SimCity V (2013) - screens/artwork and information

This is a stunning game. Make no mistake. Ignoring the DRM/web problems, it's worth at least 90% for a review. And yes, I do think we need more space. Even if only a 10% increase or something (to begin with).

I've played only 2 cities so far and spent 17+ hrs and I'm desperate to play (my mind is full of different ideas etc). One city had no specialisation, the other was a beachfront gambling/tourist trap (which really worked - bringing tourists in to the cove/beach by ferry to my two ferry terminals).

I can't get onto Euro west 6 at all - just says 'full'. I've been playing with randoms on Oceanic 2.

I would love to join an occuk region though, and will try the antartica server if that's ok. I'll be on tonight.

Origin id - maxkeiser
 
Didn't work for me anyway, just got that "your order is being reviewed" email when I tried on Saturday. So I bit the bullet and got it from GMG instead. Glad I did as had a whole weekend playing it before Starcraft 2 HOTS comes out tonight :)
 
Oh the joys of shift work! Time to get into the Ocuk Dedicated server! How is everyone else getting on :)

Really enjoying it so far, taking it slow and its nice going into other peoples cities to have a nose :D
 
Munimentum said:
Oh and there's one more thing I want to mention. I see loads of people covering their city in zones. That is going to end badly for all of you. You're going to end up with 200k-500k people when they all increase to max density eventually and have huge traffic problems, no water etc. You can see from my city above I have nearly 90k people in my city from basically 1/6th of my map.

Basically, if you want complete control of your city without it spirally out of control on you, TAKE IT SUPER SLOW. If you click on the population number at the bottom and then "details" you can see exactly how many of your people are unemployed, and how many free jobs there are. You can avoid those "Worker shortage" messages by only building zones in small increments to balance those numbers. Sure, it may take longer to make huge profits, but you have much more control over everything this way, which I prefer.

Best piece of advice I wish I had known when I first started was to Ignore the RCI indicator for the most part. Look directly at the details tab for unemployment/Job vacancies to see what you need to zone. It's so much more efficient and prevents you from expanding too quickly, as you're constantly balancing. This isn't as relevant later because you're probably always gonna have a job shortage later on, but it's the early game that's the hardest in my opinion anyway.
Click to expand...

I tried doing your slow route but having no luck, I zoned some small areas and the industrial is just going mad as they can't ship their freight. They had like 4000 unfilled orders! They are just saying zone more commercial to get the goods, I have a pretty big zone of homes and not much demand for anymore.

Not sure what to do?
 
Really enjoying the game, only issue is the map size. i get to a point that my map is full with no area's to plot more industrial for workers. I was able to get 12,000 tourists into my stadium plus max out my rock concert which holds 3,000.
but i am looking to re-arrange my map.

i'm on about 50k population.

the issue you get is too much population with no jobs more go to crime, which reduces tourism and they start to complain.
 
Andybtsn said:
I tried doing your slow route but having no luck, I zoned some small areas and the industrial is just going mad as they can't ship their freight. They had like 4000 unfilled orders! They are just saying zone more commercial to get the goods, I have a pretty big zone of homes and not much demand for anymore.

Not sure what to do?
Click to expand...

It's rather annoying you need a good balance of everything, but even then they demand more eventually as the city grows...sucks! mayube I could take a look at your city and see if i can give you some tips :p will check in a sec on Antarctica
 
Aeleys said:
It's rather annoying you need a good balance of everything, but even then they demand more eventually as the city grows...sucks! mayube I could take a look at your city and see if i can give you some tips :p will check in a sec on Antarctica
Click to expand...

I can never seem to balance it, there is always thousands of unfilled low wealth jobs no matter how much residential I zone.
 
Munimentum said:
Here's my city at the moment on our Antarctic server:

http://i.imgur.com/LuBxI5C.jpg

If your entire goal is to make a crap load of money and thus feed your neighbors/great works, I'm convinced the only real way to do it is with a mining->smelting city.

The profits are just stupid good:
http://i.imgur.com/ox2jMfx.png

It takes a little while to get going though while you gradually get more and more ore/coal mines while exporting said ore/coal until you can afford smelters. Once you get a smelter you're on course. If you have both coal and ore in your city it's easier, as you aren't constantly buying in the one you don't have and depleting your funds, which is what was happening to me earlier.

Another good thing about this strategy is that you don't need industry for jobs. I have zero industry zoned at the moment because all the mines/trade depots/smelters need so many workers. Eventually I'm going to zone some for High tech industry later with my High wealth citizens, but for now it's so much easier not even having to worry about it.


As to the guys who don't quite understand density, I've taken some screenshots for you which might help explain it.

http://i.imgur.com/Uso6wRF.png

There's a few things going on here. First, look at the window there. The top collection of green bars is the Land Value and thus the wealth of the citizens living there. If land value is at 1, you have low wealth citizens, 2 for medium etc. It's important to note that increasing land value of commercial and industry works similarly, so be careful there as if you have all your commercial at wealth 2 and lot's of citizens at wealth 1 you're going to have low happiness among them because they have no shopping potential. I've listed here what you can use to get wealth levels.

Low Wealth: The basic parks increase happiness without increasing land value, which is about the only thing I've personally noticed which doesn't do middle wealth increase also. You have a bit of wiggle room before things start to go Middle wealth tho, so you could plop a Grade School down and it would only increase land value by a little bit. Schools throughout your city, so long as they have access, increases low wealth happiness. I've heard that more educated sims don't like to work menial jobs tho so I've stayed away from full education for now, but I think I'll give it a blast, see how it goes. Oh and lowering taxes obviously helps also, but if you're dependent on tax income that doesn't really help.

Note that you want your Community College and University in your industrial sector because they increase the tech level there.

Medium Wealth: The next 2 parks, sports and nature. Also, services increase this one so fire, police and health services. Mayor house, Grade School and City Hall are Medium Wealth too.

High Wealth: Plaza and Formal parks and Mayor's Mansion I believe.

The second bar is the Density of the building. This changes based on the happiness and on time. Roads are the most important factor, thought. Having only low density roads completely prevents zones from increasing in density, which can be useful if for whatever reason you don't want that particular zone to increase. For example if you wanted low wealth commercial in a high land value area, you could leave the roads as low density roads and they wouldn't increase. Density can increase slowly, so it might not happen instantly just because you chucked some stuff down. I was annoyed earlier because it was taking ages for me but eventually it'll happen.

As you can see under the window, the white and light green highlighted areas are low wealth, the medium green is medium wealth and the very dark green is high wealth.

Phew, think I covered everything there.
Click to expand...

haha nice, the game said you had 0 money and losing 700 an hour. I guess you didn't need that 150k :p
 
Errol said:
This is a stunning game. Make no mistake. Ignoring the DRM/web problems, it's worth at least 90% for a review. And yes, I do think we need more space. Even if only a 10% increase or something (to begin with).
Click to expand...

Yeah I totally agree here. But sadly the DRM has to be included within any review as it's part (if not the very heart) of the game and for that it doesn't even get 50% as far as im concerned. I'm sure working DRM is great for multiplayer, but for me Simcity will always be a solitary experience. I have no interest in playing with other people and I dont believe I should be punished for those that do. There NEEDS to be an option for offline mode. It really is as simple as that.
 
flibby said:
I can never seem to balance it, there is always thousands of unfilled low wealth jobs no matter how much residential I zone.
Click to expand...

Same, I'm really enjoying this game but the map sizes simply aren't big enough. I can see that they want you to share resources and do some multi-city play, but it's so difficult to have space for a decent amount of residential, commercial and industrial in one city. I managed to get to about 80,000 population on a city I created yesterday, but now I don't seem to be able to get a decent population size :confused:
 
Aeleys said:
It's rather annoying you need a good balance of everything, but even then they demand more eventually as the city grows...sucks! mayube I could take a look at your city and see if i can give you some tips :p will check in a sec on Antarctica
Click to expand...

That one Antartica is more of a gung ho one with zones everywhere :p

I have a few Cities on different regions I try new things with.
 
Yes, I agree. 90%+ ignoring the DRM.

The online side is probably less than 30% if reviewed.

But I can say that I've had more fun playing it than lots of other games. It's pulled me away from Planetside (which is some feat). And I'm still hopelessly addicted with sooooo many types of cities I've not even tried yet.
 
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