Sim City 5 (2013) - Sim<parameter: string>

[Null]

Mine's 3.8GB.

Mine's 8.3in.

[Azull]

The bars at the bottom can mislead it seems. I have max industrial demand, but when i view my population details i have tons of open jobs with not much unemployment.

Got a nice bit of Education in my city last night and got some higher tech industry..i am having some problems now due to massive ground pollution and a nuclear reactor that kinda sorta melted down.

Recycling + Trade Depot = Dollar Dollar Bills Y'all

[Uzor]

Finally got it to 5.7GB, I knew it was missing some files. Had to reinstal through the Repair link, at which point it downloads another 120 files. Those 120 files gets deleted if the updater gives an "Error" message while validating files. I had to copy the entire map manually while validating the files, and then replace all of the files after the game is closed, that way it keeps the files. Not sure what's in the 120 files, though, it looked like audio files mostly.

EDIT: And now login servers are closed. I've played through the tutorial twice, and played around for 15 min in a city of my own. But then game crashed and I lost all of the progress. The rest of the time I've been stuck with updater errors and having to reinstall the game three times (once to change the language since you can't do that without reinstalling, once because the updater disconnected at 25% which corrupted all of the game files so the updater couldn't even be opened, and once to successfully install the game in English).

All in all, this launch is a failure, lol. They claim they'll have it fixed by global release on the 8th, but I don't see how. It's a mess right now, and I can't imagine more people trying to get on tomorrow will make it any less troublesome.

[Kisamoo]

The bars at the bottom can mislead it seems. I have max industrial demand, but when i view my population details i have tons of open jobs with not much unemployment.

Got a nice bit of Education in my city last night and got some higher tech industry..i am having some problems now due to massive ground pollution and a nuclear reactor that kinda sorta melted down.

Recycling + Trade Depot = Dollar Dollar Bills Y'all

lol is there any way to prevent this or clean it up? Every time I've heard someone use a nuclear reactor it always melts down. In my latest city I stuck to wind and solar. Solar takes up a tonne of space but if you have the research it's quite efficient. And yeah I have the exact same problem with unemployment, primarily the low-class jobs. My cities seem to only have mid and high class citizens and I'm always bulldozing factories because there's "not enough workers".

My game is only 3.8gb. I don't think it's supposed to be higher than that. lol

[Uzor]

I like how it says "You've played for 6 hours".

No, I've played for 30 min, I've been queuing or stuck in update screen for 5 hours and 30 in

[Azull]

Sewage Treatment Plants and the Water Pumps with Filtration seem to help. I did have to learn that you can bulldoze the 1st, non-filter, tank from the Pump and replace it with a filtered one....

Not sure about clean up...i think the meltdown may have been due to low water supply but i am not 100% sure.

[Lucavi]

I had a nuclear reactor with an additional reactor slapped onto the side and never had a problem with it. My city had every school available within it, though. I wouldn't trust the education system enough to have schools spread across regions and hope that people gained enough latent intelligence through traveling to each.

I ran some experiments on education the last time I could actually play; it seems that if you don't have a grade school in your city, but have one in another region, people will stop complaining about a lack of education, however, your city won't actually benefit from the increased education (IE. your bar wont go from purple = stupid to green = educated, even if your children commute). I don't know if this is working incorrectly, or that it is correct by simply allowing for shared services to effectively eliminate the complaining that would come from not having any of a particular service.

[Salodin]

I had a nuclear reactor with an additional reactor slapped onto the side and never had a problem with it. My city had every school available within it, though. I wouldn't trust the education system enough to have schools spread across regions and hope that people gained enough latent intelligence through traveling to each.

I ran some experiments on education the last time I could actually play; it seems that if you don't have a grade school in your city, but have one in another region, people will stop complaining about a lack of education, however, your city won't actually benefit from the increased education (IE. your bar wont go from purple = stupid to green = educated, even if your children commute). I don't know if this is working incorrectly, or that it is correct by simply allowing for shared services to effectively eliminate the complaining that would come from not having any of a particular service.

If this game can simulate brain drain I'll be fucking impressed. I'm literally 2 seconds from buying this game but if people are in que for so long to not be able to play I think I'll hold off until the price drop.

[Lucavi]

You can buy it now, but you won't play it for more than 2 hours a day with your content actually saved.

[Odesseiron]

I've been sick at home with an upper respiratory infection. While playing games is barely an option ( I have almost no energy) but after napping for a few hours I'd like to play this for an hour or two. I've got about 1.5 hours on it. .5 hours was that tutorial. That was launch day. I haven't been able to play since. Worst launch ever? Well, it's definitely up there. Seems to be no end in sight either

[Kisamoo]

I think we need to drop all pretext of a launch and accept the fact that we're in a paid beta for EU launch.

[Azull]

They apparently worked on server issues last night, anyone playing now and notice an improvement?

[Lucavi]

I think we need to drop all pretext of a launch and accept the fact that we're in a paid beta for EU launch.

Which won't work well for them, either. The EU servers are already fucked before the EU players even arrive. They're going to add servers, but honestly, how many? They're so greedy that they'll most likely continue what they've done now - add a single server to each region until the problem slowly fixes itself. I remember when Rift said "fuck it" and opened like 40 servers all at once, to allievate their blockage. Probably not the most fiscally responsible method of dealing with the issue, but it showed that Trion cared enough to try and fix the problem once and for all, instead of this nickel-and-dime EA approach.

What's more annoying is that many EU sites have already posted their perfect 10 scripted reviews as of May 4th. Some of the more objective review sites are either withholding reviews until Friday, or dropping points due to this fiasco.

[Arkanna]

Ok, so, I've been playing a lot like (most of) you guys and would like to share the things I've learned. There's going to be a lot in this post, sorry about that. I considered writing this in some kind of guide format, but the reality is I still pretty much suck at SimCity so I'm just gonna go with a "spit some truths" type of post.

1) These server issues suck. Thankfully I've only lost 2 shitty cities so far, so it hasn't been too big of a deal yet. If I lose a masterpiece though, I'll fuckin rage!

2) Matching the right workforce with your commercial/industry zones is not simple. I think at this point, it's a direct link between Sim wealth and land value ... Sims that live in low-wealth areas seek to work in commerce/industry that's in a low-value area. Medium-wealth Sims, medium-value area, and high-wealth Sims, high-value area. At least I think. That makes it tough to balance your workforce if, for example, you have all shit-tier industry zones while most/all of your Sims live in high-rises. I actually purposely slapped down a bunch of R zones right beside my dirty industry and garbage dump, just so I'd have some shit-tier workers.

3) Department of Utilities. God-tier. I don't know if I'll ever be able to deal with fucking water towers and sewage out-pipes ever again. Seriously, this city hall add-on is a 100% requirement. Sewage treatment plants alone are worth it, but in addition to those, you get water pumping centers that can handle both regular water and water you've polluted (plus, if you plop one of these next to a lake or river, you have *unlimited* water, which is HUGE). Lastly you get the recycling center, which (provided you have a ton of residential areas and a garbage dump that can pull all the garbage in fast enough) can provide you a shit-ton of money through trading the plastic, metal, and alloy it reclaims. Or you can do what I did, combine the plastic and alloy into processors and sell those for a LOT more money. In my last city, which was *supposed* to be focused on tourism, I had 2.5M at one point and would have had a shit-ton more if my city budget wasn't like 10k in the red.

4) Early power woes. Starting out with a wind power plant is fine, but as you grow, it quickly hits a wall as to how much you can actually power with it. I haven't really tried them in a region with high winds though. What I've been doing is, I start out on basic wind power, then as quick as I can, I start mining a small amount of coal or drilling a small amount of oil, plop down a trade depot with the right kind of storage, and set it to export the coal/oil. I build a matching power plant then, and the trade depot starts providing to the power plant while selling the excess. It's decent starting money and you don't have to worry about brown-outs caused when the wind dips.

5) To expand on the above a bit, nuclear power rocks. One power plant with two stacks was enough to power my biggest city so far, which was pretty damn big. Plus, later on, if you build a university, you can research upgrades to the stacks that will probably guarantee the nuclear plant will always be good enough. The best thing is, as long as you have an educated work force, the nuclear plant will never produce pollution or any other negative. I see they *can* create radiation, but outside of a disaster or a sudden dip in available educated employees, I'm not sure that's ever an issue. I guess if a disaster hits and the plant melts down, well yes, that's a giant fuck-you.

6) Sims wallowing in their own shit. Sewage out-pipes fucking suck. Is there any way to reclaim the shit-brown swamp of ground pollution you make with these things?

7) Tourism. The last city I tried, which was by far my best one yet, was centered on tourism. At least, at first it was. But it ended up not working too well. I started out by keeping the city as small as I could to avoid having the Sims complain about lack of services, then I put down a police department and a casino. Once the casino geared up and started profiting, this worked relatively well. Crime wasn't really an issue. I provided lots of tourism travel options, like a passenger train, a ferry port, a small airport, and streetcars to travel. However, eventually, the casino just faded out. I was never able to pull in more than about 18k a day from it, even maxed out with rooms and other add-ons. I think my big error here was, I didn't zone enough commercial in the immediate area because every Sim I checked was thinking something like "This city is boring, I'm out" or "Guess I'm leaving, there's no hotels" (even though there were a shit-ton of hotels in the middle of my city). Or possibly, the problem was that the casino tourists were all low- and medium-wealth, while the hotels were largely high-wealth. Idk... gotta try again.

8) Expo Center and Pro Stadium ... these are interesting. I plopped the Expo Center down first. Basically, you have to micro-manage it by scheduling events like motocross and rock concerts in it ... those events take place at 8pm on the day you schedule the event and, building up to that time, they drastically increase the traffic nearby as tourists gather. Then the event takes place, and for every ticket that sold, you get money. It's pretty easy to profit, at least at the Expo Center, though I was never able to fill every seat. The Pro Stadium was another story though. The thing is HUGE and expensive, but operates just like the Expo Center. I set up a "Championship Game" in mine, and barely got any tourists. It burned a ton of money, so I bulldozed the thing and moved on. I'm guessing I just didn't have enough tourists/hotels to support the building yet.

9) Advanced fire/police/medical ... I'm finding that with just one city in the region, these are largely unnecessary. Even with a casino, the basic police department does fine once fully upgraded. Now, if you have multiple cities in the region, or if you play with other people, having one city with a department of safety and all the upgraded fire/police and hospital might be worth it, since that city will probably have enough vehicles to cover 2-3 cities itself. Not to mention the helicopters, which I haven't actually gotten yet. The lone exception to everything I've written here is hazmat fires, fuck those things. At least they don't seem to spread.

I'm sure I'll think of more to write later. >.>

[Kisamoo]

Advanced Fire and Medical go hand in hand. After I built the upgraded hospital, nearby industries began specializing in pharmaceuticals (cool!) and I began having 'Hazmat' fires, something I could only get from the upgraded fire station. I think you can avoid it if you just stick to the basic hospital.

[Arkanna]

Actually I had hazmat fires occur with tier-3 industry too (which you get through high education). But yeah, they're still a pain in the ass to put out, since the requirements to add a hazmat truck to the fire department are pretty big.

[Mugmug]

Really wanted to get this, but I just can't support EA. GF is a huge fan and is quite upset.

Hopefully they make a PS3/Xbox version and allow offline play (doubt it)

[ringthree]

I am sitting on my hands right now, but I want to get this so bad. Server issues supposedly solved "today". Any update?

[Odesseiron]

lol

http://kotaku.com/5989207/the-simcit...ervers-working

[Necronus]

I lol'd