juliebug

Fantastic. I tried another program (Windowed Borderless Gaming?) but I couldn't get it to be perfect. The toolbars were partially obscured. Just tested this one out and it's beautiful. Thanks so much.

Thanks for the correction, much appreciated. So the bus isn't cool enough for them, eh? Alas! At least they'll use the streetcars and such, though.

Super-interesting tidbit about high wealth sims not using mass transit. That's great to know. Will definitely keep it in mind at 12:01AM ET!

Awwwwww, the blocks! How I fondly remember those blocks of 8 zones with a park or something right in the middle. Love the screenshot and how there are no roads visible, just train tracks -- no doubt to avoid traffic issues entirely. (I may or may not have supremely fond memories of old-school SimCity...)

While I'll agree that SimCity obviously has a huge creative component to it, I do think that there have to be more efficient ways to go about doing things. It's true that it's not like an MMO, where the raid boss has X health and your raid group has to do X DPS in order to get the boss down before the encounter's enrage wipes you all out, but at the same time, there has to be a balance struck in order to have a "successful" city. If one doesn't want a "successful" city (just an industrial town that's dirty whose only purpose is to provide jobs and, say, power to a neighbouring "clean" city), then one doesn't have to worry as much about efficiency and can try to be a bit more creative, IMHO. Having said that, I think SimCity is primarily huge juggling act. - Efficiency vs. creativity in layout - Services provided (and their costs!) vs. fires/crime/sickness/etc - Happiness vs. Tax rate etc. Mind you, if people just want to play and have a good time, that's obviously 100% supported. But in thinking about the bigger picture, efficiency starts to overtake creativity, which is where, I think, we get the notion of grids. Not pretty, but they can usually get the job done. Anyhow. Like you, Mark_Kochan, I'll likely have some main avenues as arteries and lower the density of avenues/streets as I get into the suburbs. I think the suburbs may be the best areas in which to show one's creativity, since one would presumably have lower density roads out there and, thus, more space for individual zones, rather than a large block set up in order to combine together to make a high-density building.

How so, if you use a grid of high density avenues you will not have traffic problems and will have the max use of space, cant be bad. Using only high-density avenues isn't the "max use of space", though. It seems like this SimCity is going to require a fine balance between uses of streets versus avenues. Use too many avenues and, while you may not encounter traffic to the extent that others might, you're losing out on what I think we can all agree is very valuable, limited space. The true min-maxers who want to squeeze out every bit of efficiency with regards to use of land are going to have to plan out avenues vs. streets very carefully. For myself, I'm going to aim for a beltway-style avenue around my first city's core and around the outermost parts of it, with a few major avenues bisecting the circles. Of course, knowing me, I'll probably abandon that idea halfway in and just start drawing roads that look cool... >.>

Hi folks! My name is Julie and I just recently joined the site. Looks like Simtropolis is the most vibrant community site out there for the SimCity series. Good to see it's so active even though SC4 was released 10 years ago! I'm super-excited for the new SimCity's release, so I've been lurking on forums and watching videos (as well as Let's All Be Mayor) for the last week. Each day that passes seems to take forever, but we're nearly there! Looking forward to being a part of the community.

Ditto, but if Nikhil told the truth, it would be worth it.

Just chatted with an EA rep through their live chat feature. No idea how accurate this is, but I thought I'd share the info I got. Nikhil, the rep I chatted with, said that the preload for SimCity will begin 24 hours prior to release. I tried to confirm 12:01AM ET on March 4th, but was merely told "24 hours before release" again. Hope that's helpful. I guess we'll see if a preload becomes available tomorrow!

Oh, absolutely more realistic in that sense, to be sure, but is it such a terrible thing to bulldoze and rebuild? The downside is what, a temporary period of time where the citizens who lived or worked there aren't there, then they go back when it's rezoned and able to be rebuilt? Or is there another big downside I haven't experienced yet?

Is the game available for download via Origin at 12:01am on 3/5? Is that how it works? I've never downloaded a game on release day. Kip was asked this in the letsallbemayor stream event thing and he didnt know if that would be the case but i believe this has been the case with origin before so I hope so! Given the change to the Amazon orders (of which I'm not one -- I got my DDE pre-order at Origin) and given that March 2nd is almost over and my SimCity in Origin has yet to start downloading, I can only assume there's no days-before preload. Since Kip didn't even know, I can't imagine there's one planned. There's been zero indication from what I can tell. The date I'd heard bandied about was March 1, which has come and gone, I'm not optimistic. I suppose it's possible that we'll get a couple of hours on Monday the 4th to start preloading before 12:01AM ET on the 5th, but again, since Beta 3 had so much emphasis on "stress testing" the servers... I'd say that all signs point to no preload. Apologies if my first post sounded official at all. I basically took the fact that Amazon had changed their preload promise to mean that Origin wasn't going to allow it. I don't have confirmation either way, but still don't think it looks all that good. :/

The thread's topic is "first city"... Doesn't mean I won't have dirtier projects in other cities in the region.

My first city will probably be education-based. Once I'm sure traffic is working all right, I'll probably add in some casinos. The major problem here is crime, obviously. I tried a gambling city in Beta 3 and had a rampaging crime problem because my streets were so overcrowded. Of course, I didn't have much in the way of education in B3, so I'm sure that didn't help. Smarter citizens are less likely to commit crimes, right?

What does that even mean. Given alot of things happen instantly like gifts/trade sharing of emergency vehicles... all of that is in real time it would seem. I read somewhere (sorry, no idea on the source -- might have even been on the livestream sometime this week) that emergency vehicles, for example, show up "when they're needed" in the other city, due to the fact that the play between cities is asynchronous.

I completely agree. Given the way that streets vs. avenues work and given the cost of avenues vs. streets, I think traffic management will be a key part of having a successful city. In Beta 3, I had a crime problem (and thus an arsonist was running around) and my fire trucks couldn't make it to the fires in time due to traffic congestion. I think we're really going to have to manage traffic well from the first roads we put down in order to have a chance at building an efficient traffic network without bulldozing later on. Then again, is bulldozing later on such a terrible thing? I know I've always been hesitant to bulldoze stuff in the past, but is that an outdated habit?