MallowTheCloud

Whether it was expected or not is no excuse. It shouldn't have happened.

Maybe that's what I need to get to answer the questions I have? The electronic version is only 9-10 US dollars, but its online only at Prima Games, depends on whether you want to spend any more more money on the game or not, I've only bought the guide at this point as I wasn't sure this was the game for me and I was sure there would be problems on launch so buying the guide was me dipping my toes in the water. Its made interesting reading, so I know not to go burning garbage at the city dumps, unless I like the idea of giant lizards destroying parts of my city, or to think twice when adding wind turbines to any city unless I like tornadoes ... I think it was tornadoes not at home so I can't check -catty I thought those were the ways to unlock the disasters for yourself, not that they would actually make those disasters more common... ? I actually looked this up for someone else who had been visited by a lizard "The guide says all six disasters are locked to begin, once unlocked by completing achievements then a disaster can either be triggered manually, by selecting it from the Disasters menu, or it can occur randomly, as determined by the simulation and certain geographical features" -catty Ya, as Xenocity noted, you still get disasters even when they're locked. I wouldn't be surprised if they're more frequent under certain circumstances, but that would kind of suck if you wanted to build a city based around something that would make a certain type of disaster extremely frequent, but you weren't looking for those disasters.

Actually your city will send them regardless if you can spare them if your neighbor is lacking. You do earn money for it. Well I guess I've just yet to have excess safety personnel. Unfortunately that's probably the least pressing of the issues I listed, at least for me.

Maybe that's what I need to get to answer the questions I have? The electronic version is only 9-10 US dollars, but its online only at Prima Games, depends on whether you want to spend any more more money on the game or not, I've only bought the guide at this point as I wasn't sure this was the game for me and I was sure there would be problems on launch so buying the guide was me dipping my toes in the water. Its made interesting reading, so I know not to go burning garbage at the city dumps, unless I like the idea of giant lizards destroying parts of my city, or to think twice when adding wind turbines to any city unless I like tornadoes ... I think it was tornadoes not at home so I can't check -catty I thought those were the ways to unlock the disasters for yourself, not that they would actually make those disasters more common... ?

As noted in the original post (and as a good troll would do), the city had no money and no buildings. So outside of getting money sent in from another city, there's nothing that can be done. This is easy to achieve. Just take out all the bonds you can, spend all your money, and the destroy everything you built. You have no money and no way of gaining money (outside of a gift from another city), and in fact, due to the bonds, you're losing money, so you have to overcome that as well.

Please elaborate? Many users are mentioning a bug with the water system. Or you dont have anything factual to add? I'd also like to point out that many of the issues I originally brought up (certainly more than half) are neither related to launch issues nor simple game-mechanic-ignorance. Like the fact that my city selling water wasn't earning any money for it. I'm reasonably convinced Mr. Griffith didn't even really read my post. Could be a bug. My Capital City (Main city) sells Power, Water, Sewage to its neighbor. It in turn buys garbage and something else. This keeps my city from completely going under. Ugh, so apparently bugs just like me, then? Yup could just be a bad luck of the draw. Or try rebooting Simcity, that causes your whole region to resync. I would if the servers were working.

Maybe that's what I need to get to answer the questions I have?

I don't think you're dumb, not my intention. 1) Your simcity is basically on an aqufier, But you use up all the water faster than nature can replenish it. So you basically have the exact same choices real cities use. Import water (See California) or Treat your water and reuse it. In the game, your treatment center treats the water and puts it back in your 'aquifer'. I see it as a pretty reasonable simulation, although in reality, the treated water would go straight into your water system. 2) I don't know the threshold anymore than people in real life know the threshold for police protection 3) This is also part of the answer to #2. Your ambulance coverage is broken because the servers are broken (between cities) 1) So you're treating it as a facsimile. Which is fine, but as I just noted in the other thread about water... "1. Treating this as an "infinite" water supply defeats the purpose. If the purpose is to challenge us in water usage, then don't make it possible to completely solve the "challenge" with one easy-to-use trick. 2. There should be some hint that this is what was intended, like showing the water table replenishing under the sewage outflow pipes. This isn't occurring, so there's nothing in their data layers that would suggest this should actually be a thing that could happen." 2) My point is that in real life there is no "threshold" for a neighborhood to send police coverage to another neighborhood. It's a judgment call. I understand that they have to have some limits in the game, but the fact that these game-based thresholds are completely unknowable bothers me. 3) Maybe. But again, how am I supposed to know that it's this reason, and not because I haven't reached this ethereal "threshold"? I simply want to know what's happening in the game so that I can adjust my play style accordingly. How can I adjust my play style if I don't even know what I should be adjusting? Um, you guys do realize that SC4 is one of my favorite games of all time, right? I know how city-simulation games work. I've played pretty much all of them (even Cities XL). Zpike, the city I ran out of water in was a city with "max" water supply. It now has almost zero. As for the sewage->treatment->water not being a bug, that's fine, but there's no way I would have figured out that that's a way of "fixing" my water problems by myself. I would have assumed, logically, that dumping sewage would not lead to an infinitely-replenishing water table. That makes no sense. kgpurrs, it should be a challenge to build a large, successful region. It should take strategy and wise use of resources. There should be moments of frustration, but it should be a moment to learn and recover. That has not been my experience so far. My experience has been that I don't even know what's going on in my city half the time, and have no idea where to even begin looking. How can I learn from a mistake when I don't even know what the mistake is in the first place, and have no idea where to find out? They claim data layers give you more information about your city than ever before. But not all mechanics have a data layer, and for those that don't, you're stuck just accepting that what's going on is intended behavior (if you can even know what's going on). EDIT: I'd also like to point out that I could easily create a large, successful region on my own if I wanted to given what I know of SimCity so far. But I'd have to forego some of the aspects of the game I want to try in order to do so. Which is ridiculous game design... "we have made this available for you, but good luck figuring out how to implement it how you want to successfully, because we're not going to explain how it works in-game". ... some of us know who you are and still have your maps in our region folders, they were and still are great maps -catty Aww.

But it is almost exclusively re-used as non-potable water. In other words, it's a way to put less of a strain on the main potable water supply, not to actually increase the amount of potable water coming in. And if this were to be a game mechanic, there would need to be an actual building called a 'Water Reclamation Station'. They put this issue on a big Reddit SimCity Bug List. Hopefully someone at EA reads that thing. There isn't a need for a water reclamation station. You have wastewater treatment plants for your sewer, and water filtration systems at your water facilities. Yes few places directly transfer treated waste water to a water plant. Most often it is used for irrigation or other non pottable sources. Still it goes back into the water table. Hence in the game if you do not have a sanitation system, you pollute your water source. If you treat it, it should replenish the water table as all water on the planet is recycled naturally. Yes you will see some districts name their wastewater plants as water reclamation plant, it is still in essence a wastewater treatment plant. The add ons to the facilities in simcity reproduce this effect. They need adjustments, and i agree one of the region projects should be a water resovoir as well, for realism. I might not have as much of a problem with this explanation were it not for two important points: 1. Treating this as an "infinite" water supply defeats the purpose. If the purpose is to challenge us in water usage, then don't make it possible to completely solve the "challenge" with one easy-to-use trick. 2. There should be some hint that this is what was intended, like showing the water table replenishing under the sewage outflow pipes. This isn't occurring, so there's nothing in their data layers that would suggest this should actually be a thing that could happen.

Ya, same issue here.

This. Using an illogical exploit is not "challenging" or "stimulating" in any way. If the idea is to challenge us to prevent from running out of water, don't make it to where the only solution is an undocumented method that provides "infinite" water. I disagree. This is exactly the kind of thing I like figuring out and should NOT be documented in the help docs. Half the fun of playing new games is figuring out all the tricks and features and how to use them. I am with you on this one. If everything was just documented than all we would be doing is running the manual and where would our creativity come into being? I like having to figuring things out. I have yet to get my game but hopefully over the weekend I should be playing it and I already have a quiet a idea of the advanced game mechanics just from watching couple of letsallbemayor and other streams. It really is not that difficult to figure things out. Please tell me exactly how I was supposed to "just figure out" that placing a water pump next to a sewage outflow pipe was a good idea. Especially when it doesn't actually register as increasing the water table. I like having to figure things out too, but when you end up having to figure out online that "oh, well, if you do these completely illogical things you can get an illogical infinite water supply", it's not very winsome.

This, this, and more this. It's not like it's unreasonable to have water problems, but right now we have two options in a developed region: 1. Run out of water. Sorry, you're screwed. 2. Dump your sewage into the ground untreated, then pump out the dirty water and treat it for drinking water. And you can essentially get infinite water this way. There is nothing about this option that is logical, it's completely unrealistic, and there's no documentation that suggests that this is a potential solution. If they allowed the aquifers to replenish more frequently (especially in cities with "high" water supplies), this wouldn't be a problem, as you said. You'd still have to work with the challenge of building in cities with "low" water supplies and having the water run out, but at least you could source it from the regions with "high" water supplies. If that's the case, great!

But it is almost exclusively re-used as non-potable water. In other words, it's a way to put less of a strain on the main potable water supply, not to actually increase the amount of potable water coming in.

Ya, I was gonna say, that's for non-potable water. Actually I did find one stat on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_treatment See the first paragraph. The ONLY place that even USES this method is Singapore, and it's not their only source of water. No other developed country currently (directly) uses treated sewage for their municipal water supply.

Maybe as a source, but not as their only source of potable water. And as far as I know, there's nowhere in real life where it's dumped into the ground untreated, then re-pumped out and treated. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's treated at the sewage treatment plant (to make it non-hazardous), sent directly to a treatment facility (or dumped into a surface-water source like a lake or river), and re-treated (to make it potable).