Why are SimCitys cities so small? Because EA didn't make it for multicore CPU's

[Depth]

One workaround would be to use one-way streets to "funnel" the traffic using longer curved roads, but that would quickly eat up space. And it seems that people would rather drive all the way to another city rather than finding a job a bit further in the home town (i.e. the highway exit is closer)

To quote a comment on youtube "As a person who bought the game, when I watched this I laughed. Then I cried a little."

Edit: This guy seems to have a good solution, only 3-way intersections and some other tweaks

 

[hellrazor]

Can you deploy military to shoot dissidents?

Tropico 4.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

And to get us back in your good graces, we’re going to offer you a free PC download game from the EA portfolio. On March 18, SimCity players who have activated their game will receive an email telling them how to redeem their free game.

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/a-simcity-update-and-something-for-your-trouble

Free game on the house!

 

[hellrazor]

http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-update-straight-answers-from-lucy
Don't forget to read the comments!

A few of my favorite quotes (from the article, not the comments):

I hate to disturb you when you’re playing SimCity

We're not, don't worry about it.

We put a ton of effort into making our simulation [...] engines more detailed than ever

Your sims' AI begs to differ.

All of our social world features - world challenges, world events, world leaderboards and world achievements - use our servers to update the status of all cities.

Does anybody in this forum really give a crap about any of that?

Cloud-based saves and easy access from any computer are another advantage of our connected features. You can pop from work to home, play the game and have your cities available to you anywhere.

Easy access from any computer from anywhere, huh?

In many ways, we built an MMO.

Such as everything that could conceivably make it an MMO is either broken or causing other things to break.

So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision.

I'll let you all have fun with that.

There was a tie for first place:

it’s not final and it never will be.

SimCity is a special game, with a very special community

 

[Easy Rhino]

terrible game from a terrible company.

 

[entropy13]

I haven't really played the game (Sim City 5) yet, but based on the videos and articles at least, it's worse than any of the Cities XL games (albeit the only one I've played among them was 2011), and Focus Home Interactive isn't exactly a big game company...

 

[Steevo]

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/a-simcity-update-and-something-for-your-trouble

Free game on the house!

Stop being a corporate pillow biter who loves it.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/1...need-to-be-always-online-says-maxis-developer

 

[hellrazor]

Just read this in the comments section (by the Maxis team):

To date we reduced game crashes which contributes to this issue by 92%

Makin' me laugh...

EDIT: found another comment I like:

Replace ‘Online’ with ‘Organ’ and I can by your claim call my penis an MMO. Ignore the fact that I usually play by myself, and have NEVER played with more than 8 people, and it’s much smaller than they’ve been used to. It’s an MMO – at least, if played with the right way.

Does that sound right to you?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I haven't really played the game (Sim City 5) yet, but based on the videos and articles at least, it's worse than any of the Cities XL games (albeit the only one I've played among them was 2011), and Focus Home Interactive isn't exactly a big game company...

Cities XL couldn't keep me entertained for a day. SimCity has had me hooked for five and I barely scratched the surface.

You people need to STFU and play it.

 

[Aquinus]

I haven't really played the game (Sim City 5) yet, but based on the videos and articles at least, it's worse than any of the Cities XL games (albeit the only one I've played among them was 2011), and Focus Home Interactive isn't exactly a big game company...

Cities XL couldn't keep me entertained for a day. SimCity has had me hooked for five and I barely scratched the surface.

You people need to STFU and play it.

I agree, don't judge a game if you've never played it. Listen to your post for a second:

I haven't really played the game (Sim City 5) yet, but

That's just asking for trouble considering you're announcing that you don't know what you're talking about before you talk about it. So I'm siding with Ford. Go play the game and get back to us.

 

[Frick]

http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-update-straight-answers-from-lucy
Don't forget to read the comments!

A few of my favorite quotes (from the article, not the comments):

We're not, don't worry about it.


Your sims' AI begs to differ.


Does anybody in this forum really give a crap about any of that?


Easy access from any computer from anywhere, huh?


Such as everything that could conceivably make it an MMO is either broken or causing other things to break.


I'll let you all have fun with that.

There was a tie for first place:

You are worse then me when I start about Bethsoft. And that says a lot.

 

[kid41212003]

what do you expect from the worst run game corp?? this will just fuel the rise of the indie dev on linux!

the mighty linux fanboy has spoken

 

[Easy Rhino]

the mighty linux fanboy has spoken

bow to your master!!!!

 

[hellrazor]

All hail king Linus!

 

[FordGT90Concept]

They're going to fix that soon:

Apparently "traffic avoidance" has been set to low (probably to reduce server load). An update soon will turn it up so they'll choose the path of least resistance.


This post has some more details and expands on other things they're doing to improve traffic pathing:
http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-update-8

It sounds like an update soon will allow emergency vehicles to get around quicker as well as preventing public transportation from crowding stops (e.g. 10 buses mapping to one stop at about the same time).

 

[remixedcat]

Well I was one of the very first (and I mean the very first, as in within the first 20 people I was one of the key people on thier forums) beta testers of Monte Christo's CitiesXL (as in, the very first one) and it was far less buggy then this Sim City game is.

I really hope EA will resolve at least some of these issues becuase my itch is getting a lil bigger to play this!

 

[RCoon]

I always wanted to love this game. But i simply cant, just doesnt allow you to make something big enough :<

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Well I was one of the very first (and I mean the very first, as in within the first 20 people I was one of the key people on thier forums) beta testers of Monte Christo's CitiesXL (as in, the very first one) and it was far less buggy then this Sim City game is.

I really hope EA will resolve at least some of these issues becuase my itch is getting a lil bigger to play this!

Cities XL is a clone of SimCity 1-4. This SimCity is something entirely different. The first issue is they didn't have enough server capacity to handle all the regions. That forced them to dial-back a lot of features so people could play with as little lag as possible. They've since re-enabled a lot of features and are finally turning to correcting game play issues like traffic. Give it another month and it will be a very solid game to play.

I just hope they add some things like subways and one-way roads. I think, as it stands, it is the best SimCity game to date. It has so much more replay value than the previous titles thanks to Great Works, specializations, and experimenting with agent behavior. I've rebuilt a single city three times just to see compare population levels achieved with each design. Can't say I've ever done that in a previous city simulator.

 

[digibucc]

I'll never understand you Ford. You hate on things that are really not that bad and you profess admiration for things that are flat out poorly made. you're like opposite man. and i mean that in the nicest way possible

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The only people trashing SimCity are the people that haven't played it. They dwell on the small city sizes but completely fail to see how that changes the dynamics of the game. Cities grow up (as in density) much faster in this game than in SimCity 3000 and 4.

It also isn't about zone density, but road density. The success of the city revolves around how well it handles traffic. That makes it very strategic if you're going for the highest possible population.

Not to mention all the other challenges the small size creates. For example, I keep wrestling with Fast Neutron nuclear reactors. They require a huge amount of money to operate, tons of population to produce sewage which increases ground water, and they require a huge amount of water to run the cooling towers. It's a very delicate balancing act but if you pull it off, one city can power (2.4 GW) an entire region/cluster.


Long story short, one city can't do everything. SimCity requires strategic cooperation like few before it.

 

[digibucc]

The only people trashing SimCity are the people that haven't played it.

I own it, I've built 4 cities, they are too small. it's that simple imo. I understand the coop with different cities, however that doesn't mean they couldn't have made it possible to make cities a might bit larger. they are NOT mutually exclusive.

quite honestly i'm more peeved about always online and the server issues than anything. regardless of whether they fix it or not it should never have happened, it's EA greed getting in the way, yet again.

 

[brandonwh64]

So they are saying if you are building a city and the server goes down, your whole city is F'd?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I own it, I've built 4 cities, they are too small. it's that simple imo. I understand the coop with different cities, however that doesn't mean they couldn't have made it possible to make cities a might bit larger. they are NOT mutually exclusive.

quite honestly i'm more peeved about always online and the server issues than anything. regardless of whether they fix it or not it should never have happened, it's EA greed getting in the way, yet again.

What's the highest population you reached? I have one city at about 330,000 making over 2 million/day off of two TV factories. That city is special though because it has a road going straight through it (two road connections to the region). Other cities that don't have two road connections I've only gotten up to about 200-230k.

I wouldn't be surprised if they release regions with larger cities in the future. The reason why they don't is because of computing resources. It is costly to simulate the activities of 330k agents, especially when it's part of a region with over 1 million connected agents. SimCity is the first true city simulator and that comes with a price tag to make it run in realtime.

So they are saying if you are building a city and the server goes down, your whole city is F'd?

It's constantly saving. I don't know what would happen if a server had hardware failure though.

 

[digibucc]

What's the highest population you reached? I have one city at about 330,000

...

I wouldn't be surprised if they release regions with larger cities in the future.

...

It's constantly saving.

fair enough, I couldn't say but I know it's not 300k+. If you're right about larger city regions in the future, I would love it.

I have had a few instances where I have lost connection in the middle of a game, and at most lost like 3 minutes of game-play. still though, when I am playing single player there is absolutely no reason for that,

 

[Easy Rhino]

it's EA greed getting in the way, yet again.

i disagree. if EA were truly greedy they would have listened to their customers and allowed them to play offline on day 1 and would have also expanded the city size. so greed has nothing to do with it. EA just made a bunch of bad business decisions.