Griffon

first of all where do most people put them? random or strategic location? what levels do you put in them? and in what order? what crowns do you use/like the most? also what zones do you place around the rest of your city? like do you not zone commercial because you place all the commercial in your megatowers? and other stuff like that. And any other discussions about megatowers you can think about as a whole. To start off, I normally just place them randomly around my city and not next to each other, but usually with a MagLev next to one exit. I try to place the mall/office levels around my skybridge (thinking back to SimTower I thought that would be a good idea) and the skybridge as close the center as possible (level 4 or 5 usually) so every level has equal access to them. I also place the levels as needed. The megatower adviser guy usually tells me what is needed in them. I also favor the solar crowns because two of them can power any CoT city I've built so far plus the solar crowns don't take up any room in your city and if you have all eight megatowers you can place at least one of each type of crown anyways (so it's not like you don't have room for the others). Here is one problem I have with them. After playing a city for a long time (usually by game year four) my megatowers start to go abandoned. The residential levels say they can't find work so they move out, then my office/mall levels start to go red because they're losing shoppers/workers from the residential moving out and soon I have entire megatowers that are red. Has anyone else encountered this problem? If so how do you fix it? Another thing I can't figure out is that a residential level in one tower is red and an office level in another tower that is directly connected with skybridges is also red. The residential says they can't find work and office says not enough workers. The solution is easy, get the residential from one building to work at the office in the other (isn't this what the skybridges are for?), but they're not smart enough to figure this out for themselves. How can this problem be solved? These problems really affect my Academy cities, because my Academy is basically ran off the megatower population, then my ControlNet drops when they leave and something ran by ControlNet stops working which leads to other problems. So that is why I wanted to start this discussion for megatower strategies and problems (for me and everyone else to understand how to use them better/more efficiently).

I think I've said this many times before offline mode was even thought of by EA (that they'd give up on the game once an offline mode was made), so I think you're right. Another question is if they really are giving up on the game how much longer will the online servers stay online?

Here was an earlier topic about Omega Co. I posted a lot of help in it (haven't looked at it in a while though). Here is what works for me. Just build one omega factory and fully upgrade it. Depending on how much industry you have this should be enough to unlock the first division at the OmegaCo HQ. I usually unlock drones first, then commerce, and then extraction. I Import everything and don't produce or mine for anything. Once drones are unlocked you need to build another omega factory, but fully upgrade it with drone factories (and bulldoze the initial omega production line). This should get you to the next HQ upgrade, if not place more drone factories around the city (2-4) and build more omega production line factories. Once you get commerce division unlocked, upgrade every factory with 2 VTOLs and get rid of any trade ports or depots (after the resources in them are used, unless you need them for other buildings). Once you upgrade the factories with VTOL build like 4 more omega factories and then you're gonna send them to other cities. (I might explain it more in the other topic, I'm just going off memory since I haven't played SimCity in a while.) In my best OmegaCo city I got over $200k per hour. Hope that helps and you also might want to check this out: http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-cities-of-tomorrow-omegaco-strategies

The subway mod is back!

That's the thing...there is no difference in gameplay other than no internet required and instant city syncs. Your cities won't continue when your not playing them, but as soon as you hit save their instantly synced with your other cities (once you start playing them again). Most bugs you saw and experienced in online play are still there. I have read that people find great works easier due to the instant syncing of cities (and resource delivery). The major advantage to offline mode is that you can use as many mods as you possibly want (and I'm using pretty much every mod here and on other websites I can find).

I have no idea if this is correct but I noticed on @MaxisGuillaume's profile page it says he's in the group "Maxis Team Member" so I'm wondering if it violated the EA/Maxis mod rules and he was forced to take all his mods down until they were approved and the subway mod wasn't. I still don't know how it works. I'm wondering if it replaces MagLevs or if you can still place both, but MagLevs were used as the base to mod it off of. I think I remember the description saying it doesn't require ControlNet to run, so does that mean it won't futurize the roads when placed? btw I'd really like to have that mod even if it isn't posted back here (just to try it out at the very least).

I don't know about all of them I mostly noticed that I couldn't load this mod. Whenever I clicked on the link it said error and was gonna make a topic asking what happened to it too. Then I noticed this topic and noticed this mod was also made by the same person. https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/29417-offline-only-mod-maglev-as-subway/ I was kinda looking forward to trying that mod out cause it would provide subways in a way. (and I remember seeing a ton of people say they wanted subways in the game). EDIT: I just refreshed the mod page and it's gone now.

At the launch of SimCity the global market didn't work and there was a set price for everything (oil, coal, processors, etc. prices didn't change). That's basically how it is in offline mode. The trade specialization won't work anymore because the prices never change. A trade specialization by itself buys resources at low prices and sells at high prices. Since there is no change in prices you would be buying and selling at the same price (no gain). All other specializations should still work just fine. Also if you have CoT and the omega extraction center is unlocked you also have futuristic mine shafts and futuristic oil wells that produce more for a longer time (just incase you didn't know that). So no they shouldn't be "obsolete" in offline mode even with CoT (key work is shouldn't, not saying you may have discovered a bug, but it wouldn't surprise me).

You would be correct, I just tested it out. I haven't played since before that mod came out, until offline mode, but I haven't used the freight trains since I started playing again (been using mostly VTOL, but I was gonna use freight trains in the next city I built). Also the mod description doesn't say it works only for passenger trains (and I didn't read the comments):

This mod should put the original trains back in the game instead of the CoT futurized trains.

Unfortunately students don't commute to other cities for school, although it is a feature in the game it's broken since game launch. I don't understand why they haven't fixed it in the 10 patches since the game came out. I only counted the major patches and there were also several minor patches they could of fixed it in too. (I would think offline mode would be harder than fixing the regional student bug.) The most I've ever gotten was maybe 10 regional students at my university. If you want to max out your University first of all build all the dorms and shut off all other schools (If you didn't know that before).

I've played around 1,000 hours on SimCity, I got it when it came out but haven't it since before December until now when offline mode came out (but only played a few hours since). EDIT: That's actually what origin says I've played so it may not be 100% correct because it also says I was playing when downloading new patches.

I kinda wish there was a de-futurization mod. As much as I really like CoT buildings they conflict with the mods I'm using. I'm using a ton of different mods to change the vehicle graphics but once they get futurized the mod graphics goes away. Also the mod that changes the color of the roads goes away once the road is futurized. And I'm sure this was mentioned before, but I'd really like one-way roads.

I think I remember reading or hearing about a mod to do what your wanting. This one, it might be close to what your wanting: Also check youtube (I think that's where I originally heard about this).

I'm still wondering where the save games are stored at in the computer? Is it in ...Documents/SimCity/games ? I only have one region so far for offline mode and the only file in that folder is named: 9a3b67209015c253 then there is one file inside that folder named 6 and there I see a bunch of folders with different numbers and other files at the bottom with weird names. EDIT: If that's where the save game really is what do all the numbers and files mean? Basically I'm asking if you can move or delete certain cities in the save game region (similar to SC4).

I'm sure the bugs I found are mostly minor because they didn't affect the actual gameplay (once I got to play it).

I tried offline mode and I found it to be buggy (which is probably understandable to a point) and I got frustrated trying to get it to work correctly. One problem I had was that if you're connected to the internet and origin is online it tries to search for updates even if it says "Single-Player Mode" and the play button won't appear until it's done. If I'm completely offline and start it up the play button is there from the start (with no wait). Also I was playing one city while I was online but was in "Single-Player Mode." I stopped playing, lost internet connection by the time I started playing again and my city was gone! I started the game again later with it connected and the game reappeared. Does it still use cloud storage or something? (can I turn that off?) Another thing I seen was I had an error saying I needed to be online while loading a city in the "Single-Player Mode." It gave me two options: Single-Player Mode or Quit. I hit the "Single-Player Mode" button and the whole game restarted. I finally had to restart Origin to get that error to go away. (Not to mention that Origin itself is buggy. I can't open it unless I restart it every time if I minimize it or click on the X and the only way to completely close it to reopen it is through the task manager.) And all that happened in one day of playing SimCity offline. I also have a few questions to ask: I think on the blog post about offline mode it said the regions are stored on your computer, well where are they? And why can I only have 10 regions like the online mode? I think offline mode should have unlimited save spaces for regions if they're being stored on your own computer.

I haven't posted anything in a while, but I've been checking the simcity.com website and this one for info about when they will finally come out with that patch (I didn't think about checking twitter or facebook, but figured I'd just save time checking here first). For the most part I've given up on SimCity since Banished came out (I logged over 200hrs in the first 2 weeks on Steam and got every achievement too). I think Banished has more potential for modding than SimCity does (this one at least), not to mention I had more fun playing Banished than I did this SimCity and still not tired of playing Banished either, where with SimCity I got bored playing it often. Sorry for the off topic comparison but I think Banished is so much better of a game already and there hasn't even been one patch yet (well there is a Beta patch for Banished that I'm using now). There is only one guy that made the game and is working on the patches right now so the patches, DLC, and expansions would probably come slower. He even said he'd release the full mod tools before the first DLC or expansion (right after he fixes most of the current bugs).

If you have the CoT expansion pack you can place ground scrubbers after you research them at the Academy. They turn ground pollution into air pollution. Otherwise parks/trees are the only way to go and it takes years upon years in the game to remove the pollution, but not nearly as long as radation (radation takes 50 game years to remove). Also ground scrubbers remove radation too and little ground pollution in your cities can't hurt as long as its not near residential or water pumps unless you have the clean water pumps. The ground scrubbers will take it away fast but its not instantaneous.

@Helevitia I thought what you said was funny (especially likd the insanity part) although I know you didn't intend it to be funny and I can't say anything you said was wrong either. I've been saying for months that the offline mode will be the end of patches and DLC and expansions, etc. But I'm still hopeful that a modder (or team) will find a way to increase the city size (and I've said that before too). I think I'll play it more once offline mode comes out just because it won't need the internet and take 15 minutess minimum to load one city (regardless of size) and also cause my Iinternet is slow as ever (dial-up might even be faster). If size doesn't bother you then the game is very playable and (at the very least 95%) worth it to get and play especially if you use some of the mods on this site. I especially like the chain plopper and service road mod. Then again, if your a huge fan of SC4 (and its mods) this game will never be worth it.

Nice job, it actually does look really good.