so how's SimCity 4?

[lozina]

I received my copy this morning by Fedex but I have been and still am working... would like to know what are some first impressions of the game while I sit here and count the minutes by...

 

[bighurtx82]

FedEx dropped mine off on Friday so I had the weekend to play around with it. It is definitely different from sc3000. Now there is an extreme importance on the region rather than the individual city. I noticed that the city maps are smaller but the region is quite big. Balancing the budget is a lot harder than in the past games. I've been struggling to make money as services have really become a huge expense. It's also a lot harder to get high rise buildings as I really haven't seen any develop yet and my population isn't exactly expanding by great numbers. Overall, the graphics are great and it seems to be much improved over sc3000 which I didn't like very much. So far, this has been a lot more challenging than the previous games or I am just doing something wrong.

 

[CrowDog]

There seems to be alot of talk about bugs and crashing on the rege3d.com forums along with poor performance. Ofcourse thats for ATI people (me)...I was going to pick it up today untill I read all the complaining.There also seems to be some stuff disabled for the Radeon line of vidcards (quote from readme: "Due to hardware limitations with the ATI Radeon series, some
buildings and graphic effects will be temporarily turned off while scrolling.")

I guess this fixes it :

"Open graphics rules.sgr in the main directory. Search for "radeon" and you should find this:
partialRule "Radeon"
stringMatch cardIdentity "*Radeon*"

# special scrolling mode for Radeons.
property noPartialBackingStoreCopies true"

This seems pretty hokey to me....why would Maxis make it to where Radeon cards arent as good for the game on purpose?

 

[lozina]

I just finished playing two cities... it's definitely harder than the other sim cities! I can't seem to make money ever... I usually have expenses doubling my income, so once my starting funds run dry I'm done. It's a shame the manual dosen't really help in city building, and the tutorial is extremely limited. It seems no matter how much I invest in edication and health my sims don't upgrade into apartment buildings/high tech industry/office buildings. I wish I knew eactly how to do that, since my city is basically houses and high pollution industry

 

[CrowDog]

Originally posted by: lozina
I just finished playing two cities... it's definitely harder than the other sim cities! I can't seem to make money ever... I usually have expenses doubling my income, so once my starting funds run dry I'm done. It's a shame the manual dosen't really help in city building, and the tutorial is extremely limited. It seems no matter how much I invest in edication and health my sims don't upgrade into apartment buildings/high tech industry/office buildings. I wish I knew eactly how to do that, since my city is basically houses and high pollution industry

Hows Performance?

 

[Glitchny]

Originally posted by: CrowDog
There seems to be alot of talk about bugs and crashing on the rege3d.com forums along with poor performance. Ofcourse thats for ATI people (me)...I was going to pick it up today untill I read all the complaining.There also seems to be some stuff disabled for the Radeon line of vidcards (quote from readme: "Due to hardware limitations with the ATI Radeon series, some
buildings and graphic effects will be temporarily turned off while scrolling.")

I guess this fixes it :

"Open graphics rules.sgr in the main directory. Search for "radeon" and you should find this:
partialRule "Radeon"
stringMatch cardIdentity "*Radeon*"

# special scrolling mode for Radeons.
property noPartialBackingStoreCopies true"

This seems pretty hokey to me....why would Maxis make it to where Radeon cards arent as good for the game on purpose?

same kinda thing happened in Neverwinter nights, shiny water was disabled for radeons on purpose. they fixed it with a patch though still kinda annoying.

 

[spacelord]

yes, Balancing the budget is a pain in the butt so far. Every city, until last night, has been run into the ground with loan after loan until I quit.

Right now I am only loosing about $100 a month for a 1200 population city. hopefully I can turn that around tonight.

I find it hard to populate the business sectors, and no matter how many schools it seems to be a city of idiots.

 

[lozina]

Originally posted by: CrowDog

Hows Performance?

So far the game performs very well, but my cities have not been very big at all yet. Sometimes when I zoom out it gets choppy so I imagine that scrolling accross a large city could get pretty hairy.

Originally posted by: spacelord
yes, Balancing the budget is a pain in the butt so far. Every city, until last night, has been run into the ground with loan after loan until I quit.

Right now I am only loosing about $100 a month for a 1200 population city. hopefully I can turn that around tonight.

I find it hard to populate the business sectors, and no matter how many schools it seems to be a city of idiots.

Exactly... the education must be really screwed up. I have a small town (1500 pop) with every education building at FULL funding, yet my people are still really stupid, although better than when I adjust funding to fit my needs- which is pretty harsh since the education costs by themselves double my city's income!

The only way I was able to get richer houses, manufacturing industry and richer commercial sectors is by adjusting the taxes so the poorer zones have to pay ALOT- like 14%, while the medium and high wealth pay less tax. This was the only interaction I had with my city wich produced a some noticeable feedback, since I get to see some cooler buildings pop up, but of course now I am getting less tax overall. It seems like whatever else I try- schools, hospitals, parks- there is little to no feedback from my city.

 

[CrowDog]

Looks like Ill pass on the game and wait for some patches.....

 

[iamwiz82]

i have to say that this game is SO MUCH BETTER than any other sim city. It is infinitely more difficult while also being somewhat simpler. The main reason your cities are running out of money is because they have no neighbors to trade with. Build up 2 small towns next to each other and then you will see your budget go up. I dont think it's possible to make a good city without neighbors. A industrial connection(rail) would do wonders, believe me.

I am so impressed with how everything runs. I actually saw a chalk outline and crime scene in someone's backyard, so i took a look and noticed that i didnt have any police patrols near there. Tore down the building and placed patrols. All is well now.

 

[lozina]

Ah so that's the secret huh? Have to build some token cities next to a section of the map you really wanna build a city?? I'll have to try this tonight.... what happens exactly? I have made connections before to a "neighbor" using rails, although that map next door really is an empty plain. I see trains go to the edge of the map and disappear... not no noticeable effect on revenue or industrial growth. If you connect to a real city, do you get revenue from your goods or something? that would be *REALLY* cool... but then that means we have to build our cities little by little accross the region so they develop together. That's kinda cool though...

Also, how do you get bigger buildings? All my residential zones are jsut houses- they never get anyhing like an apartment building. I do have plenty of medium zoning too... any tips on that ?

 

[NakaNaka]

I don't have the game yet but how do you build up small industrial towns next to your city? Don't you just control your city?

 

[lozina]

Originally posted by: NakaNaka
I don't have the game yet but how do you build up small industrial towns next to your city? Don't you just control your city?

Well the way sim city 4 is setup is you have a giant "region", which are broken into smaller bordered areas. When you build your traditional; city, you choose one of these areas and terraform it and start building... at any time, you can save this city and go back to the region, where you can start developing another area or continue building another area.

 

[Krye]

Originally posted by: lozina


Well the way sim city 4 is setup is you have a giant "region", which are broken into smaller bordered areas. When you build your traditional; city, you choose one of these areas and terraform it and start building... at any time, you can save this city and go back to the region, where you can start developing another area or continue building another area.

So what happens when you screw up and you want to reload the city you're playing to a older save? Does it roll back your other cities too?

 

[lozina]

I have never thought of that. I forget if you save/load an entire region or can save/load individual cities... I'll check tonight when I get home.

 

[iamwiz82]

Originally posted by: lozina

Originally posted by: NakaNaka
I don't have the game yet but how do you build up small industrial towns next to your city? Don't you just control your city?

Well the way sim city 4 is setup is you have a giant "region", which are broken into smaller bordered areas. When you build your traditional; city, you choose one of these areas and terraform it and start building... at any time, you can save this city and go back to the region, where you can start developing another area or continue building another area.

you can connect to other regions even if they dont have a city, but you will not gain anything. If you think about it, it makes sense. No city can grow up and be completely self sufficient. It took me alittle while to get it, also.

You can save entire regions and cities, so no far no foul, i dont think.

TO get bigger buildings, you need to have zoned accordingly(medium or heavy density), a somewhat good desirability, and a good population. I did not see apartment buildings until at least 3000 people.

 

[HamSupLo]

how well will an athlon 800 + geforce2GTS handle this game?

 

[XZeroII]

I have a few cities now all interconnected and it's pretty easy to make money (now). I just forget about schools, police, hospitals and just build lots of residential. This will make you about $500-$1000 each month, and you wait until you have about $200,000 (or more) and then start expanding and putting schools and police and hospitals in little by little. Also, I found that getting power from a neighbor is an excellent way to go. It may cost a bit more, but there is Zero pollution from it. My current city has 99% high-tech industry. How did I do this? I build a city next door that is full of Dirty industry, and I keep my education up. It takes a few years for your Sims to become educated. It's not like they are suddenly infused with knowledge as soon as you put a school up. Same with hospitals. I don't understand why you need rails, subways, or freeways though. I put ALL paved roads in and my traffic is always green. I put a subway in a different city, but not a single person used it. Maybe they are just good for interconnecting cities.

 

[paperfist]

If you build a city in the region and then start another one in another part of the region does the budget carry over? In other words if your first city is loosing money and you go and build another city somewhere in the region does that city?s deficit carry over? Or are they separate entities?

 

[XZeroII]

separate

 

[spacelord]

if you pollute the air heavily along a city border, does it affect the neighboring city?

 

[Celstar]

I read that there is a MULTIPLAYER feature in the game that allows you to compete cooperatively!!

Did anyone try it yet??? How is it???

 

[Tab]

I hate it, I said screw it and cheated my way. Right now I am $1,000 behind each month but with taxes around 9.5 for industry. I have lots of rich houses, and medium apartments, but thats about it.

 

[Celstar]

Originally posted by: spacelord
if you pollute the air heavily along a city border, does it affect the neighboring city?

Well, that's actually one of the tricks of building a successful city early on. If you have to have polluting industries, or install polluting power plants, it's best to put them along the edge of your city so half the pollution goes into neighboring cities.

 

[spacelord]

from what I can tell, polution doesn't affect the neighboring city. I built a nasty industrial area along an edge of 1 city, but along that corresponding edge of the next city all is clean so far.