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SimCity (2013) TypoC team

netzealot

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So the new SimCity, which is the actual sequel to the very first SimCity game just came out today (March 5th) and it's a smash hit (91% on Metacritic). This is not a re-versioning of the game, this is the biggest release since the original and is the culmination of over 10+ years of Maxis' simulator experience. Basically, it's a complete reboot of the game with a brand new engine. A few of us on vent discussed the possibility of sharing a region which allows us to provide each other with critical population

Watch this video first to understand how this works before trying to make sense of the rest of the thread:



There are 7 specialties available: mining (ore and coal), driling (oil), education, gambling, electronics, culture, and trading. A brief guide is available here. The region I have selected has 7 slots each with an advantage in one of the specialties. You will be responsible for working your way up to and building the HQ building of your specialty for the benefit of the region. These are reverse-engineered end game specialty selections to maximize our potential as a region.

City Slot - Specialty - Origin ID
Trader's Ridge - Trade -
Petrol Bay - Oil Drilling -
Cinder - Coal Mining -
Soiree Sands - Gambling - LaguzMannaz (Mane)
Summit Vista - Culture - FortStone9 (Eruca)
Grand Haven - Technology - LvlZeroHero
Ingot Landing - Ore Mining - jontherobot


Leave a message here with an open specialization and I will send you an invite to the TypologyCentral.com region.
 
Last edited:

netzealot

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We have at least 3 slots left and those who are already working on a city in the TypologyCentral.com region are serious players so I expect things will move along swimmingly.

If you're good at city builders, this game takes the cake and you'd make a great addition to an already strong team of cooperative players.

i-R8XRnwt-950x10000.jpg
 

Eruca

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I have questions.

1. Have you guys fallen foul to the apparently horrific sim city login system?
2. What have you achieved thus far?
3. How is communication between you, do you use vent, or is there an in-game chat system?
 

netzealot

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I have questions.

1. Have you guys fallen foul to the apparently horrific sim city login system?
2. What have you achieved thus far?
3. How is communication between you, do you use vent, or is there an in-game chat system?

1) It is pretty spotty trying to get in at times. I've been able to get in about once for every two tries. Once you're in, the issues are rare.
2) We have 2 cities hovering between 100-150k population. Nuclear power. I've built a processor plant and I believe JTR has several specialized ore structures. That's about the extent of it in the past 2 days.
3)There is an in-game chat system.
 

ptgatsby

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So SimCity currently has over 1000 1-star ratings on Amazon. Always-on DRM was a terrible idea.

And I heard they just disabled fast mode. How is everything holding up?

It's a crappy launch, but the DRM bit is a bit off. It's an online game - does it need to be? Not really. But it's modeled after multiple people/cities interacting with each other. The disabling of cheetah (and really, they seem to be just scaling time to adjust server load) is pretty crappy, but it's running now and I quite enjoy it. It's just slow now.

Angry gamers are angry. I saw the same issues when EQ launched, or WOW launched, or D3 launched... It's hard to take the general opinion seriously when the problem virtually comes down to "too successful".
 

Eruca

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It's a crappy launch, but the DRM bit is a bit off. It's an online game - does it need to be? Not really. But it's modeled after multiple people/cities interacting with each other. The disabling of cheetah (and really, they seem to be just scaling time to adjust server load) is pretty crappy, but it's running now and I quite enjoy it. It's just slow now.

Angry gamers are angry. I saw the same issues when EQ launched, or WOW launched, or D3 launched... It's hard to take the general opinion seriously when the problem virtually comes down to "too successful".

Its good to see such a comment here. I hate the fact game devs misrepresent their motivations by saying gamers want a service (they dont, they want a game). But the whole angry gamer zerg hive mind thing...anyone would think EA deliberately made their servers bad. Im always critical of unnecessary DRM and--especially--despise in-game DLC selling, but people aren't angry about those things as much as the fact the servers are screwed. Thats inevitable. That always happens with these games. If they didn't want to experience it, they shouldnt have bought a game they knew was always online.

On the other hand, Im glad there is the backlash even if I think its unreasonable. It gives a good message to EA. Anything that might help discourage overdone DRM is hard to dislike.

Maybe Im just not mad because I've not yet shared in the frustrating experience of trying to play simcity. My copy is in the mail (ordered before all this really kicked off), and Im hoping by the time it arrives some of these problems will have been reduced.
 
W

WALMART

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I have questions.

1. Have you guys fallen foul to the apparently horrific sim city login system?
2. What have you achieved thus far?
3. How is communication between you, do you use vent, or is there an in-game chat system?


There is actually a wall-posting system, so I can say something and you can read it later, like "just built a solar power farm, you can buy your energy from me" and so on.


So SimCity currently has over 1000 1-star ratings on Amazon. Always-on DRM was a terrible idea.

And I heard they just disabled fast mode. How is everything holding up?


Unfortunately it's the future. I remember when Steam as a SERVICE wouldn't let you play games in offline mode, and that was like seven years ago. Origin still won't let you activate your account at a new location without online authentication first. The Xbox 360 launch was the same way, Sony's going the same route with the PS4/Vita... Piracy really fucked over the industry, but I don't so much mind. I'll never not have the internet (sans catastrophe) and it's pretty much readily available anywhere outside of my home I go, so...


It's a crappy launch, but the DRM bit is a bit off. It's an online game - does it need to be? Not really. But it's modeled after multiple people/cities interacting with each other. The disabling of cheetah (and really, they seem to be just scaling time to adjust server load) is pretty crappy, but it's running now and I quite enjoy it. It's just slow now.

Angry gamers are angry. I saw the same issues when EQ launched, or WOW launched, or D3 launched... It's hard to take the general opinion seriously when the problem virtually comes down to "too successful".


Yeah, Halo 2 was my first experience as a gamer where server load was abysmal to the point of non-playability. I wonder if it's a marketing stunt at times, kind of like under-shipping consoles at launch season...




Also, for the record, I have no server issues anymore. I think around 2-4am they do maintenance for a bit, but they're always back up pretty quick.
 

netzealot

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Right now almost all of the issues have been cleared up. The only one that seems to plague me (not sure if the other people from here have had this) is that about 4-6 hours into a city, it will become corrupted and unaccessible. I cant even start over in the region, so in effect it leaves a marred spot on the region that we can't get rid.

JTR and Mane could tell you I havent been on in the last couple days and this is why. Perhaps if this is fixed soon, and once we get any and all TypoC members we can restart the region... not sure how JTR and Mane feel about that but it would be fun to start at the same spot.

DisneyGeek and ptgatsby... can we count you in?
 

/DG/

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Unfortunately it's the future. I remember when Steam as a SERVICE wouldn't let you play games in offline mode, and that was like seven years ago. Origin still won't let you activate your account at a new location without online authentication first. The Xbox 360 launch was the same way, Sony's going the same route with the PS4/Vita... Piracy really fucked over the industry, but I don't so much mind. I'll never not have the internet (sans catastrophe) and it's pretty much readily available anywhere outside of my home I go, so...

You're probably right about it being the future, but I so hope that you aren't.

[MENTION=17508]LevelZeroHero[/MENTION] - I'm glad to hear things are going smoother, but I won't be buying the game. Sorry. I still can't wrap my mind around always-on DRM. I know it's a non-issue for a lot of people, but I can't support such a thing.
 

ptgatsby

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is that about 4-6 hours into a city, it will become corrupted and unaccessible. I cant even start over in the region, so in effect it leaves a marred spot on the region that we can't get rid.

It's possible to recover. The primary cause is that the region becomes out of sync with the rest of the regions (losing server connection). Normally you'll be prompted to roll-back, but failing that, I believe you can still abandon it and have someone else pick it up.


DisneyGeek and ptgatsby... can we count you in?

Sure! I'm kinda nooby though, or rather, I like playing around... and that sometimes makes my entire city burn to the ground.

I just hit 300k in my no-industry hub, but can't seem to get my industry hub up and running... so that experiment failed. I was hoping to get my great work done, but... oh well. I'll join in, restart or not. Just don't expect too much from me, heh.

You're probably right about it being the future, but I so hope that you aren't. Sorry. I still can't wrap my mind around always-on DRM. I know it's a non-issue for a lot of people, but I can't support such a thing.

It's funny... I don't like always-on DRM but I rather like the online server stuff. I see them as slightly different things. But then, most games I play are MMO. I rather like the intrinsic service (updating, etc) you get through online services. That, and I'm a whore for achievements and competitions, hah hah. Server side DRM helps with keeping that honest. The only time I had an issue was when I was cruising for 4 months. Steam was a pain in the butt then.

I used to be quite vehement as well but it's faded over time. I'm more irritated with DLC and the impact it's having. That, and I find the focus on gameplay has gone wayyyyyy down. I mean, games cost hundreds of millions. Skyrim infuriated me that way. ... ok, I could rant for a while. I'll just stop there.
 

netzealot

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Sure thing... as long as you arent leaving a trail of destruction across the region then you can do whatever you please in your plot. The OP is a little restrictive now that I've seen how flexible the game is... regional play is very helpful but there is a lot more wiggle room for people to change their playstyle and it still works.

Something that has worked really well for me is to "reboot" my city by converting my "work" (in the form of the population I've cultivated) into money by driving up the taxes to 20%, shutting off everything but power/water/sewer and trash/fire/police/medical and letting the population dry up. Eventually, The positive budget will dwindle, then I shut off T/F/P/M and then eventually also P/W/S until everyone is gone (there should be no negative expenditures so youll level off at +0). Then, bulldoze every inch of the town and restart with a few million in the bank. Your new city will have a population explosion due to all the services you can afford to put in early and you can get going again more quickly than grinding all over. You can also plan better since you can afford the high-cap tier of roads right off the bat.


I also love to experiment... that's the fun of the game to me, the challenge of tweaking and balancing complex, intertwined systems and hit the best numbers possible. You'll fit right in and with a 300k city I'd hardly call you nooby. I think we should all continue to experiment and fine tune our design skills and once I get confirmation that cities won't be lost then we can set in a permanent region for the [5 so far] TypoC players. Or, we could start now and as you said, if one of us gets locked out of their city we could abandon and let someone else "reboot" it and take over... but then they'd be splitting their attention... would they give up their region to the locked out player? Seems like with such a critical bug we should just wait, I think they would fix it soon.


We should definitely trade tips here. What I have discovered so far:

1) The single most important aspect to a city is traffic. It drives the success or failure of all other systems. What I have surmised is that players who have brought in a mindset from previous versions of SimCity where they want to cram as much in as possible will fail because doing so almost always includes an aggregate route system. Because most sims take the shortest route possible, any kind of central cross-through will become crammed and then gridlock the rest of your system. That is because the majority of random point A to random point B via shortest route will include crossing that aggregation. This game is all about quality over quantity. You can get massive density without covering every inch of your region with roads.

Therefore, balanced road systems where a slight change in, say, point A to a given point B results in a different path is best. This calls for some rather unorthodox patterns, or at the very least ones which are purposefully devoid of a route which is intended for majority use. The counter-issue to this, though, is that you need to have at least enough aggregation for your city services to be able to access everything easily. Too tight, though, and those aggregation points will be a useless location for your G/P/F/M since they'll get gridlocked.

What has worked best for me is a "brick" layout where sections are rectangular rather than square and alternate, providing for 3-way rather than 4-way intersections. My latest city applies this concept in a circle format, with 3 rings, the 2 sections between the 3 rings are segmented into 3 segments (think a peace symbol) and the inner segments are divided opposite of the outer segments. Without any public transit, it stayed completely green/no gridlock whatsoever up to about 150k.

Im curious to see what other people have found to work and to somehow combine these ideas. One that Im working on now will use the peace-ring pattern along with another idea where you only place zoning on one side of the road and then put twice as many roads (I believe that person did not use avenues... I'll have to re-read the thread on the SimCity forums). I'm trying to wrap my head around why it works, besides the obvious, so that I can apply that principle to the peace-ring format and hopefully be able to top 300k without traffic.

2) The most important needs are put in order on the UI from left to right... power>water>sewage>(government is necessary to advance the rest)>trash>fire>medical>police>transport>education>land value. When I have money to spend, I go through them left to right... power in the green? Okay, move on to water... etc. The only exception to this is...

3) Develop education before expanding tier 2 F/M/P and putting in recycling. You need to spend money on education anyways, and it's cheaper and more effective to maintain a robust education system for 4k/hour than to expand F/M/P to cover the mistakes of an uneducated population for 2k/hour times 3 services. I usually put in the tier 2 F/M/P first and then don't add anything until much later. I build up my education system first and the default fleet size goes a long way. Later on, say, 150-200k+ I'll expand the basic fleet unit to max capacity and add the response time reduction add-ons for each. As long as traffic is working, I've managed to get 0/0/0 for the fires/crime/death stats and that allows me to focus on the game's meta-elements rather than deleting burnt down buildings every other minute.
 

ptgatsby

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I shot you a friend invite to get into the zone :D

1) The single most important aspect to a city is traffic.

Yes, yes, yes. And it's really really complicated. Buildings can only be zoned against roads (entries and whatnot), but roads cannot handle the traffic you will need. Only avenues can, ultimately. It's terribly terribly complicated to design around this.

But to me, this is the game. Managing traffic - and by that, I mean all the mass transit systems, etc - is actually pretty awesome. It's really a design problem that takes a huge amount of work to get "right".

2) The most important needs are put in order on the UI from left to right... power>water>sewage>(government is necessary to advance the rest)>trash>fire>medical>police>transport>education>land value. When I have money to spend, I go through them left to right... power in the green? Okay, move on to water... etc. The only exception to this is...

Yup, generally agreed, although trash is odd that way. It doesn't "build up" the way I thought it would - it's more like a % managed. Education + recycling needs to be active quite early to get high pop without the garbage "smelters" making your town germy.


---

A major thing to watch for: AVENUES DO NOT GRID PROPERLY. They take up an extra road space, which means that if you follow the suggested grid, you'll be slightly short of "maximum high density". This is a serious issue!

The other major thing I can note is not to "over cover" utilities. It's easy to do (ie: going from solar to nuclear once you hit 3+ education), but it costs a fortune. Similar with fire, especially hospitals. Sure, hospitals are more effective than clinics, but you end up using only a small fraction of the hospital until you hit 200k people. Although wellness centers are actually pretty good. Maybe. I dunno.

Parks - maybe leave room, but certainly don't put them in early. Never works out unless you absolutely want to drive density early.
 

netzealot

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The other major thing I can note is not to "over cover" utilities. It's easy to do (ie: going from solar to nuclear once you hit 3+ education), but it costs a fortune. Similar with fire, especially hospitals. Sure, hospitals are more effective than clinics, but you end up using only a small fraction of the hospital until you hit 200k people. Although wellness centers are actually pretty good. Maybe. I dunno.

Yes, my first couple of cities went bankrupt because of this. In the budget panel, no one thing should be costing significantly more than the rest except maybe education at one point.

I can send you an invite to the current private TypoC region. It's on Europe West 6... although I lost access to the old one with Mane and JTR and can't promise that any of us won't eventually lose cities on this one as well. I will issue invites to all of you so if you want to start on the latest version of the TypoC region and don't mind the possibility of yet having to even restart this new region, jump on EE6. Once the game is completely stable we'll start the permanent region if any of us are unable to join this new one at that point.
 

netzealot

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Looks like the rollback issue is resolved w/ the latest patch 1.5. I just got a processing error then was able to load despite that so losing cities wont be a problem it seems. If you guys want jump on Europe West 6 and I'll send you an invite. I have lots of shoppers and low commercial so you should get quite a population boom. I'll also have plenty of P/W/S available for you to buy if needed.
 

Rail Tracer

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It seems fun, but I might just let the initial shock die down a bit before I touch the game.

It's a crappy launch, but the DRM bit is a bit off. It's an online game - does it need to be? Not really. But it's modeled after multiple people/cities interacting with each other. The disabling of cheetah (and really, they seem to be just scaling time to adjust server load) is pretty crappy, but it's running now and I quite enjoy it. It's just slow now.

Angry gamers are angry. I saw the same issues when EQ launched, or WOW launched, or D3 launched... It's hard to take the general opinion seriously when the problem virtually comes down to "too successful".

Server loads are always apparent in more successful MMO launches. I mean, if there is that much outrage at the beginning as there are download times for new patches, most MMOs would receive a 1 star.

Still, I can't help but laugh at EA and the content producer (forgot who it was) not predicting any of this was not going to happen at the least, nope, not at the least. At the least, they'd think about predicting and scaling server loads at launch and during a simulated "peak."
 

ptgatsby

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Looks like the rollback issue is resolved w/ the latest patch 1.5. I just got a processing error then was able to load despite that so losing cities wont be a problem it seems. If you guys want jump on Europe West 6 and I'll send you an invite. I have lots of shoppers and low commercial so you should get quite a population boom. I'll also have plenty of P/W/S available for you to buy if needed.

I jumped on, but my chat seems wonky... But I'm in!
 
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