Mizari

Not too happy about this. T++ made my game sluggish, so I got rid of it after a short try. On the other hand, your mod doesn't have these issues. It will obviously include the improvements with the performance which have so far not been included in official T++, so I don't think there's going to be any problem on that front.

Ah, the memories! This was a hot-topic when SC4 was released, the growth of the silo's on agricultural zones and Wren's Insurance... the big pests. I'm doubtful it was actually intended to be so numerous. I think a mod limiting the building was one of the first I ever downloaded-- luckily, it's not that big a problem if you have a lot of custom buildings, though.

I believe this online component is the No. 1 reason for the decision to have static inter-city connections and the spaces between towns (for the latter the display constrains might have had a thing to play, but frankly, even if the other cities viewed from active town looks low-res, I'd rather have that than some wasteland.)

The fact that the city is the only one in the region and has all those large buildings despite having 1,090 population is... depressing.

Not really. For a proper high-standard motorway, yes, but in reality they come in many shapes. There are plenty of interchanges even smaller in terms of consumed space. Not everywhere has those bloated U.S. interchanges. But I forgot - this is, after all, The United States Mid-West/West-Coast Town Simulator.

All the architecture in this game is very... The Sims 3-ish... and I don't quite like it.

The video clearly shows that there is an empty space between the cities that can't be tweaked and/or edited. Which has nothing to do with the simulation engine itself necessarily, but rather with the necessities for even borders as relates to multi-player.

The stunning game SimUK, of course.

Cities in a vacuum? Even going back to SimCity 4 there was not a vacuum. There was a basic background demand and a further level affected by the existing cities of the region and their connectivity. Indeed the system was very flawed and far from fulfilling and certainly worthy of a overhaul, this issue was attacked from the wrong angle when the development of the new game began. As Maxis themselves admitted it was developed around the multi-player aspect, and this I feel was a serious error. It is further worth mentioning that resource management is not a significant contributor to the processor load as only the active tile is computed at the moment it is played whereas the other reference numbers are static, and that even in what is now envisioned we have something that in a more flashy and advanced way essentially mirrors the trade of Cities XL's dreadful planet offer. So far there have been hints, though no clarity, that it is possible to play in a region of your own - would it then be independent of the "world commodity exchange" or still affected by it? What if I want to control my own commodity production without some meddlesome other players? But I am not fundamentally against multi-player integration (especially if voluntary), but not at the cost of in-game choices. Interconnectivity, potentials, I'm not opposed to that whatsoever - but if the price for said interconnectivity is severely limiting and throttling the scope of the game, then it is a misguided effort that should not be pursued - which it demonstrably is from what we so far know. The current direction of the game forces the player down a certain path of conduct, rather than allow the player to decide how to go about it. The potentials are limited in a number of ways. Some players do not wish to see their hard work ruined by some petty & ridiculous disasters, and others find tremendous enjoyment in watching their creation go up in flames, so let them decide, don't ruin the enjoyment for all by insisting on a predetermined course. Apart from merely the tile-size there are other concerns: 16 "towns" in the whole region, static city-to-city connections (what do you do if it is filled to capacity, or does it simply have infinite capacity?) Surely the intent of a game like Simcity should be to allow for the greatest variation in possible styles of play and creativity, instead of Small Town In the American Mid-West Somewhere Simulator; for if it merely "simulates" something real that exists, then what is there a need to simulate at all?

Sure, sure, all is well -- but the main problem stems from the catastrophic error of prioritising to an absurd degree this on-line nonsense. The reason that there is little terraforming stems from this - to discourage absurd changes at borders and so on; the small sizes of the maps could have easily been remedied to a large extent by allowing directly bordering tiles, but this was not done, for reasons to not make individual players in an online scenario uncomfortable, and this is also why it does not allow custom-made player interconnection between tiles nor any customisation thereof on a basic player level. This is also the reason for the utterly indefensible idea of making disasters impossible to disable. The focus on the multiplayer aspect is such that it infringes the very core of the Simcity experience, turning it into the simulation of detached villages. It is too late now. It has gone too down this wrong path already, but it will be its undoing, lest it somehow miraculously be saved by the most extensive and dedicated modding effort ever.

I must say the restriction of large buildings to large roads is absolutely preposterous as well. In most actual cities, particularly new developments (even going back to the 50's and 60's housing estates, etc), buildings are generally advisable not to be set directly against large roads because this is a traffic bottleneck waiting to happen. Instead service roads will serve access-departing traffic and major avenues through-traffic with limited number of connection point between those. With commercial the tendency for organic growth to cluster around large throughfares is more predominant, but for housing this is not the case. You don't see the 1970's tower blocks line large avenues, they were intentionally set in parks, with narrow roads serving the final access. This traffic-dependent outlooks limits the planning potential for the player and restricts the style and course of development taken in a very unpleasant way, I feel. Furthermore, as regards city-sizes: sure, fine, medium-size, I can live with that, if I can make a metropolis of interlinked medium-sized tiles. DIsconnected city tiles with swaths between them, I cannot say I feel impressed (though I do feel better about the game in general than initially, indeed, I must confess that I am slightly excited.)

The "highways" are clearly just ground-level arterial roads and not motorways/freeways, another annoying fact. As if the tiny map-size wasn't annoying enough. The logical progression now broken: by SC3k, we had 256x256 tile cities. In 4, this was not expanded, but that was all right, because you could build a city across multiple tiles. Now, we have fractured villages posing as "metropolises" on shrivelled-up mini-maps, with undeveloped reaches of wilderness between them, and they ("Maxis") seem absolutely oblivious to the idiocy of it all.

The most awful thing (apart from the tiny map-size and the way the cities seem to not touch each other so you cannot make a metropolis) in the gameplay video is when they show these motorways/freeways with at-grade junctions. It would not be hard to implement flexible flyovers/flyunders...