With the latest Citybuilders, Citylife, and CitiesXL, it seems as if the Citybuilder Genre is being pushed in the right direction, but no game has emerged to take the genre forward. And with Monte Cristo closing, it only seems as if the genre is on death's door. However, I intend to fix this. I hope an active group of modders, or perhaps even a good, fan-serving game developing company will see this, and pick up the idea. This thread, I hope, can form some sort of plan for the perfect citybuilding game, to finally move the genre out of the Dark Age that has been the 2000's. First, let's go over a bit of history. (Feel free to skip this.)
1. HISTORY OF CITYBUILDERS
The first citybuilder, as we know it, came to be in 1989. With the release of SimCity, the city-building genre was created. Will Wright's brainchild would spark an explosion of city-building games. Perhaps the most famous (other than the SimCity series itself.), would be Impressions Games' "City-Building Series", a series of games that revolved around constructing and managing not only the city, but also maintaining defensive forces and conducting trade and diplomacy with nearby cities. The first game in this series would come 3 years after the release of SimCity. It's name was Caesar - it added a military force to the fledgling genre. Two games would follow, Caesar 2 in 1995, and Caesar 3 in 1998. Caesar 3 and it's successors would be some of the first games I played. Pharaoh and Cleopatra would come the following year, and at the turn of the millennium, Zeus and Poseidon followed. These ancient city-builders do not follow the SimCity ideal, but do have some interesting components that could be tweaked and added into a modern citybuilder.
Now, SimCity was also progressing, with SimCity 2000, SimCity 3000, and SimCity 4 coming out over the course of the years. SimCity 4 remains widely played today, due to unsatisfaction with more recent games by Monte Cristo, which had good intentions, but ultimately fell below expectations.
2. Planning the Game
We shall call the game, for now, Millennium Cities. If anyone has a better name for the project, feel free to suggest it. This is not my idea, but the entire City-Building Community's.
Now, first comes the integration of ideas.
For a base idea of the game, the features of Sim City 4 could be implemented. But CitiesXL provides a huge opportunity. The "Planet Offer" is a well despised thing, but the planet itself, is another thing entirely. My idea, in essence, is to use a system similar to that of SPORE's. Cities will be uploaded to planets based on Difficulty Setting and Location, but when players are playing, the game's AI will create a stance for the city. Prices will be set for trading, the mayor will have a certain approach to you based on the player's actions in that game, and the game will be perfectly able to be filled with large amounts of content, while maintaining a fully singleplayer aspect.
Complexity is another thing to consider, but I have an idea to manage this aswell. There will be 4 difficulties:
-Sandbox: Unlimited resources, used for designing dream-cities.
-Easy: Low complexity, recommended for new players.
-Medium: Average complexity, recommended for average-skilled players.
-Hard: Super-complex. All Resources require entire systems build for them. Water pipes MUST be placed for water coverage, and power lines must be placed for power coverage. Recommended for skilled players and long-time city-builders.
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That's all I've got for now, but hopefully we can draw on ideas and expand our so called "project" over the coming months.
