Ah Spitzville, I hardly knew ye. I made a mistake. Well, not intentionally. See, I decided “hey, what’s the worst that can happen if I leave my perfect happy city running while I go out for a few hours?” – and I got the answer. The whole thing burned down while I was away. Almost every single person in my town died. Crime from other neighbours came over and swamped my poor city, and it was a complete disaster, to say the least. When I returned after doing a bit of real life shopping, more than half of my town had burned to the ground. Could it have been that I gave permission to the fire marshals to host a fire work party and then eagerly left? Maybe. In fact that probably had a very big thing to do with it.
Live and learn.
North America East 1 server has been having issues ever since I started playing there on day one, so most of my friends and I decided we would give North America East 3 a shot when it opened. So far I have very few complaints. The server has been up and running during prime time without a queue which is helpful. My one complaint is that unless my friends are also on that exact same server, I can’t invite them to play in my cities. I find this incredibly annoying (not dipping into the constantly online single player game argument).
So I created a new town in the region of G+++ called ‘Run by Cats’. I started smaller than my previous city, and I decided to go into trade. Except there is no ore under my city, so I can either choose to import it and sell it from there or I can find another way to work trade. I decided to start a recycling plant and I’ve been trying to produce plastics and the like but so far it hasn’t been working. I did add a community college, as educated sims are the ones who want to recycle, but apparently that wasn’t enough. Then again browsing the forums and internet in general leads me to believe that recycling in general is pretty broken at the moment. Great. Some people reported having placed a new recycling plant and that solved all of their woes, but I don’t have $111,000 to plop down all willy-nilly.
My city only has a population of 6,000 at the moment. There are two small clinics, and a fire station but no police station as of yet. I’m relying on the neighbours for that. I made sure my industrial was far away from any residential areas, and things seem to be going well so far. It’s taking a bit of time for the town to grow which is quite different from my previous city, but well. We all know how that one turned out.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
After watching the launch week madness and seeing your and Arkenor’s twitter posts about Sim City, I decided to grab a hard copy on Saturday. I didn’t have as much trouble playing as I expected from all the media reports, but I did encounter a few issues.
Sorry your first city burned down while you were away. Sounds like your latest is well on its way to being profitable. Thanks for the info about the recycling plant. I have yet to get to that point in my cities.
Great blog and have enjoyed reading it for awhile now!
LOL Jinxed myself. While I was writing this comment, a fire broke out. I have no fire department. I have 3,000 simoleons and a fire department costs $20,000… this could get ugly quick!
I’m finally playing something other than the tutorial :)
I created a city in your region but didn’t realize I placed myself between an abandoned city (Cedargates) and a claimed but undeveloped city (Pinewood Hills) and a Great Works site. So I seem to be unable to connect to distant places like Run By Cats. :( I might take over Cedargates if no one else does. I’m already volunteering ambulances and garbage trucks to it.
I’m still teeny-tiny (486 souls) and basically trying to ride out the debt incurred when I had to take out a couple of bonds early on (silly noob mayor spent the entire treasury laying out roads!). I’m at +140/hour and eveyone is happy for now, but there’s a constant demand for residental and industrial zones.
My factories are complaining about not having anywhere to ship to. Not sure how to fix that.
I have to say this is the first game I’ve played in a long time where I’m kind of tempted to buy a strategy guide…