simcity thoughts

So I've been playing SimCity quite a lot and enjoying it a great deal, but also mentioned before finding it a bit frustrating.

My main frustrations have centred on how I'm meant to achieve stuff.  I've basically focused on two city types, trying to use and unlock all the bits relating to the mining and drilling specialisations.  I've done this in several different maps but I've found it all a bit confusing.

If this were another type of game people would complain about the difficulty of the learning curve.  However, "learning curve" implies that you have a path to learn that they've created.  For the new SimCity it's more like a learning orienteering adventure.

By that I mean there's probably a basic set of points that you have to find in order to learn, but you're simply given end-points and kinda expected to find your own way there.  I mean, there's in-game information stuff and challenges that I think are meant to push you in the right direction but the information is often generic and therefore often unhelpful.  The challenges get you pointed in the right direction, but often without any clues how you're supposed to get there.  And your advisors just bleat on about the same stuff.

So, for example, it will challenge you to unlock the next level of the mining HQ (you're merrily drilling for ore and coal) and you're told you need to make so much in daily profit.  It will then shade this bar in as a percentage of how far you are away.

Well that's all well and good, but how do I increase the profit?  Open more pits?  What if I'm already mining all my coal and ore seams with the maximum number of pits?  Is there a way to make things more efficient?  I generally add in the maximum number of delivery trucks so stuff doesn't build up at the trade depot.  But is this the best way to maximise profit?

I've actually found the mining one not too bad - it doesn't seem to take too many pits to make the required amount.  However, drilling is a different matter.  You seem to have to open up at least 3 (and usually 4) oil extraction places in order to make the required amount of money.  This makes it much harder to achieve your goals.  And it's not clear to me if you should open a single field with lots of derricks or lots of separate fields.  It will tell me a field is producing x barrels a day, but I've no idea how this works or what it really means.

However, I'm also doing all this with the game partially disabled.  All the global market stuff seems to still be disabled and I've no idea whether there will be a tendency for the price to go above the level it currently is or below.  If it will tend to be much higher than that will make these elements easier to achieve, but if it goes lower I can imagine it would make the game rather frustrating.

The game also lacks cheetah speed still, which again makes it rather frustrating.  SimCity has always been one of those games where you have to sit and wait a bit for your new budget to arrive so you can buy that extra thing you need.  Yes you can take out bonds, but only so many at low value and of course you have to pay them back with interest.

Also you might want to whack it in cheetah speed to wait until your city develops - until all those big apartment blocks have finished building and your revenue settles down.  Or just to watch things unfold, but not take all day about it.

My other real frustration is that the game is still very buggy.  I won't go into all the details as you can search online (YouTube in particular) and I personally haven't had too many annoying issues (I think partly because what I've been trying to achieve doesn't rely too much on the areas where the worst bugs are) but I find some stuff in my cities bizarre.

In particular the guy winging on about zoning is quite tedious and the whole RCI system is either broken by accident or they've designed it such that you can never achieve perfect balance.  If it is intended, then presumably it's so the game is "never finished", but with such tiny cities you can easily fill them and it's still moaning about you to provide RCI for everything (how can there be huge demand for all residential types, all commercial types and industrial - it makes no sense).

It's also quite frustrating when the police advisor is moaning about "crime having the upper hand" and people are protesting city hall about all the crime, but when you go to edit the police coverage you see there's actually only 1 criminal in your entire city.  1 criminal = crime has the upper hand?  What?

But then it's difficult to know what things are bugs, what is simply down to poor tuning or bad design and what is deliberate.

Roads in particular are very frustrating.  You lay down all these roads and they just seem to fill up for no apparent reason.  The whole logic system seems horribly simple.  I think this is because it's simulating Sims in an incredibly simple way and everything rushes about going to the next "event", irrespective of it that makes sense or not.  And if that changes while they're on route then they all decide to go to the next most important event at the same time.

You can really see this with the buses.  You lay down buses and set stops for them, trying to get the best coverage (it shows green).  You instinctively think this means lots of stops with stops on both sides of the road and lots of buses to service them all.

In reality what happens is all the buses set off at exactly the same time and go to the exact same stops in the exact same order.  And because they're going in some sort of priority about number of people waiting they wander all over the map in a great chain of buses, making ridiculous U-turns and going up and down the same street over and over, clogging up the traffic.

I mean, why can't I just set the bus routes?  If the AI is going to be dumb, let me control it.  Bus stops can simply be waypoints - something that's been in games for donkey's years.  I can buy a new bus route and it lets me put down 10 stops and the AI simply path finds to them in the order I put them down.  If I've done something dumb then it's my fault.

The solution to bus spam is therefore contradictory - you need fewer buses with stops a good distance apart and that are all on the same side of the street if they're on the same road.  Of course your public transport claims to carry less people, but that way at least your buildings don't all die because all your Sims are sat in their cars while 50 buses undertake millions of U-turns.

The region stuff is even worse - all the buses from all other regions turn up at the exact same time and try to go to the exact same stops in the exact stuff.  Then add in the police cars, ambulance, fire trucks, garbage and recycling trucks and it's like your neighbours are trying to cripple your city, even though they point is they're meant to be helping.

Wow - longest blog post ever!