[SimCity] - Abandoned thread, please bulldoze to reduce risk of fire and vagrancy

jdarksun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQNagqH6mO4

SimCity? What's that?
This game is the latest in a series of city management games that date back to 1989 (yes, the franchise is 24 years old). The original was created by Will Wright, a man whose name is virtually synonymous with sim games (SimCity (1989), SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife, The Sims, and Spore were all him).

SimCity (2013) claims to be the most expansive city management game yet, with your decisions not only impacting the city you're working on (and all of its citizens), but all the cities in the region as well. And those cities can effect yours, too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YceL2C4TW4Q#!

Multiplayer?
As a new addition to the series, SimCity has added the ability to invite other players to manage the cities in your region. Regions can support up to 16 city plots - so you could play with 15 of your closest internet friends. Interested? Sign up to play with us! The multiplayer isn't twitched-based or anything, so don't stress about latency or lag or whatever. It lets you cooperatively build cities with other players in the region, sharing power or pollution or police forces or whatever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpzouhrHCpM

I heard there was draconian DRM.
SimCity is Origin-only, and requires you to be connected to their service in order to play. So the short answer is: "Yes". The longer answer is: "SimCity is a live service that simulates real time updates from new challenges to new features and content." The devs also claim that a lot of simulation stuff is being handled "by the cloud", and there's a lot being simulated. It's possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RodekwSyo40

What can I do with this game?
Generalize or specialize. From the web site:

For the first time, create truly unique cities with different specializations. Mayors seeking intelligent Sims can build a college town full of libraries, community colleges and universities. Specialize in Big Business such as Casinos, Electronics, Coal, Trade, and more to increase the wealth of your city. Each specialization has major benefits but consequences as well. Educated Sims unlock technologies that will benefit your region, but large universities are expensive to maintain. Casinos will bring tourism and raise Simoleons but also attract unwanted crime.

You can also visit disasters upon your citizens. Aliens, earthquakes, giant monsters, meteors, tornadoes, and introducing - zombies!

I want to watch people play the game!
Good news! They're streaming live play every day until release. Go watch, vote on events to happen, participate via Twitter and get the city named after you or get your initials carved into the city.

Previous streams:
Day 1 - Disaster City
Day 2 - Casino City
Day 3 - Going Green
Day 4 - City in the Shape of (a Simolean)
Day 5 - Burn Some Coal
Day 6 - City on the Brink
Day 7 - 4 Cities in 4 Hours

Penny Arcade Forum Multiplayer Links
* Wanna play in a PA Forums region? Sign up here!
* Already assigned a region, and looking for Origin names? Check out the Assignments spreadsheet!

Tips and Tricks
* A bunch of helpful infographics
* A Guide to Laying Down Roads
* A document full of tips from the "Let's All Be Mayor!" live streams

Forged by Ocean and Stone, blessed by Will Wright. Multi-city, Multi-player!

Forged by Ocean and Stone? WTF?
SimCity (2013) was designed by Ocean Quigley and Stone Librande. Their names are awesome.

Blessed by Will Wright?
Yeah, he loves the new game. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSNdmSvhaU#!

Free game?
Yeah, launch has been butts, so Maxis/EA is offering SimCity players who have activated their game a "free PC download game from the EA portfolio" on March 18.

RCI problems got you down?

davidsdurions

Beautiful

Slayer of Dreams

Links to Jesse Cox (OMFGcata) and Crendor (wowcrendor) playing Sim City (beta) in an incompetent and hilarious manner:
Jesse's View - Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5
Crendor's View - Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5


Edit - also, if anyone wants a minisig like the one I have with your city name, send me a PM and I'll give you a link to the finished image.

InkSplat

Sweetness.

Slayer of Dreams wrote: »

Links to Jesse Cox (OMFGcata) and Crendor (wowcrendor) playing Sim City (beta) in an incompetent and hilarious manner:
Jesse's View - Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4
Crendor's View - Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4


Edit - also, if anyone wants a minisig like the one I have with your city name, send me a PM and I'll give you a link to the finished image.

Awesome, they put up the other parts! Last time I checked, only Part 1 was up. That was definitely entertaining.

Spectrum

Looks like form entries are up above 32 and into the 3 city range.

Can anyone speak to how region-city interactions work? Will cities only interact with other cities using the highways and rails? Or can a city bridge two different highway connections to link different parts of the regions together?

(The 16 player maps seem to be divided into groups of 4. Will those basically be isolated from the other groups or can they be linked?)

Viking

Spectrum wrote: »

Looks like form entries are up above 32 and into the 3 city range.

Can anyone speak to how region-city interactions work? Will cities only interact with other cities using the highways and rails? Or can a city bridge two different highway connections to link different parts of the regions together?

(The 16 player maps seem to be divided into groups of 4. Will those basically be isolated from the other groups or can they be linked?)

Looks to me like Airports and ships can bridge that gap.

After thinking about it a little, I think I would like to try a education/hi-tech manufacturing city for the region game. ( I really just want an excuse to drop down Evil Dr. Vu)
Which brings me to a thought, can a multi-player region have multiple Vu Lairs/Maxis Man Mansions?

InkSplat

Spectrum wrote: »

Looks like form entries are up above 32 and into the 3 city range.

Can anyone speak to how region-city interactions work? Will cities only interact with other cities using the highways and rails? Or can a city bridge two different highway connections to link different parts of the regions together?

(The 16 player maps seem to be divided into groups of 4. Will those basically be isolated from the other groups or can they be linked?)

Each group of four interacts heavily with itself--able to share fire, police, electricity, garbage, sewage, freight, and people. Then, each cluster is connected via rail from at least one city, and potentially ferry as well. Over rail or ferry you can still transport freight and people (commuters, tourists, students), but not other services that rely on roads.

Also, a lot of buildings are Region-enhancing, so, if I build a particular upgrade to the University, you can build things enabled by that upgrade. Also, anything I research benefits you as well, so, if I research the advanced Solar Panels, you can build them.

davidsdurions

Main stream media is getting hyped even.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/01/tech/social-media/apparently-this-matters-new-simcity/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Librarian's ghost

I'm TimSpork and I approve this thread.

Now that sign ups are over 32 we might as well move on to claiming plots or at least assign someone who will be the official creator of each region.

Robes

I can create one of the regions. I'll be able to download it it in the morning and set up the region before I go to work in the morning. If it matters, I'm in US/Central time zone.

DiannaoChong

Can we get a run down of why we would pick one of the regions? All I was left with was a choice of the three with no idea why I cared. A "I don't care what region" choice would be nice. I think I ended up picking one that wasn't full of water so I could get in some full city building.

jdarksun

I'm US/Eastern ad I'm happy to set up a hub.

InkSplat

DiannaoChong wrote: »

Can we get a run down of why we would pick one of the regions? All I was left with was a choice of the three with no idea why I cared. A "I don't care what region" choice would be nice. I think I ended up picking one that wasn't full of water so I could get in some full city building.

Terrain, Resources, it looks pretty?

Viking

Wessex Bend or Figaro Forest in the Viridian Woods region sound like they would suit my nefarious plans to a tee, lighter on resources but with good trade opportunities.

Librarian's ghost

DiannaoChong wrote: »

Can we get a run down of why we would pick one of the regions? All I was left with was a choice of the three with no idea why I cared. A "I don't care what region" choice would be nice. I think I ended up picking one that wasn't full of water so I could get in some full city building.

If you clicked the link for confused people on the voting page I put the pictures and descriptions of each plot in the three regions. You get an idea of what is where.

Slayer of Dreams

I'll be downloading as soon as it goes live, so if we need another region setup, I can do it as soon as it finishes. And I don't care where I go, just so long as there's some sort of elevation in one of the places that I can claim. I'm gonna try and separate the high class people from the rest of the common people.

InkSplat

Its kind of depressing that this game teaches you "well, you could make your entire city pretty, clean, and rich..but then you wouldn't have any poor people to exploit! So make sure to leave some areas crap on purpose." And that it is totally realistic.

Emruggs

Well, I went ahead and signed up for the region list, because playing in a region of wang-shaped cities seems like more fun than only my wang-shaped city.

GnomeTank

My city is going to be a slow motion version of this gif (NSFW)

Malkor

I don't care what plot I have right now.
I just want to export my crime to you all.

Librarian's ghost

Malkor wrote: »

I don't care what plot I have right now.
I just want to export my crime to you all.

So you are going Casino specialization?

Hell, from that one live stream we know there are serial killers in the game that travel to diffrent cities in a region so maybe there is a mafia for your casinos.

webguy20

Just signed up on the survey. I don't really care what region, I just want to play! So glad I can have something to play on my satellite internet.

Delphinidaes

Personally I would love to play on the Water focused one for what it's worth.

jdarksun

Delphinidaes wrote: »

Personally I would love to play on the Water focused one for what it's worth.

You and 11 others! It's looking like we'll need at least one of each map.

DigitalSyn

Put me down for a coal or oil dense zone. I want to build a Barter Town, and I wish to control the flow of energy! Muahahahahaha

Delphinidaes

jdarksun wrote: »

Delphinidaes wrote: »

Personally I would love to play on the Water focused one for what it's worth.

You and 11 others! It's looking like we'll need at least one of each map.

Well yeah I thought that was a given, I was just voicing my desire to be in the group that ends up on that map

Emruggs

I'd like to add that I picked the one that looked most interesting but I'm fine with being in any of the regions, if that makes things easier.

Spectrum

jdarksun wrote: »

Delphinidaes wrote: »

Personally I would love to play on the Water focused one for what it's worth.

You and 11 others! It's looking like we'll need at least one of each map.

It appears there's a ton of people on Woods, more than 16, so I can go to the Delta instead.

Miniwolf

http://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/to?iso=20130304T2101&p0=224&msg=SimCity+Launches!

Because if you really want to know it down to the second

Slayer of Dreams

Here's a city breakdown for the three large regions, so you can match names to places in them. Once I find more info for the other maps, I'll try and replicate this one or post the new stuff.

Viridian Woods


Discovery Delta


Titan Gorge

Docken

wow those images are super handy!

Thanks!

101

Those are good locations - quite a few completely flat areas for people wanting to build huge cities, and then some geographically interesting spots as well.

e: Ideally I'd like one of the geographically interesting spots, but I'm not fussed really.

jdarksun

Slayer of Dreams wrote: »

Here's a city breakdown for the three large regions, so you can match names to places in them. Once I find more info for the other maps, I'll try and replicate this one or post the new stuff.

Viridian Woods


Discovery Delta


Titan Gorge

Super handy! I'll put together an order-of-preference sheet today, that seems like a good way of shaking out who wants which plot.

GrimmyTOA

I'm sort of thinking I'd lie to run a transportation hub kind of a city. Ferries, and Cargo Ships, and planes and stuff. To me, that seems fun.

101

Slayer of Dreams wrote: »

Here's a city breakdown for the three large regions, so you can match names to places in them. Once I find more info for the other maps, I'll try and replicate this one or post the new stuff.

*snip*

Are there maps like this for the other regions?

mantis23

Kinda bummed that Amazon changed the availability to preload. When I preordered it said you could download starting on March 1st. Now it states March 5th. Booooooo.

InkSplat

mantis23 wrote: »

Kinda bummed that Amazon changed the availability to preload. When I preordered it said you could download starting on March 1st. Now it states March 5th. Booooooo.

It wasn't Amazon. EA isn't allowing pre-loads, and as its Origin-only, Amazon can't offer a separate download.

MasterOfPupets

I'm on the list now. I selected the woods region, but I'd play in any. Gorge looks really interesting too.

101

One thing I'm a little unsure of is how multiplayer works w.r.t. how accessible region are.

As in, if I setup a region do I need to then be online for other people to access it? Or is it stored on an EA server so people can log in to it whenever?
I'm assuming the latter, but it's be nice to be sure.

Toxic Pickle

So, I think my resistance has finally been broken down, and I'll be buying this game anyhow. I've signed up on the questionnaire, and my Origin name is Zomgeddon. Will need to start friending all you jerks or something.

Edit: Well sending friend requests is just a little cumbersome with Origin, so I started by at least adding others who indicate they want to play in Titan's Gorge. That also looks like a cool map I'd like to play on, though I'm by no means saying I wouldn't want to go anywhere else if that's how it shakes up.

InkSplat

101 wrote: »

One thing I'm a little unsure of is how multiplayer works w.r.t. how accessible region are.

As in, if I setup a region do I need to then be online for other people to access it? Or is it stored on an EA server so people can log in to it whenever?
I'm assuming the latter, but it's be nice to be sure.

You set up a private region and then invite others. Once you invite someone, its just as much their region as it is yours, and they have full access to it.