
From SimCity to SimCity: The history of city-building games - doppp
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/10/from-simcity-to-well-simcity-the-history-of-city-building-games/
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exDM69
If you like city building games and have not tried Cities: Skylines yet, you
definitely should! It does all the basics right, is truthful to the genre but
has a modern feel to it. Not too complex but rich and versatile. In
particular, the traffic simulation is very impressive! And it's one of those
games my wife enjoys playing so we can have some quality time together.

Only negative thing I have to say about it: once my city starts getting
bigger, it gets a bit sluggish on my old crappy PC. It is one of the two games
that is forcing my hand to buy a new gaming PC.

~~~
gipp
I played C:S for a while at release, but quickly got to the point where
everything but the traffic simulation aspect just felt really thin, gameplay-
wise. Didn't really measure up to SC4 to me. Have patches/expansions/mods
deepened the experience much since release?

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skrowl
I loved C:S up until the point when my first city had all of the available
building types. After that, it got very thin. Rinse / repeat. Do the same
thing you did here, but again over there.

It's a fun game but I just didn't feel as involved as the SimCity series
(prior to the latest, which was a disaster).

~~~
JeremyNT
Did you try playing in "Hard mode"?

I feel like C:S seems shallow to people because the first and only real
challenge in the game is traffic. Most of the elements that are challenging in
Sim City actually do exist in C:S, but the game is tuned such that you have
enough money to buy your way out of any problem.

Sim City games force you to make many difficult decisions because your funds
are so limited. I hope that in the future the C:S developers make note of
this, and they take the time to tune their games to replicate that challenge.

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api_or_ipa
Any discussion about city builders without discussing Cities:Skylines is
crucially out-of-date. The game set a new, extremely high standard for the
genre. Each denizen has a family, a career and travels around the city as an
autonomous entity fulfilling his day to day errands. The consequences,
especially on traffic, is a fascinating thing to comprehend.

Where the latest Simcity was a low quality sham, Cities:Skylines was a
wonderfully put together game that anyone interest in the genre needs to play.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _The game set a new, extremely high standard for the genre. Each denizen has
> a family, a career and travels around the city as an autonomous entity
> fulfilling his day to day errands. The consequences, especially on traffic,
> is a fascinating thing to comprehend._

I'm surprised it wasn't done like this before - it's kind of the most obvious
and "right" approach to model it. Why is that? Computational reasons?

~~~
roel_v
Computational, and also how much does it add to the 'fun' in the gameplay?
City builders aren't about modeling how real cities work, they're about
providing a fun gameplay experience. Which is fine, but orthogonal to the
question of whether modeling agents in the way mentioned is the 'best' way to
model a urban system (to which the answer is a solid 'maybe sometimes', but
that's a different discussion...)

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TeMPOraL
It's my personal opinion, but I find optimizing games for fun directly makes
them very shallow. In case of a sim game, I'd much prefer it to be hard due to
an accurate simulation, than simplified to improve enjoyment. The former can
actually teach you something, and you can also apply real-world knowledge to
improve your chances.

But then again, I'm a weird player who likes things like Dwarf Fortress and
considers Kerbal Space Program to be the best space game ever made.

~~~
gedrap
I think it's largely a business decision.

You need to find a balance between really heard and appealing to more niche
audience (resulting in a relatively high game price). Some games like KSP went
fairly mainstream, but they did a ton of work to be appealing to a wider
audience, not only space enthusiasts.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have easy games which appeal to larger,
more casual audiences but like you've said are a bit shallow.

In this regard, C:S hits a good balance.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I've been hearing nothing but praise about C:S (and I've seen some fun videos
of abusing dams and hydroelectric plants to create tsunami waves); I'm
definitely going to buy it.

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mjrpes
A-Train should be in there. It inspired SimCity 2000's isometric view and was
also a great game to boot with a strong economic system (ledger, stocks,
taxes, capital gains, etc).

~~~
agumonkey
I don't know if it's only nostalgia, but I feel strongly about old programs
attempt at conveying conveying / display complex things through limitations of
the era.

[http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/87549-a-train-
constr...](http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/87549-a-train-construction-
set-dos-screenshot-the-map-from-the-last.png)

