reReticulated Spline

The windfarm on the hill looks funny. I tried getting a mansion on there, but haven't succeeded with it. The whole, fix somebody's junk-city, angle sounds really fun. I might try it some time. Where there other players in the region and did you interact with them?

While I expressed my disapointment with the theme of the expansion, and I still don't like it very much, I think the developers are really thinking about strategy and such and I like that. It's not a 'here's some random stuff you may want' expansion but it has a certain gameplay. City evolves slowly into a futuristic city over time due to Academy: I like. Academies require especially high wealth workers and increase tech and land value: I like. The Omega resource and stuff: I like. I sincerly hope there are going to be more expansions with theme's I like better, as I like they way they implement it. Then again, the fact that everything in your city interacts with each other in some way in a much more direct way then other simcity games have done before, is what I like about this game so much, so I'm not that surprised they keep this up.

I wish Maxis would communicate with us more. On the other hand, one of the devs asked in a EAforum topic about what bugs I experienced so they could fix it, and immidiately the topic got flooded with people telling him how much he sucked so I can't really say I blame him for not answering the question I asked him there. I'd especially like to know what they think the feasibility of bigger maps is, and what their future support strategy is going to be.

I agree with Oppie that I would prefer less biased new items on the front page. People should be free to discuss their opinions on the forum but I'd rather see the opening page as objective as possible. I think Simtropolis is one of those sites that can and should stife to be better than the low standard we see on other gaming sites. Just because you feel your opinion is very very very true and shared by many others, shouldn't excuse adding bias. The Red Cross DLC title bothered me a lot personally, because I felt it was undermining a transparent fundraiser by implying something fishy was going on. I did not feel the Red Cross, who agreed to the terms, would be happy with people 'defending' their cause by convincing less people to donate. I had a PM session with it's author Haljackey where I expressed my discomfort with the title. We had a good talk about it, which I appreciated a lot. We both felt strongly about the subject, but took it to a different conclusion. I'm happy to see the topic title changed. I'd rather see the opening screen of Simtropolis have a "talk about your favorite Simcity (whichever one) and discuss the good and bad of the future of the series" vibe than a "rawr, let's sit here and be moody and angry and feel sorry for ourselves" vibe. I like Simtropolis as a site a lot because it is less angry gaming kids. And to be honest, considering the problems SC2013 faced at launch, it's stil vastly superior to many gaming sites.

Considering the dramatic launch of SC2013 at least one of these two things happened: - EA gave Maxis too little budget to make a decent game and didn't extend the deadline when it needed to. - Maxis had enough budget but overestimated what they could do and should have put less features in the game and focus on getting the features that where in the game working. I don't want to speculate over what happened too much. If the former happened, Lucy would be blamed for not managing the budget better. If the latter happened Lucy would be blamed for not holding Maxis' leech tight enough. I don't know her so I don't know how much she deserves to take the blame for it. I do think it's good to see that the Simcity launch did shake up EA. They seem willing to put effort into repairing the damage done to the brand and haven't abandoned ship. If they had declared the Simcity brand dead, that would have sucked. In other leadership news: the new EA CEO's intro speech was basically: "we love our shareholders". Not much change happening there I'm affraid.

I'm working on a better way to control hotel development FWIW, so it's more location-based. Great news! I know a lot of people here and on the EA forums are having trouble with unwanted hotels turning up. Will it be similar to sororities showing up only in proximity to universities? I hope you don't make the location too small. One of the things I love about Simcity is actually how different buildings show up at different locations unexpectedly. Zoning, and not knowing 100% what is going to appear, for me, is the soul of Simcity. I hope more sororities/hotel like buildings will appear in future additions to the game like beachhouses or fishing warfs for R/I near water and those sort of things. Anyway, since Guillaume didn't tell me I was wrong, I guess my suggestion should work for now.

If anybody is interested, Maxis has said on the forums that gifting is their first focus right now, but they are also working on fixing Great Works and regional commuting. Seeing as how I think those three are the three 'big ones' in terms of bugs right now, I'm quite happy about that. I doubt that regional commuting will be fixed within one patch though. I've found many different errors so it might take a while.

Note that hotels appear as a result of tourists leaving your city even though they still have spending money. They have 5 coins and will alternate between a hotel and a tourist attraction (or casino). If they can't alternate, they leave. If you build only more gambling capacity in your gambling halls, commercial will jump to fill the demand for hotels. It's a good idea to have enough hotels though, as it allows you to have more tourists in your city. Maybe have less gambling capacity and more hotels as modules? The best way to control your hotel placement is to unzone the commercial you don't want to see turn into hotels, then zone for commercial and start attracting tourists (and keep any hotels as part of your casino's turned off temporarily). Watch all the new commercial turn into hotels until you have enough. Then turn on the hotels in your casino's again and zone underneath the other commercial so they can grow in density again.

Nope, no bigger maps yet. IGN's trailer specifically mentioned there are no bigger maps or offline mode part of this EX. I think we can interpret 'expanding outwards' as either: zoning more or adding modules most of which are ground level.

Aaaanyway, I hope people will forgive me for taking the topic on-topic again. As Oppie has mentioned: modding is not possible because it allow cheating and/or trolling. The game is protected through it's always online mode. Does this mean modding is impossible? Complete modding yes, but that does not mean custom content is impossible. Game developpers such as Blizzard, Bethesda and Valve have supported custom content for their games. This does mean that it is Maxis themselves who need to open up Simcity for modding. It would involve releasing tools for modding that only allow mods to be used in sandbox mode to avoid cheating. Such a thing is not impossible (Stacraft 2 is also always online and has such a tool). The developers have mentioned modding and shown that they are both open to and interested in supporting modding somewhere in the future: Modding, like NAM did, where you change the basic of the game like pathfinding is indeed unlikely to come to Simcity 2013. However, just how powerful the tools are that the developers worked with themselves is unknown. It is also unknown how much they want to and in what time frame they think of releasing the modding tools. Many gamers believe modding harms DLC sales. It's likely many people within EA think this as well. However if you look at modding games in the past, modders have always used extra content as extra tools for their creations, thereby making the extra content a requirement for these mods and thus adding value to them. NAM doesn't work without Rush Hour I believe. DOTA doesn't work without Frozen Throne. Is EA aware of this opportunity or are they afraid of it? EA has obviously changed their strategy on games since SC4 as they seem to want to support their games longer and release more DLC. In previous games they released the modding tools with the first and only expansion. They are not doing this now but they are interested in more expansions. I hope we get them soon, but honestly couldn't tell you when. I do think the tools will be released and they will add a lot to the game. The description of the 'Simcity Exchange' sounds awesome and it's addition in the survey suggests the developers are serious about modding. On another note: Maxis is obviously aware of the mods such as the overpass and build-outside-the-box mods and has done little to stop them despite obvious advantages to the leaderboard. Their reaction has been to implement one of them into the game themselves instead. Those are good signs. I wish Maxis would be more open about their future plans though. Serious question: how has the Sims series handled modding?

This sounds like an expantion I'd like to buy... in about 5 years of so when the price is down and i already got the things I REALLY want. I think it's waay too much of a 'funky' expantion considering there are many 'normal' things still missing. Sigh, at least I won't feel like I'm missing something by not buying it. There's so much in the base game I'd like to see expanded upon that I'm dissapointed that Cities of the Future seems to focus entirely on it's own content.

The Nissan DLC is basically paid for BY Nissan for you. The Red Cross DLC is paid for BY you to the Red Cross and EA. It would have been a good gesture from EA, and god know they can use it, to put more of their own money in. Apperently a fundraiser that gives 80% is given a 7.5/10 for effort by some charity measurement I looked up. EA will make the least amount of money of this DLC compared to the others. It's certainly a minimal sacrifice on their part, but a big win for the Red Cross who get paid at least $100.000. If nobody would buy it, EA would have to fork over the $100.000 which would be hilarious but I'd rather see the Red Cross get more and gaming companies be inspired to do more charity-DLC in the future. Also: I now know what it does when there are no disasters. It is a free building that spawns two vehicles that act as wellness vans. When a disaster hits, it spawns more vehicles that go around putting tents on service buildings in which 10 sims can live each, that would otherwise be killed. A useful bonus certainly. Like the houses of worship, it's free cost makes it a plopping 'must' if you have it. It does mean Maxis needs to come up with some way to claim cities without having the same DLC though, as it's going to burn multiplayer if less and less cities are available for claiming.

Apperently radiation has a half-life time of about 20-30ish years. So about every 30 years, your radiation level get's cut in half until it's too small and it disappears (about 90 years?). Needless to say, you'd better plan around it for a LOOOOONG time or just abandon the city alltogether. Radiation makes R/C unhappy so you can plop your other buildings (like recycling centers) on top of it to get some use out of the space. Sims will still get more sick there though, so workers going there need more medical care.

Sheesh. So Maxis/EA releases a DLC that helps a charity and still people go raging. I've seen someone on another forum actually try to argue that the Red Cross is not a charity worth supporting just to keep the black-and-white view on EA alive. And no, while giving all of it's profits to the Red Cross would have been cooler, $2 is not a secret cash cow. Also, unlike a recent angry-gamers-fundraiser, they aren't going to pull their money back when they discover it doesn't serve their own purposes *cough, Mass Effect, cough*. I think it's great if publishers and developpers put some effort into charity fundraisers, even if it is just for PR purposes, it's still money going to a good cause. With Bioware recently supporting Easter Seals, this is a trend I'd like to see happen more often. God know, some gamers could use some more awareness of the world around them. Unfortunately I can't download it because I'm from the Netherlands. It would have been the first DLC I'd ever download. As for gameplay wise: I've heard rumors it houses homeless when it's not fighting disasters but I'm not certain. Like all DLC for Simcity, I think it's mostly flavor and doesn't add anything really important to the game. This one probably the least useful. If it wasn't for charity, I certainly wouldn't recommend it. Just see it as a small bonus you get for supporting the Red Cross.

Well, this is going to be it. The expantion will either feature bigger maps and mod support or it will not. We knew this 'futuristic superskyscrapers' expantion was coming through the survey released a while back (http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1hjg25/potential_feature_changes_in_simcity_survey/). Details about it included: - Higher sky scrapers - Multiple zones in one skyscraper - Multi-layer transport - Denser cities with more population - Cities slowly become more advanced over time - Cities advancement influences the region Comporation cities with: - Mega corporation (OmegaCorp) which consumes resources for money - Robotic augment services as new industry Green cities with: - Academy which researches more sustainable technologies I admit that I like the features on this 'arcology expansion' the least of all the potential changes alluded to in the survey. However, many of the OTHER changes in the survey, I loved. THE big question is of course the bigger maps. Maxis know we want this most of all so if it isn't included in the expansion or patched in before that, they have technical issues which would be beyond terrible. The other question I have is if modding get's included now. It has been standard practice to add it in the first expansion pack, and it would greatly improve the value of the game. If it isn't, it would seem Maxis cannot convince EA of the obvious benefits of an active modding community which would also be terrible. So either Simcity 2013 will show itself to be the game most of us want it to be, that needed time to take shape or it will show itself to be like a ship without a captain, unable to get where it needs to go. What do you guys think of the features this expansion is going to have, which I listed above?

Since I've found no explanation about the oil, I decided to just upload the graphs I came up with. The first graph is about which powerplant is cheapest to use in the early game. (Without selling to neighbours.) The second graph is about which powerplant is cheapest to use in the late game. Here are the numbers I've worked with: (As far as I know, there is no difference between importing and exporting pricing, so it shouldn't matter in costs if you produce the resource yourself or not.) Wind Power = 10 Coal price = 440/ton Oil price = 9/barrel Water price 0.0025/gallon (pumping station) Not included: - Cost/benefits worker requirement - Extra healthcare costs due to pollution - Cost of transportation of resources - Cost of Tech required to keep building running at maximum - Wind mills occationally malfunctioning and temporarily not producing energy until repaired - Polution/clouds reducing Solar power output - Plopping costs In the late game I've found the following windpower would put Vertical Turbines at the same comparable cost: 5 MPH = Clean Oil 12 MPH = Clean Coal 13 MPH = Solar Power 19 MPH = Fast Neutron Dirty Coal costs 63% as much as Clean Coal making it almost the same price as Nuclear Energy! Conclusion: Dirty Coal is the cheap poluting solution that stays relevant all game long. It also has the lowest footprint by comparion. Nuclear is the cheapest solution. It has a slightly higher footprint due to the massive amounts of water it also needs. Does come with tech requirement and disaster risk. Wind is the best solution for starting cities that cannot sell their power. At high altitude, it can compete with the others, especially if you build on the otherwise unusable cliffs. Other than that it's the most expensive. Solar Power is surprisingly cheap green power but with a huge footprint of prime real estate. Oil is... weird. Maybe if the oil price collapsed it would be useful. I still feel like there is something wrong in my math. Then again, Oil cities are usually floating in cash, so why not build one that doesn't require more trucks from the region and pollutes slighly less then Coal?

So is this going to be a daily thing for you guys? Like the 1984 daily Goldstein films? Well, have fun making sure everybody know you're not having fun.

That sounds incredibly smart and therefore unlikely to appear as a though inside the head of EA management. How amazing the concept of DLC could be if only it lived up to it's potential.

Moah, that's a minor thing. It would be better if the DLC buildings got auto-demolished if you don't have the DLC though...

That's odd, because this trick has worked wonders for me in the past. Try to make sure it's the shortest route. The truck will make the decision which road to take when it leaves the Well, and if there is no traffic right at that moment, he's going for the shortest route. He can't predict traffic in the future.

I've done another commuter test a while back. In this test I had all the HQ buildings as job sinks and had a 200.000 commuter city. In the job city, the jobs didn't close as they did in my previous test and things worked fairly good there. In my worker city, trains started kidnapping workers and never bringing them back. I also had trouble with a High Density building which sucked up all the workers coming home even though it's money was already maxed and thus was wasting worker money. Because of all the kidnapped people, the city eventually was empty. I buldozed everything and when it rebuild it had people again. It was both completely broken, yet functioning for short periods all the same. Intercity commuting has many different bugs and problems associated with it, but can still work if you try to work around it.

University students can go shopping in between classes if there is commercial nearby. It might be an interesting experiment to see how high you can tax commercial for these premium locations where they get huge amounts of shoppers. According to the the school of business, it increases profit. A university city will never be that profitable though. It's one of the more challenging city types.

I am, and into the forseeable future, still surprised by the high cost of most DLC. I would expect they could get much more profit from a lower price. I have trouble believing $10 is on the top of the profit curve. I would think DLC would work best as an impulse purchase. Something you'd do in a moment because it's so cheap you can't really regret it, but which stacks up if you get a lot of DLC. I've played Magic the Gathering. I know how to suck people dry little by little.

When building a full region, it is often a good idea to build up multiple cities up to the point that you can put down your first city hall addon and then switch. Bigger cities require things that you need to unlock first and they usually need them al at the same time. Building up a new city can be greatly sped up, if you can get support from a neighbouring city. Therefore, setting up power, water, sewage and trash in one city can give it's neighbour all the breathing space it needs to expand quickly. Mining and Oil cities are great starter cities. The requirements for putting them up are low, the first buildings you need to place are not that expensive and you'll only need some low wealth workers to get going. Oil is definately the best low-investment / high returns specialization as adding pumpjacks is cheap and easy. An oil city can be making tons of money quick, which you can ship to other cities to help them start. Maybe starting the mining city first, so you can put most of the costs of utilities in that city, can help maximize quick profits. Casino cities really benefit from the transportation module, but they also need plenty of water and power and police coverage and preferably the culture addon. I've also heard more tourists come to your city if you have more people living in your region. It's not the most ideal city to start with, but it's quite managable to get some quick gambling house profits. A benefit from waiting with this city is that you can use money from other cities to instantly put down some heavy road networks so you don't run into trouble later and can plan early. Electronics cities take a time to setup because you need to unlock the college/university and you won't be seeing any electronics money soon. And since the college / university costs quite some money too, having a bigger start capital to help boost your growth is quite nice. Once an electronics city get's going, it's going to be making so much money, you can fund all other cities off it's profit alone. University/ green cities are the most challenging to make money in at all. Having most your utilities handled by other cities is a must. Possibly the city you want to save for last. Also because you don't want to steal students from the electronics city too soon. Commuter cities are a bit of a gamble because commuting has many bugs that might give you some trouble. Definately don't rely soly on commuting but have some jobs available in your city! Having plenty of unemployed sims AND making sure they live within short distance of a way of commuting to another city (next to stations or ferries or the highway), can make them viable. You can grow these along with your other cities if you are in need of workers.