maybe simcity isn't the game for you? perhaps something like Railroad Tycoon?
Oh, and SimCity 2000 > all other sim games.
Nah RR tycoon is way too simplistic, even at highest difficulty...
SC4 is the only where I have true traffic problems, and for example have to bulldoze part of the neighberhood ( and you really don't want to, some bits take AGES to grow like you want ( eg. make a villa only suburb or get skyscrapers) )to make a new avenue or even upgrade an avenue to a highway ( wich is much tougher due to highways not working as ''side roads'' anymore and on/offramps instead of roundabouts or traffic lights ).
Oh well I like puzzling making parks etc but the real challenge Sc4 is best for imo is keeping transportation running fine, I've found the rest still simplistic eg pollution education crime income etcetc, it's very easy to contain, I learned in just 1-4 hours of playing, while traffic problems always keep growing, wich is fun imo as you keep having to upgrade/ expand infrastructure.
Railroad tycoon is too small scale too I either fill the map so much my cpu can't take it anymore and the game starts lagging, or EVERYTHING on the map is transported, all raw resources used and there's hardly any improvement left.
Besides, it's too simplistic by upgrade with roads in sc you have Streets>Roads>Avenues>highways, and you can make it more fun by avoiding traffic lights ( I do, roundabouts and un-interrupted intersectiosn isntead
) and making more general infrastructure eye candy ( I love roads and looking @ road systems , then you also have loads of mass transit, buses, subway, elavated, monorail, trams ( with mod ), etc...
Sc4 is the only game with such a diverse infrastructure system and I love it, sure I like building random cities too, but I'm only busy with that for about 50% of the game, hence anything b4 sim city 4 rush hour bores me much faster, it's just too easy and WAY too simplistic. Imo sc4 rush hour + 3gb of mods is still reasonbly simplistic and they should expand & add mroep roblems etcetc in the game too, steeper learnign curve etc... Everything kinda sim city 3000 to sc4 did but then another step up. Sim city soceiety's is a step down again it bored me to the death ( I mean it doesn't not even have water pipes in, sc3k even had that) , even prefer city life instead. SC4 is still the best simulator ever and I hope one say they'll make a proper successor instead of a sidegame to the sim city series.
So I want:
More problems
More advanced
Higher difficulty
Steeper learning curve
even much more advanced
etc...
Thus imo SC4> Any sim city game
( I've played sc2k as a very small kid and sc3k when I was a normall kid)
The dates go to fast and the new economy system is worse than the original imo, too much resources to transport in the end from factory's, this is good for small maps but for big ones it's rubbish.
I have one game where it's 2150 I think and I have 500 trains or something silly, and I'm trying to fill the whole map transport everything on a 2048x2048 map ( 64 X as big as the default transport tycoon deluxe map) but I've only filled about 20% and the economy is starting to get too poor to use trains ( I don't like upgrading old lines to maglev and monorail, I prefer to just expand normall railways, if there only was some way to slow the dating and industry output expansion bu about 5 times or something then I'd be able to fill the whole map like I want by playing it for 300-500 hours
.
I agree some stuff is perfect, perfect upgrade form ttdlx, but I feel it aint adjusted for someone that wants to stick to trains till 2400 ( bout 300 hours of playing, and yes, I prefer 1 uber long game above a lot of small ones).
This is the game I'd like to play on but the economy system is starting to work in such a way that normall trains will be unprofitable in the next 50 hours of playing :
Sim city on the other hand, always stays playable for no matter how long.
I play ttdlx for the same reason tho, designing infrastructure, the time I spent fixing railroads because compeltly clogged up...
Upgrading a single to a double line is easy still too ( so 2 to 4 rails), but onwards it gets tougher making intersections that way that all rails actually get used equally, u have to make loads of load spreaders and such stuff...
But SC4 and openTTD both remain FAR above the early sim city games for me.
Far more playability, not some poor 10 hours of playing, but nice hundreds of hours you can spend on a map in openTTD and on a region in Sim city 4.
