Our preview of Sim City by Maxis Studio.
MORE TOOLS TO DESIGN WITH
Certain things like color changing graphs that center on an object help out immensely. For example putting a sewage treatment plant, through the data I see what parts aren’t getting cleaned, and be efficient. Tool like these are great for understanding the flow of your city, what resources you harvest and what problems that need to be addressed.
Previously in Sim City the common problem in the game was that the game had so much to offer, but over time every city looked the same. Since you could only build grid style roads, your city that you have now spent 20 hours had no personality that resembled you. Thankfully the entire road system has been ripped out and put in place is a much more efficient system, which in turn allows more creativity. For the first you can draw large roads in the shape of a circle, or curved the design to the attended need, but one of the best additions is the ability to upgrade the roads you currently have.
For example, during my play session the developers tasked us to bring 30 thousand tourists into the city. Seems simple enough right! See when your starting a city, the last thing you need to worry about is how much traffic is occupying your roads. Until you have enough residential zones, you could use the medium-capacity roads that have 1 lane for traffic in both directions, but in the later stages your going to experience many problems unless you upgrade. This is allows you to not destroy roads around that area, and increase the workflow inside your city.
During my time with Sim City I played on a small map that occupied two cities, and resource center called the Great Works Sites. During my time this feature worked well! In one of my cities, I had my workers commuting to work when at the same time my other city was supplying them jobs. You can also send utilities, police and ambulances between cities to help grow your region. This feature is built into Sim City multiplayer mode.
