OK, I'm in on Take 2 now...somebody send me some simoleans so I can get up to speed quickly...

Just my city, or so it seems.

I was able to invite Javajaws, but I can't claim another city, or get back into Petropolis.

I may "Abandon" it then see if I can re-enter.

my origin name is BilllGates with 3 L's

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I may "Abandon" it then see if I can re-enter.

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When i have abandoned a city and re-entered it seemed to pick up exaclty where i left it. Not sure what happens when someone else claims it though.

Thanks! I'll try that.

Update: Okay, when I Abandon'ed from Take 2, I no longer have access to Take 2.

Some re-invite me when they get a chance.

Thanks!

[This message has been edited by Cruiser87 (edited 3/12/2013 4:13p).]

Can you click on my icon in the friends list and see Take 2?

ok sent invites to cruiser and billlgates

Long post follows, now that I've played it awhile. I'm kinda concerned about the nuts and bolts of this thing, although it is fun. Part of the cool thing about this game and glassbox is that every individual sim is in the game, you can follow them around, etc. It sounds neat. Probably stop reading if you still want to think its neat.

So has anybody actually noticed how this game actually works? Its very intuitive for the agents like sewage, power, water, etc. They are generated at a source, and then move down the line toward the closest building that has a need for them and as they pass it you can see them filling the need (a circle under the building is shown filling up). If a building is too far down the water network, all the buildings in between suck up all the agents moving down the line.

For water and sewage it is particularly accurate, I think.

One problem is that power also acts this way. This is not how power works in real life. The old way I think was more accurate where you are either connected to the grid or not, and the whole netwowk is either overstrained or not leading to blackouts that rol, not "well all the power got sucked up by the first few building along the road before it got to you"

meh, alright

Bigger problem.

Your sims also act like this. Everyday they all wake up and start wandering like zombies toward the nearest job. Not "their job"...the "nearest job". If its filled by other zombies before they get there, they just move on to the next one down the line of a similar wealth/education level until they are all sucked up just like the power/water/sewage blobs.

Then they get off work and its time to go home. So they take the fastest/shortest route to their home, right? Wrong. Any home will do, thats of the right wealth level. So the zombie herd starts wandering toward the residential districts, filling up the housing they find along their path until they all get sucked up.

Uh, thats realistic...I guess. Each person did their own thing that day! But uh, they didnt work at the same job, and they didnt sleep at the same house...isnt that kinda weird?

The police, firetrucks, buses, garbage trucks, freight trucks, all work this way too I think, leading to good results for some, and comical results for others.

I dont think everything in the game being a mindless agent searching for its needed place is a good thing. This game is fun, FUN, FUN right now, but I think it will be increasingly counterintuitive once you begin to learn what is actually going on with the "agents" that make up your city. Less realistic layouts will be more optimal than they should be.

All of my police cars should not head to the nearest crime, in reality the appropriate number would be dispatched. I should not have a fleet of 8 busses following each other around the map trying to pick up one zombie that has stopped at the bus stop, and then 7 of them racing to the next nearest bus stop for the next zombie. It would be better if you could put the busses on pre-planned routes, but Im sure that would add a layer of complexity.

In any case, this fun, and I still highly recommend it to those who are wondering whether to try it out, but for all the "we use agents, so its ultra realistic, and not just a mathematical simulation!" marketing, its really just a different type of simulation, its not that realistic.

[This message has been edited by JJxvi (edited 3/12/2013 4:28p).]

So you're saying if my sim is a Mr. Mom...he gets a new sim chick in his bed each night?!? I can totally roll with that...

Well, I'm not sure it has to be a chick...

javajaws, thanks, I'm back in, but Petropolis is still dead, so selected another plot of land.

Interesting observations. i wonder if some of that logic was disabled because of the server status or if that is just how it is coded?

where was Petropolis at? I may attempt to claim it to see what happens when someone else does...apparently they are supposed to receive a bonus

The agent issue is why the main problem I face in the game is traffic. The sims are stupid, and they all wander toward the closest house or closest job, and they dont even know if that house/job is filled until they get there ( I think, based on my observations) then they move onto the next one. So you have two problems, pathfinding is almost never perfect, and second, a ton of agents are trying to not only use the same road, in fact they are all trying to get to the same place! The same way that all the sewage blobs are all trying to get to the treatment plant, just as the freight truck is trying to get to the nearest cargo point (and then if its full when he gets there he recalculates). For water and sewage this is accurate, water flows in the pipes as it gets sucked up, sewage flows to the sewage plant as long as there is capacity.

For the sim agents, it just means that when your city gets really big, your sims just throng the major streets that lead between districts, creating gridlock, and if you are unlucky and have a huge city dependent on specialization money, crippling your business entities by stopping the freight trucks, or the tourists/gamblers or whatever.

I'm already building my trade city to try and keep population down, except to have enough workers to run my business interests. Too many people will shut down traffic in areas, although I have designed my streets hopefully so that the trade ports, factories and mines, are not between work/shopping/residential districts.

I'm toying with the idea of my next city having mini districts that are self contained rather than having sims travel across town.

[This message has been edited by JJxvi (edited 3/12/2013 4:53p).]

If your theory is correct i'm ****ed as my city is basically Left third Residential/center commercial/Right third industial and utilities and yes my traffic is horrible.

mini-districts may be the way to go but id have some pretty high tech industry as not to have a ton of pollution.

I will say that visually, the engine is fantastic. If the streets are so jammed nobody can go, then nobody can go. You see everybody walking the sidewalks, they get on trains and busses, the sewage flows to be treated, the water runs to the buildings (Visually it annoys me about power, especially since you could use like one equation to determine if your city was generating enough power for all its buildings and what the excess or deficit was just like previous games and it would be realistic, but instead you've got yellow blobs flowing down the street like water taking up processing power).

Most things "act as they should" and its satisfying to see things acting like they should, but as far as the simulation goes, this way is doing a poor job of showing things as they would be at the macro city level, because while they can program the agents to "act" like they should, they cant program the agents that need to be "smart" without really amping up the number of computations (probably) and crippling the simulation.

The big business, factories, trade ports, etc are awesome. I am having a blast with those. Thankfully the delivery and freight trucks have simpleton jobs that are scripted for them so what they have to do is not much different than a real person with that job would have to do, and so it works really well. You just have to make sure the rest of the system (traffic, workers, water, power) doesnt find a way to shut down your stuff.

Someone hit me with an invite to Take 2!

dlance13

so is there any plan to Take 2? Or is build want you want and share what's needed?

Granted - if transport between cities isn't working right then I guess it doesn't matter if each city is trying to play of each other.

[This message has been edited by wee_ag (edited 3/12/2013 5:56p).]

I like the "the mayor should schedule more trains!" message at a train station. What does that mean?

I think i got all of the invites out for those who don't have them.

weeag - not really. I think at this point everyone is still trying to figure it all out. Though when the challenges start there will need to be some coordination.

Had that in my first city. Could not figure it out

1 week after launch and I had a rollback on the Oceanic 2 server. What a bunch of bull****...

Can I have an invite -- > Wisxox

Live server status page.

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/server-status

[This message has been edited by wee_ag (edited 3/12/2013 8:03p).]

Anyone ever have trouble getting the game to recognize you have connected a road to a highway? Has happened twice today, second time just now in my Take 2 city.

Update 1.5 just released.

http://help.ea.com/article/simcity-patch-notes

[This message has been edited by wee_ag (edited 3/12/2013 8:44p).]

Has anyone had success with inter-city sharing? I'm on ANE1 and I'm getting some residents (about 500) going to my commercial and industrial cities, but not enough to fill all the jobs... I've got 40k residents that complain about not enough jobs.

Is it still buggy or am I doing something wrong? I've got the highway, train, buses and a port going between them all.

A work in progress, Aberlour on Take 2:

My city reminds me of Detroit.

I am still recovering from my roads being bugged at the start. Had to bulldoze my avenues and rebuild them. Then arsonists ran wild and burned down half my city. Finally got police and fire and things have stabilized. Ugh.

My sims are fulfilling their dreams diggin ore, smeltin alloy, and making tvs and processors. They don't need trivial things like health care, police or fire protection...

If it's not one bug it's another. I have 4 huge garbage sites and my citizens are still *****ing that there is trash everywhere. My medium and high wealth sims hauled ass and left me with the bill. The only thing keeping Oban afloat is my recycling center. I'm gonna try to build up some cash and bulldoze this whole bia bia to the ground I guess.

[This message has been edited by Cromagnum (edited 3/12/2013 11:04p).]

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If it's not one bug it's another. I have 4 huge garbage sites and my citizens are still *****ing that there is trash everywhere. My medium and high wealth sims hauled ass and left me with the bill. The only thing keeping Oban afloat is my recycling center.

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And I have been sending garbage trucks your way as well...

It is definitely broken. Twice my garbage collection has failed me in the party mission. Could use that $50k.

If you'll were in my quadrant I'd give you some money. Is there anyway to make it let me gift without being connected by road/train? Maybe airplane?