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Worst SimCity evar?

Saint_Proverbius

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Okay, just curious. Which SimCity was the worst one? SimCity was brilliant. I played that thing to death on my Amiga 500. Sim City 2000 was classic too, I still play it.

I got SimCity 3000 the week it came out. I was pretty disappointed I couldn't play it in a window like I could the previous games. I was really disappointed with having to deal with garbage as well. I understand that garbage is something a city deals with, but.. BORING.

SimCity 4 seems to have removed garbage but added water pollution and traffic annoyances. I'm not even sure that cities actually DO deal with water pollution. Either way, the piping system in SimCity 2000 was much, much better than the simplified yet pollution oriented model that SC4 has. It seems that they added a level of complexity to the situation with pollution while eliminating the SC2k style water management that would have made it easier to deal with.

The traffic thing in SC4 seems to be a matter of forcing the player to go back and replace the standard zoning roads with the streets that have traffic lights. Or is it the roads that have the lights and the streets that don't? I never could get that straight. The only thing I do know is that the mechanic just seems to force me to paint over one with the other. Meh.
 

Psilon

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As I mentioned in the other thread, I feel 4 was the worst. 3000 was pretty much stagnation (new features, but nothing interesting), but 4 was awful. A broken economic model, public utilities beyond useless, bugs galore, but Sims Integration!

2000, though, that was the best. Far better than the (extremely good) original.

Now they just need to license SimEarth 2 and SimAnt 2 to some decent developers. I wouldn't trust EA with either, but then again they've shown no interest in redoing titles other than sports or the Sims.
 

Fez

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Simcity 2000 was the one that made the best impression with me. It looked good and played better. The later games seemed to bring in disappointment from the fans more than anything else. I still remember that special edition of Sim City where they had FMV clips of actors playing out parts in the game. They made a documentary about it at the time.

Another Simant would be great, I was talking about this on IRC recently too.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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One thing I think that I don't really get about the SimCity games, especially the last one, is that a lot of things that could bring in revenue for a city don't and end up costing the city money. Water, for example, can be a source of revenue for the city if it's city owned yet it costs money and doesn't bring any money in. Electricity costs money as well.

The game is way too socialist, really. You end up having a 10% or higher tax rate for things to pay for all the utilities and other things people use. It might be a better idea if they allowed privately owned utilities that just paid taxes or if the city owned them, have utility bills. Having it all lumped under "taxes" is just silly, since people will pay more for electricty than it costs to produce and maintain. The same goes for water.
 

Fez

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If they allowed more private enterprise to develop in the Sim Cities then you may as well just sit back and watch the game play itself. Sim City is all about being the omnipotent guiding hand that plans all (OMG COMMUNISM), like in many god games and city builders. "Socialist" elements are the least of it's troubles.
 

Psilon

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Instead, they could fix the economic models. The two later SimCity games really had only two tax settings: none and crushing. The growth benefits from slightly lowered taxes never matched the money loss, so population level and coffer level were usually inversely related. SimCity 4, especially, seemed to require running at 1% taxes and 1% public utility funding for several years (with the commensurate deficit spending) in order to have any prayer of developing a population base.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Fez said:
If they allowed more private enterprise to develop in the Sim Cities then you may as well just sit back and watch the game play itself. Sim City is all about being the omnipotent guiding hand that plans all (OMG COMMUNISM), like in many god games and city builders. "Socialist" elements are the least of it's troubles.

Not really. You could allow it or not allow it. Right now as of SimCity 4, a lot of the power company and water company stuff is pretty much automated anyway. You don't really connect power cables or pipes like in SimCity2000. You'd be giving up money and control for automation as well, since you wouldn't be in control of the utilities.

The way it is now is just dumb. If you control utilities, you should be able to use water bills and electric bills to earn money instead of them being a huge drain on the economy of the town.
 

LlamaGod

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Keeping it simple: SimCity the original is fun, SimCity 2000 is the only one you should play, and SimAnt is motherfucking awesome.
 

DarkUnderlord

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3000 was nothing more than 2000 +garbage. I like the garbage though - I'm a nitpicker so stuff like that appeals to me.

I never found the tax stuff to be understandable - in my games, it started at 7% and stayed at 7%. I never touched it because it either made everyone come and not pay or everyone leave and me having no money. The ordinances and things were nice to play around with though.

Given I have classic, 2000 and 3000 - that I hardly ever play them at all and that 3 was really no huge improvement over 2 - I gave 4 a miss.

Strangely, there appears to be some correllation between Civ games and the SimCity franchise. 1 = classic. 2 = great improvement. 3 = no real improvement with maybe some steps backwards and 4 is a disaster. Civ 4 is only just getting developed though...

Civ 4's a "tycooncodex" game too, right?
 

Saint_Proverbius

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DarkUnderlord said:
Civ 4's a "tycooncodex" game too, right?

Nah, it's more of a empire strategy thing.

3000 was nothing more than 2000 +garbage. I like the garbage though - I'm a nitpicker so stuff like that appeals to me.

Garbage is another thing that can be privatized in the real world. This is usually what happens when the city doesn't do a good enough job in a neighborhood of trash collection, so the neighborhood opts out of the city trash collection in favor of a private company.

The problem I have with SimCity since SC2k is all the environmental stuff like garbage and pollution. If an industrial plant is polluting the water, you should be able to slap them with a huge fine and make them clean it up. If you slap them with too many fines or over-regulate them, they're likely to pack up and leave. That's the way it should work, IMHO, instead of having to build pumps and water treatment plants. Most industrial facilities I've seen have their own water treatment systems built in based on regulations from either the federal or state level.
 

Dux

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One thing that always perplexed me about SimCity was the financial aspect. I haven't played the series in a long time but I still remember struggling just trying to earn some money. It always ended up with me legalising gambling and taking in other cities' trash. It was never enough, though.

Then there's SimCity for SNES. That's a fond memory I have. Granted, I didn't understand much of it back in the day but it was still fun.
 

pippin

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3000 was lots of fun, partially because of the garbage. Everything was in the right place imo.

SimCity 2013 had a map which allowed you to see the shit flowing through the sewer system.
 

mck

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ah simpler times before the new sim city. 3000 is my favorite tho. the soundtrack is killer. i hum several of the songs from it on a regular basis despite not having played it in years.
 

Turjan

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Wow. People saying simcity 4 is the worst. Jesus.
It was pretty much broken before the Rush Hour expansion was released. The latter made it playable, though my love for the game is definitely related to using mods, particularly the one that fixes the traffic simulation.
 

Turjan

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Wow. People saying simcity 4 is the worst. Jesus.
particularly the one that fixes the traffic simulation.

which is ?
Nowadays, it's part of the Network Addon Mod, which also gives you lots of new roads and traffic systems. That's rather large though. The actual traffic simulation fix is only quite small (a bit above 1 MB). If you don't use the NAM for whatever reason (like absolutely no RAM left), the file is still available here.
 

J_C

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Wow. People saying simcity 4 is the worst. Jesus.
It is unbelievably incredible. I don't know what goes through in one's mind when they say things like that. SC4 is fucking awesome with expansion and great mods.
 

Whisky

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Wow. People saying simcity 4 is the worst. Jesus.
It is unbelievably incredible. I don't know what goes through in one's mind when they say things like that. SC4 is fucking awesome with expansion and great mods.

Turjan had a good point though. The original release was not very good. I've never played it without the expansion, but from what people say the original release was very broken.

The best mods might not have come out yet in 2005 either.
 
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maxis games, back when maxis was maxis, were never fully "games", most of the times they were tools, you sent some input in them and then watched how things evolved, in a believable way. that's why even if the game was broken, the simulation was appreciated anyway.
what does today's shitcity simulate, other than boredom?
 

makiavelli747

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Even original release was fine, way better than first two games.
 

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