SIM City 5 - Actual Strategy Discussion

[ultimatebob]

for shits and giggles i started a new city in a public region. i have *horrible* traffic jams and half of my city is filled with ambulances, fire trucks, and police officers trying to get... somewhere.

i wonder if i destroy all my tourist attractions, will this problem go away?

At least your city didn't magically disappear like mine did. It seems like someone nuked the entire region on me.

 

[Phobic9]

I was able to get a full refund on a physical copy of this game from Amazon despite being well beyond the return window (on opened software no less) . I'd advise anyone else considering this to do the same.

 

[Mixolydian]

Patch 2.0 will be released on April 22.

 

[imaginary17]

For those who have chip,tv,computer factories. How do you deal with the ground pollution they create?

Issues I faced was mostly ground pollution from Industrial and drilling. Not sure how to prevent that.

Then I had water issues but that was resolved by sewer recycling next to each other.

This game was a trail and error for me. I think I started at least 9 new cities in private mode. My current city is doing fine now but not before soo many disasters trying to take my city out. I was like come on, when you start to get momentum a disasster has to strike and hit your important builds such as University.

Mind you this was my first sim city game since back when it was on the SNES. LOL..

 

[AMDZen]

http://www.geek.com/games/modder-proves-simcity-can-run-offline-indefinitely-1542922/

 

[paperfist]

For those who have chip,tv,computer factories. How do you deal with the ground pollution they create?

Issues I faced was mostly ground pollution from Industrial and drilling. Not sure how to prevent that.

Then I had water issues but that was resolved by sewer recycling next to each other.

This game was a trail and error for me. I think I started at least 9 new cities in private mode. My current city is doing fine now but not before soo many disasters trying to take my city out. I was like come on, when you start to get momentum a disasster has to strike and hit your important builds such as University.

Mind you this was my first sim city game since back when it was on the SNES. LOL..

Trees will fight pollution, but I don't think they will remove all pollution unless the factories are moved.

 

[Chaptorial]

Update 2.0 goes live on the servers this evening. List of fixes:

• Mayors Mansion: Mayors will now drive their fancy cars to work. Mayors will take their helicopter, limo, or sports car if the modules are present.

• HUD: Now color-corrects when in a colorblind mode.

• Data map: Data maps show the filtered color when a color filter is enabled (unless in a colorblind mode)

• Cities not Processing: Mitigates some of the issues that were causing cities not to process. We are continuing to work on and improve this issue.

• Region Filters: Now sorts regions with available cities to the top

• Invitations: Invitations to join a region should be sent and received more quickly.

• Tourism: Fixes for unexplained fluctuation of tourists. Tourists more smartly counted on transit.
• Cruise Ships are now more effective at bringing medium and high wealth tourists in coastal cities.
• New tourists will now decide to come into a city once leaving tourists reach train stations, bus depots, or cruise ship docs instead of waiting for those tourists to go out to the region first.
• This change will reduce the downtime of tourist buildings.

• Casinos: Casinos tuned so that Gambling will be a more profitable specialty. Players can bulldoze and replace existing casinos to see effects of tuning.
• The larger casinos now invite more tourists into the city which helps keep them full.
• Note that existing casinos will need to be replaced to take advantage of this change.
• Raised module limit on Sci-Fi and Sleek Casinos to 6 modules.

• Region Play: Cash gifts can now be received in a bankrupt city.

• Education: Fixed school buses getting stuck at the high school. Existing Schools will fix themselves.
• Fixed school buses picking up students at neighboring cities that didn’t have school bus stops.
• Fix to more accurately track regional student population.
• Fix where kids leaving the school bus stop would teleport to the nearest pedestrian path instead of walking directly into the school.
• University wings now give the proper bonus.

• Recycling: Fix for the Recycling Center where it would sometimes stop working, recycling services will visit other cities.

• Air Pollution: Fixed issue where air pollution would appear to come from nowhere. Fix issues where your regional air pollution would be reflected back into your box for a double penalty.

• Fire Service: Fire Trucks don’t clump, dispatch to fires more efficiently.

• Water: Water pumps are now capable of pumping water from rivers at a larger radius so they can take better advantage of the water table in a city.

• Disasters: Cooldown for random disasters: Some players were getting hit too frequently with random disasters, this introduces a cooldown where no random disasters will occur.

• Trade: Fix for trade ports that suddenly stop shipping.

• Transit: Street Cars and Buses go to high volume stops first.
• A city with residents and public transit will now provide the accurate amount of workers and shoppers to its neighbors.
• A transit vehicle stuck in a pick-up or drop off loop will now go back to a garage instead of trying to pick up more people.
• Transit vehicles should recover automatically after the update. If players want to force the recovery, turn off the stops that are having looping issues, wait a few game hours, then turn them back on.
• Neighbors buses will now come in lower numbers into the city and do a better job at picking up local passengers first.

• Residential Tuning: Residential-only cities have failure state.
• Buildings are prevented from going up in density when they don’t have power or water.
• The amount of happiness gained from low taxes, police, fire, and health outreach has been lowered.
• Fixed some cases where buildings would not go abandoned when they should have.
• Higher density residential buildings are no longer blocked from going abandoned due to not having enough money.
• Happiness from low taxes does not double up every time it is given.
• Losing happiness due to not having a job is more impactful.

• Budgets: Fixed bug that prevented systems like fire, abandonment, garbage, and sewage from turning on when they were supposed to.

• Audio: Fixes issue where audio will stop working after creating a large city or where phantom audio sounds play in a city.

• Demolish: Fixes issue that occurred when players demolished buildings that had service vehicles, delivery vehicles, or agents out in the city or region. Previously, the agents would be in a state of limbo and would not recover when new buildings of that type were placed. This will no longer happen.

-----

Game still has a long way go IMO but some welcome change(s) relating to the fix of overall behavior of fire services, if it works, is a start.

 

[KentState]

Any wagers on how long it takes them to patch and people can actually play without interruption? I'm guessing sometime next week.

 

[ultimatebob]

The patch sounds good. I wonder when I'll actually be able to play it

Something tells me that the next version of Simcity will have an offline option. If not, most Simcity 5 sufferers will hopefully be smart enough to avoid it!

 

[Dominato3r]

The biggest thing for me is game filtering. If you want us to play online, at least let us filter maps/gametypes.

 

[iamwiz82]

Just d/l'd it and it is installing. Looks like a fairly small update (from a byte count perspective), compared to past ones.

 

[FuzzyDunlop]

Im still getting endless loading screens when I switch between cities in a region.

 

[ultimatebob]

Im still getting endless loading screens when I switch between cities in a region.

Yep, same here. Looks like they fixed some small bugs, but didn't fix the large "crash and trash my entire city" bugs.

 

[datalink7]

Not sure how interested I'm in going back and playing more until they change how the population goes where they go. People not having jobs and houses and just filling up whomever gets there first really annoys me.

 

[Phobic9]

Seems like most people on the Simcity subreddit are saying that not much has really changed. Granted, they seem to whine a bit more over there but the whole story surrounding this game is still mildly entertaining.

And to think I almost thought about opening Origin for a second (since for some reason I still have access to the game after getting a refund).

 

[Wyndru]

Any good news here about the patch? Seems like mostly negative comments I've read so far (on most of the forums I visit).

I was under the impression (and hoping) that this would be the patch that makes a big difference in gameplay. I'm a huge SimCity fan, but I just can't bring myself to throw money away if it sucks as bad as people say. If I buy it I want to love it, like I did the previous versions, which is why I've been so hesitant to shell out any cash yet.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Any good news here about the patch? Seems like mostly negative comments I've read so far (on most of the forums I visit).

I was under the impression (and hoping) that this would be the patch that makes a big difference in gameplay. I'm a huge SimCity fan, but I just can't bring myself to throw money away if it sucks as bad as people say. If I buy it I want to love it, like I did the previous versions, which is why I've been so hesitant to shell out any cash yet.

I was REALLY ready to play a simcity game when this came out.

I hadn't played anything since simcity 2000, and to be totally honest the 2 months or whatever of fighting with the 'new' simcity made me lose ALL interest in the franchise.

I even went and bought simcity 4, but still am not playing it.

I suggest skipping the new simcity until ALL of the issues are fixed. I swear there are EA shills going around acting like there are no issues.... Including people who claim to have played during periods when all servers were down...... So be careful what input you take from people.

 

[Phobic9]

Any good news here about the patch? Seems like mostly negative comments I've read so far (on most of the forums I visit).

I was under the impression (and hoping) that this would be the patch that makes a big difference in gameplay. I'm a huge SimCity fan, but I just can't bring myself to throw money away if it sucks as bad as people say. If I buy it I want to love it, like I did the previous versions, which is why I've been so hesitant to shell out any cash yet.

I would highly recommend that you do not even consider spending any money on this game for the foreseeable future. The patch broke just as much as it was supposed to fix, maybe even more. It's a real disappointment.

 

[iamwiz82]

I cannot even get excited enough to play it anymore. They really bombed this release.

 

[auStrategyGamer]

Hey was looking at getting this game to play with my bro.

Is it any good compared to SC2000? and is there a real multiplayer section or is it crap?

 

[el-Capitan]

Hey was looking at getting this game to play with my bro.

Is it any good compared to SC2000? and is there a real multiplayer section or is it crap?

I got this with my bro too.

We gave it a week. It bores too quickly and the coop works poorly. We have agreed to wait a few months and then revisit. Def not as fun as SC2000 which would take me hours on end.

 

[sswingle]

To be fair my casinos are now making tons of money and they were barely breaking even before. As a side effect traffic is now even worse. To be fair though it could be worse because the casinos are now bring in a ton more people.

Also my arena struggled to break even and I made money a couple nights in a row.

Another negative is that buildings seem to go vacant much easier. I have people leaving their homes due to no money, even though everyone is employed and I have thousands of jobs available.

 

[QuantumPion]

How do you filter out regions that are full? I see no button to do so anywhere?

 

[iamwiz82]

How do you filter out regions that are full? I see no button to do so anywhere?

One of their 'fixes' to assist with server load was to only show full ones. Genius idea for an online game, no?

 

[Redinit]

Can you re-sell SimCity5?

How do you filter out regions that are full? I see no button to do so anywhere?

You can't, they removed the feature the 2nd or 3rd day and have yet to re-enabled it.