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I added you tooComment
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I don't know the source of this info but someone quoted it on my forum. I'm trying to find out where they got it from but here is a copy and paste of it. What do you guys that are playing it think because if it's true, those are some big issues.
One of the biggest problems people are having with the game is the massive traffic-jams that seem to clog the entire system up. Now, this is responsible for the ineffective coverage of ANY traffic-based services (Fire, Police, Garbage, Medical, Education, Mass-Transit.) There are also a number of smaller complaints that may also be directly related to how Glassbox handles traffic.
"Workers aren't commuting."
"There aren't enough workers, even though I have plenty of population."
"Tourism is broken."
"Emergency services are slow/unresponsive/broken."
The agent system that is used for utilities (power, water, sewage) seems to be identical to the system that handles traffic.
The problem is that, just as power can sometimes take a ridiculously long time to fill the entire map (because the "power agents" just randomly move about with no sense) traffic and workers can do the same thing. Workers leave their homes as "people agents." These agents go to the nearest open job, not caring at all where they worked yesterday. They fill the job, and the next worker goes to the next building and fills that job, and so it goes until all the jobs are "filled." So, when you have all your "worker" sims leaving their houses for work in the morning, they all cluster together like some kind of "tourist pack" until they have all been sucked into "jobs." They don't seem to care if the job is Commercial or Industrial, only that it's a job.
"Scholars" are handled exactly the same way. As are school busses and mass-transit agents. This is why you see the "trains" of busses roaming through your city, and why entire sections of town may never see a school bus, despite having plenty of stops... Once all the busses are full, they return to school and stay there until school is done for the day.
Now, here is where it gets really good... In the evening, when work and school lets out, they all leave and proceed to the absolute closest "open" house. They don't "own" their houses. The "people" you see are actually just mindless agents (much like the utilities agents, as I said earlier) making the whole idea of "being able to follow a 'Sim' through their entire day" utterly POINTLESS!!"
The reason traffic problems cause so many other side-effects, is because EVERYTHING relies on those "people" who are stuck in herds trying to go to whatever closest "slot" they can fill. Casinos go bust because "tourists" are just "shopper agents" from out of town. You MUST put casinos RIGHT next to the entrance to your city if you want them to succeed. Placing street-car stops by the casinos can actually cause more harm than good! Why? Because the "shoppers" will board the streetcar stop (because it's the closest open slot) and be shuttled to a shopping district instead.
Sharing resources and services gets to be a joke, because all the vehicles ("agents") get bound up with the busses at the entrances to cities.
TL;DR: Fixing the way the game handles traffic and "sims" will fix 90% of the problems plaguing players!
Ultimately, the problem is that the developers have decided to handle sims like they handle any "mindless" power-agent. This results in mindless sims, and mindless services. Mindless services reduce the actual quality of the simulation. Since no sim actually owns a house, they don't REALLY care what ammenities are built around it. THIS is why it is nearly impossible to have distinct districts of each wealth level... A low-wealth agent may very well end up in a high-wealth house at the end of the day. Why? Because it was the closest open house. The next morning, that agent sets out to find "high-wealth" work. Then after work, may end up in a medium-wealth home with 2 kids! There's no rhyme or reason for the way they behave, OTHER than just taking the shortest (not quickest) path to the nearest open space.
Police services suffer from this as well. They converge on the first crime committed, and ignore the second crime until one car rushes off to deposit the criminal-agent in jail. THEN the other cars can respond to the second crime. There's no zones, and there's no actual "prevention."
Fire services also send every unit to the first available fire. It's utterly pointless to try and "decentralize," because every truck from the city will still converge on one fire, ignoring the other three until it's out. Once the first fire is out, they all rush to the next fire. The only thing you get for having multiple fire-trucks is that they put the fires out slightly quicker. Really, you can have the exact same fire coverage quality with only one of each type of fire-unit. "Fire Marshalls" are COMPLETELY random, and just seem to roam around picking whichever building is "most at risk," ignoring the fact that an entire neighborhood is high risk, and the next "most at risk" is on the other side of the city... Which gets them stuck in traffic.
Interestingly enough, ambulances seem to act independantly of one another, but they still refuse to take "right of way" and are constantly bogged in traffic. Medical vans just act like all the rest of the service vehicles.But there's more! Population cheating as well:This gets even better folks...
I started suspecting this behavior soon after I started getting somewhat stable connections so I decided to test it out.
Not only will agents randomly wander around your city, they will also randomly wander IN AND OUT of your city.
You're asking, so what?
Say City A is a bedroom/commercial/water community and City B is for industrial/sewage/power and you have it set up so that they share their resources, City A sends City B commuters, water and poop, City B sends City A freight and power. Something you see in the real world in every day.
Remember that one freeway exit? Well it's also the ONLY path for any of these cross city resources to be recorded as transferring between cities. You know those little yellow/brown/blue dots wandering around the map? They wander randomly also, and ONLY when they happen to bump out the exit do they "transfer" to the other city AND suprise, suprise, they suffer from the same traffic jams as everything else!
I saw this first with sewage. The little brown dots were randomly wandering around my city going in circles, when they should have been being transferred to City B. Sewage backed up even though there was more than enough capacity at City B.
I rearranged my roads so there was a single straight shot to the freeway exit. Viola! All the little brown dots started heading for the exit single file and suddenly my sewage problem went away!
How broken can this be?
http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comm...ulation_sizes/
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Re: SimCity 5
I got my city on lock, very prosperous. Now I just need someone connected to me in OSVille 2 in order to make it interesting.Comment
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Re: SimCity 5
Pretty much all of those issues are true. They aren't continuous though. You will see it for one hour and not the next hour. sometimes you will see every time you log on for the day. Traffic jams are a pain in the butt for sure. Sometimes they just play follow the leader and you will see a line of service vehicles following each other going in a small circle.
I'll be glad when they release a DLC or something to make the land size BIGGER. Way too cramped, especially if you have a map with mountains on it. But beyond those issues, this game is a blast. Got two cities running right now and yeah, I named one of them Chicago. So far I survived a health epidemic, got another one starting though. Survived a zombie attack that ate 1/4 my population. Survived a crazy arsonist as well. I'm just plugging along,Comment
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Re: SimCity 5
More garbage problems for me. This time, there's a street with a pro stadium and a university on it, and the garbage and recycling trucks just won't go down it. I've sat there watching them, and they go to every other street in the city except this one. Meanwhile, both buildings complain about a garbage problem, which leads to a sickness problem, which leads to low attendance.
I would currently give this game a 9, but it could be higher if they iron out bugs like that.Comment
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Re: SimCity 5
All of those problems are there. They can easily be overlooked BUT if Maxis gets around to fixing them it could completely change how the game plays. Sounds like a good thing but we are all adjusting to how the game plays now and could see our cities go from success to bust in a patch.
It also leads to many cities reaching a break point where everything is going great and then without warning everything goes to crap at once. Many times getting past this break point requires a massive deconstruction and rebuilding of the city.
Plus reaching the break point, cutting all outside connections, maxing taxes, turning off all services, and watching the simoleons roll in while your city burns gives you a fresh slate and 1.5 million simoleons to work with to rebuild. Not a problem in a single player game but in a region where others are relying on your services/sims it can really shake things up.Comment
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Re: SimCity 5
Hack to play offline being experimented with.
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Re: SimCity 5
I want to play this game, but I'll wait and see how all this pans out. Looks like "YOU NEED TO BE ONLINE" has been effectively debunked and is, as most thought, just DRM on EA/Maxis' part.Comment
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