Deadeye31

You are disappointed with a manual? Simcity 4 has a short manual that contained no suprises what so ever. Most games don't even come with printed manuals anymore. The Beta actually had a lot of stuff locked or missing that we couldn't use to develop our cities beyond 100k. Yeah. Manuals tend to suck, these days. They certainly aren't as good as they were back in the late 90s. I loved the original Starcraft and Homeworld manuals. Those were books as much as guides to the game.

There's a couple of interesting things I read in the manual. It looks like you can build small airports right inside your city rather than depend on the big regional one for tourists. I haven't seen that even mentioned before. I also like the idea of being able to bring in ferries and cruise liners for added tourism. I'll be focusing on Electronics, but for gambling cities, a vibrant seashore might be something to invest in.

How about doing it the anno 2070 way? In that game you could have your scientists research a module that would add something like 5000 of a given resource to the ground in one of your islands. They could have a similar thing on the market that you buy with simoleons ( I think that's what sim money is called) and call it deeper mining or something but just replenishes the giving material. Maybe they could even make it something some specialized city could produce. It's either that or have the stuff come back naturally given time and/or you have to balance your extraction with the natural replenishment. A city shouldn't just not function at some point and never be able to recover because then you would eventually have empty cities cluttering the landscape and server.

Why don't you use Twitch TV? This way you could live stream if you want to and save the videos for people to watch later all at one place.

But there's a fine line between realism and rubbish (it never hurts anyone to have UFO's, cartoonish Advisors, and meteorites attacking your city). But when Godzilla, zombies, and many other Sims-like creature occurrences start happening too often (along with the highly realistic green spaces between cities), then these people have stepped too far over the line. So there's no place in your game for "fun but not very realistic"? Don't look at it like black or white, it's not that bad of a game. I'm sure there will be plenty of time to build the city of your dreams. Just make sure you got enough police and/or firefighters for those hairy times. Heck, you could even have a couple extra stations that you leave turned off till you need them in an emergency.

This is not the older games.

There are Zombie attacks and this is the new Sim City, you check realism at the door. It's suppose to be a fun, casual city builder with some added depth if you really really want it, not a super realistic, if-you-can-build-it-here-you-should-change-careers-to-being-a-real-life-city-designer game. Sit back, enjoy the game and have some fun. Don't play just to train to be a real life mayor or something.

You know what would be totally awesome? If Godzilla or aliens did show up and someone in the region had Maxisman and he and/or the police in the region, came and fought a titanic battle while you and everyone in the region who wanted to, got to watch. I think that would make it all so worth it. XD

I personally would have liked to see a set based on Japan; maybe with the imperial palace as the landmark. I can see the German set being in because Germans love simulators (which I think has to do with laws that restrict violent games) and the British have a very large gaming community now but I would've liked a "Japanese" set over a French one. Three European cities seems meh to me but there will probably be more sets as DLC in the future.