HAHA! Although, I was finally able to play last night for an hour or so, and just when my city is starting to build up, a meteor shower comes out of no where :huh Thanks EA, this week has been great.
I'm not sure if anyone here knows, but I have a question about the servers. From what I understand, you're tied to a specific server once you've started a city. Also, the servers are regional. So if I start a city in the US, and travel to Asia, will I be unable to get to my original city?
That is my understanding. Maybe once all the server issues are worked out, and the initial release demand has faded the servers will start sharing info, but that is pure speculation on my part. Either way, I sure wish they would turn off this stupid server based DRM and let me save a game to MY computer.
From the sounds of it the game is only multiplayer so it's beyond DRM issues. I'm guessing you could create your own city or cities in a region but a big part is trade/commerce between them. So to keep the game with all the features intact they'll need to make AI for the surrounding cities. Not an impossible task by any means but if they're doing it from scratch it might be a few months until it's ready to be released.
I lost a few hours to it this morning. They have doubled the server quantity. Four per 'region' now - North America West, North America East, Europe East, Europe West, and Oceanic. I have a city in NA West 1 and NA West 2. I can never remember which one to log into. You can play in up to ten regions per server. 30k people in one city, a university, upgrade sewage, coal mine, oil rig, trade center, rail center, bus depot. There are still a shitload of upgrades to spend money on.
So I downloaded it yesterday and played some this morning. I got through the tutorial and started a new city. I made it public, built a few zones and then shut it off. When I turn it back on will I have all sorts of new neighbors? That will be weird. I have to say, it's quite pretty. I'm glad I upgraded to that GTX 660 - it makes a difference!
Some good news for ya Grainbelt: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57573434-1/after-launch-mess-ea-pledges-free-game-for-simcity-players/
With GTA V delayed (again) until at least September I'm looking for a diversion. Tell me, how much grief can I inflict upon other players in this game? You know, tactics like building a heavily polluting city, sucking up everyone's resources, and other neighborly tactics
The way I understand it, if you move into someone's region, everything you do affects all of the cities in that region. So yeah, you could be a SimCity griefer and wreak havoc all over someone's region. Just stay away from mine - I'm creating a utopia that will shine forever, or until I get tired of it and turn off the sewage pipes.
I started a second city in a region to test this out (twice, one failed to 'process' and I haven't been able to access it for three days). A city has to offer services, you can't just take them. I have a stinky coal mining city with a sewage treatment plant, gas fired power plant, etc. The other city pays them for sewage, power and water; it has a recycling center, collects all the good shit from both cities and makes computer processors with very little pollution. People travel freely between cities in a region to work, go to school and shop. Your pollution is in your city, not theirs. You can't really ruin another city in a region. But you can buy excess capacity from dirty infrastructure and keep your city nice.
That's good to know. I was reading a Reddit thread yesterday that made it seem that if you made a city that was all casinos and crime, it would spill into neighboring cities. So I figured that pollution would spill over too. If not, that's good.
I am pretty sure that crime does spill over. When you add utilities the game is always telling you that you can share. THings like police patrol cars, ambulances, fire trucks, etc. Seems reasonable that some crime can go back and forth if the police can too. I haven't tested it though. So far, I have only created one region with my city, and my 7 year old started a city. Her's isn't doing so well though, the roads are random and do not connect
Killed some brain cells this afternoon. Under the 'specialization' menu, using the trading buildings makes it pretty much impossible to run out of money. Plop down an oil drill or coal mine, use some of it to run a power plant, plop down a trade depot, and sell it. In the highly socialist land of Sims, the city gets all the proceeds.
Yeah I just figured out the trading thing last night. I made a city that's got four upgraded oil drills, and I sell plastics. I wish I could let it just run all night to make money. Do you know what happens if one city is months or a year ahead of its neighbors?
Zombies??? I built a city last night and had it up to around 10K people. Then all of a sudden my population was under 3,000 and I was loosing money very quickly. Took me a minute to realize that zombies were eating all the sims in the city This game has a lot going for it, now that it works...
See this shit really pissed me off. It's the latest move by corporations to sell you something that you dont actually own. Im obsessed with Battlefield 3 which is a game that thrives on Multiplayer mode but even if you want to play single player mode, you HAVE to log into their servers - and you dont actually ever even get the software! You download it from their servers! I dont even have a complete copy of the game. I have the disc but its probably just an exe file. Simy City which I have player several versions of over the years, is/was a great game and I'd love to try a new version but no way Jose' if I have to log on to their servers just to play single player. Screw that and screw EA if that's how they want to play it.
