eskie227

I found that problem this morning (using FF) but all is normal again this evening, including the ones not rendering earlier in the day. Blip on Steam's end that appears corrected.

No, unfortunately you could not. It will not run on a tablet. It requires a minimum of 4 GB RAM (your tablet I believe has 1 GB), a faster processor, and a discrete graphics chip (yours I also believe uses an integrated ARM solution for graphics).

That's because if you play and follow more than one game, the issue of trying to play on inexpensive laptops always comes up, and the replies are always the same. Get a better, higher priced laptop, or go with a desktop for more bang for your buck. Rinse and repeat for every performance PC game out there.

No, it's nothing you're doing that's a problem. In real life, it's not unusual to see commuter rails set up to push, rather than only pull, avoiding the need for extensive turn arounds. Not sure I've ever seen it with cargo trains, but in game, they're the same "size" as the passenger trains, so I guess it's possible. As to in game control, you have no ability to route cargo trains like you do with passenger trains, so adding a turn around is unnecessary, and unlikely to even be recognized by the cargo routing formula as it wasn't 'prebuilt".

True. But those sales figures were achieved only after 4 months on the market to reach 2 million, while CO got to 1 Million in only a month. And EA likely spent more just on marketing SC2013 to achieve those sales in 4 months than CO's entire development budget for CS, let alone essentially relying only on word of mouth and strong gaming reviews to achieve those sales figures. Not to take away from SC2013's performance, but for a AAA game from EA to struggle in the marketplace (and let's face it, even at 2 million sold, between their development, marketing budget, and ongoing server costs, likely resulted in little, if any actual profit from those revenues), but for CO to roll out a game that has performed so well in such a short period of time with a development staff smaller than the number of interns EA probably had running around during the SC build, is a remarkable accomplishment. And even after factoring in expenses to Paradox as their publisher and Steam as their platform, CO in all likelihood made a very tidy profit in a very short time frame. So yes, CO still has a long road ahead to assure ongoing success and profit from this game, but they are off to a pretty nice start so early in the race.

I have to agree on this one. There is nothing in your current price range that will run CS. Even at $800 as Indiana Joe suggested, there will be some compromises in performance. Must it be a laptop? You can certainly put together a very nice desktop that would provide you with a decent gaming experience far more cost effectively than any comparable laptop.

I'm still trying to fill my 25 tile mod area. Besides, once you get to 81 tiles, you're going to have to set it up as a bunch of interconnected towns, because cims won't be able to efficiently commute to work across that big a zoned area, so working would likely be local, or maybe regional among a town cluster. Would look cool, though.

The Hadron Collider will give you a highly educated population, so your RCI zones should all level up. As your Industry advances to level 3, they'll use more educated workers, and the higher level commercial also will use more educated users. The only zones that continue to provide lower level employment are Forestry and Agricultural, I believe, but even there, if your educated cims need jobs, they'll still fill those positions. I've used it in 2 cities so far, one that got up to 300K, and another over 200K, so I do not think that should limit your growth. The only "trick" I've found to encourage growth was to zone up residential in blocks and let it fill itself in as the RCI meter "drives" it, but to wait for both C and I to rise significantly before adding additional areas. That way, the residential growth is driven by C and I, rather than flogging for more population to increase demand, which it really won't. When the residential zones are getting a bit tight, I'll put in a whole bunch of new areas to support the cycle again, building out the others only if there is high demand. And yes, once the population is educated, I rely on office only for "industrial" growth (it should really be, IMHO, commercial, but they consider it industry, which I don't quite get, as commercial in game is really retail). Your offices will also level up quickly with the Hadron Collider in town, and offices carry a bonus of not only no pollution, but low noise and little traffic, which makes managing a big population much easier. But as office space, even at level 1, requires some educated cims, I don't zone for that until later once the city is more established. Technically, as commercial can import products to sell, you could phase out your industry later in the game and just rely on office work, but I hate rezoning industry that's polluted the ground purple and build offices on them. That just can't be healthy.

That really summed up the situation beautifully. I'm especially upset at what EA has done to that franchise, both to SimCity, and The Sims. And it has been exactly that attitude which resulted in the derailment of what was once a great studio. And I am grateful Colossal was there to pick up the baton. Hopefully they'll use this success to take on the life simulation side as well. Thanks for posting that clip.

I'm on Win 7 and patched, and have no problems with my old saves, and no issues with any of my installed mods. It seems like a smooth update, for now.

I think it's because their lifespans are so stinkin' short. With the longer life mod (the one where they live about ten years) I have about ten or so deaths per week in a city of slightly over 20,000. Maybe others don't have a problem with that short of lifespan but for me everything just happens way too fast if I don't extend their lives a bit. It seems like I can never get things evened out with the default. I tried my latest city without the longer life span mod just to see how it would run if I built out quickly and allowed the workforce to "regenerate" at the faster, "game" rate. So I got nicely built out, with a ton of industrial and office space, when all of a sudden the Black Plague swept my town. Not only was i scrambling to get enough crematoria in place to handle piles of cims who all died at the same time, but buildings were getting abandoned from the smell of all those bloating corpses (can't blame them either, I'd move out if a dead body was in the next apartment for weeks on end too), my industry started contracting from the loss of workers and demand for product, and it looked like I was in a death spiral of what was otherwise one of my better cities. My population dropped precipitously, with a concomitant loss of revenue in taxes. I assumed it would simply implode, but as I had built up a pretty big cash reserve, rather than just moving on to another city, I let it run out to see when it finally would go bankrupt (and hopefully get me the 1,000 abandoned building award before going bankrupt). So after a few months in the red, low and behold, my population went from 150,000 to about 100,000, and stabilized. My cash flow turned around (just about right before I would have run out of money), and the town started growing again, albeit slowly. Obviously, there was no demand for residential or industrial zoning as there were plenty of empty, abandoned areas. But interestingly, my commercial demand shot way up. In my earlier cities, I typically found demand for commercial space always felt kind of low for a city, but suddenly I'm having to lay in whole new areas, and even rezone some residential into commercial to keep up with demand. Which is nice, but not really the way I thought would the best approach to stimulate demand, having a mass die off. Needless to day, I turned the longer lifespan mod back on. I might even try just toggling it periodically to get a more staggered age spectrum, because those mass die offs are just not fun to get through.

And that does bring me to another little issue I have with traffic. Why do cims insist on using a single freaking lane on multilane roads? Sure, you need to be in the correct lane for turns or for on/off ramps, but geez, do they have to be in the right lane to exit from 8 tiles away? I know modelling traffic is a difficult task, but it is one area where "smarter" driving/lane management could really help with flow. As an aside, but after they get that done, I sure hope they turn to train traffic management next, because those trains make cim drivers look like pros.

Well, I'll give it a go and see what the patterns look like. And Grater, yes, I've noticed the interstates perform poorly, so I want to try to upgrade or improve their flow as they're assimilated into the network. I just didn't want to spend a bunch of money on roads that wouldn't actually be used as I intended, rather than how the game engine views those highways. My thanks to both.

I've tried to dig this out from my usual sources, but I have not found an answer, so my apologies if I simply missed something that should be obvious, but isn't. Once you build your town over multiple tiles, you frequently have portions of the "Interstate" running through your town. Now, I know your cims will use those interstates for travel to the rest of the "world", but can I count on them logically using them as intracity routes if I work them into my highway grid? I've found there are times I can have industrial zones, especially for raw materials, close to pre-existing interstates, which is great for export. But if i have a series of interchanges that rely in part on that infrastructure, will cims still use those "interstate" legs for things like commuting from zone to zone or moving goods that are not quite sufficient in volume to justify rail yet? The same is true with nice areas for more suburban residential housing which might abut a CS interstate. Can I rely on those cims using that highway section for that portion of travel flow I've earmarked the resource for? Or, should my city highway system only connect for import/export/tourism to the interstates, and build everything else out myself?

@Mystrelia, you sound familiar. Have we posted on another forum? But yes, it's hard to find the right balance for the timing building out. I just started on an expansion of my current city, and in a new tile I laid out several grids for housing and one for industry. I built in all the support, utilities, some small parks, transportation and whatnot, then zones in my industry and only 1/3 of the residential. As the first residential grid filled up, I zoned the second, and will get the third one done in a while. I'm hoping that it help smooth things out by phasing in my new zoning, although I do like to have that area of the map already laid out and supported before actually allowing expansion to proceed. I finally broke the 300K population ceiling on this town, so I'm really trying to avoid any fatal errors this far into it.