Noobi-Wan

No but I have had a few issues with it needing to rebuild every time I start a new city around it. I would hazard a guess that it is bugged but I never really go in for the great works so I cannot say for sure I am afraid.

It is an interesting idea but in practice I think this might become quite cumbersome. As everything is done based upon an in game hourly profit and loss any sort of predictability would be pulled out of the process which means you would probably want a very well balanced RCI city to afford you the luxury of doing this. If there was another specialisation like finance where you could build a stock exchange and manage this sort of trading from the HQ I think it would be easier to do. Whether this would be possible is another thing....

Does anyone know how the traffic is generated? Does it get a bump in a similar way to population numbers? I agree that the emergency vehicles should get right of way as a start but it just seems that if the traffic were thinned out a bit then it wouldn't hurt so much if they didn't. I have resorted to using helicopters only on the fire station as they can disregard the traffic but it is quite an expensive exercise.

That tends to be an issue with road layout. Are you using a continuous spiral layout?

I gave up on fire trucks and just use the helicopters on the larger fire station. Traffic is not so much of an issue when they are flying over it! Edit: never mind my edit you already covered it!!!

I never do. I find the multiplayer experience way too frustrating to put up with it in the long term, let alone the additional traffic issues that come out of it.

This seems to be a fairly common issue. I have got around it by cutting my trade ports off from the highway connections and forcing export via rail and/or sea. Try setting up your city with R and C in a completely segregated area (but with the freeway connection as nothing will build otherwise) to your manufacturing specialisation and trade. Connect the two with rail or streetcars only and force the sims to commute using the mass transit options to the area with the manufacturing. Remember that your sims will walk along streetcar tracks to get to work which can help getting the power and utilities working but this will stop cars from entering the manufacturing zone. I use little stretches of streetcar track like a foot path for the sims. This means that you have to set up an entire city with two sets of all of the essential services like power, water, sewage etc. It also means a lot of forward planning but the benefits of a city that does not have to overcome traffic to trade outweigh the dual expense of utilities. This approach will stuff up contribution to a great work as they are dependant upon a road based trade connection as far as I know but I just gift a few million from a few of these cities and buy a great work with the gift money and a bit of importing.

Well, yeah. However will electronics be freight? Will they let you import freight in the trade centers? How they implement this will tell the tale. However I'm waiting for something that means something. The game was working fine for me. And when I played it last after patch 5 Armageddon didn't come down and wreck my cities. But if they don't add some content and an offline mode then I've gotten everything that I find useful from it. As it stood when I quit playing I had no traffic issues, no money issues, no gifting issues, and could pretty much do whatever I felt like doing. At which point it lost my interest. I suspect that the number of players has dropped off on their servers. And old farts like me don't get to answer surveys. It's a good point re importing freight. I hope that would be the solution. I like the idea of having industry as the backbone of a city and a viable alternative to specialisation.

Does this sound to good to be true or what? If this is legit then I think it is fair to say that they have been listening to the community or at least trying to figure out where they went wrong (which I don't think would have taken much work). That said I am not as outraged as some of you seem to be. Lets not forget that they were trying to give us a multiplayer city building game. Unfortunately they have been pitching this at a community that is accustomed to playing a single player game whilst creating its own content and not paying for the privilege. My gut is telling me that this could be a troll so I am not going to get my hopes up until I am playing offline on a huge map...

It all comes down to balance. Although they look cool I don't think we were ever intended to have the massive commercial blocks that we had in SC4. I usually try and stagger the size if the buildings to maintain the aesthetics without having to play whack a mole with the bulldozer as they go abandoned.

^ problem here is that EA own and run the servers and clearly do not want to give control of the game over to the community as a whole. I agree that this would certainly allow more transparency with the process but I have to wonder if it would actually fix the issues that have been raised (of course no disrespect intended, there are like you say a lot of very talented people here). I appreciate that the process of fixing the game must be immensely complex and they are trying to communicate this to the community (in the forums etc) but I think they have missed the point that they are dealing with a fan base who, due to their choice of game, like to micromanage. Some of the frustration will be coming from that feeling of being shut out of the process and seemingly ignored by the people running the show (which I suspect is not the case). Perhaps we would feel a bit better if they issued a weekly update about what they are doing, whilst issuing some feedback to the main problems people are facing. Even if it was a simple "hey, you know what, the maps could be bigger but we feel it is better to fix the gameplay issues first and then up the size" or "thanks for your idea on abc they are great but cannot be done because of xyz". I think they could do with adding this in as part of a global news feed in game. At least that way it would stop them getting spammed with offline play requests!

Well I think you ruled out anything to with your PC!

I have to agree with the more than one great work per four city cluster or at least adding road connections between the clusters so that you are able to actually share with the region like advertised. What about a regional sewage/water treatment facility that on one GW plot covers two needs for the region. I might even pay for that as DLC if it were implemented. I would also like to see more flexibility with what we are able to do with the roads in the cities like adding tunnels, overpasses and off ramps as an easy to use option (shift click terraforming is easy after practice but is very frustrating).

I had a similar issue with the solar farm where I started it in one city then moved to another city to complete it. For about half an hour I couldn't see the great work and then out I nowhere it appeared. The only thing I would suggest is to play the other cities for a while and see if it materialises.

^ I like that No cars!

Ha maybe one day!

Some of the ones leaving may have been sent by the region (basically randomly generated delivery trucks that come to collect from you). You shouldn't need any delivery trucks for your exporting trade depot/port as the region will send them in to collect resources. As for importing, your delivery trucks will take the stuff to where it is needed (eg if you import coal and ore your delivery trucks will take this stuff to your smelters). I dont know if this will help but for exporting I never use any trucks ...

I thought they broke the link between commercial and residential when they made this one?

Turn off traffic 100% happiness

I'm not sure but I think the message is probably bugged. Have you checked to see if they are tourists etc?

Maybe but I think the difference would be that global demand would only increase with the increasing global population. Even sims have to eat right? This could lead to food being a massive money spinner in the long run even if the price didn't change over time with the increased demand and all that.

I would go for this as another specialisation but I have had an idea that I think could be applied to this and other DLC like it. We have all noted the limited space that we have to build in and I have to say I am not convinced that we will see any sort of speedy resolution on this from EA. What struck me as I read a post from one of the maxis developers was that there is a ton of space around our cities that is not utilised and this is essentially treated as a frame around the canvas of the city tile. What if, as a result of plopping certain agricultural HQ buildings or other specialised buildings (grain mills, slaughter houses, food processing plants, etc) the "frame" around your city started to reflect the specific agricultural leaning that city is taking on? By this I mean that corn fields and the like appear on the outskirts of town or around the freeway leading into your city. This would allow you to make farms without them clogging up the city tile and may give more of a sense of effecting the region.

It is starting to feel like they have deliberately released a broken game and are selling little bits and pieces to bring it up to scratch. I won't be buying this one in a hurry. I would buy a NAM style DLC if anyone from Maxis/EA is reading this. Just a thought.

You should check out skye stormes videos on YouTube he does an excellent basics on education video that deals with a "knowledge network". The network is generated by colleges and universities and is represented by pink lines on roads just like power or water. I think the closer the power plant is to a college or uni the more benefit it gets. As for the current city I am thinking it might be too late I am sorry to say.

I think Screwball is right I had this issue with a building right next to a park. Since 5.0 I have noticed that the traffic is going nuts again so the old problems associated with this are back. The sims (as I understand it) want to get everything done in a day. They travel to and from work but stop off at commercial buildings or parks on the way home to get happiness. If the traffic stops them from completing this in a day then they start moaning about it.