Sim City 4 .. first impressions?

[LordJezo]

So far mine is.. looks pretty. Havent played it too much though..

 

[iamwiz82]

i love it. It is a much bigger challenge than previous versions.

 

[Queasy]

I played it for the first time last night. Reminds much of the original SimCity and SimCity2000 in that it really makes the time fly! I started at 10:30PM only planning to do the tutorials...the next thing I knew my wife is walking into the office asking me if I am crazy because it was 2:20 AM and I had to get up for work at 6AM! That's the measure of a good game to me.

I only played SimCity 3000 a couple of time as it never really took with me. This version provides lots of features that makes city management and building a lot easier than previous versions. My only complaint (other than my current inability to balance the budget ) is the messages that are constantly popping up during the game about the things that happen around the city. I'm sure you can turn them off, but I spent as much time trying to keep up with the messages as I did with managing and building.

 

[iamwiz82]

I have the opportunity to build a University, however the cost is $1200/mo, i think. I am debating whether or not i should bulldoze my Airport($700/mo) in favor of the university. oh the trials and tribulations of a mayor.

 

[Vette73]

Not to bad as far as I have played so far.

But my only real complaint is that it seems the game is not very optimized. I have 768mgs of DDR ram and 2 Athlon XP 1600+?s and it seems to slow down a lot when moving. Seems like the game is running more off the CPU?s then the Video card, which I have a Retail Radeon 8500/

And yes ALL those messages popping up are killing the game a little also.

 

[iamwiz82]

what messages are you talking about? I have the scrolling menu at the bottom giving me feed back, the only messages other than that are when fires start. BTW, ATI cards have some issues with the game. That is why you are seeing a slowdown. Check the simcity4 forums at ea.com

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: iamwiz82
what messages are you talking about? I have the scrolling menu at the bottom giving me feed back, the only messages other than that are when fires start. BTW, ATI cards have some issues with the game. That is why you are seeing a slowdown. Check the simcity4 forums at ea.com

Yeah, I'm talking about the messages that scroll along at the bottom. I got a couple of years into my city and they were scrolling like made and not all for necessary stuff (like Grim Economic Outlook ). Alot of the messages were silly stuff about people winning ice cream contests and such. It was distracting more than anything and anytime I looked at a real message I had a clutter of all the junk messages there too....wait, that sounds just like my home email!
:Q

 

[iamwiz82]

you can go into the Adivsor screen and close certain ones you do not care about.

 

[Queasy]

Yeah, I should have done that but it was late at night

 

[vegetation]

Game chokes on my 512mb celeron 2.6 system. Looks like this game needs a lot of ram, maybe a gig or more, just to run smoothly. Maybe even multple gigs for very large complex city maps. Don't even try to run this game on a 256mb system, I've never seen such disk thrashing go on in my life with my old laptop p3-700 256mb system.

 

[XZeroII]

I've got about 400k in my nation so far. It's really a great game. I have been able to fill up the large maps about 1/3 before I just can't take the slowness anymore and build an adjacent city. In case anyone is wondering, the secret is to lower funding for buildings. Ex: Build lots of schools, but only fund them as much as necessary. If you only have 200 students going to the HS, only fund it for 300 students or so (to allow for expansion). That saves a TON of money. The same works with hospitals and stuff too. Also, build lots of connections. The only thing that I don't understand is how someone can afford a stupid Fusion Power Plant. 10k/month!!! I have been able to squeek an extra 3k/month max, but that's it. By the time your city gets large enough to afford a fusion power plant, you are going to need 2 of them! That's about the only item that I havn't used yet.

 

[Atlantean]

haven't loaded it yet, will have to try it after class this morning, looks like it will be purdy though...

 

[LordJezo]

Like everyone Simcity game, I suck at it!

I can never ever make money and always end up going broke.

 

[BeauJangles]

I think its great, but I'm afraid I will eventually get bored of it because it can hardly run on my system.

 

[iamwiz82]

my 256Meg system runs it alright. The only time it chokes on medium maps is when i zoom way out or way in. I have a GF2GTS, though.

 

[Ausm]

Originally posted by: vegetation
Game chokes on my 512mb celeron 2.6 system. Looks like this game needs a lot of ram, maybe a gig or more, just to run smoothly. Maybe even multple gigs for very large complex city maps. Don't even try to run this game on a 256mb system, I've never seen such disk thrashing go on in my life with my old laptop p3-700 256mb system.

Game runs ok on my system

Ausm

 

[skace]

I like the game a lot but I don't understrand traffic one bit. Right now every expansion to my town has been the same 4x4 block it seems. I try to get creative, but it is hard.

If someone knows how to add effective subways / bussing / trains so that your city isn't so street reliant, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise people are gonna be bitching at me for not having enough trees due to all my streets for the next 10000 years.

 

I loved the first Sim City. I got 3000 for like $10 but could never get into it. Perhaps Sim City 4 is just what I need to justify that 1GB RAM upgrade?

 

[Supermercado]

Originally posted by: LordJezo
Like everyone Simcity game, I suck at it!

I can never ever make money and always end up going broke.

Same. Anyone here have any suggestions for balancing the budget? Other than lowering the finances allowed to each specific building? I did that and it only helped a little. The best I've been able to manage on my budget is making about $700/month while spending $1500.

 

[silverpig]

Zone a LOT at the start to get a lot of people into your city. Many people say you don't even need a police station until you're at 20 000 people, so try that too...

 

[hdeck]

Originally posted by: SuperCommando

Originally posted by: LordJezo
Like everyone Simcity game, I suck at it!

I can never ever make money and always end up going broke.

Same. Anyone here have any suggestions for balancing the budget? Other than lowering the finances allowed to each specific building? I did that and it only helped a little. The best I've been able to manage on my budget is making about $700/month while spending $1500.

same way for me. i always end up doing that with all the sim games, have that problem in roller coaster tycoon as well. that's one thing that makes me shy away from spending $40+ on this game.

 

[iamwiz82]

Originally posted by: silverpig
Zone a LOT at the start to get a lot of people into your city. Many people say you don't even need a police station until you're at 20 000 people, so try that too...

i usually hold off on all goodies(fire, police, clinic, schools) til around 4000 people show up. Also, export your garbage. I normally create one city whose sole job is to create power for the other cities near it and then import it because it is cheaper.