be expanded upon in the future, but for now, this is an MMOCB, you're online, with "massive" amounts of other players, playing a City Builder Yes, most other MMO's, especially MMORPG's, offer a lot more "multiplayer" content. But, that's in part because of the type of game (adventuring is much more logical to do in a group than building a city). I think with a City Builder, it's more about creating the impression that your city is "real", it exists somewhere outside your harddrive. Other people can visit it, even if you're logged off. You can trade with other cities, so there's some interdependency as well, wich adds to the "real" feeling. And, let's not forget, there's no traditional Save-Load option (yes, the game save on intervals and exit and loads when you enter, but you can't save, try something silly, ruin your city and then load the old save again... well, unless of course you build an interstate only to find out they are ridiculously expensive and you can't use it yet... so after loosing 1 million in about 5 turns you yank out your internet connection and hope for the best ) Bottom line: This game isn't an MMORPG, whether it's an MMO or not depends on your definition, but it (PO) is an online multiplayer game. For me, that's a plus. For some it won't be. "Luckily you can also play solo!" you might think... I'm not so sure. As is becoming more and more evident, if you want to enjoy the game fully, you'll need Planet Offer. I'm sure MC understand this. I think they included solo play because the city-builder players aren't by nature online players, and would possibly be turned off by having to pay a monthly fee. Why not simply make it an offline game alltogether then? Well... I think they truly believe that Online is the future for city builders, so they will try to get everyone to play that. Basically, it's the same logic as "zOMG they "gimped" solo mode to force PO on us!", but reversed Edit: I just came up with an analogy which I think demonstrates the broadness of the "multiplayer" concept. Imagine a go-kart track. Imagine the following three situations: -You go to the track with a group of friends. You are the only ones on the track, and race eachother for bragging rights. -You go to the track by yourself. You are racing the clock, but other people are as well. Though you don't know any of the others, at the end of the day you compare your best time to the overall best time to see how you've done. -You go to the track with a group of friends. You meet up with another group of go-kart enthusiasts and race eachother as teams. -You go to the track with a few friends and race eachother and other people you don't know as well. All of these I would call "multiplayer" in game-terms. But the actuall level of interaction between the players is very different in each situation... sometimes others are just a background to what you're doing, other times you actually depend on others to make you win...

Define "succesful" My city "Reigerburgh" on Caliban has over 800k pop and is making a profit. To me, that's succesful (especially since it's my first city), but from what I've read it's hardly exceptional I do think it's an interesting city, as I had no plan in advance and only a very rough idea about how the game worked, it's a bit of a jumble... Oh and I have an interesting feature... in the middle of the map a small mountain range has appeared out of nothing... thing is, there were already houses there. They're still there, still functioning, the roads are still working... they are just hidden beneath a small mountain, so I can't change anything

I've skipped most of the Economy 101 above and would like to reply to the OP Yes, indeed, taxes are very important. Especially if businesses are at the edge of protitability, a bit too much tax will drive them bankrupt, whereas a bit less tax might just be the little boost they need, which means they start making a good profit, so you get more tax (15% of 1000 is a lot more than 17% of 100 (or even 0)). This is actually one of the things I like about this game. It's not just X of this and Y of that need Z of that and Thingy should be at n%... it seems to all be interdependent, which means it can be a puzzle to figure out what's wrong, but it's a good puzzle. Still have a few things happening that I can't place atm, which I'm trying to work out. Offices and Hotels seem to randomly drop to 37% satisfaction, bad reputation because of bankruptcy problems. And a bit later, while nothing's changed, they are fine again... High-tech is also weird, they tend to go bankrupt even when all seems to be fine (all resource needs met, good traffic flow, no polution, enough workers, no overproduction...), but I'm starting to think they're just like elites: Buggers to please

I keep this message too. A few things are important to remember when trying to "satifsy" workers: -The higher level they are, the harder they are to please. Elites are a bugger! -Services don't have a "circle of effect", it seems to be a bit more intelligent than that, so it's not enough to just plonk one down every so many miles. -You don't actually have to satisfy their needs. As long as their overall satisfaction is ok. My city is constantly popping messages that there's not enough leisure, the city is dead and boring, and all the citizens are dumb as can be... still got it to 800k pop with nice profit!

Yup, that would indeed be good While playing yesterday evening I did find that when you click on a piece of road, you get some customising options. You can "upgrade" (or downgrade) roads, but only to other roads of the same size (small road <-> small farm road, simple road <-> large farm road for example), and you can change the lanes, either making it a one-way road, or in the case of uneven lanes, 2 in one and 3 in the other direction. This can help solving traffic issues without having to destroy/add anything, though it's still a bit limited. Also, you can only change one piece of road at a time, and the directions are inconsistent, so it's a bit of a hassle.

Originally posted by: His Divine Hand Originally posted by: Psycho_Teddy Also, if they had no intention of fully supporting their solo mode then it should not have been included in the game in the first place.quote> I fully, 100% agree with you here. Originally posted by: PyroMancer Originally posted by: rhenry I was looking for people talking about this today. I am pretty much convinced by now that it's just not even possible to build a very large city without being on the PO. When it comes time to buy resources from Omnicorp, you never have enough money or he's not selling any to begin with. The only maps that have a respectable amount of oil have no water and visa versa. I thought maybe if I just started buying oil from him as early as possible, before I even needed any, then it might help but it doesn't seem to help at all. So the basic conclusion after 4 days with this game is that solo mode is just a demo version for the PO mode. You play solo until your frustrated with your limitations and then you give up and buy your online membership. I'm 100% certain of it. I've already found myself trying to dig out my old wireless adapter to put my game computer online, which I did not want to do out of fear of viruses. but if I want to play the game to it's full potential, what choice is there? Resistance is futile. You must assimilate.quote> Or you could just wait until a Hack/Mod comes out. I'm sure one will be out eventually after all the game hasn't been out a full week yet so there hasn't been much time for that yet. I mean after all people talk about how SC4 is superior because of all the "fan support" along with the fact it has better simulation. But the "fan support" is nothing more then hacks and mods to the game. Cities XL is a nice pretty gfx engine from what I've seen. I'm sure in time some people will make some kick ass mods. And probably even ones that do stuff like unlock Mass transit and lower Omnicorp's trade prices. quote> Absolutely. I had said it before, that so long as MC provides a game that people want to play, and more importantly, improve upon, then there will be mods, whether MC wants them or not. The key is if the right people want to make the tools to make this possible, and if the game allows for relative ease to add things to it (which, with the GEMs, I imagine it is quite possible). And personally there is nothing wrong with that. Once a person buys software, such as a game, they have the right to use that software however they see fit for their own "personal" use. So if they want alt it so Cities XL looks like it's on say Mars (SimMars Mod hehe) when in SP then they are perfectly within their right to do so. Now if they try and sell it they might have some legal issues. quote> . . . And here you fall off the boat. You see, things like movies, books, music, and yes, video games fall under a different area of ownership. You see, the code that your computer reads to play games like CXL is under the ownership of the game creator, not you. All you own is the disc it comes on; the company so kindly lets you lease their wares for only the original purchasing cost. Intellectual Properties, how loved you are.quote> I don't think that's entirely true... You are free to do with it whatever you please (for instance, if I want to rename all files in the game folder lol.lol, that's my right. Or if I want to alter the game a bit, that's cool too. What I can't do is alter the game and then sell my changes, as that would be profiting from intellectual property which isn't mine. There's a bit of a gray area concerning "free" mods, I'm not knowledgeable on law enough to say for sure, but I think the owner of the IP would have to allow you to do that...

Originally posted by: wondergreat Originally posted by: Androv It seems possible to make a 'country' (or 'guild') with several players, each exchanging resources so that you can all build big cities / a nation / etc. You can visit each others cities. That definitely fits 'online', 'multiplayer', even the 'rpg' element if you roleplay with your avatars (not that there's anything you can actually *do* with them yet apart from have a chicken dance party)..... and if there are several such 'countries' or guilds then you've got the massive bit down as well.quote> P2P trading, online chatting, visiting other cities and getting togther through the avatars can be counted "multiplayer online" features. The real problem is, if these features justify a subscription model without a more interactive mechanics which would affect the growing of player's city. Base on the beta experience, we will see if this model works after 2-3 months, maybe sooner.quote> That's the important question. Wether or not this can be called an MMO does not matter one bit in itself. What matters is will people be prepared to pay? Personally, I don't care about the monthly fee. The amount is about the same as what I spend on lunch at work... each day. Of course, it's not about "the money", it's about "the principle"... Well, I guess you could have objections to buying a game "unfinished" and then having to continue paying for updates and full functionallity, it seems logical to object to that... but is it? I think the problem is that while development on games has become much, much, much more expensive in, say, the last 15 years, the price of games hasn't changed that much... Yes, the market has grown, so more copies get sold... but the initial investment is so high, you have to be pretty sure you'll get good sales... This has a number of results: -A lot of companies only release "sure things" (EA being the first example that springs to mind) -They will try to find ways to make a game earn them more money than simply the shelf-price (add-ons, expansions, online plans, etc.) -Publishers will push designers to get a game done quickly, as each day it's in development it costs money rather than earn them money. And since "everyone" has an internet connection nowadays, they can "get away" with releasing an unfinished product as they can update it later. Cities XL is a good example of the latter 2. Which I much prefer over the first.... So I'll pay my couple of euros each month and hope they put it to good use continuing to develop the game

Trades are the key here, indeed... a completely self-sufficient city which is running stable (ie, positive balance, no great shortage/excess of anything, low unemployment and high house filling rate) should in theory be able to run endlessly without major changes. So yes, you could leave a city like that for hours and come back to a larger bank account. However, imagine the same city, but with a shortage of 2 out of 4 needed fuel, which is fulfilled by a contract. If that contract ends, all companies that depend on fuel will do less well. Then, all companies depending on those companies start to do less well... Now, people are losing their jobs. And, you are losing income. All in all, left alone, a city could, theoretically, be completely "ruined" in such a situation. Which is why it pauses Though I'm not sure this always works, I've seen the pause message on-screen a few times while the city still seemed active...

would be a nice feature, as it would stop us placing half of a road to find out it can't go on the way you planned

Interesting article on this general subject: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_223/6641-M-is-for-Massive.3 I think what's happening in this discussion is that people are mixing up "MMO" and "MMORPG". MMORPG's have, by now, been quite well defined. MMO's in general haven't. as new online games are developed, the defenition changes. Put simply, to be considered an MMO, you have to be 2 things: Massively Multiplayer and Online. Multiplayer is simple, online is simple, Massive is subjective at best. I agree that there isn't a lot of interaction between different players, but in itself that's not what "defines" an MMO. Sure, if you're all online together it makes sense to use that to the game's advantage. And yes, I hope they expand on this in the future in CXL. But that doesn't mean it's not an MMO right now. There's still potentially thousands of players all building their cities on the same planet. They can talk, trade and visit eachothers cities... not exactly a plethora of options, but still. One thing I'd really like to see them add is some sort of city-linking, so that you could, for instance, have automatic trading with other cities (either your own or another player's). The way it could work is by adding a "trade with " option, where you can make "normal" trades or resources for resources trade... Some sort of "guild" function would be really nice as well, as this changes the community from a large, unconnected mess into smaller but much tighter groups, which as a whole can form a much tighter community. It would also serve to "bond" people to the game (and the planet offer) as friends are often harder to leave behind than a game. Something I'm most certainly not holding my breath for though is a "real time" planet, where you can see all cities all the time etc.. Of course this would be wonderful, but I don't think it will be technologically/financially possible to get this done any time soon.

Hello all, I've just bought CXL a few days ago, after a friend showed me the site. I hadn't played any sim-games seriously since the original SimCity and Civilisation, it looked cool, so I decided to give it a try. Reading these forums I noticed that most people here are experienced sim-players, mostly SC4 vets. Since my background is rather different, and I assume there'll be more like me, I thought I'd share my views on the game so far. Ok, as I said the last city builder I played was SimCity (and to be honest, I mostly cheated to get limitless cash, build huge cities and then release godzilla...) so while I had a general idea of how a city-builder works, I had no experience with any recent ones. This being the case, I started with the tutorial. Since it's only the tutorial I'll be brief: It worked well enough to introduce me to the basic controls (though I'm sure I'd have figured them out either way) and it explained the basics of building a city. The attempt at humor failed, but meh. One thing I found unclear was how many tutorials there were. I did a few and then I saw a list, but didn't know if they were new ones... so I just went on and started my first city. (yes, I could've checked... but I'm lazy and wanted to start playing) So, Solo Play or Online Play? I've been playing MMORPG's for over 6 years now, so I was naturally drawn toward the MMO part... But is it MMO or not? Well, it's Online, it's Multiplayer... is it Massive? Yup, one "planet" holds 10000 cities, that's a minimum of 2000 (and max 10000) players on one server, which would be respectable figures for any MMO. That said, the actuall interaction with other players is minimal. Apart from chatting and viewing eachothers cities (which are nice features) there's only Trade. Since this can be done through an auction-system, you don't actually interact with people. Personally, I find enough enjoyment in just building my city right now and I think the monthly fee is fine if it's simply for use of the servers and (content)updates for the game. But, I must admit that I instantly started thinking about other ways to interact with other players, and obviously there's loads of potential... so while I think it's good now, I do hope they'll expand on this in the future. That said, simply the fact that my city is online, visible to others and persistent, is enough to win me to the online side. But that's just me. On to the game itself! My first city (Reigerburgh on Caliban, if anyone's interested) started out without any kind of plan. Basically, I just put down what the game told me I needed for a while, in a way that I thought looked good, and all was well! But then, after a while, income started dropping, people started complaining... so I dived into the various menus to find out what was happening. And that's when the game got interesting. Because I couldn't. Well, at least not at first... but then, by trying some different things, playing with taxes, roads, public services, I started to discover little interdependencies... and by using what I found, I managed to get the budget back in black, keep the residents happy and expand the city again. I think I hit my first "hurdle" at around 100k population (traffic, that one). Then another at about 200k, one more at 350k, again at close to 500k, and the most recent one at close to 700k, which I'm still working on now. Each time I discover more about how my city works. Quite enjoyable (at least to a sim-***** like me)! Looking back now, it would have payed off to do some basic planning in advance, as my city is a bit jumbled-up and pieced together with bits of string and cello-tape, but it's not really necessary. The upside is that my city feels more real to me than a perfectly layed-out hyper-efficient metropolis would. Also, this is probably the best way to learn how the game works, as you are bound to cause problems which you then have to solve again! All in all I think it's a very enjoyable game, which, at least to a sim-*****, seems to offer enough depth and variety (though of course only time will tell). I also see lots of potential for improving and expanding, so let's hope they'll do that as well! Edit: Changed title since ***** is sensored here Edit 2: Ok, so even spelling Newbie as n o o b but with 2 0's instead of o's isn't allowed... they must really dislike n oo bs here!

That seems to be quite in line with how I'm experiencing the game, except I stuck with my first city, got it to 680k now, but growing further will require major changes So now I'm starting a second city to get other resources so they can support eachother, and this one I'll plan a bit more careful. Nice to hear your story!

Not taken as an attack at all the reason I put it in there is to illustrate my lack of experience with city-builders. However, it's not as bad as I make it out to be, I just meant that while I enjoyed that game, I was never exactly a hardcore (or very good) player (I was also about 12, 13 or so... which means I had a different approach to things than I have now, at 31) and so while I know the "basics" of a city builder (balance different zones, keep residents happy, fight polution, etc.) I started this game with a "fresh" view, not expecting SC5 or anything for that matter. Rest assured though that I'm playing this one cheat-free, and Godzilla has not made an appearance yet What I like about this game, opposed to what I remember of SC, is that it feels more "dynamic" in a way, not always telling you exactly what's wrong where, so you actually have to study your city to see what works and what doesn't. (but maybe SC4 did that much better still...) Regarding the "inexperienced players", I know I was just surprised they found n oob so offensive especially considering I was calling myself a ***** I never got the whole "n oob" as insult thing, but than again, I also don't really care what others think of my skills in an online game ^^

I've given up pleasing the citizens and have just accepted that "the city is dead and boring" It doesn't seem to stop people moving in, or influence productivity or anything, so I basically put down a bare minimum and leave it at that. I agree that "leisure" is a strange defenition here as well. Yes, museums, parks, even basketballcourts can be funded by the city (in part), but a bowling alley? A go-kart track? A helicopter ride?!?! I think they should throw out Leisure as a seperate entity. It's either a public (community) service (basketball courts, museums, etc.), or a "retail" business (bars, bowlingalley's, etc.).

I agree the options for placing roads are limited. It would be great to have more control over the traffic flow. I would also really like to be able to upgrade roads, instead of having to replace them, since a bigger road will be, well, bigger, you often can't put it where the old road was.

Actually, I'd say "Connection" is fine... it's the button that you press when you want a connection, so it says "connection". Sure, if the text is supposed to literally describe the "action" the button will perfom, yes, it should be "connect". However, who says it has to? Nitpicking, at best. Regarding the other problems... I agree to an extent that the installation process isn't perfect, but the examples mentioned here I'd hardly call real issues.