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SIMCITY

Kevin

Not in the 'In' Crowd
VIP
Really not worth paying for or playing at this point. I just played for an hour or two and lost everything when I tried to jump to a different city in the region. It's ****ing horrible. Worst game implementation ever.... can't save it locally and every time it disconnects you lose your changes.
Combine that with my crappy DSL connection and I don't think I'd be a very happy person trying to play it. :(
 

BirdOPrey5

Staff member
VIP
Don't buy the digital download of SC4 without reading the reviews-a lot of people were complaining the digital download still requires the CD to play! Could they really not have edited the software not to look for the CD? Who knows.

If you do manage to buy it on disc or otherwise in Windows 7 do NOT install it in c:\Program Files(x86) that seems to be the cause of all the headaches. I installed in regular c:\Program Files and it works more or less fine.

I would keep all other windows software closed when playing to prevent risk of conflict and save regularly.

Also if you google "SimCity 4 Widescreen" some Wiki (first result) has instructions for widescreen mode.
 

wct097

Director of the JUOT Center for Excellence
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP
Still unplayable. What a joke....
 

BirdOPrey5

Staff member
VIP
I had an awesome city going and the servers lost connection... not sure how long ago when I noticed... we'll see if anything is still there tomorrow.







 

wct097

Director of the JUOT Center for Excellence
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP
I haven't been able to play long enough on one server to get my casinos to unlock beyond the gambling hall..... I did, however, have a couple of major disasters in my biggest city. The first was a meteor that just took out my brand new, upgraded, hospital. The second was a giant godzilla-like thing that came out, ate a casino, a giant tourist building, and my shuttle bus depot.

What are the chances that the disasters would take out $150k+ in civic buildings each time in the same city?

edit: are you playing in Sandbox mode?
 

BirdOPrey5

Staff member
VIP
This last city I was playing in a large region (not sandbox) the Region was named Area 51 so I grabbed my eye... Once someone in the region unlocks something it seems all cities in the region have access. Think I'm on Eastern Europe 2.

That Casino was the biggest mistake I made- I had no tourists and it was losing money big time. I started putting down monuments ("culture") and the Washington Monument was a hit, it was even profitable to operate. Then I put down some dutch windmill and it was losing money left and right.

I put up a seaport because all my factories were complaining no where to ship freight... I don't know what I did wrong because the seaport was reporting 0 usage for "days" so I finally turned it off because it's expensive to run. With no other way to ship freight that I could see I made an airport and added some cargo hangers, that seemed to work to get freight moving out of the city.

The biggest complaint around the city was "Germs" and people dying. I had a clinic and a giant state of the art Hospital with all the extras and maxed out ambulances and they were still bitching about germs... Either a bug (very possible) or it may be better to have more, cheaper, clinics than 1 big central hospital... which is BS since it is supposedly a 2km by 2km sized "city" you don't need more than 1 centrally located medical center.

For mass transit all I managed was shuttle-buses and a butload of stops. Near the end I upgraded all my avenues to carry street-cars but it had already disconnected from the server so I'm sure those are gone.

The "Maxis Manor" was a giant waste- I sent Maxis man on patrol 4 times ($2000) and he only ever managed to help 1 sim so I never even finished that challenge.

If the Casino isn't there I would start with the cheaper-to-run gambling house, probably a good thing to have before a mega-casino.

The only disaster I've seen was the godzilla thing... It knocked out some homes and a factory- it was following a line to my garbage dump- once it got there it ate the garbage in a pile and 'burrowed' down to disappear. Overall no placed buildings lost at all.

There was also "VuBot" but I released that myself on a different city doomed from the start. :shush:
 

wct097

Director of the JUOT Center for Excellence
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP
How did you put down a big casino without a gambling hall first if you weren't in sandbox mode?
 

wct097

Director of the JUOT Center for Excellence
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP
Still unplayable this morning. Tried every server.... couldn't get on.
 

KJVBlueXJ

signaling the Mothership
VIP
I'm not all that surprised at the issues I'm hearing about. I bought Simcity for android a while back and it hardly ran on my last phone because the phone was so old. But in the game, no matter how well it was going or how many people moved into your city, the revenue was non-existent. Every city hemorrhaged money. So I stopped playing for a while. Once I got my new phone, I tried it again and it doesn't even start running, just a black screen. Based on reviews it seems like lots of others are having the same issue. It's just crappy software.
 

BirdOPrey5

Staff member
VIP
Still unplayable this morning. Tried every server.... couldn't get on.
I think if another city in the region unlocks it, all cities in region get it.

I taxed the hell out of the city (20%) and shut off all services and put it in cheetah mode until I made $2 Million, then paused, bulldozed everything but the main streets, and rebuilt from the ground up. Glad I went to $2 ml, $1 wouldn't have been enough. Got within $60k of going broke before it started turning a profit again.




 

whatttup_G

免租的母狗!!11!
dang, cool looking city... looks packed too, that freeway offramp is nuts to butts fo sho

are you finding that your city uses up its water supply, or add ons doom your city in anti logical ways?? reading the forums it seems that ifyou can play, and if your save game wasn't lost, you hit walls in gameplay like a third kick ass casino fails, and even after demo, the two you had suddenly suck... or at around 200k people your water demand dries up the supply... or buses and traffic act retarded and create bottlenecks that shouldn't occur, like that line of traffic there...
 

wct097

Director of the JUOT Center for Excellence
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP
I was trying to do the region thing where one city would overbuild power and share with the others. It worked initially, but when I upgraded the power plant to keep up with demand, I started getting blackouts in the city without the power plant. Same goes with water. The existence is nice to get it started, but it doesn't seem sustainable to power or water one city completely from another. The fluctuation in available power just didn't make sense. It was showing less than half available to the city needing power than the city with power to sell had available.

On another note, water gets "used up" entirely too quickly for a renewable resource. I've taken to building a sewage treatment plant beside a water pumping plant that uses filtration pumps. Sewage rehydrates the soil for the water plant..... otherwise your city runs out of water after mid 100k residents move in.
 
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BirdOPrey5

Staff member
VIP
I also found I could not depend on getting water or power from the region, random power outages, random water outages- better to just supply yourself.

I did not find any issues with having to replenish your water supply with sewage treatment... that is weird.

What I can't figure out is what I need to move freight around. I opened up a trade port and no freight moved in... Had that sea port and no freight moved out... Factories all complaining no where to ship freight... No idea what i need to do to make that happen.

The reason I went and destroyed the first city was because after I opened from a saved game it was like everything stopped working, and fires broke out everywhere.... Literally 4 or 5 constant fires all the time, couldn't put them out before another started- it was annoying, I had no fire issues before I saved.

Even while playing for no apparent reason population may start dropping 20% (100K down to 80k) for no apparent rhyme or reason... eventually they come back even if you don't change anything so long as you can hold the budget together.
 

BrandonM7

MaMway Platinum Member
Staff member
Moderator
VIP
(cool pics and stuff)
I see what you mean about the roads not snapping to grid - a lot of those are just a little bit crooked. Have you had those slight variances cause you to not have useable space in between them yet? I could see that happening, like a 4x4 building not fitting because the crooked road made the spot 4x3.95 or some such.

What I can't figure out is what I need to move freight around. I opened up a trade port and no freight moved in... Had that sea port and no freight moved out... Factories all complaining no where to ship freight... No idea what i need to do to make that happen.
I saw that in your Amazon review, too - have you tried creating trade between your own two cities? An outlet in each city, same region or different region, see I that makes it start flowing? Just some ideas for the hell of it.

I want to get this, but I'm going to wait a few weeks for all of this bullshit to pass - I'm tired of bleeding edge shit where you spend more time working out problems than actually playing.
 

whatttup_G

免租的母狗!!11!
sounds buggy.... like a prototype forced into production... I dint cut code for a living so I'm guessing, but mechanically it sounds like a first release

maybe after three or four major revisions it will work well enough to be fun... if they decide to back off the always connected nanny bullshit, I'll reconsider buying it.

I mean running out of water in a fuggin video game... wow.. it's almost like some liberal bullshit. hey, can you give away free cell phones, run up mind boggling debt or up the tax rate to 75% like France??? maybe that is what makes the game happy
 

wct097

Director of the JUOT Center for Excellence
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP
Can play now, but I just lost an hour's worth of effort... told me that my city wasn't processing properly and would be rolled back.
 

wct097

Director of the JUOT Center for Excellence
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP
And it did it again..... so much fail.
 
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