7 ms·

I played SimCity 2013 a few months after launch, and I quite liked it, especially the gorgeous visuals. I've read TFA, and honestly they also failed to mention

I played SimCity 2013 a few months after launch, and I quite liked it, especially the gorgeous visuals. I've read TFA, and honestly they also failed to mention maybe the worse issue of SimCity 2013: how limited it was compared to the previous instalments. The playable area was tiny, so you quickly felt constrained by the border of your playable area. The fact that you could build multiple cities in the same region alleviated it a bit, but it really felt limiting compared to it's predecessors. Another point, which I feel is a good representation of an 'EA'-fied game: I was a bit miffed to discover that you couldn't create a subway system, you were limited to roads (I don't even remember if you could create a bus system). A few months in, I see that there was a 'Subway' content pack, which got my hopes up... until I realized it was to add 'Subway' sandwich shop in your city. Same, they had a cross-promotion with Nissan, so your Sims would feel happy when they recharged their electric car, and the charging station has the effect of a park in your neighborhood. Add to that the server issues, the fact that they said it was because so much computation was offloaded to their servers (which was quickly disproved, and felt bogus to being with), and the whole affair had a vibe of "Don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining". It was particularly sad, because it really still is an enjoyable game. EDIT: After a bit of fact -checking, I realize that I've mis-remembered the "Subway" DLC story. It was instead the "Metro" content pack (metro is french for subway), which was for a newspaper distributed for free near French subway entrances. There is also a Subway sandwich mod, but for SC4 only.

weard_beard 4y ago
City skylines has more than filled this gap imho. Great community. You should check it out if you haven’t yet.
- mablopoule 4y ago
  It's on my bucket list since, but I was afraid of falling down the rabbit hole, same as Anno, Civilisation and other cool games. I'm so glad City Skyline had such a success, because I feel that other Paradox Interactive games wouldn't have existed otherwise. As an avid player of Stellaris, and as someone eyeing the Crusader Kings series or Europa Universalis, I'm feel that Paradox games have DLCs done right. They are clearly on the expensive side, but they are contentfull, and feel less shameless than EA counterpart (especially with the Sims who has the same DLCs over and over again). On a side note, there is also Caesar III (& Pharaoh) on Gog, and it's still a gem.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Is there some backstory to the crucial-ness of Cities Skyline? I thought they’d had a pretty good thing going for a while by then, with their various funky history simulators.
    - mablopoule 4y ago
      Maybe not then, I haven't done my homework on this subject to be honest. I mostly said that because of a gut feeling that CS is their main cash cow, while their others series are solid but with a more niche player base.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        > while their others series are solid but with a more niche player base Might have been so in the past, but Paradox games are relatively mainstream, although they seem a bit niche. Hearts of Iron IV is the 32th most played game at Steam right now (https://steamdb.info/charts/ https://steamdb.info/charts/), while Cities: Skylines is on spot 56. Might have something to do with recent news or released addons, but still, other Paradox games are wildly popular and Paradox would surely do just fine even without Cities: Skylines. More interesting stats comparing Hearts of Iron with Cities: Skylines > Cities: Skylines - 18,280 players right now | 24,541 24-hour peak | 60,386 all-time peak 8 years ago > Hearts of Iron IV - 32,652 players right now | 44,193 24-hour peak | 70,997 all-time peak 5 months ago
        mablopoule 4y ago
        Interesting. Thanks for the detailed comparison, and glad to be proved wrong.
      - orwin 4y ago
        I think they improved their Clauswidtz à lot in the past 3 years. Really night and day in term of bugs. Idk what they did, better hire, better process or more people on it (or all 3), but it made multi-player bearable on EU4, and great on Hoi4/stellaris (I do not like the game that much, but it's a better MP game than EU4, let's be honest.) Anyway, Hoi4 isn't niche anymore. It's like top5 MP strategy game.
- zymhan 4y ago
  CS has never captured the "soul" of a city though. Your city doesn't feel alive at all. But it's a great city building simulator.
- netruk44 4y ago
  Cities Skylines is alright but my problem with it from when it launched is after about an hour into the game it stops being challenging and just becomes a zen city-builder-themed garden. There's really no chance of losing once you build any kind of cash flow, and as a result there's no obvious goal other than 'make big city' and then subsequently 'manage the traffic' SimCity on the other hand is challenging to keep going throughout. You need to make thoughtful choices on what you're building next and where or else due to some quirk of the Agent system you're going to be on the brink of collapse (Why won't the power go down this one street??) Obviously there's room for improvement on the SimCity front, but my point is that if you're looking for a challenging city builder, Skylines is not it unless you wanna spend time configuring mods.
  - mcv 4y ago
    > a zen city-builder-themed garden Sounds like a great selling point to me.
    - netruk44 4y ago
      And that's why it's so fun for so many people. But not for me, that's not what I'm looking for in a city builder. Different strokes.
  - loudmax 4y ago
    It depends on what you're looking for in a Sim game. There's no Ender Dragon to kill in City:Skylines, so the objective of the game is whatever you make of it. At heart C:S is really a traffic management game. Cash flow usually isn't an issue, but getting efficient traffic flow and minimizing traffic jams becomes a major issue when you build up a dense downtown area.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  I struggle to get into CS because of the number of DLCs. I have no idea what ones you need to have a SimCity 4 experience, and they're all really expensive.
  - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
    The DLCs add stuff, but you don't really need them to start out. The base game is great as-is. Other than that, you can see what's included with every DLC on the C:S wiki: https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content. That way, you can decide which DLCs you care about and which you don't.
  - jabroni_salad 4y ago
    The way CS does content updates, part of the update is free and part of it is paid. So, organically the best way to figure out what to pay is to play the game, see which features you like, and get the DLCs that expand the areas of the game you like the most. (I also recommend this method because if it turns out you dont like CS after all you arent too badly in the hole) They do occasionally go on sale, so you can always just wishlist something and come back later.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    If you have Mods you don't even need ANY DLC, really, though the park ones make the "park problem" completely a non issue. Mass Transit is a joke, all the options are just memes.
shadowofneptune 4y ago
> Same, they had a cross-promotion with Nissan, so your Sims would feel happy when they recharged their electric car, and the charging station has the effect of a park in your neighborhood. Perhaps not as bad as all the BP solar arrays and windmills in SimCity Societies! Game came out 3 years before the New Horizon spill.
- ascagnel_ 4y ago
  But it came out 3 years after BP's Deepwater Horizon spill.
  - shadowofneptune 4y ago
    Memory must fail me, Deepwater Horizon. SC: Societies was 2007, to be clear.
    - Pxtl 4y ago
      New Horizons was the probe that went to Pluto.
- shadowofneptune 4y ago
  Looking deeper, it was only a year after the Prudhoe Bay spill. The gall.
etempleton 4y ago
The playable area was tiny and the game was weird in the way it cycled boom and bust development seemingly at random. And then despite the game selling incredibly well they abandoned it after launch and never really improved the game much. The marketing hype leading up to it featured lot of outright lies in terms of how the game works. Compute was not offloaded to the cloud, but bigger than that there was the lie that every sim had a daily routine that was simulated and when a factory had an output it was an input somewhere else and that was all simulated like Factorio. It wasn't. It was all faked and not even convincingly well. I have been hoping for a new city builder for awhile. Cities Skylines was great, but I am looking for something a bit more in depth. I think I want the original promise of SimCity (2013) with the transportation flexibility of Cities Skylines. Solving transportation issues and bottlenecks to make sure your city is operating efficiently sounds incredibly rewarding.
- pdntspa 4y ago
  You might enjoy Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic. It's really rough right now, and frustratingly manual in places, but it does a good job of simulating resources at least. If you play in Realism Mode then vehicles and resources are dispatched and consumed realistically. (People too, but they teleport home at the end of their job and they don't appear to take transfers for public transit)
  - homarp 4y ago
    Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic: https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources...
- dragontamer 4y ago
  OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe being the original), is my preferred traffic simulation game. Once you can control all routes and trains, you can never go back! You get used to the control, the timetables, the organization that's possible.
  - 4y ago
actionablefiber 4y ago
> Another point, which I feel is a good representation of an 'EA'-fied game: I was a bit miffed to discover that you couldn't create a subway system, you were limited to roads (I don't even remember if you could create a bus system). A few months in, I see that there was a 'Subway' content pack, which got my hopes up... until I realized it was to add 'Subway' sandwich shop in your city. > Same, they had a cross-promotion with Nissan, so your Sims would feel happy when they recharged their electric car, and the charging station has the effect of a park in your neighborhood. That's kind of insulting. If you were to ask me "what's an environmentally friendly piece of mobility infrastructure that should count as a park" the answer is very obviously a bike trail.
blibble 4y ago
it was more of a village simulator than a city simulator more like SimTown than SimCity: https://youtu.be/GRLyvPi7X4c?t=131 https://youtu.be/GRLyvPi7X4c?t=131 > A few months in, I see that there was a 'Subway' content pack, which got my hopes up... until I realized it was to add 'Subway' sandwich shop in your city. this is hilarious, but sadly sums up gaming these days
- behringer 4y ago
  *ea games. I have a rule, if it's an ea game it's going to be hot garbage.
  - suddenclarity 4y ago
    Among "new" releases, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is quite good. If you're into those types of story driven games with a bit linear map path.
JohnFen 4y ago
> the fact that they said it was because so much computation was offloaded to their servers (which was quickly disproved, and felt bogus to being with) This shredded the last bit of trust and goodwill Maxis had with me.
windowshopping 4y ago
What is TFA in this context?
- sciurus 4y ago
  The article. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFA https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFA
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  In HN's comparatively dispassionate register, "the featured article". Using it in a more frustrated tone can be suggestive of a different F word.

weard_beard 4y ago

City skylines has more than filled this gap imho. Great community. You should check it out if you haven’t yet.

mablopoule 4y ago
It's on my bucket list since, but I was afraid of falling down the rabbit hole, same as Anno, Civilisation and other cool games. I'm so glad City Skyline had such a success, because I feel that other Paradox Interactive games wouldn't have existed otherwise. As an avid player of Stellaris, and as someone eyeing the Crusader Kings series or Europa Universalis, I'm feel that Paradox games have DLCs done right. They are clearly on the expensive side, but they are contentfull, and feel less shameless than EA counterpart (especially with the Sims who has the same DLCs over and over again). On a side note, there is also Caesar III (& Pharaoh) on Gog, and it's still a gem.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Is there some backstory to the crucial-ness of Cities Skyline? I thought they’d had a pretty good thing going for a while by then, with their various funky history simulators.
  - mablopoule 4y ago
    Maybe not then, I haven't done my homework on this subject to be honest. I mostly said that because of a gut feeling that CS is their main cash cow, while their others series are solid but with a more niche player base.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      > while their others series are solid but with a more niche player base Might have been so in the past, but Paradox games are relatively mainstream, although they seem a bit niche. Hearts of Iron IV is the 32th most played game at Steam right now (https://steamdb.info/charts/ https://steamdb.info/charts/), while Cities: Skylines is on spot 56. Might have something to do with recent news or released addons, but still, other Paradox games are wildly popular and Paradox would surely do just fine even without Cities: Skylines. More interesting stats comparing Hearts of Iron with Cities: Skylines > Cities: Skylines - 18,280 players right now | 24,541 24-hour peak | 60,386 all-time peak 8 years ago > Hearts of Iron IV - 32,652 players right now | 44,193 24-hour peak | 70,997 all-time peak 5 months ago
      - mablopoule 4y ago
        Interesting. Thanks for the detailed comparison, and glad to be proved wrong.
    - orwin 4y ago
      I think they improved their Clauswidtz à lot in the past 3 years. Really night and day in term of bugs. Idk what they did, better hire, better process or more people on it (or all 3), but it made multi-player bearable on EU4, and great on Hoi4/stellaris (I do not like the game that much, but it's a better MP game than EU4, let's be honest.) Anyway, Hoi4 isn't niche anymore. It's like top5 MP strategy game.
zymhan 4y ago
CS has never captured the "soul" of a city though. Your city doesn't feel alive at all. But it's a great city building simulator.
netruk44 4y ago
Cities Skylines is alright but my problem with it from when it launched is after about an hour into the game it stops being challenging and just becomes a zen city-builder-themed garden. There's really no chance of losing once you build any kind of cash flow, and as a result there's no obvious goal other than 'make big city' and then subsequently 'manage the traffic' SimCity on the other hand is challenging to keep going throughout. You need to make thoughtful choices on what you're building next and where or else due to some quirk of the Agent system you're going to be on the brink of collapse (Why won't the power go down this one street??) Obviously there's room for improvement on the SimCity front, but my point is that if you're looking for a challenging city builder, Skylines is not it unless you wanna spend time configuring mods.
- mcv 4y ago
  > a zen city-builder-themed garden Sounds like a great selling point to me.
  - netruk44 4y ago
    And that's why it's so fun for so many people. But not for me, that's not what I'm looking for in a city builder. Different strokes.
- loudmax 4y ago
  It depends on what you're looking for in a Sim game. There's no Ender Dragon to kill in City:Skylines, so the objective of the game is whatever you make of it. At heart C:S is really a traffic management game. Cash flow usually isn't an issue, but getting efficient traffic flow and minimizing traffic jams becomes a major issue when you build up a dense downtown area.
candiddevmike 4y ago
I struggle to get into CS because of the number of DLCs. I have no idea what ones you need to have a SimCity 4 experience, and they're all really expensive.
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  The DLCs add stuff, but you don't really need them to start out. The base game is great as-is. Other than that, you can see what's included with every DLC on the C:S wiki: https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content. That way, you can decide which DLCs you care about and which you don't.
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  The way CS does content updates, part of the update is free and part of it is paid. So, organically the best way to figure out what to pay is to play the game, see which features you like, and get the DLCs that expand the areas of the game you like the most. (I also recommend this method because if it turns out you dont like CS after all you arent too badly in the hole) They do occasionally go on sale, so you can always just wishlist something and come back later.
- bombcar 4y ago
  If you have Mods you don't even need ANY DLC, really, though the park ones make the "park problem" completely a non issue. Mass Transit is a joke, all the options are just memes.

shadowofneptune 4y ago

> Same, they had a cross-promotion with Nissan, so your Sims would feel happy when they recharged their electric car, and the charging station has the effect of a park in your neighborhood. Perhaps not as bad as all the BP solar arrays and windmills in SimCity Societies! Game came out 3 years before the New Horizon spill.

ascagnel_ 4y ago
But it came out 3 years after BP's Deepwater Horizon spill.
- shadowofneptune 4y ago
  Memory must fail me, Deepwater Horizon. SC: Societies was 2007, to be clear.
  - Pxtl 4y ago
    New Horizons was the probe that went to Pluto.
shadowofneptune 4y ago
Looking deeper, it was only a year after the Prudhoe Bay spill. The gall.

etempleton 4y ago

The playable area was tiny and the game was weird in the way it cycled boom and bust development seemingly at random. And then despite the game selling incredibly well they abandoned it after launch and never really improved the game much. The marketing hype leading up to it featured lot of outright lies in terms of how the game works. Compute was not offloaded to the cloud, but bigger than that there was the lie that every sim had a daily routine that was simulated and when a factory had an output it was an input somewhere else and that was all simulated like Factorio. It wasn't. It was all faked and not even convincingly well. I have been hoping for a new city builder for awhile. Cities Skylines was great, but I am looking for something a bit more in depth. I think I want the original promise of SimCity (2013) with the transportation flexibility of Cities Skylines. Solving transportation issues and bottlenecks to make sure your city is operating efficiently sounds incredibly rewarding.

pdntspa 4y ago
You might enjoy Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic. It's really rough right now, and frustratingly manual in places, but it does a good job of simulating resources at least. If you play in Realism Mode then vehicles and resources are dispatched and consumed realistically. (People too, but they teleport home at the end of their job and they don't appear to take transfers for public transit)
- homarp 4y ago
  Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic: https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources...
dragontamer 4y ago
OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe being the original), is my preferred traffic simulation game. Once you can control all routes and trains, you can never go back! You get used to the control, the timetables, the organization that's possible.
- 4y ago

actionablefiber 4y ago

> Another point, which I feel is a good representation of an 'EA'-fied game: I was a bit miffed to discover that you couldn't create a subway system, you were limited to roads (I don't even remember if you could create a bus system). A few months in, I see that there was a 'Subway' content pack, which got my hopes up... until I realized it was to add 'Subway' sandwich shop in your city. > Same, they had a cross-promotion with Nissan, so your Sims would feel happy when they recharged their electric car, and the charging station has the effect of a park in your neighborhood. That's kind of insulting. If you were to ask me "what's an environmentally friendly piece of mobility infrastructure that should count as a park" the answer is very obviously a bike trail.

blibble 4y ago

it was more of a village simulator than a city simulator more like SimTown than SimCity: https://youtu.be/GRLyvPi7X4c?t=131 https://youtu.be/GRLyvPi7X4c?t=131 > A few months in, I see that there was a 'Subway' content pack, which got my hopes up... until I realized it was to add 'Subway' sandwich shop in your city. this is hilarious, but sadly sums up gaming these days

behringer 4y ago
*ea games. I have a rule, if it's an ea game it's going to be hot garbage.
- suddenclarity 4y ago
  Among "new" releases, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is quite good. If you're into those types of story driven games with a bit linear map path.

JohnFen 4y ago

> the fact that they said it was because so much computation was offloaded to their servers (which was quickly disproved, and felt bogus to being with) This shredded the last bit of trust and goodwill Maxis had with me.

windowshopping 4y ago

What is TFA in this context?

sciurus 4y ago
The article. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFA https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TFA
revolvingocelot 4y ago
In HN's comparatively dispassionate register, "the featured article". Using it in a more frustrated tone can be suggestive of a different F word.