March 2013

Run by Cats – Oh How You’ve Grown #SimCity

stargrace March 13, 2013 2 Comments

I spent about four hours streaming my adventures through Run by Cats (my latest thriving city) and watched in amazement as it grew. It started off very slow. I didn’t have a population over 10,000 for quite some time. It slowed again at various stages, but it’s almost at 70,000 now.

The city is a trade city, and times are good. I’ve been sending alloy over to the Great Works site just south of me, and in the mean time here are the components I’ve added to the city (not including things like general commercial, residential, or industry).

• 2 wind power plants (each has 2 highest fans, which is all there is room for on the lot)
• 1 water pumping station (x2 basic pump)
• 1 sewage treatment plant (x2 tanks)
• 1 garbage dump (x2 lots + max garbage trucks)
• 1 recycling center (max trucks & max refining stations)
• 2 fire station (max trucks & tower)
• 1 hospital
• 2 clinic (extra patient wings and ambulance)
• 1 police precinct (helicopter and dispatch tower, + extra car lot)
• 1 university (extra dorms + medical building)
• 1 train station
• 4 ore mines (max delivery trucks + extra shafts)
• 1 coal mine (max delivery trucks + extra shafts)
• 1 metals HQ (commerce department added)
• 2 trade depot (max storage + delivery trucks)
• 1 trade HQ
• 1 trade port (freight rail added + max delivery trucks + max storage)

The city is making a surplus of about $1,500 at the moment, but my money comes from my trades. What I don’t send over to the Great Works Site, I export, and I’m making about $150,000 a day from that. There’s a few smaller sales in there that I haven’t figured out yet, but it’s paying for the city to run and that’s the important part.

Of course, I did see my first disaster today (aliens!) and I’m hoping that’s really not going to be a common occurrence. I’ll have to get a little safety net created just in case that happens.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Run by Cats #SimCity

stargrace March 10, 2013 3 Comments

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!

Welcome to Spitzville – Population: ME! #SimCity

stargrace March 6, 2013 No Comments

I’m already well aware of all of the stuff that’s wrong with Sim City, people have been incredibly upset and venting those feelings all over the internet for the past day or so now. Rightly so, but that’s not what this post is going to be about, so if you’re looking for someone to share in your anger, well. I’ve never really been that sort of a gamer.

I didn’t download the game when it went live at midnight, knowing that the servers would be bombarded. Then today Sims 3 university released, and they were bombarded even harder. So around 11am EST I got around to downloading the game, installed without issue. I did (and continue to) have problems with the friends list but for one brief moment the planets aligned and Scopique managed to ping me with an invite to a G+ region with spots for 16 cities. Not feeling especially creative, I claimed a spot of land near to the railroad that runs through the map, and named it Spitzville. I may come up with a better name later.

I then proceeded to laugh my ass off for 5 hours straight. The game is hilarious, and I’m having so much fun with it. The detail is amazing, the ability to follow my little fire trucks and ambulances around the city just adds a level to the game that I enjoy so much. I also got to partake in my first interactive session, as I sent over fire trucks and ambulances to Scopique’s city. He has students coming over to mine for some schooling. I’m also purchasing water from his city, and he sent over a garbage truck (thank you) to help with any waste issue I may have.

Cooperation is key. Your region is equipped with a “wall” where you can post things like “really need doctors, please help” and those members of your region will hopefully step up to the bat and help your city out.

I did pre-order the limited edition, and so I got a superhero and villain combination with it. Instead of a regular police station I placed down Maxis Manor, and let me tell you, he’s a hassle. He’s expensive, and after healing up a few of my wounded sims he wanted a garage so he could chase down criminals. Who am I to say no, I have no police station after all. So I built him his garage. Now, my city is getting quite large, I’m up to 16,000 citizens. Crime is on the rise. In fact the leader of the super villains asked me to build him and his friends a headquarter. They were obviously jealous of Maxis Manor. In order to build this I need to have 5 crime lords roaming my city. I’m not sure if I’m OK with that. So far I’ve had my superhero capture them all. If you do these little ‘side quests’ for lack of a better term, you earn money. You can really never have too much money when it comes to building your city, so the more the better!

There are a lot of ‘things’ I’m saving up for right now, and the game is really detailed and complex which I enjoy. It’s not just about building a super huge city this time around. There’s much more to it. So I’ve just added an education department to my city hall, and I’m looking forward to placing a college or at least a high school so my little citizens can get smarter and go to work at places other than just your basic factory. The city is also growing by leaps and bounds. I’ve had to replace my roads with the largest ones to keep traffic jams from happening.

All in all, I’m having a blast. I hope EA can get a hold of their issues so that people can go back to enjoying playing a game, instead of being so angry over it.