What city building/exploration would you recommend?

[paperfist]

Strange you guys like Dawn of Discovery so much as I didn't like it overall. I bought it when it first came out so maybe I missed out on a patch or two as the game seemed so simple to me.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Simcity 4 is awesome, I haven't played it in a while, and my issue was always with traffic pathing, and, overloading the trains and subways ...

I may just have to reinstall it and get an up to date NAM installed ...

This isn't so much City building, but transportation network building (my favorite part of simcity), but ... Check out Transport Tycoon deluxe, or OpenTTD .... might be up your Alley ...

 

[JoshGuru7]

Strange you guys like Dawn of Discovery so much as I didn't like it overall. I bought it when it first came out so maybe I missed out on a patch or two as the game seemed so simple to me.

Dawn of Discovery: Venice added some complexity, but you're right that it is pretty simple compared to say Total War: Napoleon. But that's partly why I like it, I'm not always in the mood for the complexity or competition.

 

[Andrew111]

All the positive talk for SimCity4 sold me...seems pretty fun so far but looks like EA stopped supporting it and hasn't patched it to be stable. Getting crashes to desktop out of the blue occasionally and seems to be a popular problem...especially for those with dual/quad processors.

EDIT: I got it off Steam so I'm assuming it came up to date with patches...tried to patch it anyway and said the new files were already there. Looks like the only simple work around at the moment is to install the "saved game adviser" that reminds you every 10 minutes to save so you don't get screwed out of a lot of work when it crashes.

 

[Wyndru]

All the positive talk for SimCity4 sold me...seems pretty fun so far but looks like EA stopped supporting it and hasn't patched it to be stable. Getting crashes to desktop out of the blue occasionally and seems to be a popular problem...especially for those with dual/quad processors.

EDIT: I got it off Steam so I'm assuming it came up to date with patches...tried to patch it anyway and said the new files were already there. Looks like the only simple work around at the moment is to install the "saved game adviser" that reminds you every 10 minutes to save so you don't get screwed out of a lot of work when it crashes.

I'll have to look at my configuration at home, I think this issue was caused on my laptop by allowing hardware video acceleration (or not allowing it I don't remember). I'm running windowed mode and custom resolution for widescreen, so that may have cause my crashes. Once I switched the option on or off the issues went away.

 

[Andrew111]

I'll have to look at my configuration at home, I think this issue was caused on my laptop by allowing hardware video acceleration (or not allowing it I don't remember). I'm running windowed mode and custom resolution for widescreen, so that may have cause my crashes. Once I switched the option on or off the issues went away.

I had it on hardware...I'll try it on software acceleration when I get home. Changing that didn't produce a noticeable slowdown in the game? I can run most current games close to the max settings no problem but for simcity4 it gets a bit jittery when zoomed in on bigger cities.

 

[Wyndru]

I had it on hardware...I'll try it on software acceleration when I get home. Changing that didn't produce a noticeable slowdown in the game? I can run most current games close to the max settings no problem but for simcity4 it gets a bit jittery when zoomed in on bigger cities.

I think I did need to set it on software to get it to work. No slowdown, but the game is designed for computers from 10 years ago though, so I don't think that option really matters much. Even on large tiles that I have 5million+ and skyscrapers everywhere it still runs fine. I don't ever zoom all the way in though, I'm usually 2-3 levels back, cause closest zoom looks like crap IMO.

 

[kamikazekyle]

Use software acceleration, and it'll wind up pretty stable. I still do have crashes every once in a while, though it's usually when I'm going back to region view after I saved (haven't had a save corrupt). I read that changing the processor affinity to a single core helps as well. Oh, and running in software mode will fix the load jitter you get when scrolling in hardware mode.

Grab the GigaPack as well. It includes NAM, which really beefs up the Sims pathfinding abilities for transit so they'll actually take intelligent paths to/from work as well as add in a lot of new buildings.

But I *still* can't get my bus stations or train depots to work right (vanilla or NAM). They start off getting some use, then it tapers off to zero within a year, even with low-wealth areas. Bleh.

 

[lupi]

Still hate sim4 with the make your own city neighbor scheme.


Did have a chance to put a couple hours into patrician4 finally, if you played any of 3 and like it you'll love 4. In my limited play time so far I can say it gets a big graphic update, has a slider to manage pirate levels, and has a simple slider for easy bulk buys/sells with clearly visible pricing.

 

[Wyndru]

Still hate sim4 with the make your own city neighbor scheme.

I actually prefer it over the earlier versions because of this. I like that you can assign different city tiles different responsibilities/wealth types and share demand/supply with the neighbors.

Helps in making regions more realistic looking i.e. have a small city tile be all commercial offices for central business districts, keep rural and suburban low density separate, etc.

The loading back and forth is annoying though, and the fact that the neighbor "freezes" in time is a little unrealistic, but I like the strategy it adds to the game deciding what to put where.

The NAM is amazing, especially the recent versions where you can really modify the path finding. I have sims commuting 5 and 6 tiles away to find work now, so I rarely have unused transit types or no job issues.

 

[Andrew111]

After turning it to software acceleration it was stable...I found that out when the day flew by without a crash after using up almost every square of my city, lol. I can't believe that they dumbed SimCity down with the new Societies series...it isn't that damn difficult to figure out you need to provide water, electricity, education if you want high tech industry, etc. Do the masses really desire games with no difficulty/thinking involved? You see it with almost every game...WOW has been drastically dumbed down (at least for the lower level dungeons)...I can't put myself through the level grind to get to max level anymore.

 

[CPA]

After turning it to software acceleration it was stable...I found that out when the day flew by without a crash after using up almost every square of my city, lol. I can't believe that they dumbed SimCity down with the new Societies series...it isn't that damn difficult to figure out you need to provide water, electricity, education if you want high tech industry, etc. Do the masses really desire games with no difficulty/thinking involved? You see it with almost every game...WOW has been drastically dumbed down (at least for the lower level dungeons)...I can't put myself through the level grind to get to max level anymore.

See Farmville for your answer.

 

[paperfist]

See Farmville for your answer.

It's like a reboot back to 1985. Sadly we now have to wait 15 years for the mass population to catch up to 'intelligent' gaming before we all 'lesser' types can be satisfied again

 

[Andrew111]

See Farmville for your answer.

The future looks bleak indeed

 

[BurnItDwn]

The future looks bleak indeed

Sad but very true...

Last FPS I really truly loved was probably RCTW: ET

Newest Building games that I've really loved: OpenTTD or SC4

Civ5 seems a bit dumbed down vs Civ4 (I'd love an updated version of Civ or Civ2)

The only really difficult/complex game that I'm familiar with in the last 5 or so years is probably "X3" (I loved X3:R, but, X3:TC is also great)

Ohh, and it was buggy, and sucked for late in the game when the armies got totally huge, but Victoria 2 is pretty awesome.... as far as grand strategy goes... It has potential to be so much better ... but I don't think it's ever going to get the budget to solve a lot of the gameplay issues (my biggest complaint is late game, takes wayy too much time to micromanage things)