Mastaflex

The roads to divide large areas for decorations don't need to be connected to other "real" roads. So you shouldn't have to destroy any building. Sometimes even adding a little bit of road(random straight line) in the middle of a large empty area is just enought to be able to fill in the rest then simply destroy the road and fill what remains.

Originally posted by: FatalCheese But I'm calling foul on the part of the FAQ that states there will be no more fixes for the game. I still paid $50 for this game. It's 4 months old. There are some major bugs in it, unrelated to the PO. Reputable game companies don't drop support for a game when they decide they're making a new one. I'm sure alot of poeple are happy that the next version will not be subscription based - but don't let that euphoria absolve them of thier responsibilty to the investment we've already made.quote>

Originally posted by: ACEH People the PO is history now - look at the newly created post.quote> Exactly, the post is newer than our responses.

I don't play the PO but I agree with mrdazza if someone pays for two accounts they should not be penalized, its not that they have any special privileges it's just that they have 2 legit accounts to play with... restrictions would make it 1-1/2 account for the price of two? Besides how do you enforce this there is no possible way of knowing if two accounts are shared by the same person.

Originally posted by: His Divine Hand No. They should have just dropped single player all together and only focused on the mmo part if that is what they were trying to do. After all, does World of Warcraft let you play a single player game? Do any of the big name mmo's have a single player? Monte Cristo should have just gone all out mmo if that was their strategy. Let the players unwilling to do an mmo go cry in a corner.quote> *facepalm*.... WoW =/= Cities XL... subscription fees aren't a genre(I can't believe people still use the WoW example). The thing with solo is that devs aren't supposed to waste time on it and I don't think they do, so there. Charge extra for extra content who cares but it's obvious now and it was obvious then that subscription fees for a city building game would never go very far. Maybe it will go far, maybe it won't but they are losing big time money now from people figuring out you have to subscribe to play the full game. And Monte Cristo should have gone all out solo if it cared about gaming more then salaries.

I hope it comes out soon and for the SP also, because I was really looking forward to this when I first baught the game, even more then buses.

Maybe you have too many and there is not enought HT demand? Just a thought.

That's a nice city and I love the look of it. But if you look closely you will notice that the bend in the roads aren't always perfect and means each bend was done manually(the second pic gives a clearer view of this), so it wasn't just clicking on a circular road icon and plopping them, he had to plan out pretty much everything sort of like the above posts mention.

Originally posted by: Stef42 Originally posted by: Mastaflex Busses = PO only? that is not something I wanted to read. Question for those who may know: If I buy a 1 month subscription only, will I be able to add busses to my solo cities and when the 1 month sub gets cancelled will I get to keep playing my solo city with busses. If all it takes is 6$ to get busses in my solo city, I will do it.quote> I'm sorry to say but that is not possible.. PO users can't use the buses in their SP city's either... quote> Thanks for the reply. Although I am disappointed that buses aren't available to solo players the fact that even PO subs can't build buses in solo cities gives me hope that they will eventually release buses to solo cities, subscribed or not. I will just have to wait until then.

Busses = PO only? that is not something I wanted to read. Question for those who may know: If I buy a 1 month subscription only, will I be able to add busses to my solo cities and when the 1 month sub gets cancelled will I get to keep playing my solo city with busses. If all it takes is 6$ to get busses in my solo city, I will do it.

Originally posted by: Tuesday Excellent screenshot, Mastaflex. What approx population had you reached by that point? And how many citizens do you have now?quote> In the screenshot I have just abit over 1 million population. I now have 1.8 million and the highrises have almost doubled in the downtown core, also because of this I had to demolish the expressway leading from the airport to the city and replace it with a highway for better traffic flow; you can't see it but the road that runs along the airport goes to my main industrial and manufacturing area, making a lot of traffic both ways and can put a hamper on passenger services if too clogged up.

Originally posted by: Tuesday So, when I eventually get round to playing this... If I start off my city, building from the very centre of the map and outwards I'll encounter problems with passengers? Are everyone's cities heavily built up round the edge of the maps?quote> When you get the opportunity to build a large airport, all roads in your city get a huge boost to passenger services. My city here has a very dense CBD, but all roads within are green for passengers(thanks to the airport). Freight is almost null except for the fringe areas around the core but then again offices don't require freight. This is also a old pic of my city and I have developed the CBD even more now and had to build a second airport on the other side of the city for more access.

To answer the OP question right now all that is released is the small stadium, I hope when they finish the big stadium that they will release it to solo players and not charge for it. I also never build those ugly paintball or go-kart leisure buildings and instead only build the basketball court, bowlingalley and the public swimming pools, the cultural leisure buildings I find are well done and look good except for that rotating restaurant tower, I just refuse to include that thing in my skylines.

Good post, you covered a lot of the problems I have with the game and I just want to expand on these thoughts; here is my two cents. Originally posted by: ACEH 1. First of all - the public and leisure services. Well, come on MC, the things aren't working this way in real life! In the game you can cover a 500 000 city with one school and one hospital. You should GREATLY reduce the range of public and leisure services and their price of course. It's just unrealistic. Agree with me that for example 100 000 people need at least 10 basketball courts and several hospitals. quote> Very true and I think they are trying to fix this. 2. The micromanagement - one hospital now costs 5000 per month no matter it serves 5 or 50 000 people. We should have the option to reduce its budget according to how many people it serves. Even more - if for some reason we decide that we don't need hospital any more, we must demolish it. Why we can't just reduce its budget? It's ridiculous. PLEASE change this absurd in upcoming patch, I'm sure you can do this! quote> This is soooo crucial for a city building game, they need to forget micromanagement for a minute and realise that these kind of services are made have their funding increased or decreased on the fly, it's how a city operates its various regions. Fixed prices make it bland and lame, I am trying to be nice about it but I feel MC specifically made it like this to not copy SC4. 3. The price of the resources that Omnicorp sells is crazy - I've heard from Mathew that this should be fix in the next patch. Give us, the Solo mode players chance to build prosperous cities.quote> I have no problem with this at all, I can build succesful cities in solo but if they want to lower it then that is fine with me. 4. The height of the bridges - hey, did you ever see a real bridge, MC. They don't look like those in the game. The bridges from the game are incredibly high.quote> Very true also, maybe needs a look at. 5. Include some roundabouts - they will include some variety in the road networks and can reduce traffic on intersections.quote> Also a very realistic suggestion and would be nice to see. 6. There are different building styles in the game - European, American and so on - thats great but can we have the option to choose what style exactly to be build - some cities look very unrealistic with all of the styles mixed together.quote> I am comfortable with the way cities look right now but being able to chose which style dominates is a very good suggestion. 7. Parks and pollution - in certain stage of the game the advisors says "Pollution is killing everything" no matter that my industries are very far from the resident zones and I have near 100 parks in the city. You should increase the parks ability to reduce pollution. One little note - now a parks with different sizes creates same area of effect around them - that's unrealistic too.quote> I am a bit on the fence on this one. While it's annoying to see this message constantly even when all I build is light industry and manufacturing, I believe they made it this way to add variety in cities so that they don't always have everything single thing. 8. Create some kind of on and off-ramps for connecting smaller roads to expressway - now we need to make an intersections with the Expressway which makes no sense - the expressway should be express. In this row of thoughts - why should the smallest roads have traffic lights at intersections. That is cosmetic but very annoying.quote> Roads can use some work, there are several bugs with highways and expressways where it will say the connection is not possible when it actually is... Also the more options they can give to roads the better. 9. The upcoming mass transit - buses - why should they cost so much - the people are paying to use them. In most of the cities the municipality makes profit of them and we should pay to have buses. Why? Just reduce the price.quote> Buses should be available at a low cost that is a given. 10. A very useful feature from the beta is missing - the lines which shows the traffic when you click on specific road - where did they gone?quote> No comment. Because this post became very long, I stop here and I hope some of the developers to answer some of the questions. I'm sure many of you guys playing the game agree with me. So MC, please answer!quote> I hope MC does listen, I like the game when I should love it and it's not because I am picky or have too many expectations it's just the common sense stuff that either needs to be looked at and in some cases fixed asap.

Originally posted by: mtzadogg are you telling me that bus and mass transit will not be available in solo mode. If that is the case then i am completely angered from this idea. the more i hear how much better the game gets for planet offer subscribers the worse the game becomes for solo mode players. this is an outrage and seriously another game will come out anmd topple this company into the dirt. they will burn in hell for this. quote> The thing is for me and many others it seems the single player game is great, I had fun making my cities and they came out extremely realistic. But the lack of mass transit cut short the amount of hours I would have played my cities and the nasty rumor of them giving it to PO subscribers only infuriates those who have baught the game with the intention of playing solo and any future customers who would do the same thing. They have what should be a great money grabbing scheme with the GEMs but they took it too far with mass transit either because it wasn't finalized before the game launched or they thought it wasn't a big deal.

Originally posted by: mr cars Monte Cristo have said they are considering releasing content to solo players for a small price. MC have to make money too you know. They spent alot of money developing the game, and they need it back!quote> They will get it back, the GEMs look very promising and seem to have no end in sight with the right imagination but the main issue here is leaving out something which should have been basic for this genre, almost as basic as waste disposal. Not even including taxis services or bus stops to the solo option is a bit annoying and again irrelevant issues such as they need money gets brought up to annoy even more.

I seriously hope MC reconsiders giving mass transit only to PO subscribers. I also don't see why me writing a post about it means I am getting all upset and that I should relax more in my life. Mass transit should be given for free to anyone who buys this game as a final thank you for buying the game and a "please consider purchasing the PO" message that follow. Everybody keeps bringing up irrelevant discussions about SC4, Rush Hour, life, stress and even the Planet Offer. These things all fly right by my head because I dodge useless issues like those and concentrate on a more basic way of thinking; "why does this fine city building game not have a mass transit option to better my cities traffic flow" and no matter how many times it is repeated "it will be available to PO subscribers only", it honestly just doesn't cut it.

I use only light industry and light manufacturing with just a small portion of my population being unqualifieds to support these. I then buy most of the waste, industry and manufacturing icons when the resource tab goes orange. Most maps I can find a secluded area to build a wind farm so I avoid heavy power plants also. All combined it gives a bit of air pollution to the overall map but not enought to scare execs and elites away. I can also afford to make 1 or 2 heavy manufacturing lots since most of my cities concentrate on offices and I can use the most manufacturing I can get, but keeping in mind the lowest polution possible of course so I usually don't put more then a couple heavys.

Originally posted by: jeremy12 This is meant to be a Miltiplayer game, take Battlefield 2 for example, it has Single player, a really bad one but its there none the less. quote> Playing a FPS against bots is boring, ask anyone. Playing a city building game solo is what we have been doing for 20+ years. That's why your comparison doesn't make much sense and why an option for both in this game would have been ideal.

Originally posted by: sthudig Ditto...the only reason I check the cxl threads is in the unlikely event MC releases a massive expansion pack within the next 3-6 months. Until then...well, i'll be spending my money, just not here. In reply to someone else's comment, no, I would NEVER join planet offer for even 2 dollars...or free for that matter. I do NOT want my cities on someone else's server. Period. And a lot of people feel the same way I do.quote> I am with you 100% on not paying even 6$ for a city building game, money isn't an issue. But and I mean huge but, you are missing out on the newest city building game(which don't come out evey year) and even in SP without mass transit I have been able to enjoy several hours of building much more realistic cities then I could in SC4. Of course I will get bored of it after a month or two but I love city building games and this one was worth the try already.

Originally posted by: Stef42 As I'm also only playing in Solo, my city gets to suffer because of the stupid Solo Tradingquote> From my experience in playing solo only, the trading is not as bad as you would suggest. In fact I have to say the solo trading makes perfectly good sense. There must be some other reason your city is suffering(a bad mayor maybe..... oops, I said it.)

Originally posted by: morriswalters Solo Players currently have no reason to be any angrier than any other player about mass transit, since nobody has it. However as a point of curiosity, what is there about mass transit that people want. By that I mean would the presence of things like trains even if not connected to the traffic system, be enough? Currently in the game traffic doesn't work very well so I'm not sure that anybody is missing anything other than eye candy. Would eye candy be enough? quote> Apart from traffic moving past intersections one lane at a time in a very unrealistic way, what is it about traffic that doesn't work very well? Trains are one thing to consider if all your talking about is freight but what about buses and taxi cab services to reduce commute. The thing is my SP cities have traffic issues(not that I really care, the cities run fine even with bad traffic) but why leave out something so glaringly obvious for a city building game such as mass transit? It just doesn't make sense. A city of 1 million + needs mass transit, point. Whether mass transit is out yet or not is irrelevant if they only plan to add it to the PO mode. I would like this issue raised high enough so that when it does come out it's not some expansion pack money grabbing scheme.

Originally posted by: c4bmx22 That is very possible, I will keep that in mind and try that out. It has been awhile since I have played these types of games and any help is welcome. Also in placing the Fire House, Police Station and other things such as that. Do you want to space them out in the city or can you place those utilities near each other?quote> The way I do it is know first hand where you will build a large residential district and build most of the services in the middle of it. When beginning a new city obviously you wont be plopping in elites right away so start with qualifieds and as your city grows replace those nearest to the "services central"(we will call it) and replace them with elites and execs, up to a certain point of course since you will most likely need more qualifieds then the other two. That way your qualifieds are satisfied until you get your city on the right foot and then when the execs and elites roll in you have the old neighborhoods to turn into new rich ones with extremely close proximity to the services they desperately need. Here's just an example from my city, but you don't need to build them all together like I do, I just find it easier to manage my city when I know exactly where my services are and can almost select them from the farthest view away for stats.

Here is my new city of Springfield, population: 1,000,000. The downtown core is split by the river with several bridges connecting each side and medium density residential neighbourhoods surrounding the downtown with light density residential surrounding the whole thing. I did not build a lot of industry or manufacturing zoning and instead import most of it to lower polution. The city is still in developement with several more residential neighborhoods planned to complete the surrounding of the city. It has a wind farm in the hills to supply most of the cities power and a large airport with two smaller airports on opposite sides to provide passengers easy access to the entire city.

Originally posted by: citiesxlfan42 Holy cow! That is amazing! Why the heck are people saying junk about the SP, that is amazing! Was that in SP?quote> If you are refering to my pics, yes it was in SP. This was my 4th city and my first to pass 500k pop. I considered my first cities practice runs until I made this one, the city came together so well that I almost don't want to add anymore to it. Last night all I did was touch-ups here and there to improve the cities efficiency and I might check it out again tonight to maybe add a new neighborhood and reach 750k. Concerning the negativity against SP to be honest I have read almost every post about cities xl on these boards and after playing this game I almost never agree with the complaints(well except for the mass transit issue obviously). Here is a new pic I thought I would leave out because it's almost the same view as the others but you might enjoy. you can faintly see the big airport at the top right corner of the map behind the city.