SIMCITY

[wct097]

Another lizard attack!

 

[Brock]

Isn't this the game the furry played?

 

[whatttup_G]

lizardcatcher??

 

[BirdOPrey5]

Fury Fox played 2nd life. This is Sim City- there is far less social interaction in Sim City.

Industry burns...

UFO caught on camera:

Night time...

 

[wct097]

I'm not very pleased with the gameplay. I'm finding it extremely hard to deal with traffic and trade. In theory, you should be able to import raw materials, run them through your factory, and sell for a profit. I'm finding that not to be the case.

edit: I have three streetcars in one city.... but none of them show up anywhere on the tracks.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

The traffic "Bug" seems to be the biggest complaint now. Some people argue it isn't a bug...

But basically ALL traffic ALWAYS takes the shortest route between to places. So if you have a direct dirt road and a slightly in-direct high density avenue, 100% of traffic uses the dirt road and will wait in traffic even though the avenue is empty.

I consider it a bug since it is supposed to simulate real life and in real life people take the shortest route by time not distance.

Streecar one I haven't heard of- did you check the stats to see if anyone was using them?

 

[wct097]

I think the streetcar thing has to do with the fact that I bulldozed the roads, then rebuilt everything from scratch.... I guess I bulldozed the streetcars and they never came back.

 

[Jeepnut28]

BBC News - EA apologises over SimCity launch

 

[BirdOPrey5]

Traffic fix should be out "soon." That's what I tell people when they ask when the next vBulletin update will be out.

Blog Article

It generally means anytime between now and a month from now in my experience, sometimes longer.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

This is SimCity 3000 but still...

 

[wct097]

They must have made some improvements and AI tweaks because not only is it running smoothly, but I'm not having as many issues as I was having with balancing city specialization with budget.

 

[wct097]

Spoke too soon.... I'm not sure how it's possible to grow over 100k in population while doing a city specialization. At around 90k the traffic gets insane and your delivery trucks slow down and you start losing your ass on trade stuff.

I have a trade port running to import oil and sell fuel that my refinery makes. Fuel sells for more than 4x what crude costs and you make fuel from crude on a 1:1 basis. For every $4500 I spend in crude, I should make $21000 in fuel. For some reason, I spend $18000 on crude and only sell $21000 in fuel. It just doesn't make any sense.

 

[whatttup_G]

the math doesn't make sense and your cash is mysteriously gone... yeah, you must have received the BHO patch...

 

[wct097]

So I end up getting stuck in a recurring situation. My city grows, my tax revenues are barely covering expenses, but my city specialization (oil in this case) brings home the bacon. As the city grows and tax revenue increases, I add services as needed. Bus, streetcars, park & rides, etc. Then around 80-100k population, the traffic gets to be so bad that trade ceases to work and I start losing massive money. By the time I've lost $300-500k, I bite the bullet, kill services, and max out taxes. My population dwindles to under 10k and traffic still chokes the city. Abandoned buildings abound and eventually I have to turn off my specialization until traffic fades.... then I start the cycle all over again.

I think traffic ultimately kills your city. I'd be interested to see how people manage to go larger than 100k population while maintaining a specialization. Maybe their servers are taking a dump still and the traffic/trade problem is a result of that.

 

[wct097]

I'm taxing my Sims to death in hopes that they'll move out, ease my traffic congestion, and free up trade.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

I make oil wells or coal mines but just enough to run local power plants... I hd a city close to 200k population but forgot which server its on. I'm on South America recently in a small region trying out some circular deigns and an expo center for the first time.

 

[wct097]

Oil wells run dry.... gotta take advantage of them while you can to get the petrol HQ decked out so you can build refineries, then use them with imported oil to make fuel to sell. My city now has three refineries, one well, a trade port, and only 16k citizens.... I'm at $1.6m and rising. Taking my time now to build out the residential section of my city, taking care of ground pollution and building out services very slowly.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

How do you clear ground pollution?

I LOLed when Is stared the game today and they wanted me to buy the "Deluxe" edition for $20 more, the same day got an email offering a free game because they were so sorry about the bungled launch.

I LOLed again when SimCity 4 was on the list of free games. I tweeted them to offer the Deluxe for free. Nothing else they offered I cared about.

 

[wct097]

Plant trees on top of the ground pollution. They die, plant more, and slowly it goes away.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

How do you plant trees? Parks?