Catmando

Oh dear God, I hadn't even thought of that. Multiplayer could become SimEmpire: the practical objective would be to create a ruling elite of cities with a slight majority and enslave promising new cities in the region to funnel money into the capital. I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep tonight.

I've considered ideas like this before, but I have reservations. I don't want to keep my city locked in the "simple" setting for its entire life. I would prefer at least being able to move freely between the levels. I realize this could be abused, though, and I'm not sure how it would work if, say, the number of types of resources in your city gets changed, although I think problems with that could probably be solved. I'm also interested in the method Synekism used. They had a secondary menu that could be opened called "sampi," named after the Greek letter. It had more complex options that aren't originally visible. The menu's options can be changed freely, assuming the players care to, but it's inconspicuous enough so as not to distract more casual players who don't care about stuff like that.

I think there's significant problems with your view, though. Consider what could happen: You get put in a region with a bunch of random players. Anarchy ensues and you all try to damage each other. There's no government or some ineffective tribunal as in my scenario. You get put in a region with a bunch of random players. There's an effective tribunal. It's not explained how it is effective. You join a region with your friends. The tribunal is ineffective because you're all working together anyway. You join a region with your friends. Most of you work together, but one or two try and stir up trouble. The tribunal attempts to punish them. It's not explained how effective it is. In two of those scenarios the tribunal is ineffective, in one because it can't get anything done and in the other because it doesn't need to do anything. In another it's effective because magic: do you just happen to have a bunch of well-meaning people outnumbering the "trolls"? That's unlikely to say the least. Finally, in the last, it's unknown how effective it is. Its effectiveness would probably depend on what it can do to punish wrongdoers: economic sanctions, fines, whatever. It seems to me the best solution is to just have a person in charge of the entire region, like the founder, who sets the rules and hands out punishments when necessary. This would avoid anarchy unless the founder actually enjoys the anarchy. I wouldn't play on a region like that (I probably won't play multiplayer at all), but leaving it as an option is nice.

I changed my wording a bit to account for this. Roads, highways, and rails are pretty much the basis of Simcity's transportation, excluding things like seaports and airports (and spaceports, I guess—all of them are structured quite a bit differently).

I see virtually no reason either. As far as I can tell cities were meant to work together in-game anyway. The only problem I can think of involves exploiting the isolation of the cities. In my current region I have three extremely polluted industrial dystopias surrounding my clean, happy metropolis and contributing a hundred thousand jobs or so as well as taking care of the city's garbage and power consumption. In other words, I'm essentially exporting half my city's worries at a fraction of the normal cost. I've heard of this method a lot and it seems to be pretty common. I don't think this will be possible or at least nearly as easy in the new Simcity game, especially with the "balls of nasty" we've heard about, but we'll have to wait and see. This would be great. Perhaps it could be a "Region Quickview" feature. It would save your current city and then zoom out high enough to let you see the region and take a snapshot of it if you want.

Simulating transit is just a part of simulating a sim's behavior as a whole. I think we just got a bit too general. Of course, at this point I don't think there's much to discuss. I have a feeling we're going to be reduced to polls and wishlists for the next twelve months. Might as well start early. Fellow Simtropolians, which do you value more: a few highly customizable transportation choices (e.g. roads, highways, and rails, with variable lanes, customizable intersections, changing speed limits, restricting traffic type choices available, etc.), or a large variety of relatively unchangeable transit options (e.g. walking paths, bike paths, streets, roads, country roads, avenues, boulevards (they're specifically tree-lined, if I remember correctly), one-ways, highways, elevated highways, trams, rails, elevated rails, and so on ad infinitum)?

On the other hand, everyone loves a little anarchy. Who's to say the tribunal will even be effective? From the article posted in that other thread, it seems mayors are tasked with competing for citizens in multiplayer or working together if they choose. If I had to compete with you and everyone else in the region for a bigger, better, more prosperous city, I wouldn't be afraid to send a "ball of nasty" at you or anyone else, and no one else should feel like they can't do the same to me. With our region's geopolitics in that sorry state, what good would a tribunal do?

It may be that the idea behind the "sewage works" is to just dump the toxic sludge into the water. Or maybe it's something like the toxic waste dump, so it pollutes everything around itself but gives your city money. The idea of dirty tricks is rather a matter for the Regional Police wouldn't you say? I'd like to see the establishment of such a force or a tribunal where fines for such things can be levied, as well as damages payable to the offended cities. No action should be without consequences. I think actions should definitely have consequences and it seems to me that's a fundamental idea of Simcity: you can do whatever you want, but you will pay for it, one way or another; add a ton of educational institutions, and be they higher EQ or massive budget deficits, consequences will occur. I'm not sure a regional police will exist or need exist, though. For example, that sewage works may make neighboring cities undesirable, but it may give you bad press as well. The article JanH posted above seems to put emphasis on the importance of media and attracting your citizens in a very direct way. If the media in your city is very watchful of you, they may harp about it. I can see it now on the news ticker: "Mayor [x] Blamed for Burgeoning Eco-disaster" or something very alarmist and... advisory.

It may be that the idea behind the "sewage works" is to just dump the toxic sludge into the water. Or maybe it's something like the toxic waste dump, so it pollutes everything around itself but gives your city money.

This may sound controversial, but I think a lot of time that went into customizing this game is wasted time. I think Maxis could have made it worlds easier to add, say, new transportation networks. I don't mean to say the NAM or SAM or RHW or something is useless, but so much time went into making those when the game was not "friendly" toward the new stuff at all: having a dozen puzzle pieces just to build a diagonal street?! It's an improvement on the original game, sure, but at the cost of a lot of effort dodging game limitations. If Maxis has cleaned up their act and made/is going to make the game more custom content friendly, I don't doubt we'll see more custom content available, of a higher quality, and in less time. EDIT: Just to be clear, by higher quality I mean better fitting into the game. No one doubts the NAM is well done, but it gets back to the issue of actually making it work well with the game.

I think what the NAM did in this respect was great. The Ped malls, that is. With those it became possible to create "streets" out of cobblestone roads, grass paths, and so on. It really added to the aesthetic in some places and made things like Schulmania's roadless cities possible (although if I remember correctly, Schulmanator still used subways for long distance travel due to the game's silly commute length rules). I think this could be go along with the plaza-zoning discussed earlier in another thread. If we could build public squares and stuff around which we could zone businesses or homes or what have you that may congregate around it. I think it goes without saying that transportation in general can be extended a lot, though.

Have they addressed just how detailed the modular building is? Will it go right down to what we would consider props in simcity, like trash cans, street lamps, and such, essentially becoming an in-game lot editor but without the base and overlay textures editing, or is it going to be a lot less intricate? I haven't heard much about it other than the article above, and I'm really, really curious how Maxis is going to do it.

Terrain/climate and all things related could use an upgrade. Do these suggestions jive with you? Alternative grid-based flattening tools, assuming there's a grid at all (because getting nice flat land by putting down single pieces of street in Simcity 4 was annoying to a degree I can't express in words)Different climatesWeather, especially snowBetter slopes (thank you Nonny Moose for reminding me of this! Long-time gripe of mine)Improved handling of foundations and retaining walls.More flora variety—probably works well with climatesBetter choice of water colorAnd I suppose that, so long as these are all sufficiently moddable like in Simcity 4, the community can take care of other concerns, like fine-tuning interaction with slopes and terrain and water colors and stuff.

I do like a little mixing and matching, but I hate when styles are obviously clashing. That's the problem I was trying to highlight earlier with having big, overarching styles. "Euro" is such a huge term and it could mean anything from a rowhouse in London to a skyscraper in Frankfurt to a Mediterranean villa in in southern Italy. EDIT: Whoops, that wasn't entirely relevant, was it? Let me amend what I said: Throwing "American" into the mix might create even more problems. A skyscraper in New York might look all right alongside something out of Canary Wharf, but for the majority of buildings from other styles it might not fit very well, especially if Maxis tries to play up the diversity (like introducing distinctly Art Deco styles; I'm looking at you, Simcity 4 New York style).

It seems to me it's the kind of thing they've already taken into consideration, but if not I think it's worth mentioning here. I wonder, though, can I contract with certain construction companies à la Coal Enterprises and let them build nice pretty HQs in my city, or will it all be city-directed?

I think it would be ridiculous if a ten-year-old became a professor at a university too. I wouldn't mind for the game to have a few absolutes in this respect. While the outliers produced by the kind of simulation flowmotion suggested would be amusing, they might bother users looking for more realism. Then again, I think flowmotion's suggestion could be an opportunity for Maxis to introduce some of their classic humor into the game: 90% chance the sixty-year-old man relaxes at home, 5% chance he responds to the call from the tavern, and 5% chance he rides a llama through the streets.

Aha! I tried going to check with the Wayback Machine. I think I found what you're talking about: It seems to be "multiplayer" type thing I was thinking of. Also, If you want to see the rest of the old site for nostalgia's sake, you should be able to visit most of it with this link. I had some "browser incompatibility issues" on most snapshots of the website, but that time seems to work all right. At any rate, getting back to the topic, I think we can at least conclude from this that Maxis never had multiplayer on their website for Simcity 4, although they may have tried to get something up and running. This doesn't really tell us much about the new Simcity, although it seems to me if they were trying to do multiplayer back in 4 they're at least taking the idea as less an afterthought and more a core mechanic of the game this time around.

Here's an idea I haven't seen touched on in suggestion threads before: the city should have a workforce of its own. Now, in Simcity 4 we did see this a little with jobs at power plants, hospitals, police stations, fire stations, and the like. This didn't go far enough, though. One thing that's bothered me about the game is that it's never explained how the roads are maintained or by whom. Obviously the city throws oodles of money toward transportation, but for what? A continuous supply of asphalt? The city should be able to hire and pay workers of its own in the transportation budget, for all the money it has. Assuming we can tweak how much money to spend on roads and building maintenance and the like, the city should also be hiring more workers proportional to that. Back in Simcity 4 you could push budgets up to 120%. I don't remember what this feature was for—I think I remember reading that it's supposed to make potholes disappear if they appeared due to low funding in the past—but it should also correspond to a larger workforce on the city's road maintenance. This should also apply to construction. A lot of temporary jobs could be created just building new sections of the city, new roads, new rails, and so on. (Sorry if this has been brought up. I tried to read as much of this thread as I could, but it gets repetitive at times as it is.)

Simcity 4 kind of had an online aspect if I remember correctly, didn't it? Back on the old simcity.ea.com website? It's been such a long time I honestly don't remember for sure, but I thought there were multiplayer regions to play on or something. Do you think it's worth trying to draw parallels to that thing, or is it too old to be relevant?

I think it's possible to have a natural cap based on balancing the effects of a landmark with the space it takes up and the costs to maintain it. It would be more indirect (so you won't see something like "Your city can have x landmarks at this time") but should still be clear enough when you zone too much and encounter economic problems. That said, I did suggest a cap earlier, so I'm kind of undecided about this.

Wow! That's a pretty comprehensive plan. I actually really like your idea of national park zoning. It's something I've been wanting to suggest for ages for a new Simcity, but I figured nothing of the sort would come about. A few years back, before Cities XL and maybe during the SC Societies time (but I'm pretty sure before it), I attempted to make a comprehensive list of all ploppable buildings I would like to see in the next installation of Simcity. I had good intent with the list, but it was doomed to fail. You see, I was thinking like an unimaginative Simcity 4 user. While that term would ideally be a contradiction in terms or at least some kind of heresy, at the time it was no less than a reality. I was thinking in terms of grids and zones with definite size and large, complicated sets of modular buildings all intended to (hopefully) work together. So it wouldn't have made a bad list in Simcity 4, but for a new game, where the idea is to innovate, it was disastrously stupid of me. Here's a few excerpts from one of the pages I found after looking for a while: One of my greatest blunders was attempting to make a comprehensive list of the kinds of parks I wanted to see. I started with small grass park sizes without trees, then moved up to with trees, then grass parks with paths, and so on. Then I realized in Simcity there were like a dozen grasses, and how could I not account for even more in the next game?! I considered erasing, but as I looked back at my list I realized that with a little flexibility in the game's design the whole thing would be obsolete. Why should I have to concern myself with sixty-five kinds of well-watered grassy parks when I should be able to plop a few trees and designate the whole area as a park? I don't think I ever brought up the list or the conclusions I gained from it on this site on my old account, but I think the topic's as worthy of mention now as ever. Now before I delve completely into tangents of tangents about my old ST days, I had a few other comments about what you said. I fully agree on the idea of designating whole city blocks and neighborhoods historic. I wanted to know some particulars, though. Would the buildings necessarily have to be used, or could they sit empty (and city-maintained, of course, so they grow dilapidated) and still generate tourism for the city? And on the topic of city-maintained, would we need a pretty sizable budget for maintaining those buildings if the Sims themselves don't take care of them, or will that not really be a problem? Also, if you're trying to make an entire neighborhood of the city historic, should the overall look of it change at all? For example, would there be old style cobble roads, old style lampposts, etc.? I think this would add to the overall aesthetic look if you were actually making the area historic, but if you bend the intended use of the historic zoning tool even a little bit it might become more of a burden. After all, sidewalk sizes and styles change in Simcity 4 automatically to the type of zoning alongside them, but this can get to be tacky. Regarding plaza zoning, that would be really nice so long as we have some choice as to what the tiling would look like. After all, there's old-style city plazas, piazzas, squares, etc., that would only really fit with historical looking buildings like old churches and wall-to-wall buildings and the like. The Piazza San Marco in Venice is an example of this. How could that square look good anywhere but exactly where it was, lying before the Basilica and aside the Doge's Palace and Libreria? Alternatively, how could anything but a square of its design look good lying before the Basilica and aside the Doge's Palace and Libreria? Perhaps (assuming you're okay with stylistic changes) if historic zoning and public space zoning could be overlaid. That sounds like a rather messy compromise if you ask me, though. Furthermore, I'd still want to make some changes to such spaces on my own. After all, Central Park isn't just trees and grass; it has the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Belvedere Castle, a skating rink, pedestrian paths, and so on. I would hope such attractions would add to the value of the space rather than devalue it by removing valuable space or something. I suppose if they are all attractions in and of themselves they may contribute, but at this stage it's hard to tell how such things would be considered. After all, the rich don't enjoy being pedestrians in my poor, overgrown Simcity 4 metropolis; just imagine telling them they have public space to walk around in rather than a nice big skyscraper full of new condos.

The problem is, some people actually like seeing those in their cities! This is especially true for people trying to recreate a city. Even now lots of people make popular buildings from around the world in their cities. Didn't Petronas come out just last year over at SC4D? There's definitely a demand for those buildings, even for those who aren't recreating real life cities. I guess the job of adding real life buildings to the game could be relegated entirely to BATters, but as long as they're optional in the game I don't see much of a problem. Again, if Maxis resolves menu clutter issues then I don't see how the existence of the landmarks in the game could bother you. Now, the idea of making a landmark out of "bits and pieces" would be nice too, but I think that could go for all buildings. We're already seeing some modularity and customization in the game anyway: Remember this video? It apparently demonstrates some flexibility in how you may design public buildings. Is this what you were going for?

A distinction needs to be made for the Old European themes. Styles in different countries in Europe are unique. An old street in Lisbon would not look like an old street in Madrid would not look like an old street in Paris would not look like an old street in London and so on—you get my point. I feel having one theme for all of them would look like some kind of eclectic mismatch of old Western European wall-to-wall buildings. Having thirty themes seems kind of excessive, but I guess we could compromise and just make User-created styles an option. That way we could fix up the styles to our taste. I'd be really interested to see how Maxis would pull such a thing off in a remotely useful way, though. Designating the style of buildings one by one sounds tedious. Perhaps overarching themes (Old, West, East, etc.) could be implemented with more specific styles as lower levels (Paris, London, New York, etc.)?

I'm a big fan of disasters in Simcity. The one I probably want the most is floods. I wanted those so badly in SC4 for those days when I was bored of building up my city and would prefer wreaking havoc (which is more often nowadays). The only ones I voted against were droughts and cyclones. I just don't see a way in which a drought could be implemented in a way I would like. I guess it's possible and I wouldn't mind it if a good drought was added in the game, but I'd prefer Maxis just not waste their time on it. When it comes to cyclones, I think a tsunami/flood is sufficient for me. Cyclones would bring unique forms of destruction of their own that tsunamis do not, like wind damage, but I think a tsunami is good enough for me. I don't like the idea of war or missile strikes or anything of the sort. I'm also pretty reserved about plane crashes. It's all in the interest of realism and fun, I'm sure, but I feel it would be too controversial.

I don't see why we can't just designate certain buildings landmarks, with a cap on the number of landmarks of a certain kind based on the characteristics of the city. For example, if you have some 50,000 jobs in your business district and you wanted to make a certain building stand out you could designate it as a landmark, giving it some sort of tourist status and maybe making money for your city because of tours and so on, but still functioning as an office building or whatever it is. This could apply to other buildings like museums and such depending on whether or not your city has sufficient education, etc. In that way landmarks would be a lot like rewards, except you could choose which buildings to designate a landmark. This has problems, of course. I would miss a lot of the old buildings. I recently moved my plugins folder out of My Documents because it was over six gigabytes and was making the game really slow, and while screwing around in a vanilla city, I went ahead and placed all the landmarks. I didn't realize how much I actually used to like the landmarks before I stopped using them. I'd say having a long list of available museums to designate as landmarks would be a nice compromise for me, although then we get right back into the "menu clutter" problem. Perhaps Maxis will find a way to avoid menu clutter issues? I've always wanted to create my own menus so I wouldn't have to wait a full minute for all ten thousand landmarks or parks to appear. I could have a menu for beach/seaside things, a menu for ploppable commercial buildings, and so on. The way I see, being able to organize one's own UI is really just an extension of the necessity of organizing one's plugins folder. When I did that around two gigabytes in and later around four and a half, it took weeks but was well-worth it and I have rarely had issues finding something I stuck in there since then.