soldyne

I have not played SC4 since my region files were corrupted about a year ago. too depressing to lose a "child" like that. also, I can't get myself to play a 2.5D game anymore no matter how much custom content there is. I will give CitiesXL a try but first, I need a new comp which will need a new OS so I will most likely not try it until November (after windows 7 is released). I am also one of the few people interested in the PO. I don't mind spending a few dollars a month to get more content. I am a little ticked that the single player mode has so few features, but, if I am playing PO then it should not affect me all that much anyway.

nuts, apparently, the demo that is available out there is the EU version. all the sites that were offering the demo have been asked by MC to take it down. not only does North America have to wait for the release but we have to wait for the demo too. I can't find any available downloads for it anywhere. I guess I will just have to play the game through you guys at the moment.

If you are playing the demo then I am sorry to think that it very well may be the final release. if UI are your only major complaints then I am certain that those things are easy to tweak later. just give them a few patches. what about the actual game play? could we bother you for some screen shots? I am waiting until the weekend to dl the demo so I can make full use of my 7 days (Monday is a holiday for us in the US).

I am just a little concerned that it sounds as if MC is making Simtropolis do all the work as far as maintaining an official forum. it sounds like MC is saying we can make this third party free site do all the work for us and we don't have to spend the time or money to maintain our own forum. from an economic perspective it sounds like a good deal, but, really, it just seems like MC is taking advantage of Simtropolis. however, for all we know, MC and Dirk made a deal of some kind. perhaps MC is donating some amount of money to simtrop in order to main a Cities XL forum. I would be OK with that I guess. MC can concentrate on other things and save a little money and Simtrop can do what it does best; maintain one of the best communities on the net. as long as MC has a presence here (as we have seen in this thread already) then I guess it is just as good as an official forum. as far as the rest of cities xl page is concerned I guess it looks OK. I don't own the game nor have a beta account so I can't sign in and access the community pages, or maybe there is just nothing there yet to see. only time will tell how the main site will grow. I am still going to purchase the game when it is released in North America. Probably after October when I have a new comp build.

thank you for unlocking the thread SWAT, it is appreciated. now what we need is a way to air our concerns to Monte Cristo. without an official forum or any official way to contact MC how are they going to know what we think. this implies that they don't want to know what we think. also, an official forum gives people a place to discuss strategies, post FAQs and do research for technical issues they are experiencing with the game. now that I think about it, perhaps MC is still in the process of converting the old site to the new site. perhaps migrating all the user accounts and old forums is time consuming. I will give MC the benefit of the doubt and hope that eventually the old forums and accounts will be restored. maybe they are working on them right now...

I too noticed that the forums are missing. I posted the same kind of topic on MMORPG.com and Gamefaqs.com but it seems like there are very few people who actually care... I only got 1 response from a person who noticed too. perhaps everyone else is just too angry with MC for deleting their accounts and trashing their discussions they want nothing more to do with MC. I had high hopes for this game, but when they blatantly delete all the users accounts with no warning or message to the public they are basically saying "we no longer care what you think, go away". and that is exactly what people will do... very sad really...

So I went over to the Tilted Mill forums and asked around about Societal Energies. I explained (or rather complained) that the whole energies thing just made no sense and had no logic about it. well, almost right away, a TM developer got on and started explaining their logic to me. according to TM the societal energies works like this: SCS is all about creating a city with a mood to it. it is also about getting your sims to feel and work with that mood. when a building "produces" an energy it is basically setting the mood of the city. a building that "uses" an energy is one where the sims require a certain mood level before they will want to use it. so a bank produces prosperity and authority. that is because a bank sets a mood of money and policy in the city. a mall on the other hand "uses" prosperity which means that the mall is a venue that people will only want to use when the mood of the city is a prosperous one. if the city has a low or 0 prosperous outlook no one will want to spend lots of money at the mall and thus the mall does not work. another example: the Public Clock sets an authoritarian mood because it promotes a sense of control over the local time. the city hall also promotes control because it is the seat of government. jails however "use" authority because no one will want to use them or even care about crime in a city that has no sense of authority and thus the jail will not function. so if you ever find yourself wondering why a building "produces" or "uses" certain energies try looking at it from the perspective of setting and requiring a certain mood. TM also said that there are still a few (very few) buildings which still don't seem to make sense and they are working on ironing out those buildings in the next patch or for the expansion. for example all agricultural buildings produce or use spirituality except the orchard with uses prosperity... for the most part though the whole mood concept really works. remember though that such things are always open to interpretation so I would like to open the discussion to help answer questions about the energies of different buildings.

Marketing Flaws: agree completely. but a bad title does not make a bad book. also, SCS is not just an airport and seaport, you need to get out more. SCS is about creating enitre resort complexes including tourist destinations, theme parks, resort hotels, monuments and attractions. the airport and seaport are just there to accomodate the increased tourism in your cities. really the ports are just a small part of what SCS will offer. also I am not sure where you get your figures from. SCS will be available for download here in the US for $19.99. pretty much every Sims2 expansion costs that much and all they add are clothes and furniture... Program Flaws: agree again. but, there are 5 patches out for the game and many people say that the latest patch cleared up most of them. people who are still having trouble are most likely due to local problems. I personally have had a great experience playing the game with just as many glitches as I do playing SC4, Oblivion, or any other high end graphics game. Technical Support: disagree. those people who are having trouble with tech support are not talking to right people. They are most likely trying to contact EA tech support which is a load of carp. if they go to the tilted mill forums and post their grievence in the tech support thread a TM developer will respond within 24 hours (unless it is a weekend or holiday). they also respond a lot to suggestions, comments, complaints and will even carry on a random conversation. I'd say that the tech support for SCS is better than any game I have ever played before. A large portion of the fixes and additions that came in the patches were due to the conversations and complaints on the TM forums.

thanks all for posting you comments here. It seems apparent to me that there are two kinds of City Builder People here; the mechanical types and the artist types. the mechanical types are not impressed with pretty screen shots and are disgusted with the simplicity of SCS. the artist types are more willing to be swayed by an artistic showing of the game. this is not to say that there are not people out there that are both. I actually think of myself as a mix of mechanical and artistic. I was attracted to SC4 for the mechanical aspects of city simulation but I felt that it lacked the artistic capabilities I was looking for. SCS gives me the artistic content I want (although I would like more models to work with) but it lacks the simulation detail I seek. I also think that there are a lot of people out there that are still bitter about SCS carrying the SimCity name. I agree, it should not have been called SimCity, but, what's done is done. (hey whats this I am standing on...oh its a soap box, sorry about that). anyway, for those that are interested in seeing the rest of Fable Falls please feel free to join the Tilted Mill forums and post your comments. I really hate double posting in my own CJ just to give more updates and I have plenty of those! also, I started my CJ with the suburban area because I thought it was the least interesting part of my city. just wait until I show the city park and high rise complexes (those are my favorite areas). I do agree with Ded that the suburbs look a little samey, but, in my experience most suburbs do look samey (all the houses are built with 1 of 3 or 4 available designs for that housing complex). I would have liked to have more colors but I am terrible with texture modding (all I have is MSPaint). keep the comments comming.

wow, tough crowd! that is my city he is linking to by the way. thanks baertooth, I was just comming on Simtropolis to make this exact post. as some of you know I had a CJ here on simtropolis some time ago (still linked in my sig) but SimCity4 is just too limited for me anymore. I need 3D, I need dramatic views, I need the ability to make the city I want to make and SC4 just does not have the kinds of tools I need to do that. yes SCS has its limitations; no terraforming, small city sizes, little strategy, but, a good artist knows how to work with limitations. I guess I just got bored with SC4. I must admit though, SCS is really just a snack to hold me over for Cities Unlimited. I am very much convinced that CU will be the SC5 that everyone was hoping for. the thread linked to above is active and I am posting updates to it every so often. also, for those don't know, you can click on the thumbnails for a bigger picture. trust me, the pics look much better in their full size.

dont think of it as "draining". when a building subtracts from an energy it is not reducing the energy in the city but is instead being fueled by it. another way to look at it is to say that sims will not work or play in a place if the city does not have the right atmosphere. if you have a city with a ton of prosperity and creativity but no productivity and you plop down a factory that is fueled by productivity then no one will work there because it is not the "in" thing to do. you sims may prefer to work in office buildings or go to clown school for example. As for the office buildings using productivity...well, you still have to work hard and efficiently even if your job is just to sit at a desk all day and pound out paperwork. A desk job in an office setting is still very similar to an industrial assembly line. it just happens to be cleaner and prettier than a factory.

so, I am a huge SC4 fan and I have no intention of letting SCS replace SC4 (that's just blasphemy). I also think that the one major flaw of SCS is that is has Sim City in the title and I think EA really needs to release SC5 as their next City Building simulator game. anyway, I think SCS has some interesting ideas and has the potential to be a fun game when not thought of as a SC4 sequel. I am ok with the idea of SCS as a stand alone or spinoff title. I have played other tilted mill games and enjoyed them (I think Ceasar 4 is one of them). because of my anger at the "SC4 sequel dissapointment" I want to make sure that EA has understood their mistake before I give them money for SCS. I have seen a lot of press releases and ratings for the game that seem to indicate that EA has indeed seen the error of their ways. Do you guys think it is safe to purchase a copy of SCS without giving EA the wrong ideas?

SimTower had bomb threats, they can do that in a city too. you have to evacuate certain sections of the city, send out bomb squads. that would be neat.

I played around with this yesterday. I love the idea of zonning with tags. put tags on all your buildings and then you can zone for certain building types. you can make all kinds of specific districts. you set up your tags by architecture type, industry type, size, color...whatever you want! One thing I am looking forward to using this for is to zone out apartment complexes and suburban neighborhoods with similar architechure styles. the tags are the perfect answer to keeping mansions out of low wealth neighborhoods and also a way to keep CO and CS seperate.

Go to the tilted mill forums. people will actually help you there. you will just get talked down to here if you mention that you play SCS. sad but true... the best advice I can give you here (without getting pelted too much with rotten fruit) is to build your city with prosperity, authority and productivity in mind. those types of buildings have the highest population and best income potential.

ah ha! that helps expalin things. nice view point Gyrobot.

ok, so what is your sim city strategy? strategy of city building is defined by the player. when I play SC4 I design all kinds of different cities in my region from rural, suburban, industrial, slum, downtown, utility, etc. when I play SCS I play with strategies to create totalitarian kingdoms, or spiritual farming communities. the strategies are different, but they are still strategies. if you are referring to the lack of focus on money then remember that money is not the only resource in SC4 and it is not the focus of SCS. Perhaps you should take a look at the CJ section of the forum for a minuet. what is the overall feeling of some of the best CJs on this forum? do you think they care about making money or balancing the budget or even about any of the resources? I believe that most of those CJs are all about plopping down BATs and cheating on the money and power just so they can develop a city with a certain look and feel for the ultimate purpose of telling a story. that is the point of SCS, build a town with a mood and tell a story. if you are not looking to make a CJ or share your pics with others then continue playing SC4 with your grids and charts. if you want to create a beautiful skyline in a cybertech city or a rose tinted sunset in a romatic village and share that story with others then SCS is what you are looking for. yes Sim City is about creating a city with strategy, but, the strategy is entirely up to each individual player based on the goals they are trying to achieve.

Replay value for SC4 vanilla was limited too. I think we have all been spoiled by the STEX here. I think replayability for games such as SC4 and SCS are really based on what you want to do with it. when I first bought SC4 I did not play it very much at all because I had no inspiration to do anything with it and it just sat there on my desk collecting dust. that was until I saw a CJ for the first time and then the flood gates in my imagination flew open. with SCS it is the same thing. SCS is not really a game so much as another design tool like SC4. if it weren't laughably easy then it might be a decent game. the difference is that you can try to build themed cities like a romantic getaway town or a haunted village, whereas with SC4 most people try to build realistic cities. don't try to play SCS as a full blown simulator but more as an artistic tool. then you might be surprised as to just how much replayability it really has. (ok not as much as SC4 but at least you can try to get your money's worth)

Just on the off chance that someone somewhere actually does something with these lists I guess I will put my list out here too. I also think that repeating things that have been said is a good thing because the more we repeat it the more it means we really want it (kind of like casting votes): 1. Optional Grid. I want the ability to place roads, zones and buildings any which way I want, but, have the option to "snap to grid" for when I want to space things out and help things line up. Black and White 2 has an excellent non-grid city building engine. 2. water at different elevations. with this goes a physics engine to allow rivers to flow and water to fall off cliffs. while we have a physics engine going we can apply it to traffic accidents and disasters. 3. on that note, lets add weather: rain, snow, sleet, tornados, hurricanes, floods, avalanches, etc. with the physics engines and things like rain you can have local flooding and the temporary closing of roadways. lots of possibilities there. 4. regional terraforming: please see SC4 Terraformer for more information! 5. Simple yet robust customization. we need an easier Lot Editor mixed with a 3D engine and ILives Reader. we need the ability to simply load up an existing lot, change its props, change its properties and be done. but for the more ambitious people out there they can go so far as to create their own 3D designs and upload their own textures. this tool also needs to be fully supported by the game developers as a fully functional part of the game. 6. the ability to switch easily between random zoning/organic building and plopping down fully functional buildings. every RCI lot in the game should be automatically available for both random zoning and plopping. 7. the ability to customize our in game menus (this is to keep us from going insane with all the mods will be making...) 8. More zone types. RCI is the basic set up but we should be able to zone specifically for certain types of industry, CS and CO individually, and different home types like zone specifically for single family homes, apartment complexes, mansions (to keep mansions from popping up next to slums). the random developers should also be smart and try to build similar architecture next to other buildings that have already grown to help keep architecture styles similar within neighborhoods. 9. paintable fillers like parking lots, parks, warehouses, storage areas, alley ways, dirt lots, and other stuff you might see between and around major buildings. also the ability to place down props in order to decorate already grown areas. perhaps that back alley is not dingy enough and could use another trash can or two, or maybe you just want to put a few cars parked along the side of the road to give the area a more busy look. 10. use the SCS concept of venues. yep I went there and brought up SCS. I like the idea that sims go to work and then they go to play. I never was satsified with SC4 live and work routine. why do I have all of these CS areas when no one is using them? 11. more "puzzle pieces". we need lots of different kinds of expandable stuff like amusement parks, zoos, airports, sea ports, malls, shopping centers, schools, hospitals, police stations, universities, parks, etc. to this day there are very few satisfactory ways to build a decent shopping center in SC4, even with BATS. each piece should add something to set, like there could be different pieces for adding capacity to a hospital while other pieces add administration space for more empolyees and adds efficiency, a research wing could improve city wide health, while a birthing wing could help increase populatio

I think the reason there are going to be expansions for this game is because Tillted Mill most likely signed a contract with EA to develop one base game and a number of expansions. so Tillted Mill is releaseing these expansions because the contract says they can. they are probably under contract for at least 2 expansions and if those are successful (which they already aren't) then they can go into contract for more later. you have to remember that companies like EA have things like this planned years in advance. they don't just wake up one morning and say "hey lets see if we can squeeze a few extra dollars out of the community with a SCS expansion pack - lets call up tillted mill and see if anyone is awake over there." they knew they wanted a base game and set number of expansions right from the start. its like the auto manufacturers - they have their 2010 models already planned out and waiting for production to begin. the engineers are already working on the designs for the 2012 models. for big companies like EA, what we see happening now was thought about and contracted years ago.

Thanks everyone for your replies and well thought out comments. I think I will give it a try although not right away. I have other games on my to do list but I will put this on my game queue for later.

very nice screens Da' Mayor, it really does remind me of a horror town...*shudders*

I have been hesitant to purchase any release of City Life because of the bad press I have read and heard about the Starfoce protection software in the original City Life game. I have a custom built computer and I don't want this game to damage my hardward which I have heard is a real possibility. is there any information that anyone has about the latest versions of City Life and the Starforce software? I am interested in trying out the game but not at the expense of my system.

I recently got a new HD and reinstalled SC4. I updated my clean install from SC.com and then, using my old drive as a slave drive, I moved all my plugins and what not from my old drive to my new drive. everything is an exact copy of what it was before. I load up my latest city and about 1/2 of the props are missing! Here you can see what I mean. the prop files and all dependancies are loaded. the street in the middle of the picture shows that stuff on the left hand of the picture has props but stuff on the right side has none. it is like a thick line of missing props which goes straight down my entire city. I tried replacing the lots by reploping them. that worked at first. then I saved I reloaded the game, some of the newly ploped lots were ok, but some of them lost their props again. so, I tried again, this time a whole new section of my city was hit with the prop loss. has anyone every encountered this before? if so how can I fix it? this city is for my CJ. I put about 3 months work into this city and I can't bear to start it over again. other cities in the region seem to be unaffected by this strange prop loss effect. it is as if I have encountered some kind of internal prop limit; i put some down here and lose some over there. this is on a large city tile, all graphics settings are on high, I have a fairly decent comp with 2GB of RAM. I did not have this trouble with the city before I reloaded everything. I can try to use my old HD as the master drive and see if the problem persists. if not then I will have to play SC4 on my old HD i guess. any help will be most appreciated.

excellent road tour earlier. it makes the whole region seem alive and realistic; going from inner city to rural. as always a wonderful mixture of story and eye candy! the snow is just fantastic, well done. and the cat is quite amusing, I have three here myself