Trying patiently to log in.

origin Id: woodometer

agdude12 is my name still trying to connect....

WHILE WE ARE ALL WAITING FOR EA TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO RUN A GAME...

Why don't we do a planning for our second run at Aggieland once we have a handle on this new SimCity.

How do we want to play this? It seems the common opinion is to have each city play off and support each other. We started claiming what we each wanted to do, but that kind of fell apart since we are all learning how to play.

Things that can be sold/shared between cities are:
Power
Water
Sewage Processing

Services that can be shared:
Fire
Ambulance
Police
Garbage collection

Sims will also travel to other cities for things they need:
Shopping
Education
Work

Cities can specialize in different industries:
Mining
Drilling
Trading
Electronics
Culture
Gambling

We also have Great Works to consider (we can accomplish all of them in a 16 city region).

Before the collapse of the server, I was testing a theory: if I had no industry would sims travel to other cities for work. I would also be curious if you had no residential or commercial, would sims travel in mass to get them. IF that is the case, we could have entirely industrial cities producing TONS of whatever resources are needed for other cities - each specializing in something specific. We could have entire commercial cities or residential cities as well. I was trying to get a gambling/cultural city that would simply be a tourist attraction. My hope was to make a ton of money that I could send to whoever may need it. I would buy all my services from other cities as needed (power, sewage, water). Maybe even police/fire/medical could be sent from nearby cities to save on room to develop.

So, does each city specialize in something, sell that specialization and buy what they need?

But maybe I'm just reaching and this is all more trouble than it's worth. Seems a little boring to just have everyone do whatever and not work with each other.

Thoughts?

I'll edit my original post (4th on page one) with what we are planning.

[This message has been edited by wee_ag (edited 3/7/2013 12:15p).]

Just saw a commercial for the game. Maybe they should pull those til they at least get it where you can log in.

no doubt. Next time I want to waste $60 I will go get a prostate exam. At least they use lube before they **** you

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Mining
Drilling
Trading
Electronics
Culture
Gambling

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I'm still trying to learn about these, but from the gist of it:

Mining: Mine if your town has a good coal deposit, use coal for your powerplant. Not sure what you can make from coal yet.

Drilling: Same as mining if you have oil. I guess you can make plastic and gas from it?

Electronics: Takes smart sims, and plastic from (I guess) drilling to support.

Culture: Entertainment.

Gambling: Entertainment with high/risk reward of revenue vs crime.

Trading: Shouldn't every city have some version of this so you can swap resources for what you have too much of vs what you need?

That being said, I don't think you can make a city that is purely one of residential/commercial/industrial and actually get anywhere. There is too much that needs to be balanced to be good at any one thing.

I just want to go on record that I called it on page 3...

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Sounds like a Diablo 3 fiasco in the making.

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[This message has been edited by wee_ag (edited 3/6/2013 11:05p).]

The updates they did didnt fix my unable to claim city problem.

Origin sez I've played for 5 hours. That's 15 min of tutorial, 3.5 hours of "can't claim city, try again soon mother****er!" An hour of cant log in to our servers, 15 minutes of other misc crap, and 0 minutes of gameplay.

1) you win! Your game connected to the update server!

2) you win! Your game connected to the authentication server!

3 you win! Your game connected to the chosen game server!

4) you win! Your game loaded all of the co.....oh sorry! Try and get through all the steps one more time!

Still unable to claim city on the aggieland, but for the first time ever I saw a blue city spot successfully claimed in my own private region. It didnt load completely begore kicking me back yo the main menu but it did say it was mine! Success! Time to call it a night.

Oooo - got my first queue notice... 18:00 and counting

Man I'm glad I read this thread before I bought the game. What a cluster****.

Don't lose hope, there's still a game underneath all these problems...


I have seen the face of evil...and it's an overgrown iguana. I had this two times within 2 sim days (he eats the garbage):




The trail of destruction:




Back to normal:



[This message has been edited by javajaws (edited 3/7/2013 12:49a).]

Of course, right after I posted that previous message my computer crashed with a blue screen of death...

So the good news is that I can play on NA East 2. 1 still shows busy

Still trying to get on

Origin name is MCVet0914

Why does it tell you "unable to connect please try again" in the pop up when the server connection fails in game (usually immediately after the intro video)? How exactly does one "try again"? It doesn't kick you out of the game, are you supposed to quit the game and do it all over to "try again?" Does it continue to try to connect on its own within the game? If so why tell me that I need to "try again"? Why is there not a button in game that tries to reconnect rather than having to quit and go through every step again?

[This message has been edited by Jjxvi (edited 3/7/2013 7:24a).]

Finally got a new fail message. apparently now I cannot claim Palomino (the abandoned city ive been trying to claim) because "I do not own content used to create it"

Pretty sure the city is empty, so if someone has extra content and creates a city only someone with that content can claim it even if it is blank? These developers were real *******s.

[This message has been edited by Jjxvi (edited 3/7/2013 7:39a).]

I'm guessing whoever originally claimed it had the $80 version?

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no doubt. Next time I want to waste $60 I will go get a prostate exam. At least they use lube before they **** you

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I don't think you went to a real doctor...

Here's a quote from IGN's review in progress.

quote:

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"Update: Unfortunately I can't recommend buying SimCity until these crippling server issues are fixed. Please don't purchase it until there's a reasonable expectation that you'll be able to actually play."

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quote:

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"If you held off and waited on this purchase, give yourself a pat on the back. If you didn't, I advise thinking twice next time. Remember: if you really want to make a game publisher sweat, tell them (over Twitter - believe me, they're listening) you're not preordering because you're concerned about launch issues. They're all about that these days."

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[This message has been edited by dietcola84 (edited 3/7/2013 8:33a).]

I wasnt buying because I'm concerned about replayability, now I'm definitely glad I haven't wasted 2 days being frustrated over the game lol.

Let it download during the night and hoped to at least do the tutorial' but no dice.

When will these companies learn that you need to offer single player offline mode in a game. No major game or expansion in recent memory has been able to keep up with launch demand. Blizard, whose whole business model is online hosting isn't able to keep up with a launch.


Either build in the ability to have offline play with only occasional authentication checks, or over lease the amount of servers you use to host and scale it back later.

Diablo 3 had at least a little bit of excuse. The sheer volume of people flooding into that game at release had to be astounding. I'm sure Sim city has no where no those numbers, and they still are falling fat on their face .

Best review I've seen so far.

I believe after almost 48hrs with Simcity I have enough experience to give a pretty unbiased and accurate review of the game, so here goes.

Graphics: The screen looks great. There is a large metropolis being shown, with a helicopter and a plane flying over. The words SIMCITY are large and easily readable, which is nice, so I know what the game is. There is a News and Community are with nothing being shown beneath it, which is a little alarming. I would think there would be a community interest in the game, maybe we have to give it a few days. To the right of the News area is a kind of advertisment section about Facebook, Twitter, and sending your city somewhere. I hope we get them back if we do that. The bottom of the screen has information on Servers and an update bar with a big green arrow to the right. I'll go over the arrow in the gameplay section. Altogether the graphics are nice. It is colorful and easy to read. I would have expected the screen to move a little, it does seem weird to have the helicopter and plane just hovering in midair, but this is 2013, can't expect miracles.

Sound: The screen has music that it pleasing and easy to listen to. It does seem to repeat often though, so it will probably become tiresome. I suggest listening to your own music while playing after a while. I suggest city related songs like Summer in the City, Funkytown, Where the streets have no name, and of course Penny Lane to keep with the mood of the screen.

Gameplay: If you click the Select Server button on the lower left, it brings up a list of 9 names that range from North America West 1 to Oceanic 1, with the words Busy and Available on the opposite side. Busy in orange, and Available in green so it's easy to tell the words apart. After clicking the busy ones, you are eventually brought to a screen with a 20 minute countdown. It is pretty exciting when the countdown reaches the end, but then it goes back to 20 minutes again, which seems like it will eventually grow old. It is a cool minigame though. The best part is clicking the green arrow. It starts a movie, and the first thing you see are the letters EA, which look great. Then it starts showing you rolling hills, rivers, and some cities. It has industrial buildings, railroads, and a lot of other things. It all happens so fast, I can't quite remember it all , but it was pretty impressive. Your then taking to a screen the informs you that the server you selected is unavailable at this time. You can change your options in the top right corner. I fiddled around with the graphics, but the screen really didn't change much. Maybe I need to restart to see the difference. There is a Play button which doesn't seem to work, hopefully they will put out a patch soon to make it do something. I would love to see what happens when you click it.

Conclusion: So far, I've enjoyed my time with Simcity. The screens, while pretty static are nice to look at, the music is pleasant, and the movie is pretty cool. I expected more then 2 minigames for $80, but beggars can't be choosers i guess. Not sure how I use the city sets that came with the digital deluxe version I bought. Maybe the screen will randomly chage to reflect them. All in all though, I give it a 10/10, so far the frontrunner for Game of the Year

10/10 for that review

I actually got to play a little this morning. Does it automatically save?

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I actually got to play a little this morning. Does it automatically save?

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Yes it does

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I actually got to play a little this morning. Does it automatically save?

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Yeah, but only if it doesn't lose your data first.

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Yes it does

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Sort of.

Two caveats so far:

1) I would make sure you wait 3 minutes or so after doing anything before quitting. Then quit to main menu before exiting. I believe the save period is every 3 minutes, but at least on launch day it did lose a few changes if I immediately quit after. This might already be fixed.

2) If you single play multiple cities in the same region, changes aren't always being propagated between one city and another right away when you quit one and load the other. The changes are saved for the original city if you reload it, but some things like resource sharing amounts, etc. aren't always getting properly synced between the cities.

This is the best review:

http://www.jonathancresswell.co.uk/2013/03/review-simcity/

Those 2 reviews...