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Your Critical Review of SimCity 4

Started by tomkeus, September 24, 2009, 05:53:42 PM

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ismailozcelik

What was good and why
Zone system and realistic traffic system, day/night, more type roads..
What could be better and how
- In the game, we can give names for districts and when a fire is starting in the city, manager doesn't tell "A fire in the city.", he says "A fire in North of city". It is necessary for big cities.
- And all road hasn't crosswalk, for example i make connection road for highway but road has crosswalk, it is not realistic.
- We will manage the public transport system very detailed. (or who wants to manage must be a package.
- Cities XL underpass and bridge system is not good, i think we make road we select 3 options "Up, Normal, underground".
- And i don't want to traffic lights in all crossroads. And roundabouts must be in game.
- I want to add traffic signs in my city but i don't want to give a zone for sign. I think it must be like bus stop in Cities XL.
What I wanted and it didn't have
- I want to see Churches and mosques and they effect the people.
- I want to development plan map and some of people must be illegal building if we don't supply the building requirement.
- I want to play real online game. And in the online world all players shouldn't Build a city, some of them makes trade company or transportation company etc... I mean two game in the one. (City building and trade)

Ocram

#21
SimCity 4 Deluxe
What is good and why?
1. Diversity in transportation options
2. Openness to custom content
3. Zoning options (and the foundations that allow for the CAM)
4. Simulation (to a certain extent)
5. Economy (and taxes)
6. Disasters
7. Building styles
What could be better and how?
1. Zones:
a. Have an option to zone commercial services separate from commercial offices but still have an option to have both together (maybe going so far as having both offices and services in the same building)
b. Have the option to zone everything like industrial (no division of property lines set with buildings growing as needed), this is also how zoning was implemented in SimCity 2000 and 3000
c. Add mixed-use zoning
d. Add a new Hotel Zone
2. Resources:
a. Add in the concept of resources for construction (manufacturing industrial products for construction), running, and satisfaction of buildings and citizens.
b. Have all buildings producing or consuming resources (water, fuel, food, gems, metal, etc) and/or services (commerce/retail, office services, industrial products, etc) in addition to needing employees and utilities (possibly with the option of running while low on utilities, resources, and/or services but at a reduced level).
c. Have the ability to trade resources with an AI with a different price for each resource. Ideally having the ability to trade between cities.
3. Roads:
a. Greater flexibility of road usage (number of lanes, number of stacked roads (viaducts and possibly "flying cars" if someone makes a custom, invisible viaduct), presence and size of medians and sidewalks)
b. Free rotation of roads (with the option of snapping to 45 degree angles of either N, NW, W, SW, S, SE, E, NE or 45 degree angles of a free road)
c. Curved roads (using splines)
4. Custom Building Styles (for custom content that does not fit into existing building styles)
5. More terrain tools (including query)
a. Salt water and fresh water (effects desalination plants, fresh water pumps) with fresh water being able to go on slopes and to have a variable water level (which would be needed for slopes anyway) with a tool to make shallow, surface water (4 meters) or deeper water based on number of clicks or to have an auto fill tool
b. Custom tree planting (choose which tree(s) will be planted with God Mode tree tool)
c. Terrain query (to show height, terrain/water type, and slope)
d. Resource allocator/painter (decide which natural resources go where in God Mode)
6. Economy
a. Taxes: be able to tax new zones and to adjust taxes up to 80% with the only way for growth to exist would be to provide government services for free (that would make things more socialist) but commercial services would suffer the greatest from high taxes as the people would not be able to afford non-subsidized commercial services and non-subsidized commercial services would not have access to any freebies that residents would have access to.
b. Have the option for all business, services, and civic buildings (except for actual governing buildings like city hall, mayor's mansion, and capitol) to be either private, government-owned, or subsidized. Private buildings make more taxes and are usually more profitable (and thus contribute more to land value and General Prosperity Index) but are more susceptible to high taxes. Government buildings do not earn taxes but rather send all profits (or losses) to the city coffers; government buildings are not as profitable but give an extra degree of control and protection to the city's economy (these buildings will never close or move out unless you want them to); they are also unaffected by taxes because they do not pay any. Subsidized buildings earn less taxes and do not send profits to the city coffers but are more effective and less susceptible to high taxes.
c. Add a General Prosperity Index to measure total wealth and prosperity. A General Productivity Index would measure commercial and industrial productivity and Gross Domestic Product would measure the combined prosperity of residents and services with the productivity of businesses .
7. Add a higher level government entity that can own and run buildings and can help the cities. Possibly SimNation and a player-owned regional government. The regional government can tax citizens also but the combined tax rate cannot exceed 90% and very few conditions exist for anything to exist above a 75% tax rate.
8. Add a timeline or at least a technological level. The higher the timeline or technological level, the more high tech and efficient the new buildings are and the less demand there is for lower technological industries. At the year 1800, no high tech would exist, in the year 2100, only high tech would exist. A timeline can be replaced with a technological level that is dependent on year of existence for region and the highest education levels in the region.
9. Change time so that all cities in the region have to sync up in years every 10 years. This can be done automatically (which could lead to undesirable consequences of up to 9 years of growth without governing) or the player can play the cities lagging behind up to (or beyond, as long as the difference between farthest behind city and farthest forward city is no more than 12 years) the point of synchronization. New cities are automatically synced to the latest date. All cities would have a founding day. This can be combined with a timeline so that the region time starts at January 1, 1800.
If you always do YOUR best you will always be better than the best.

Can't think of anything better for a sig.

armagin

#22
What was good and why

- Ability to mod and easily add custom user content to the game created a great community that has stood the test of time.
- Route Query and the General Query tools are excellent features and any city game that doesn't feature something of this sort is going to fall short of the mark

What could be better and how

- Its probably been said but the terrain tools need a bit of work and water needs to be able to "flow" realistically instead of on only one level, as it stands right now SC4 is great for creating coastal cities with little variation in terrain.
- Slope conformity, Speaking of terrain, buildings that were on any degree of slope generally and very poorly molded to the terrain, large buildings and small should not need to have a "level foundation" with massive and ugly retaining walls in order to develop
- Control over buildings, when Rush Hour came out they added the different building styles which was fantastic but incomplete, when a major building is built in most cities and towns it goes through some sort of approval process, that would be something nice to see. Also the option to offer incentives for large companies or developments to come to your city would be a definite plus. Perhaps a "Building Catalog" where you can even determine the amount of cash (if any) you would need to lay out to attract a certain developer or building to you city.
- Roads shouldn't be the only thing that is draggable, boardwalks/shorelines, walkways, parks, fences, waterways, tree lines etc. would all be great additions if they were drag gable and not tied to a grid.
- A "snap" feature, say if I want a road to follow the contours of a hill, the side of a large building or park, or a shoreline the ability to "snap" to the side would be both beneficial and good from a programming standpoint as you have a way of ensuring things that need a transport connection have one.
- Festivals and events, A Saturday morning market, A county fair, a cycling race, a rock concert, the Olympics, hosting events in your city would be kick ass and fun to brainstorm for.
Check out a journey through Heavenshire over on Simtropolis: http://www.simtropolis.com/cityjournals/?p=toc&id=716

townscape

And another small but important thing:

What was good and why:
-Color coding for zones by density and type

funny how I link the banner to the only place I ever post :)
The Greatest place to get a game name

catty

Quote from: armagin on May 31, 2010, 12:28:09 PM
- Festivals and events, A Saturday morning market, A county fair, a cycling race, a rock concert, the Olympics, hosting events in your city would be kick ass and fun to brainstorm for.

I really miss the SC3000 parades thru town   :(
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" DEATH thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE.

thingfishs

What was good and why:

something I really appreciate about SC4 is the way that all kinds of clues are used, which are both natural in their environment (so as to not break the spell), yet recognisable enough to inform. For eg. TP in trees, car jacking, flashing etc., to indicate crime levels; sparking electricity, burst water mains, clouds of pollution, striking workers etc. for their respective issues. It might be nice to have some more subtle indicators of when things are going well...

Lowkee33

What Could be Better

- A Historical Zoning tool.  I am sick of making things historical one at a time 

WillG_75

Non-grid building. I've always wanted that. Maybe offer buildings at 15, 30, 45 and 90 degrees instead of just 90. Same thing with roads.

Floydian

What was good and why
Probably the best feature of SimCity4 is the regional aspect. Having an unlimited area that can be tied together to create a realistic world is the ultimate freelancer concept, and it really pushed the game well beyond any of its predecessors. The ability to add custom content without replacing other items was also a very nice feature that opened up the modding community. In that vein, NAM and RHW are the two greatest additions to this game, and it is not the same playing it without them any more, in my opinion.

What could be better and how
I have two main issues with the general foundation of SimCity. I'll start with the simple one: lack of diagonals. This springs into the second one: the tie in to the tiled grid system. Games such as Age of Empires/Mythology have broken the grid by using what I imagine is instad a coordinate based system. If this were done with simcity, the possibilities would be amazing: You lay out tangents to build roads (highway curves are very simple formulations), and assign zones within boundaries. The game then automatically "subdivides" the zone and creates each lot facing the road. A cul de sac could actually have houses going all around instead of on three sides.

What I wanted and it didn't have
More curves. Smooth curves.