soldyne

ok, I can understand that, but, why use a park and ride when I can just put down a bus stop every 100 feet. I am pretty sure bus stops are cheaper and take up no space. I guess this is something we will have to experiment with! is it better to have a ton of bus stops or fewer stops with park&rides?

yeah, parking is one of the things that no city simulator has every done right. its one of the things I have always sought after when I look for mods. parking may take up a lot of space and does not look very good, but, it is realistic. as far as SC2013, the park and ride under mass transit is the closest thing I've seen, and I am not entirely sure how it works...

I think history will tell us how SC2013 rates in the series. give it 10 years and we can ask that question again. I don't think it will fail like SCS did (that was just a horrid mistake we all wish they could unmake). if they do decide to use the business model of the Sims for SC2013 then I can't blame them. it is a very successful model and I would be surprised if they did not try it. if it can eventually grow into a game that allows people to re-create New York City, London or some other large metropolis with exacting detail like SC4, I think it will eventually become the successor that everyone wants, its just too early to tell.

I have the following: 460GTX Nvidia card 8 GB RAM AMD II X4 3.2 GHz Win 7 64 bit I first tried to run it on Ultra settings but, I got some stutter. I turned Shadows down to medium and got a fairly smooth 35 FPS. Shadows are the biggest killer for FPS in my experience.

I uninstalled from Origin and it just opened up Control panel. I uninstalled from there and it seemed to work just fine for me.

I think it is interesting to note that most of the large population screen shots also have negative budgets and low treasury's, while the lower population shots show high treasury's and positive budgets. sure you were able to get 150K sims in 1 hour, but, if you had 2 hours would they all have stayed?

I think education takes time to take effect. 1 hour is not enough time to see the full effects of education on a population. I think they just put it in the tutorial because that is how the tut will be when it ships. unfortunately I was not able to get multicity to work. I put res in clearwater and industry in norwich and no one would commute. but I was able to make clearwater successful by using commercial without industry so at least there are options.

Frankly, to get a city like that you have play on cheetah speed the entire time and know exactly what you want to do from the second you start playing. also, people know they only have an hour and take out lots of bank loans to build really fast since they know they don't have to pay them back. in an actual game, you will want to play much slower so you can plan ahead, make sure you have proper utility coverage and play around with the specializations. It would not surprise me to find out that the cities in the screen shots above had all kinds of fire, police or health care issues. Just because he filled in all the space does not mean its a well run city (er...town...er village...whatever...) I am afraid to talk too much about my beta experience, but, I will say that with my play style I was unable to fill up the city square in the hour limit. I like to plan ahead, be cautious, make sure utilities have proper coverage before expanding. I could have easily played my first city all day long and not wished for more space (eventually, yes I would have wanted to expand because I do agree the size is too small).

what is that message on the building? I see letters I think... anywho...I got my key at about 11:00am EST. I was afraid I had been passed up. I got all my chores for the day done so now I am gonna play, its already finished downloading...so what the heck am I doing here???

no key here yet. I did not sign up for the first one, but, I did sign up for #2. I would like to get in. I find it odd that this is supposed to be a 24 hour test, but, they are waiting till the day of the test to send out the keys. are they sending them out at midnight or after noon or when really? I have things to do tomorrow and I can't sit around my computer hitting refresh on my email all day. thanks for posting the extra codes, but, they were all taken by the time I saw them.

I followed the link and it says that the content was removed by request of EA. I guess it really was leaked and EA did not want it out there yet.

Ok, so the online thing. I don't like it, you don't like it, very few people actually find it a plus aside from the corporations. however, this is the way the entire industry is moving. even The Elder Scrolls series which has been a single player game for decades is going online...a very sorry state, but, there is nothing anyone can do about it. What gets me riled up is that people blame EA as if they are the only ones or even the first ones to do this but they aren't. Blizzard did this to Diablo 3, everyone complained and everyone also bought the game too (so did I). The only way to get a new game made that is not going to be multiplayer or online-only is to make it yourself. you either learn to live with it or just stop playing new games all together. Charging for DLC. really? are people still complaining about this? every company does this today, its not new, its been going on for many years. EA is not the only one, they just seem to be really good at it (stuff packs). Microtransactions are not new. free to play MMO's are not new. just like online only, it is the industry standard and its not going to change. Yes things get expensive, its called inflation. TESV: Skyrim just released its third DLC and this if for a game that gave the public its creation kit for free and they still expect people to buy content which they could have made themselves with the same software, and you know what...they do pay for it! and lets not get started on Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House where people actually spend more money on an in game weapon then they did for the original game itself (seriously). so you want all your games to be free and have all the features you could every hope for and live in a rose tinted simulation world...well its not going to happen. I have no problem debating how to address the issues of small city sizes, region play, adding new features, modding or similar topics. but when it comes to issues that are industry standards that no one without their own multimillion dollar company can have any impact to change then there is no reason to bring it up all. everyone hates it, no one has the power to change it, there is nothing else to discuss. so, since Online-only and DLC are not things which are plausibly going to change regardless of how much we want them to, there is no reason I should make my purchase decisions based on that. If I did then I would never buy another new game as long as I lived and I don't see that happening.

by lack of control I assume you are referring to terraforming and modding. These things are just aesthetics although we have become accustomed to them with SC4 it is actually not the most important part of the game. the code that runs the simulation in the background is the biggest and most important part and I believe that is what EA is concentrating on right now. they designed a whole new simulation engine and they need to get that working right before they concentrate on giving us tools to make it look pretty. as for the definition of a complete game...I don't think any game is ever complete. I challenge you to name one game that you would make absolutely no changes to if you had the opportunity to make said changes. I can't think of any. every game I have ever played would have benefited with a few tweaks, mods or just plain old overhauls and redesigns. If you are waiting for the perfect game then I am sorry to tell you it will never happen, unless of course you win some lottery and get the chance to design your own. Even if you did, everyone else would ask, "where's this feature", "why didn't you include that?", and of course "why should I pay your asking price if your game isn't complete?". Can I ask you if you think SC4 is complete? I don't think it is. if it were there wouldn't be any new mods. If it was complete at release they never would have release Rush Hour or given us the lot tool after that. SC4 is an incomplete game, but, you defend it...why? ?5? years from now when EA releases their region editor and building mod tools I believe that SC2013 may actually be a decent successor to SC4. But, for now, SC4 is still king when it comes to city simulation and hopefully we can all agree on that.

I would like to say that I never actually said that SC2013 was superior to SC4. I said that aspects of the new are better than aspects of the old such as curved roads, dynamic grid layouts, 3D camera angles, and upgradeable buildings. Also, after hearing that city specialization is neither required nor limited to one, I think the idea of city specializations and special buildings sound interesting and I will also mark that as a plus. to Jim14409, I do agree that that there are things that SC2013 needs to improve. we need to get back the ability to modify the region and set the city placement (city size is mostly irrelevant if we can put multiple city squares together). We also need a decent modding tool. We also need to get back our mass transit options such as subways and highways (but rush hour was a paid expansion to SC4 so why should we expect differently with SC2013?). I wont call SC2013 a true successor to SC4 until we have the ability recreate cities like NYC, London, Tokyo or Edmonton with the same scale and detail. That is the ultimate goal and SC2013 is nowhere near that yet. the point of my post was that SC2013 isn't perfect, but, at least it provides some hope that city simulation games are not dead. If the community can support the game with constructive criticism and plausible solutions to our issues then we have a chance to get a really good successor to SC4.

Money Saving Tips for any City Design Please PM Soldyne if you have any questions about this article. Part of building a successful city is making it economically prosperous. I have noticed that a lot of new and old players alike seem to have trouble balancing the budget. This seems to be the number one problem that chases a lot of newcomers away and makes old players turn to cheat codes and money lots. I myself started the game having problems but as I read through the countless posts here on Simtropolis and did some of my own experimentation with game mechanics, I have compiled a list of money saving tips to help keep new cities in the black. This list is a compilation of ideas about how to cut costs in a city. There are numerous (if not too many) threads about how to make money but cutting costs can make earning money that much easier. I want to say before hand that this is a compilation of ideas from myself and ideas from numerous other players here on the forums. As such, I will not take full credit for these ideas but I am also unable to give total credit to any specific set of people for any particular idea. 1.) Manipulate Funding on Civic Buildings: This is probably the most common piece of advice and yet the most overlooked by new players. Use the query tool and select either a hospital or educational building. Here you will see some information about what the buildings capacity is and how much it is being used. Slide the bar down until the capacity is just slightly more than the usage and you can have large medical centers servicing small rural towns for mere dollars and still gain the full benefits of the coverage. Another idea is to lower the ambulance/bus radius coverage of the building. Most people don't do this because they may not be aware of it, but if you lower the coverage funding to 0 you will still get a radius of effect. The radius will be smaller but it will still be just as effective as full coverage. There are other benefits to doing this as well. Lowering coverage funding can allow you to have lots of buildings of the same type for very little funding. In fact one of the problems with civic buildings in larger cities is that they get over capacity very easily. A hospital for example can only hold about 3,000 patients at full funding (the same capaict for a single residential high rise), but in a large city you will need multiple hospitals to handle the thousands of patients. If you lower the funding on radius you can afford to put in more hospitals at strategic locations to better handle the need and it will actually cost less overall. 2.) Keep Education to a Minimum: One of the most common and useful goals of most cities is to attract High Tech Industry. To do this you need education. The question then becomes how much education do you really need. While utilizing the above idea you can raise EQ to about 120 by only using elementary schools and libraries. Libraries are quite cheap. You can satisfy quite a bit of demand for §10 - §20 a month and libraries increase land value and desirability where ever they are placed. Most people think that you need colleges, museums, high schools and universities to get HT but this is not necessarily so. As far as education is concerned it should be one of the first civic buildings placed (perhaps even before your fire station). It takes a long time for a new city's EQ to raise to an acceptable level for IHT so start educating your sims as early as possible. When you are ready to have your EQ raised to a higher level, you can start adding the other buildings. Remember that the college, university, and museum each affect an entire city. I have had cities as large as 500k and more which only needed one of each. More colleges and museums will only benefit your city if your first ones are over capacity. Tip: you need many museums to get the major art musem reward, but once you have the reward placed in your city you can get rid of the extra museums. 3: Saftey Last: One of the most common pieces of advice is to place your first fire station when you have your first fire. This is good advice. When you are trying to balance your budget, only place fire stations in trouble areas where you seem to have lots of fires. When your city has a healthy income then you can work on better fire coverage. Police stations are the last thing to get put in. Crime in SimCity4 is determined by population and education levels. The higher the education level the less crime there will be. I had a city of 500k with an EQ of 200, no police stations and only 6 crimes on average per month. If you have a good education system (as described above) you wont need police stations to handle crime. Police stations do increase desirability and will help to attract more residence but is not a requirement and should only be considered as a last addition to most city designs. 4.) Manipulate Funding on Power Stations: Yep, just like you can with civic buildings, you can manipulate funding to the power stations to reduce costs and reduce power output. With a new city, a 6,000MW power station is producing way more power than you will need. Simply move the slider to a lower funding level and keep raising it as you need more. It will still produce just as much pollution but for a small city just starting out its not a big deal. 5.) Never Use a Water Treatment Plant: Most people (myself included) when starting to build our first cities will put all the utilities in the same spot; power, trash, and water pumps. The problem with this is that if water pollution levels near a pump rise too much, then they stop working. Most people will put down a water treatment plant to quell the problem. This costs a LOT of money. To fix this problem before it starts build your pumps as far away from your industry, power, and trash facilities as possible. I usually put them on the opposite end of the map. Give your pumping station its own wind power plant (and reduce its funding as well) and you will never have to worry about water pollution again. Your advisors will still complain about the pollution but your pumps will keep working and that is what matters. 6.) Free Trash Disposal: Landfills are the first trash option that most people fall back on. Tthis is the worst option by far. It is expensive, and takes up way too much space and has a huge negative desirability. The incinerator is what a lot of people go for when the landfill gets full. However, the incinerator is very expensive, being §1,000 a month. For a large city many incinerators may be needed. another option is to create a trash city where the entire city is nothing but incinerators and/or landfills and then export the trash to the neighbor. all of the options are very expensive. One option which is very much overlooked is the idea of funding your incinerator for §0 a month! Thats right, you can fund the incinerator for no money and it will still burn up to 500 tons of trash every month. You can have 1 or 10 waste to energy plants burning your trash and it will cost you nothing to maintain. There will be a small cost for trash pick up but that will be very small. The only draw back is that the pollution is still produced. To get around the pollution you can download Simgoobers Modern Waste To Energy plant from the STEX. The idea with that lot is that filtering technology has been improved so the lot produces less pollution. Tt has a higher plop cost and higher monthly fee but with this idea the fee is waived. -------------------------- Those are all the money saving tips I have for the moment. Have fun and if you learn of more, be sure to pass them along on the forums.

so I bought City Life 2008 recently from a half price store for $5. I try to install on my new windows 7 machine. it installs just fine but when I try to paly the game it tells me that I am using the wrong CD. there was only 1 cd in the box and I only have 1 DVD drive. the only information I can find on City Life 2008 are old reviews on gaming sites. there are no forums anywhere. not even on Paradox Interactive home page. its like they just completely dis-owned the game and wont even recognize they had a hand in its construction (I guess they are living up to their name...). if anyone has any information about this game it would be appreciated. I know I only spent 5$ but I woud still like to get some play time out of it.

I think I know what the problem is. I looked closely at the drive name when the DVD is in the drive and it says "ityLife2008". see the problem? its a typo on the name of the CD. the game is looking for "CityLife2008", its missing the "C". maybe I can try mounting again and change the name of the image. wish me luck. *edit* nope, the mouted image still says "ityLife2008". I can rename the .mdx file but the name of the image remains unchanged. oh well, I am pretty sure that this is the problem and since it was only $5 I am not going to worry about it anymore. *edit*

I tried a mounted digital copy and it still asked for the CD! the only .exe file on the CD is the install .exe, when I mount the CD it just tries to re-install. there is no way to play the game using the files on the CD. the actual .exe file that plays the game (once installed) is apparently hard coded to check for the CD so it does not matter if it is mounted or not. I could try a compantibility mode but i am not very confident at this point.

thanks for the repsonse. nope, never played City Life. I do have a SCS city journal on the Tilted Mill forum though. I have City Life 2008 edition with should be the third edition (after World Edition). I know that the original City Life had some malware on it called starforce but, I tried to make sure that starforce was not on this edition. I am only vaguely familiar with Tages but, I don't know much about it. do I need to install something extra to make Tages function? my disk is fresh out of the box and has no scratches (nice shiny mirrored surface). like I said, I only paid $5 for it. a download would probably cost $20 or more (I'm cheap).

thanks for the repsonse. nope, never played City Life. I do have a SCS city journal on the Tilted Mill forum though. I have City Life 2008 edition with should be the third edition (after World Edition). I know that the original City Life had some malware on it called starforce but, I tried to make sure that starforce was not on this edition. I am only vaguely familiar with Tages but, I don't know much about it. do I need to install something extra to make Tages function? my disk is fresh out of the box and has no scratches (nice shiny mirrored surface). like I said, I only paid $5 for it. a download would probably cost $20 or more (I'm cheap).

the challenge is simple for those that have the ability to do so. backup all of your SC4 custom content and save files. uninstall SC4 completely. reinstall SC4 vanilla - no CC, no mods, no Rush Hour no patches. now play SC4 vanilla as it was initially released. now compare to CXL. if you still feel that SC4 was superior to CXL then by all means continue to complain, otherwise, please keep in mind that CXL is still new and after a few years of patches, updates and a few GEMs it will be a very different game. discuss.

wow, I seriously have no idea why I won or what I did to deserve this honor. apparently I have Swat-Medic to thank for the nomination - Thanks! and we even had a small tussle in the Cities XL forum not too long ago. no hard feelings apparently!

Another question: Since I don't have the game yet, will I be able to download this pack at a later time when I do have the game and PO? or are these content packs only for people that are subscribed at the time of its initial release?

Cool news, Thanks Gregory_C! one question though (I don't have the game yet and was concerned about this so I thought I would ask), how can a player control what kinds of architecture pop up when doing the random zoning. most people are not going to want to see old English buildings mixed in with modern day stuff in a random fashion, and, I am sure that most people who like to randomly zone will not want to switch to pick-n-plop for the rest of their gaming experience. how are the new architectures kept separate from the standard types? this question also goes for the new stuff that is planned like "China Town" etc. (edit) I went the link and I guess there is going to be a new button for all the different types? that could work I guess. so are there any far future plans to add castles, or castle pieces for people to build their own medival cities? 12 is a decent start and they are all well done, but, you know people will want lots more (edit)

So I just got this game about a week ago. My wife found a used copy of it in a Gamestop for about $40. I played the demo on PS3 and at first I thought it was a new game comming out, LOL! Turns out it is over 2 years old! anyway, I went on line looking for forum discussions and only find old posts asking for a sequels, but, no one is really talking about the game itself. OK, so the game is pretty straightforward, but, it is still quite addicting. My favorite unit has to be Archers. pelting away at the enemy from afar and causing panic in their ranks which I rack up the kills. its so fun. Cavalry is fun too, but, it loses its appeal quickly just due to the over powered nature of their charge attacks. although, I was able to rack up a 150 kill combo with a lancer unit, that was fun. Pikes are interesting since they have almost no offensive capabilities. if it was not for the fact that they level up so quickly they would be such a pain. however, my wife was watching me play and I summoned a unit of 10 pikes right before being charged by enemy cavalry. well the entire enemy squad was killed by my pike wall and they all died in the same spot creating a large pile of dead horses. my wife died laughing it was so funny. that is probably my favorite moment so far. so anyway, share your thoughts on the game please, I just want to talk to someone about the game. well...lets see...has anyone gotten 100% in all weapons? how about firearms? how does one get Elephants they sound very fun. I have gotten to about level 19-25 in the weapons I have access to and about 2 star fame thus far so I think I have a ways to go yet. anyone...? *crickets chirp* *tumbleweed tumbles*