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The Legacy of SimCity 4 and the city builder resurgence with Cities:Skylines

SimCity 4 is 12 years old now, and even with the new Cities:Skylines lighting up the city builder scene, in many ways there doesn't seem to be a proper simcity 4 successor.

Don't get me wrong, Cities:Skylines is a great game, and it is much better than other offerings we have had in the interim (Cities:XL series, SimCity 2014, etc), but it still doesn't provide the same sort of grand traffic planning that was allowed SC4. At the heart of this problem is the "agent simulation" that has become a centerpiece of city builders. Cities:Skylines has made severe concessions to allow for individual agent simulation.

The most glaringly obvious omission is the lack of any sort of rush hour mechanic. If anybody played CIM2 they would immediately recognize why the developers had to remove any semblance of meaningful time, having vehicles move at realistic speeds relative to time of day means the simulation needs to support absurdly fast levels of simulation speed unless you want to sit there for 4 hours to simulate one single day. In addition, it just doesn't matter much if your citizens don't get to their destinations in any sort of timely manner. It is wholly irrelevant whether it takes 1/2 a day or 1/2 a year for your citizen to reach its workplace.

The cap on citizens and agents also helps to destroy the proper illusion of a real city. A skyscraper with 14 households? Ridiculous. A max of 50k agents pathfinding at any one time? A city with 200k people probably has 50k people traveling during rush hour at least (pedestrians+vehicles).

All these concessions mean that it doesn't feel like a real city at all. As soon as one plunks down a bunch of services next to a lvl 1 skyscraper it immediately upgrades to max level, doesn't matter that the people living in the building have never even traveled to workplace, they are now rich rich rich.

None of these concessions exist in SC4. Sure, it's not as pretty and you don't see individual agents but the simulation is much more REAL. It truly matters when your worker takes 3 hours to get to work, he is going to leave the city.

9 years ago by Rizzmond with 2 comments

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  • ticktack
    +3

    I've heard great things about Skylines that it made me watch some youtube videos of others playing. I'm waiting to buy it, but I'm in no rush so I'll prob wait for a sale.

    • Graphictruth (edited 9 years ago)
      +3

      The great things are true. It's very nearly what I expected of the disastrous Sim City release. It's not quite as pretty, but it's solid and it does everything you'd expect, with a lot of support and mods. And it's very playable, even if it's not as rich a simulation as SC4 - the fact that it's NOT from EA is a huge bonus for me.

      I'm sure they will get around to deepening the simulation as funding appears.

      I got it through Steam and did not wait for a sale. I figured it was applause and a poke in the eye to EA.