I don’t usually complain about the always-on thing - this might be my first time, actually! - but I’ve had more server issues tonight than I did throughout the entire Diablo 3 launch process. I managed to get through most of the tutorial but I’m locked out again now. If I can get back in before bed, I’ll establish a township, but who knows at this point. Judging from playtime patterns in other games, I imagine it’ll just get more busy over the next couple of hours.
Like I said, I was REALLY looking forward to it.
I’ll just answer this and then bow out to keep from hijacking any further. I do have an always-on connection, but I’d like to be able to play the game when my Internet is on the fritz or I’m on a plane or at a hotel that charges for WiFi. And what happens when they shut down their servers or go down for maintenance? In Team Fortress 2 about once a month I can’t log on to play because everyone is hammering the servers for the new updates. Would you buy a car if it only ran while being connected to Ford’s servers?
Well, I’m kind of agreeing with you guys now.
The server are down and I have no clue if anythign from my city was saved. I just gotted booted off, unceremoniously.
I had garbage trucks and fire trucks covering Neoplast and Terminu’s cities, and just started zoning more residential and commercial.
And I didn’t have to waste space with a power plant/sewage dump/water tower, as I’m purchasing those services from my neighboring cities. Cool, but…
I hope it’s all still there!!!
Played until I got a message that servers were down and it was attempting to reconnect. Kept playing for good while afterwards, then I was unceremoniously dumped into the opening screen. Oh well.
As people were coming online, I sent as many invites as I could. Some folks I invited multiple times yet never got the invitation. Others wouldn’t appear on my friends list, so I couldn’t even invite them. I was also testing the “Region Wall”, where it also takes a while for messages to appear there. Probably all part of the same server problems.
Huh, I wasn’t even aware that you were covering my city. I really, really needed those garbage trucks, too.
The Origin Chat box is borked as well, can’t talk to anyone. Hopefully they get this fixed soon. Websites are already makign a huge dela about this. Doesn’t look good.
It took me a while, but I got on. It was stuck at “updating” but when I closed the game and restarted, I got in right away. So far, so good.
The server came back online and it seemed everyone took the opportunity to jump back in. Hopefully I’ve invited everyone who wanted in on the region. It was quite the busy area when I left (due to a server issue again).
It looks I’m building some sort of university town. I’ve already built a library and grade school. Once I get the city hall upgrade I’ll plop down a department of education, a high school, and a university. Now this is supposed to give coverage for the whole region, as long as you can get students to my town. That needs a department of transportation to enable the various terminals. I don’t intend to build one anytime soon (if at all) since I’ll already have access to all the education facilities. If someone else builds one, I’ll happily plop down an appropriate terminal so your students can study in my excellent college.
Hey, post pictures of what you are doing so we can watch.
I can’t believe I just one-more-building-ed for 6 hours. But it’s fun. Wolf island is going okay, If a bit unorganized. Unfortunately Inever got to specialization, and I’m almost out of room. I may have been a bit ambitious in city design for a newbie.
Adding any of you that I can find while waiting on the Australian release (7th).
ETA: my handle is the same
I kind of ruined Willowcrest hard. I didn’t notice the specialization tab to I never exploited any of the ore or coal resources, and my districting and roads make this… highly infeasible at the moment.
On top of that, I’m basically in perpetual disaster mode, with high crime, terrible fires, and a regular need to pump taxes > 15%. In addition, I made a recycling plant not entirely understanding it’s not a replacement for a dump. Basically all it did was make everybody have a need to recycle, but get pissed off that the plant is constantly full of material (since it has no electronics industry to feed it to). I planned on doing electronics, but didn’t grasp that that was under the specialization tab – I figured that your industrial districts just kind of magically changed into that.
Just to break into electronics is about 150k simoleans, which is a ludicrous amount of money for me given the fact that I’m constantly going in the red. Not to mention my water treatment plant is looking like it’s going to run out of water soon and I have nowhere to expand it so I can get more water.
At the moment, I have a university and my departments are education, transportation, and utilities (sewage) etc.
So yeah… oops.
Protip: Before you start building check out the resources map. I just realized I’ve got a ton of oil and it’s all under my wealthy residential area 
I’m going to save some simoleans and restructure my city. Will move my residential, add some more industry and start a coal and oil business.
Anyone else having trouble with roads? Especially intersections between two types of roads?
I laid down my beginner roads - the mid-level streets for my small town - and then as my town grew, I started building the first level avenues. Sometimes, it doesn’t let me do the intersections. I draw the new avenue over the old road, and sometimes it works, sometimes it give me the big red road with a warning that “roads overlap.” Well, no shit they overlap, it’s a freakin’ intersection!
Seems to happen a lot on the edges of town, but there’s at least one spot in the middle. It’s making me crazy, I need those small roads to feed into the larger avenues.
Jragon: I forget if you’re in the same cluster as me. If so, I’ll send some trucks over your way.
It’s really easy to expand very quickly in the early game. You can fill up the whole space, rezone to high density, and get towering skyscrapers, only to find that it’s unsustainable. I’m rather glad that my picturesque area prevented me from laying down grids all over the place, leading to slower and hopefully more sustainable growth.
One thing I’ve found is that, while that factory is being rebuilt, no one is working there (DUH) and you’re not getting any tax income. Then when construction is finished, it still has to rehire the workers who also have to find the factory first; you’re still not getting any tax income while this is going on. If you’ve rezoned an entire district, all the factories may be rebuilt at once, leading them to compete for workers thus resulting in none of them getting enough.
I haven’t had too many problems with intersections on roads. Of course, I’ve laid down the avenue first, then draw the road over that. Maybe that’s what you need to do, Athena?
Here’s a protip: Since you can upgrade the roads later, lay down dirt roads first when planning out your grid. That way you don’t lose too much money when you inevitably screw up and have to bulldoze and redraw.
Incidentally, a number of you have the generic blue question head as your Origin avatar. This makes it hard to identify who’s got what in the region. I’d appreciate it everyone could set their picture in their Origin profile. Then we can throw the proper festivities when your mayor comes to visit our fair city.
Podunkton has hit oil. I repeat: Podunkton has hit oil.
Thar she blows!!
My best advice in this game thus far: don’t be afraid to use that bulldozer tool. I cleared out a whole neighborhood to install some oil derricks. They didn’t like it. Tough. Eminent domain, bitches.
I didn’t really need the extra Simoleons earned from selling oil, but … oh, wait. Yes, I did. One always needs extra Simoleons!
I’m actually enjoying the multiplayer region stuff, more than I thought I would. I’m tempted to snag an open plot to make it into a massive garbage dump to service the whole region. Maybe I could plop down some mines and industry while I’m at it. 
I won’t make a move unless it appears no one else wants to join our region.
One thing is clear: the city council of Podunkton have met*, the citizens voted on the referendum**, and our town has a new motto: “drill, baby, drill!”
Podunkton’s an oil town. Always has been**, always will be****.*
*They’re intimidated by the brutally fascist mayor.
**The election was rigged.
***What lies.
****Until it runs dry, that is.
My approach has been to start out with avenues. They’re not the much more expensive than roads, and replacing roads with avenues is extremely expensive (in terms of short-term revenue loss) if there’s any development.
My overall idea is to create a stable income with minimal services and minimal specialization. That is, use the simple specialization buildings, but don’t try to get the high-profit, high-cost ones.
Also, please remember that services (like medical, fire, etc) usually give you a bonus truck that you can send to other cities. Do it! on the region screen. It’s free to you and the recipient. If we all give out our bonus trucks, it will measurably improve services in all our cities.
I tried logging back into our shared region, but was locked out by a queue. So I made my own private region in East Europe (I think 1?) with five cities. I’ll get some practice there. I think we’ll want to abandon our current region in a month or so and restart. 
In case anyone didn’t notice, each player can save to up to 10 regions on each server. Regions are on specific servers.
For planning purposes, here are the sites that have been claimed in the region so far:
Cluster A
Terminus Wetlands - TerminusEst920
Sapleton Forest - Pleonasticity
Willowcrest - Jragonmiris
Marshlanding - KinthalisT
Cluster B
Moss Yell - LSkywatcher68
Wolf Island - wolfman393
Harper Plains
Sawyer’s Crossing
Cluster C
Podunkton - Zaparthes [Knorf]
Kyriopolis - jstilwell13 [Kiros]
Spooner Plains - LSkywatcher68 ???
Jugband Hills
Cluster D
Rising Sun Valley
Stackolee Ravine
Barleycorn Point
Cotton Bend - Jragonmiris ???
Jragon and Lute Skywatcher, I noticed you claimed additional sites but haven’t done anything with them. If you don’t intend on building there, I think we’d all appreciate you abandoning them. I know we didn’t agree on a single site per player, but there are still more Dopers coming in (the game still hasn’t even been officially released in ANZAC and EU) and I’d like to reserve some space for them. I don’t have the ability to kick anyone so if you keep the sites, I can’t do anything about it.
In my next post, I’ll share what I’ve learned about clusters and region play.
Clusters are connected by road, so you can share anything that travels by road. This means power, water, and sewage as well as vehicles like ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars. Sims will also commute by car or bus to work or shop in neighboring cities. The cities in a cluster can also collaborate on producing a Great Work.
The rail sometimes connects cities in different clusters. I think this means that Sims can commute between the those two cities, much like they travel on the roads. I believe ferries work the same way; if cities are connected by water, the sims can ride the ferry between them. Of course, your ambulances won’t ride the boat so you still can’t share services between clusters.
I’m not so sure about the City Hall ploppables. Will a Department of Transportation built in one city affect the entire region or just the cluster? I’d test this, but Jragon, who’s in the same cluster as me, has built most of them (which probably contributed to his fiscal cliff) so I can’t tell one way or another. I’d appreciate if someone from one of the other clusters would try to build a sewage plant or university.