bedhead

With relation to the roads, the one thing I've found irritating so far is the need for buildings to be dropped along roads. This gets frustrating when trying to build infrastructure that relies on underground resources such as mines and water tanks. I wish I could drop things first, then build the roads around them. I often end up with these very small spaces in between say, a trade depot and a road, where nothing can grow. It's a waste of space in a game where space is a (super) premium. It's also annoying that certain buildings get wedded to roads, so you cant bulldoze them. The other thing that's been slightly frustrating but I'll probably adapt is getting used to the size of specialized buildings and budgeting extra land for their inevitable modular add-ons. I end up having a lot of dead space next to things like a trade depot because I worry that I'll need to eventually add a bunch of additional storage space. And I'm honestly still confused about coal and ore and the supply chains associated with them. It's not clear to me (a) how much is being mined, (b) how much my city's industry is consuming, © how much storage will be needed, (d) whether higher value-add products will be produced, and (e) whether I have the capacity to export. I'm thinking back to my operations management class in business school...is that what Simcity is trying to accomplish here, an actual supply chain? Even power plants' readouts are confusing...I miss the old days when it simply showed what % of capacity is being used. Am I missing this somehow in 2013?

You are correct sir! (If you get the reference then you are most likely older than I am and that's just scarry) You know it's funny. I played Classic in ~1991 when I was about 13, and it was just an incredible experience and I have such fond memories of it and SC2000. I haven't played Simcity in years but I started getting giddy when I saw the screenshots and videos for this game. I can't wait to show this game to my 6 year-old son and get him into it. The jackassery on these boards is ridiculous. I've never seen such impatience or entitlement before.

I'm sure modding will be allowed eventually, even if it's in a different format than SC4. It'll look like the App Store on iOS - EA will offer their own content at premium prices while modders can opt to charge for it or give it away. It's just the natural evolution of the game, and my guess is that it's one of the primary reasons they decided to make the game online-only. Why else bother? It's not like all those servers and infrastructure come cheap, and I'm sure EA doesn't enjoy the current debacle anymore than players do. A year or two from now people are going to be saying, "Remember when everyone hated this game? Can you believe that??" And everyone with their grandstanding "I'll never buy this game EA sucks rawr!" will have plunked down $70 and be playing 15 hours/week.

Sorry if this has already been addressed elsewhere, but what is the best spacing for various road types? Due to server issues and crashes (cant believe I have to deal with this for single player sandbox - ugh) I haven't been able to make a whole lot of progress...experimentation has been slow. Say you're just building a grid city, what is the optimal spacing so that there's no dead space in the centers of the boxes? Will they automatically fill in as density improves and roads are upgraded? Does this change along curved roads, and will many larger buildings, whatever their zoning, be unable to grow along curved roads? Any advice is appreciated. Separately, I think it's got the potential to be an epic game. The server issues will get fixed soon. Tile sizes will probably increase. Maybe they can fill in region gaps. Mods are inevitable, and creators will be allowed to charge $0 even if it all has to go through an EA server. All of the problems are solvable. Meanwhile the micromanagement aspects are surprisingly fun and challenging, while the screenshots are stunning. Patience, people - it's only going to get better from here.