SimCity 5

OK, i checked my math and found the problem: people should just say 4 * 10^9 m^2 when they mean 4 sq km . Also, I was off by three orders of magnitude. The data I was looking at says NYC is 1,300 sq km, not 1.3 sq km. RI was also off by a factor of 1000.

Lol, I don't think the map size is the most serious problem we could have with the future Sim City

I'm starting to care more about the Glass Box simulation, in fact. I don't know if I, or the people I discussed it with at Simtropolis, understand this correctly, but that's how I get it:

- There will be these Units, which will be something like persistent entities of all sorts. For example a Residential building will be a Unit, and have certain properties prone to simulation, etc. etc.

- The movable stuff in the game will all be represented by Agents, which according to what I understand will be created at the beginning of each simulation cycle, and then destroyed after they fulfill their purpose. For example, when a resource needs to be transported from the factory to the store, an agent will be created which will carry the resource unit to its destination, and then disappear.

- The problem comes with the simulation of citizens.... They should be persistent entities by all logic that we as citybuilding players recognize; yet when they move, they will do so by temporary agents. They will go to work via a temporarily created Agent, and come back via another temporary agent. And here it comes: Since it's two separate agents that do the moving to and from work, they are prone to a number of different simulations, including depositing their citizen unit in a completely different residence that the one from which it went to work.

How the hell are they gonna create a credible, persistent traffic simulation, if all movements are recreated for each cycle? How are they gonna create a credible citizen simulation, if this citizen is constantly moving around the eligible residences around? Please, I know that there should be something I'm not getting; but if there isn't and if what I think is right, then CXL's simulation will be much more realistic than the Glass Box simulation!

Yeah, I agree with you, that whole temp worker thing is bad enough, but now they tell us that they will be sleeping in a different home every night. That's just creepy, not to mention unrealistic.

Single Player needs a constant wifi connection to be able to play, heres why.

from here

So, If all those reasons add up... Will the cities be on automatic build if we were not to be online or not playing the game? will there be like a "notifier" of sorts? lol?

+srry i added this in another post, safari on 10.4.11 has no java for some reason

From SimcityEA's youtube.

Hm, yeah, this was CXL's original idea for the Planet Mode. It seems Maxis stole that too. But let's see if they'll manage to implement it better than MC.

The degree of interactivity between players and their cities of which Quigley is talking is staggering.... it could mean that difference in simulation that's gonna separate Sim City from CXL. However, I'm almost sure that it'll also mean that there will be NO single player in Sim City. I see no possible way to weave together the global economy to such a degree (prices of resources changing in real time????), and still retain the ability to play offline, or by yourself.
Well, in fact SC4 had this in a way.... the regional play effect made impossible for you to control your cities once regional demand reached certain levels. Unless you did NOT connect your city to the region, it'll start attracting only SSS citizens, only Office Commerce, etc. Even with no schools, or clinics in your city, there would be skyscrapers just because the neighbor city is a huge metropolis....
I suspect this concept is taken further in the new Sim City - now it won't even be you that dictates the global conditions, it'll be other people

I think that for single player mode a game ran corporation could offer across the board limited resources for a community to get started. Once the user had multiple cities linked together they would share resources.

Wouldn't there be still be limits on building size/density based on the population of that city rather than global population? Residential income should be based on schools, jobs within an acceptable commute range, and desirability of the neighborhood. The types of businesses would be partly based on the resources in the mediate area.

Why can't one person in single player mode not have 10, 20, 30, etc... city 2km x 2km squares laid out in a grid with one being a high density urban zone surrounded by multiple suburb zones and most of the rest rural? Each one having a character of its own based on nearby resources.

I hope for the best but fear for the worst. I hope that this agent based traffic simulation has a more accurate overall traffic pattern than SimCity 4 Deluxe with the NAM but it sounds so weird. Maybe an expansion pack with UDI will also have My Sims where you can keep a handful of sim families persistent.