SimCity V (2013) - screens/artwork and information

francky · 17 Mar 2013 at 22:00

Anyone had the bug where all your industry starts to build more dense units, where they then get stuck on 0% Construction and wont budge and eventually every single building is stuck on 0%, which totally ruins the city as no-one can work??

arknor · 17 Mar 2013 at 22:00

Deific said:
I can't believe how small the cities in all of your pictures look. What are you supposed to do once you fill out that tiny tiny square and have no further room for development? None of them look even close to city size, they look like small towns.

That's the problem once you fill your square you start over or simply don't play any more

There's no real variation to the cities every one is basicly the same....

Everyone using pretty much the same road layout because you get punished by the poor AI for using a brain

jonneymendoza · 17 Mar 2013 at 22:36

question: how do you build those tech industries?

oddsbodikins · 17 Mar 2013 at 22:38

jonneymendoza said:
question: how do you build those tech industries?

increase education level with schools and uni's.

jonneymendoza · 17 Mar 2013 at 22:42

cool ok

Azza · 17 Mar 2013 at 22:51

Anyone else who have tried a snaking S road system had troubles with people complaining about sewerage?

PMKeates · 17 Mar 2013 at 23:06

Azza said:
Anyone else who have tried a snaking S road system had troubles with people complaining about sewerage?

Yes, solved it with one plant at each end

Vince · 17 Mar 2013 at 23:19

Having spent a ton of time zoning and rezoning, changing road layouts slightly and changing the transport for busses inner city and street cars on the main roads. I've finally come up with this:

Most of my money is coming from exporting processors but population is on the up.

Lt_Red · 17 Mar 2013 at 23:31

arknor said:
That's the problem once you fill your square you start over or simply don't play any more

3 weeks ago I would have agreed without thinking. Yes it does feel a bit odd to be artificially constrained by dotted lines But to be frank when you are actually playing the game the limited city plots force you to plan, think and reorganise your city on a regular basis to maximise its efficiency.

I love this about the game and can only put the need for deep, well thought out tinkering and occasionally massive and costly re-organisation down to the limited plot sizes. Its not simcity 4 where you could just build your way out of trouble - you are forced to manage your city and your allocation of land and this is a GOOD thing.

A little bigger would be nice but once you are building 3 linked cities in a region and balancing the flow of materials, people and services between then the plot sizes kind of drift to the back of your mind. The only thing you really do need are for the plots to be a little closer together and there to be more train/highway links between them.

I think it would be much better if the boundaries were more organic and less of a box shape but I can live with it coz its a fantastically addictive game.

Footyslayer · 18 Mar 2013 at 00:06

Right, after playing this game for a week now quite a lot. Starting three different yet profitable cities I am at breaking point because of one issue...

TRAFFIC :mad:

It's killing my cities, I just cannot combat it. Would people say traffic is bugged?

Lovejoy! · 18 Mar 2013 at 00:40

have you been under a rock while playing this game?

Footyslayer · 18 Mar 2013 at 00:44

Lovejoy! said:
have you been under a rock while playing this game?

Not entirely. I have read different things though, some say they have solved it whilst others still say they have problems.

Criminals are getting away and fires are not being put out because of traffic. Is it this bad for everyone?

Vince · 18 Mar 2013 at 00:47

Footyslayer said:
Not entirely. I have read different things though, some say they have solved it whilst others still say they have problems.

Criminals are getting away and fires are not being put out because of traffic. Is it this bad for everyone?

Traffic in my city posted above is working really well, mind you I am only at 228k population. But everything seems to be ticking along nicely. I demolished half my city for the most expensive roads and shuttle cars. But now its all good.

Footyslayer · 18 Mar 2013 at 02:33

Vince said:
Traffic in my city posted above is working really well, mind you I am only at 228k population. But everything seems to be ticking along nicely. I demolished half my city for the most expensive roads and shuttle cars. But now its all good.

You got a screenshot at all?

I tried the highest density streets and avenues, then lowered them. Maxed out public transport but still overly bad traffic.

tdream · 18 Mar 2013 at 05:45

francky said:
Anyone had the bug where all your industry starts to build more dense units, where they then get stuck on 0% Construction and wont budge and eventually every single building is stuck on 0%, which totally ruins the city as no-one can work??

That's not a bug. Your traffic is so bad the construction trucks never get to the site to start building. Fix the traffic and the buildings will finish.

Mr_White · 18 Mar 2013 at 05:49

If you have intersections, you're gonna have a bad time.

yhack · 18 Mar 2013 at 07:21

I fixed many of my traffic problems by just deleting roads and making them drive further. Now most of my town isn't on fire.

Khrest · 18 Mar 2013 at 08:03

Lt_Red said:
I love this about the game and can only put the need for deep, well thought out tinkering and occasionally massive and costly re-organisation down to the limited plot sizes. Its not simcity 4 where you could just build your way out of trouble - you are forced to manage your city and your allocation of land and this is a GOOD thing.

I agree and I think this is where the game is actually more realistic than we are giving it credit for. Admittedly its a contrived realism and not there for realism's sake but the point I make is that real city planners DO have to contend every day with limited plot sizes. The approach of SC4 and CitiesXL where you can just merrily plop zones to build your way out of trouble is not realistic.

Whether it makes for a better game is probably a personal thing and I still would prefer larger plots, but one thing I dont think the plots are is unrealistic per se.

thingemajib · 18 Mar 2013 at 08:21

So this isn't a perfect solution, but its done me well upto around 100k pop (cba to load SC up just for a screenshot...). Waiting for these traffic fixes to materialize before I carry on though.

Black is regional highway. Red is a single unobstructed high density avenue going right across my tile. Blue is city roads. My thoughts behind this is that no matter how smart the traffic or how well you plan, the single entrance is ALWAYS going to be a bottleneck and 95% of the time is the biggest cause of further gridlocks. This approach simply moves that bottleneck to the other side of the city giving me two advantages:

1 - I can place mines and factories down this stretch giving delivery trucks unobstructed access to the outside world

2 - When the traffics inevitably does pile up I can create temporary relief roads at the dotted green lines and *poof*. pileup gone. Obviously one i delve into the other half of my tile it will get more frequent so this still aint a long term solution, but for now it still takes quite some time for the traffic build up again.

PMKeates · 18 Mar 2013 at 09:00

The snaking avenue approach is the cookie cutter transport build until traffic is fixed. I have a city with 300k pop, ZERO public transport and a bunch of activity, and 90% of the time traffic flows perfectly. You ocassionally get a police car holding things up, but when it clears everything sails away - no gridlock possible.