Marla_Singer

I unfortunately already know I will never have the time to build a city at that scale.

CO devs have been very clear on the fact that 1 million agents was a hard-coded limit... not simply a problem of PC size. However, we should also have in mind that 1 million agents don't equal 1 million population in SC4. In SimCity 4, the figures for residential population were insanely boosted: 2.5k for a skyscraper residential, 15 dudes in a small house. If C:SL is like the Cities in Motion series, residential population will be rather shrinked: an 8-story buildings will host 20 people or so. That means that a city with 200k agents will look very very huge, with 10,000 appartment buildings. However, each of those 200k agents will be simulated simultaneously with an appartment, a job, and favourite shops. And as such, the figures given will have a direct effect on traffic in such a way that well balancing game is done very differently than on a statistics-based simulation like SC4. I have absolutely no clue whether or not C:SL will have succeeded in the balance. From what I've seen on "Let's Play" videos, some average sized cities had big problems in traffic whereas much bigger ones looked very empty. It could be simply that one had messy transportation and the other not, or that the game has balance issues. I can't say it for now as I haven't played the game. But anyway, no matter the issue, all this should be easily moddable as we can easily modify the number of residents and jobs in a buildings. So for those who would like to see more agents on their city that could easily do the trick. And of course, no matter if the 1 million limit is hard-coded, I'm sure that modders will be able to break that hard-coded limit (I've seen them doing much more difficult things than that), so maybe if you have a super-computer you could handle something even larger indeed. This being said, I've built a map of Greater Paris with 100k agents for Cities in Motion 1, and that already looked like a lot of people to manage. So we'll see!

SIMoViEStAr posted today several "let's play" videos with a city of 150,000 inhabitants. The biggest I've ever seen yet.

That's the whole Colossal order team : I'm amazed such a small team based in Tampere, Finland made such an awesome game! Imagine if they had the financial capacity of Maxis...

Yes of course. From your post I just started thinking in general. I wasn't addressing only to you... though it's true I quoted you!

According to what I've read, it would be possible to start a game entirely from scratch, with nothing prebuilt at all. For more information check this out: Cities in Motion 2 – The Map Editor – Developer diary #7 Cities in Motion 2 – Dynamic Cities – Developer diary #8

Not only London... about any city in the world actually. Think about it, what's a city? We generally consider civilization started with the appearance of the first cities. Thanks to the advent of agriculture, one person could grow food for more people than just himself, thus allowing others to dedicate their daytime to other things than farming or animal husbanding. However, such a system is only people if there’s a meeting point for supply and demand: a location where craftsmen can easily swap their products in exchange for their basic needs. And the name of that place was... the city. So a city is primarily a specific location dedicated to exchange. And in order to make supply physically meets demand, we need transportation: roads, river, oasis, coast, valleys, headlands. Cities aren't placed at random, what determines why they grow on their specific location is in most cases a matter of transit (there are of course exceptions such as mining cities or forts but this remains quite marginal). All the elements we believe make a city such as housing, offices, industries, shopping, leisure or administration are only there because they are connected to one another thanks to transportation. So no, we don’t build houses and then think how it could be connected to a road, it's exactly the other way around: because there's a road only then it makes sense to grow a building. And what's the most fascinating is that our cities are almost entirely shaped on transportation. When transportation is slow and difficult, they grow dense and tight; when transportation is cheap and fast, they grow extensive and wide. Before the advent of rail, cities were dense because transportation at the time couldn't allow easy commute, thus forcing most to live in the place where they worked. Once rail arrived, cities could expand, and once cars and motorways arrived, living in detached houses was eventually affordable.

I have something for you, it's called direction signs: It doesn't guarantee the fastest route, but at least it makes you avoid dirt roads.

Cities XL maps claims to be 10.5km x 10.5km = 110 sq. km. SC2013 maps claims to be 2km x 2km = 4 sq.km. That makes Cities XL maps about 27 times bigger than SC2013 maps. However, I'm not really sure any of both game is fully accurate in its claims. Some guy calculated the SC2013 map actually needed the small dirt roads to be 20m wide in order to actually represent 2km x 2km. As for Cities XL, I don't have the game but 110 sq. km. is freaking huge... That would be about the size of a whole region in SC4!

I don't have the game, but from what I've read and seen, the worst trafic jams are mainly due to crowds of agents all getting the same instruction to go at the same place at the same time. Considering this, I believe the simplification consisting in asking to cars to get to the nearest house/job is counter-productive. Not only people all rush to the same house, but also it makes public transportation unattractive. As a result, the best outcome is to mix altogether residential, commercial and industrial zones, so that the "nearest house/job" is actually different from a point of the map to another. Considering the small size of maps, it would actually make more sense to me to randomize houses and jobs sims are going to (it would generate more realistic traffic patterns too). This could work well as long as a job slot is considered as "occupied" at the moment an agent is leaving house (and not at the moment he arrives at it). Such a move shouldn't really take more memory than a function asking them to go to the nearest job/house. It wouldn't solve all (the single regional entrance is another big issue) but it would already be a big improvement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH-CdkSqDSs

Indeed. As a matter of fact, I tend to find the Simtropolis community a lot less harsh with the game than what I can read elsewhere on more mainstream forums, twitter or reddit. We do feel most people attached with the game and wanting it to be a success. Most people here simply ask for patches and are ready to wait for them the time needed to make them operate properly.

I'm quitte fascinated by the argument saying: "this game is a reboot, it's not aimed to please the existing simcity community but actually a much larger audience". To me, it's a bit as if someone would say that GTA IV focuses too much on a male audience and thus loses the 50% of the female audience. As such, let's turn it into a socializing games focusing in getting friends on line and interacting a bit as in the sims. That's just killing the cash cow to me. A city builder should be meant to build cities. That's what made Maxis sold millions of copies in the past. Trying to make it something different won't make it a more mainstream product, it can only denature it.

Always taking the shortest route no matter its nature is not fine. It makes it impossible to guide trafic to the largest avenues. You know... it's something usually done in real life using direction signs. Considering the huge ressources Maxis/EA could invest in this game devlopment, I'm totally clueless about how such a thing could actually happen. It seems so basic to me.

This video posted on another thread actually shows how much the game is affected by these problems: Those aren't some minor glitches only a geek could find out, they are the fundamental basis of the simulation. Considering we've been told the depth of the simulation was the biggest strength of the game, we can decently be disappointed. So if I've got it well, we have micro-cities which can't even be freely connected to other contiguous neighbouring cities so that the powerful glassbox engine could make sims searching for the first empty house once leaving work? Seriously I can't figure out what game designers had in mind when making things this way. And I really try to be soft here.

Very informative video, especially the one with the Paint scheme: So to put it in a nutshell, the simulation is totally irrational and we have to play according to that irrationality in order to make things work. I could be okay with design flaws if they weren't affecting the game at such a scale. And don't tell me that's okay because pathfinding is hard to simulate: CitiesXL did it properly, even Cities in Motion did it properly. This "optimal" road layout scheme is solely based on totally crazy concepts. There's just no excuse.

Originally posted by: belfastuniguyWell I certainly didn't state that. I doubt many here have. I also seriously take issue with the fact you think that we are insecure becuase NYC is bigger than London, please, we're not pathetic. We are of course proud of our national capital, as the city which has and still is, one of the most important in the world, a city which has spearheaded progress and innovation and been at the centre of the economic, political, cultural and scientific world for thousands of years. Then again.....maybe Paris is just jealous........ quote> You see, that's exactly the kind of post which explains why Londoners are so boring to me. London, an important city for thousands of years? You mean like Rome or Istanbul? Let me clarify the point. London has a fantastic History and that would be idiotic to say the opposite. However, why do you guys always have the need to exagerate things? Londinium was founded in 43 AD and destroyed in 61 AD by the celts. It's been indeed quickly rebuilt, but quite frankly has never been a really decisive city in the Roman Empire. The fortified town has been totally abandonned in 410 AD, and resettled again as a very small town about 150 years later. London only became really a significantly influencial city around 1000 AD. That means it's been so during 1,000 years ! This is HUGE ! This is enough huge to not have to exagerate and to talk about thousands of years. London is enough great as it is to not have to rely in exaggerations to make it look interesting. Enjoy London for what it is.

The fact there are people to genuinely doubt NYC is bigger than London seems really desillusional to me. Are Brits that insecure to consider a city from a former colony can't be bigger than their motherland capital?

The thing which quite astonishes me is to see so many people able to consider London as "superior" to New York City. I mean, come on, a simple visit in both place is enough to realize that London is a provincial town compared to NYC. Even Paris, which has a more urban feel than London because of its density, feels quite small compared to New York City. If there would be such as a thing as a "capital of the world", I could only imagine it to be the largest city open to a large cultural diversity and this is necessarily New York City. Indeed, I don't question the fact London is also multicultural, but so are many other cities: Toronto, Paris, Hong Kong, Sydney, Singapore, Los Angeles, New York. Among those, the largest one is clearly NYC, by far. Thus I don't even understand how they could be an argument about it. Another thing I might add, is that, at the opposite of a city like NYC which has 150 years of massive immigration history behind them, the phenomenon is fairly recent in London since it globally dates back to the 50's, and only reach a critical level in the 90's. The city in Europe which has the oldest tradition of immigration and multiculturalism is not London, it is actually Paris. Remember that Edith Piaf who was Italian/Algerian Kabyle, Josephine Baker who was African-American, Charles Aznavour who is Armenian. Remember Hemmingway's descriptions of Paris. Well, I could go on this way forever. I won't claim Paris is the capital of the world because of that... A simple walk in the streets of Manhattan is enough to make me understand how stupid that would be. And walks in London streets are even less impressive than walks in Paris... so you get my point.

Looking at the screenies, we see that the company is French ! There are indeed several Haussmanian-style builidings and many Parisian skyscrapers. Building 04 is EDF tower in La D

Hey everyone, I personally like a lot accelerated videos in an urban environment ! I think it would be great if you anyone could post cool timelapse videos they've found over the internet. I've actually already made my little personal mix of several Paris timelapse videos I've found over the internet. The only sequence I've created myself is the accelerated evolution of Paris metro map accross the last century. Anyway, here's the video ! http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlb_U95iYsY

Thanks s_olah. That was fun !

The UK and London have led the world in banking services and still do. You won't find many, some but not many, French banks operating in America, Asia or Africa. The financial and insurance companies of the United Kingdom are some of the largest and most important in the world and have been since the days of the British Empire.quote>The list of world's largest banks can vary depending if we rank them accoriding to shareholder equity, full assets, annual revenues. However, generally speaking, both British and French banks rate at similar levels. The UK has HSBC and Bank of Scotland (which is actually based in Edinburgh), whereas France has BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole (which has merged with Crédit Lyonnais) and Société Générale (all based in Paris). As for the insurance business. The three leading corporations are globally AXA (based in Paris), ING (based in Amsterdam) and Allianz (based in Munich). Once again, I don't see at all British insurances dominating French insurances at a worldwide level. Let's get things clear. I'm not here to make a silly contest on things I actually don't care really about (I don't work neither in Banking nor in Insurance industries). My point is simply that you seem to despise French banks and insurances a little too fast. I see that as a good thing, London has also prided itself on its wealth of open parks and gardens, the fact it seem more 'suburban' than Paris I believe is a benefit to London though I would disagree central London is suburban in nature. Remember that although incredibly beautiful central Paris is pretty much completely engineered to look the same everywhere with uniform building height, severe planning restrictions and similar architecture. London has pretty much, bar some areas, been allowed to develop and grow naturally. With areas that have been planned, but not to the extent of Paris. Paris also has shunned its commercial and financial sector to the outskirts of the city while London has it at its very core.quote>This isn't true at all. The largest business district in Paris is located in the district of the Opera and the Champs-Elysées at the very heart of the city. This district hosts 420,000 workers/employees, 80,400 companies and 8.5 million m² (91 million sq. ft) of office space.

Paris is much more urban than London. That's obvious. The environment of the City of Westminster, in the heart of London is more "suburban" than many inner suburbs of Paris. An average building in Central London would have 3 to 5 stories whereas an average building in Central Paris would have 6 to 8 stories (counting ground floor in both cases). Paris is actually the most densely populated city in the Western world. Its population density matches the one of the borough of Manhattan. This is not necessarily a good thing. Indeed if we compare transportations at all levels, Paris infrastructures are always busier than those of London : subway, suburban trains, motorways, light rail. The only transportation system where London matches Paris is the bus system. However, this is quite logic considering London bus system is much more complementary to the tube than is Paris system to the metro/RER. Anyway, Paris is more crowded than London, and benefits from less green parks than London. As a result, people are much more stressed in Paris than they are in London. Something explaining why Parisians are rude (explain, but don't forgive). In this aspect, Paris is actually much more comparable to NYC than it is to London. As a matter of fact, both Paris and NYC are structurated in the same way : with a dense core (City of Paris, Manhattan), then dense inner suburbs/boroughs (Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens in NYC and 92, 93 and 94 departments in Paris), then large sprawl. Somehow, Paris and NYC are the two major cities worldwide where the borders of the "central city" are the most clearly defined (Paris périphérique in one case and the island of Manhattan in the other). Financially speaking, London beats Paris, but that's logic considering that the UK is traditionally a credit-base economy whereas France used to be a banking-base economy. As anywhere else, the French economy tends to be more and more financed through the financial system, instead of the banking system, so things evolve. However, it's natural for London to be in advance. On the other side, Paris economy is very diversified, and overall stronger than London. Paris has leading companies in a large number of activities : banking and insurances, utilities, food and drug stores, motor vehicules, aeronautics, engineering and construction... London relies more on the financial sectors. Even if it still benefits of some other key companies in their own sector, it's still less true than in Paris. However, globally speaking (outside big business), current economic trends are much more favourable to London than they are to Paris. It was the opposite 15 years ago, so everything changes. Anyway, all this to say that in the end of the day, both Paris and London are fantastic cities. Very different but still fantastic. As a Parisian, I dislike the very suburban aspect London has compared to Paris. From a Parisian point of view, Central London is just a giant inner suburb. However, London suburbs are I believe nicer to live on a daily basis than Paris suburbs. They are organized as a city (which is logic considering they are part of the Greater London), whereas Paris suburbs are organized as small towns we couldn't manage the growth of. Probably I say so because I'm parisian myself, but I tend to find Paris streetlife much more fascinating than London's. To tell the truth, my two favourite cities on earth are Paris and NYC, and I realized recently that I actually love them both for the same reasons (they do have many things in common). Anyway, I can understand people see things differently. Obviously in this thread Parisians like better Paris and London people like better London. That's a good thing since it means people are happy of the place they live in. And that's the most important.

Anyway, after all these pictures showing the Eastern popular districts. Here are some nice aerials giving you another impression of Paris:

People will never like La Défense... 10 years ago, people were saying it was too boxy, now people are saying it's too extravagant. Ah well. I guess French people don't know how to get urban things right.. that's probably the reason why Paris is the most visited city on earth. Paris HAS massively changed during the last 150 years ! Paris had 2 million people in 1860, it had 11.6 million people in 2005 !! Most of the Haussmanian buildings which made Paris famous have been built from 1890 to 1930... which means they are not significantly older than NYC art-deco skyscrapers. Frankly, I'm desperate to see how Paris is so badly known in a forum about a game such as Sim City. Hearing some, we could believe that Paris is Venice. In the western world, NYC is the only city that could challenge Paris regarding vibrancy and crowds. The city proper of Paris has the same density as Manhattan, and it's larger ! The inner suburbs of Paris have the same density as NYC outlying boroughs. Paris is a more than alive city. It's not because Americans get fantasies about the Paris of the 30's, which in itself is very honouring, that it means Paris is still like in the 30's ! Paris is one thousand cities in one. There are so many diversity in Paris that a whole life is not enough to discover it fully. I've spent my whole life in Paris, and I still discover whole districts that I had no idea they existed, and this as much in the city proper than in the inner suburbs. Paris has not one... but FOUR Chinatowns: The 13th district (predominantly Cantonese Chinese and South East Asians), Belleville (predominantly Mandarin Han Chinese), the Sentier (trusting the textile industry), and Lognes and its surroundigns in the suburbs. Paris is a multicultural city welcome migrants from all countries since the 19th century. But anyway, Paris diversity isn't only about that. Diversity in Paris is just about everything. Regarding religions, Paris is the largest Muslim city in Western Europe, the largest Armenian Orthodox city in Western Europe, the largest Jewish city in the whole of Europe, the largest Buddhist city in Europe, and it has also a very significant minority of Protestant worshippers (predominantly Lutheran). Paris has founded its Central Mosquee as early as in 1926, London had to wait for 1978 to get its own ! Diversity is also about cityscape, and you can find any kind of urbanity you want in Paris. From the skyscrapers of La Défense to the popular buildings of la Goutte d'Or, from the 30-floored residential highrise of the 13th arrondissement to the medieval streets of Le Marais, from the façadism of the business district of the Opera to the modernism of the business districts of the Val de Seine or Saint-Denis, from the older pavillion houses of the western suburbs to the US-like sprawl of Marne-la-Vallée, from the midrise towers of the 19th and 20th arrondissement to the bourgeois buildings of the 16th arrondissement, from the wealthy villas of Saint-Germain or Le Vésinet to the huge malls sparsed all over the suburbs. Diversity is also about History, and you can find buildings from all periods of History in Paris from the Roman Thermae of Cluny to the not-yet built futuristic Auditorium of La Villette. You can give to Paris the face you want, just pick your neighbourhood. And Paris is dense, very dense. 25.000 inhabitants per square kilometers in the city proper, that makes an average of 65,000 inhabitants per square miles. You think London is big with 7 million people on 1,580 km² ? Paris reaches the same population on its central 800 km². The city proper has the most dense metro network in the whole wide world. With three ring motorways and 8 radial motorways linking the center to the suburbs. 200 km of metro tunnels, 75 km of RER tunnels, and tons of motorway tunnels. Paris even build its motorway interchanges below ground as its the case between the A14 and the A86. And Paris is economically a monster ! You believe Paris belongs to the past ? Well, Paris is the third city in the world hosting the largest cumulated office space (1st being Tokyo, 2nd being NYC), and right at the time I'm speaking to you, it is building more office space than cities such as NYC or London. Among the 500 largest companies worldwide, 36 are located in Paris. It comes only 2nd after Tokyo (with 51). Well, all this to say that it's time to change your idea of Paris, or even France in general. If there are black people in the French football team, it's not because they are foreigners, their family are actually French for generations. Forget about Edith Piaf or Josephine Baker. Paris has moved on since the 30's, and if you had in your city the Haussmanian buildings Paris has in its center, then I guess that just like Paris, you would keep their façades and build fully modern buildings behind. Oh and by the way, La Défense isn't recent. It dates back to the 1950's.