# The New SimCity : yea or nay?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617
**Category:** The Game Room
**Created:** [March 11, 2013, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617 "2013-03-11T05:29:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2013, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/41 "2013-03-12T03:20:43Z")
> [@Knorf](#):
>
> [This analysis](http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/19xwhx/distribution_of_client_and_server/) seems spot on to me. Yes, it’s on reddit. Don’t judge me.
Yup, sounds about right. Note that, despite all the recent improvements on the server side, neither the global market nor cheetah speed have yet been re-enabled. Without the global market, the trading aspect of the game is still severely broken. if and when it comes back, it would be interesting to see cartels and market manipulation emerge.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2013, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/42 "2013-03-12T03:45:57Z")
Ironically, a global market would have been extremely easy to do, would have arguably tied players together in a much more realistic maner, and been a lot more user-friendly to boot…
You’d need some kind of protection against people manipulating it, but that’s nothing new.
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### Author:  [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2013, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/43 "2013-03-12T04:49:32Z")
I don’t think it was the global market that crashed the servers so much as everyone sim raping the the sim earth sending back a constant stream of sim coal at cheetah speed. Maxis really should have seen that one coming.
There are supposed to be hard minimum and maximum limits on the prices of commodities, but aside from that the market is free to fluctuate between those limits.
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### Author:  [@Apocalypso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apocalypso)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2013, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/44 "2013-03-12T21:44:27Z")
> [@Quimby](#):
>
> It is really SimRegion not SimCity. The teh sites within a region are not just plots of land. They are interconnected and dependent on each other. Even if you chose to play single player completely you can’t just focus on one site in the region and tweak it until it is a huge metropolis. The game just doesn’t work that way. I am not a fan of this. I also hate the fact that I have to worry about Coal and Oil etc. That is stupid. Does the mayor of New York care about that stuff? No and I shouldn’t either. These cities are a part of a world presumably. This is the game Civilization.
I was kind of on the fence about SC5, until I started reading about the regional aspects of it and the small city sizes. I hated SimCity 4 due to the regional play. I want to build a big huge city without having to switch to other regions constantly to build them up. The always online aspect doesn’t bother me as I’m, well, always online. I think I’ll try to find a copy of SC3 instead…
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### Author:  [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/45 "2013-03-13T06:19:24Z")
Question: If I play in a private region of my own, do I need to worry about trading resources with other players?
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### Author:  [@Carmady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carmady)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/46 "2013-03-13T07:30:19Z")
One of the people who made the game now claims EA is lying, and the game could easily be played [offline.](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/)
> [@](#):
>
> “The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything. I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise. It’s possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I’m clueless.”
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### Author:  [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/47 "2013-03-13T07:32:41Z")
Figures.
Well, it wasn’t hard to notice there was something screwy with the claims that the servers were needed for the core of the simulation.
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### Author:  [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/48 "2013-03-13T08:25:27Z")
> [@Knorf](#):
>
> Figures.
>
> Well, it wasn’t hard to notice there was something screwy with the claims that the servers were needed for the core of the simulation.
Yeah, that argument was shot the second I saw “connection to the servers lost, trying to reconnect” and the game kept chugging along merrily. If the servers were doing anything integral, it would have had pretty reduced functionality. (Incidentally, this also probably means that the game can be pirated much easier than, say, Diablo 3, since all a clever pirate has to do is simulate the inter-city packet routing. Hard, to be sure, but not impossible).
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### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/49 "2013-03-13T08:40:51Z")
> [@](#):
>
> •Industrial resource chains are fundamentally broken (especially for single-player): You’ve probably noticed by now that there’s no way to have a city passively supply another city with industrial resources (i.e. they must be manually gifted by the player while actively playing the city), and this is a side effect of the above architecture. Unlike passive services generation of industrial resources depletes a finite resource in the generating city, and this requires that the intra-city simulation be run. This means that as soon as you stop actively playing an industrial city, it stops generating resources. Because of this the workflow for having a multiple city industrial chain is frustrating, at best. Let’s say you have a city devoted to smelting alloy, and a city devoted to building processors. To make this work with a single player you’d need to play the industrial city until your freight depots are full, manually gift the resources to the processor city, then switch to the processor city to produce the processors, over and over. When you’re playing the processor city no alloy is being produced, and when you’re playing the alloy city no processors are being produced. If the city synchronization times were instant (which they should be once the server situation is resolved) this would be somewhat tolerable, but in the game’s current state city synchronization can take hours, so this process just can’t be done in a reasonable time-frame. Once the servers are resolved working concurrently with another player in real-time could result in a reasonable workflow, but people who prefer singleplayer are shit out of luck for the foreseeable future.
Is that accurate? Because that sounds awful. I thought the strength of the new game was supposed to be the cooperation and interdependence between cities. But if you have to manage all that stuff manually, then the asychronous nature of the cooperative city building is ruined. Does your whole region get screwed up because whoever is producing some sort of necesary cog didn’t log in for a week to manually gift his items for the next stage?
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/50 "2013-03-13T13:54:19Z")
> [@Carmady](#):
>
> One of the people who made the game now claims EA is lying, and the game could easily be played [offline.](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/)
I’m staggered that anyone believed this nonsense to start with. t was an absurd lie, an OBVIOUS lie.
If EA were hosting, for my game, more computational power than my computer could handle, that means EA _would actually have to dedicate more server power to SimCity than was possessed by all their customers’ PCs combined_. Of course they cannot possibly be doing that, it’s insane, or they’d have to charge hundreds of dollars for the game or charge a monthly fee.
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### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/51 "2013-03-13T13:56:09Z")
I agree that it was pretty obvious that they were lying, but you’re overreacing with that logic. If some part of the simulation were handled on their system, it wouldn’t have to have more computing power than was available on that system - it could just add to the work already being done by the PC. Also, they wouldn’t have to have more than the combined computational power of all owners of the game combined - only as much as needed to serve the most concurrent users they’d see at once.
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### Author:  [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/52 "2013-03-13T14:34:40Z")
Meh. I didn’t even participate in the beta, but just from watching the various let’s play videos, I figured out that localhost would run all local simulations and the server was only required for regional transactions (and the DRM, never forget the DRM). C’mon, it’s EA; why would you take anything they say at face value?
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> Is that accurate? Because that sounds awful. I thought the strength of the new game was supposed to be the cooperation and interdependence between cities. But if you have to manage all that stuff manually, then the asychronous nature of the cooperative city building is ruined. Does your whole region get screwed up because whoever is producing some sort of necesary cog didn’t log in for a week to manually gift his items for the next stage?
You can buy services like water, power, and sewage from a neighboring city. You can also volunteer your city vehicles like police cars, fire trucks, and garbage trucks. One set up, they require no further intervention. Workers, students, and shoppers may also commute between cities. This happens automatically, though you can encourage this by building transport services like bus terminals and train stations.
You can gift money, coal, ore, oil, and possibly a fifth item that escapes me at the moment. Aside from money, none of these are actually needed to run your city. Coal and oil are burned in their respective power plants, but you can always buy them from the “global market”. Now it’s possible that you can’t afford to buy the stuff and your power plant gets shut down because it was dependent on regular gifts. If that’s the case, I’d argue that your economy has some more fundamental problems that require fixing.
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### Author:  [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/53 "2013-03-13T14:51:12Z")
I guess what I am not clear on is is the Global Market just an abstract pool of resources you can buy from to get what you need or is it more like an MMO Auction house where what is available is dependent on other players selling into the system?
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/54 "2013-03-13T14:53:38Z")
It’s an abstract pool, I believe.
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### Author:  [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/55 "2013-03-13T14:54:05Z")
[Rock Paper Shotgun article on AI issues in the game.](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/13/simcitys-sims-dont-seem-that-smart-after-all/)
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### Author:  [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/56 "2013-03-13T15:05:51Z")
Actually, prices in the global market are supposed to be affected by what resources the players are buying and selling (or else the Trade Specialization wouldn’t make sense). They have shut off that part for now so prices are currently fixed.
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### Author:  [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/57 "2013-03-13T15:12:24Z")
> [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](#):
>
> Question: If I play in a private region of my own, do I need to worry about trading resources with other players?
No, you do not. You don’t need to trade resources even if you are playing with others. The Global Market works as an infinite sink and source for all resources. And there’s hard upper and lower limits on the prices there.
And resources aren’t traded as much as they are gifted. I don’t think there’s any way to directly sell resources. Instead, you gift resources to another city in your region (controlled by yourself or someone else) and that city gifts you cash.
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > •Industrial resource chains are fundamentally broken (especially for single-player): You’ve probably noticed by now that there’s no way to have a city passively supply another city with industrial resources (i.e. they must be manually gifted by the player while actively playing the city), and this is a side effect of the above architecture. Unlike passive services generation of industrial resources depletes a finite resource in the generating city, and this requires that the intra-city simulation be run. This means that as soon as you stop actively playing an industrial city, it stops generating resources. Because of this the workflow for having a multiple city industrial chain is frustrating, at best. Let’s say you have a city devoted to smelting alloy, and a city devoted to building processors. To make this work with a single player you’d need to play the industrial city until your freight depots are full, manually gift the resources to the processor city, then switch to the processor city to produce the processors, over and over. When you’re playing the processor city no alloy is being produced, and when you’re playing the alloy city no processors are being produced. If the city synchronization times were instant (which they should be once the server situation is resolved) this would be somewhat tolerable, but in the game’s current state city synchronization can take hours, so this process just can’t be done in a reasonable time-frame. Once the servers are resolved working concurrently with another player in real-time could result in a reasonable workflow, but people who prefer singleplayer are shit out of luck for the foreseeable future.
>
> Is that accurate? Because that sounds awful. I thought the strength of the new game was supposed to be the cooperation and interdependence between cities. But if you have to manage all that stuff manually, then the asychronous nature of the cooperative city building is ruined. Does your whole region get screwed up because whoever is producing some sort of necesary cog didn’t log in for a week to manually gift his items for the next stage?
It is accurate. There’s ways to mitigate it. For example, you can build a trade depot with storage bins for whatever resource you need as input. Fill those, and you have an inventory buffer.
Or more abstractly (and more cheaply, because depots cost cash and space), your neighbor can simply sell their resources on the Global Market and send you the cash for you to buy the resources you need.
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### Author:  [@Airk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airk)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/58 "2013-03-13T15:25:08Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#):
>
> [Rock Paper Shotgun article on AI issues in the game.](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/13/simcitys-sims-dont-seem-that-smart-after-all/)
So basically the game doesn’t really “Sim” anything? Not entirely sure if I should take the comments as fact, but someone suggests “Ya that’s great until you find out that your citizens dont even need jobs, or shops, or much of anything at all. In fact with no jobs or places to shop your traffic problems are all solved, and your income is quite good.”
I could make some really snide comments right now about the priorities of modern AAA games.
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### Author:  [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/59 "2013-03-13T16:25:09Z")
Sure. Here’s a time lapse video of an [all-residential city](http://youtu.be/ACdu1ho2Ic4) with only basic services and nothing else in the region - no commercial or industrial. Note that this was in sandbox mode, so you have unlimited money and everything is unlocked. The key is that parks provide “shopping” so the sims actually have somewhere to go. If that’s the way you want to play, then you’re perfectly welcome to do it that way.
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### Author:  [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-simcity-yea-or-nay/652617/60 "2013-03-13T17:00:24Z")
Hmm, now I want to plant a city in a populated region, give it a bus terminal, ferry, and train station (so the sims can commute to other cities), and just zone everything residential. I wonder how that would work.
Outside of sandbox mode, you’d probably have to be gifted some seed money so you could build those transportation buildings right away. Or start with the typical RCI zones but gradually rezone as your treasury builds until you’re all residential. Mabye plop some tourist attractions for additional income.
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