An exclusive Simcity video was posted on Amazon giving you a glimpse of various aspects of gameplay including regions, bridges, and crime.

 

Each city has a set boundary with some empty space separating it from other cities. Mountainous terrain may limit some of the space availability unless you can somehow create extra land by carving roads through cliffs. While in region view, you can visualize the hourly rate of power transferred to other cities.

The region is pre-generated with roads, highways, or rail to interconnect each city in the region. Sims can travel to different cities throughout the region by utilizing various forms of transportation. For example, robbers can drive from one city to the next unleashing crime wherever they go. As the video highlights, a robber from another city drove into the parking lot, came out of the car and entered a building. Shortly after, the alarm went off, he escaped, and a police chase ensued.

It is quite amazing to see this level of detail where Sims can physically enter and leave their homes even to panic over their neighbor’s house on fire.

This is the first time we got an actual glimpse of bridges. We’re happy to see that you can even create bridges underneath them.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Simcity game without the Golden Gate Bridge making an appearance.

We’ve compiled all of the current question and answers with Simcity development team into one post. Information was acquired from the Simcity Forums and Twitter.

RCI Demand and Zoning

• You can build any combination of RCI lots throughout the city.  Pure residential cities have a unique set of problems different from the pure commercial cities. You can split up zoning amongst cities and have residents commute to different cities. Residents usually want expensive services which you can place in different cities and share between them. (Subject to change in final game.)
• When commercial buildings upgrade, you may see some shops on the street floor. The number of customers for a commercial zone is based on the entire building and not per business.
• Zone sizes are based on the road type. Their widths are in 8 meter increments. Two lane streets have short lots and can only accommodate low density buildings. Four lane streets and roads support higher densities.
• Building upgrades are based on how successful it is. For example, if a low density shop gets a lot of customers because it was placed near public transportation, it will then tell the simulation which will enable a medium density building to to be built over it. However, building density is based on the type of road it’s attached to. Two lane streets only support low density buildings, but avenues can support all density types.
• For a residential building to upgrade, they factor in their ability to earn and spend, while industrial buildings check to see if they’re able to deliver freight. The traffic around these areas will factor into the successfulness of the lot.
• You can control taxes for RCI  based on three levels, “low, medium, and high.”

Infrastructure and Terrain

• Buildings flatten and roads cut through the terrain.
• Highest land elevation is dependent on region.
• Roads auto-snap when you get to 45 and 90 degree angles.
• They are still experimenting with the distance between cities.
• If you bulldoze a road, the building that is attached to that piece of road gets demolished too. There’s also a confirmation screen if you bulldoze a road next to a civic building.
• Rail lines will curve on a 90 degree angle.
• They don’t have plans to do toll roads yet.
• Taxis are available to transport tourists.
• Multiple cities can share the same public transportation network as long as each city utilizes the same transportation type. For example, you can set up a bus terminal in one city, and bus stops in another city.

City Specialization

• You can create cities with multiple specializations.
• Universities can research advanced technology to upgrade the effectiveness of your power plants.

Landmarks

• Landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben are fully functional. Tourists come to your city to check them out and stay at hotels around your city.
• Sims can work at Landmarks.
• Big Ben will tell the current game time.

Resources

• Weather is simulated throughout the year. In Winter, there’s more rain, which makes the grass greener. In the summer months, the water table evaporates.
• The game follows Simcity4’s model of having sea level elevation to form rivers and oceans.
• There’s Wind, Solar, Oil, and Nuclear Power Plants. There’s also a garbage incinerator, but it doesn’t produce power.
• There’s Coal, Ore, and Oil which can be refined into resources like steel and plastic.

Disasters and Emergency Response

• Emergency response runs automatically, its effectiveness is based on the modules you add onto the service building.
• When a Sim is sick, they can walk to the hospital. But when they are injured, an ambulance needs to pick them up before they die.
• There will be protests at City Hall if Sims are unhappy.

Region, SimWorld and Multiplayer

• City size 2k x 2k.
• The marketplace is driven by SimWorld, you can gift resources and cash between cities.
• You can trade resources to other cities as long as there are road access.
• The region has prebuilt methods of transportation which you can connect your city to.
• You can kick people out of your region. [The Development Team decided to remove this feature.]
• The number of cities available varies by region.
• You can watch your friends’ cities grow in spectator mode.
• You can complete Great Works by yourself by controlling multiple cities.
• You can take control of a city if it was abandoned.
• Chat is stored on the region.

Interesting Questions

Q.  Why are city sizes so small?

A. The cities are that size because we’d rather build a rich, intense, simulation than a statistical one. We also want the terrain to provide a push-back on the players, so we’re making interesting regions that will challenging.

Q. Is there a pause feature?

A. Yes the gameplay is asynchronous, every city runs at its own pace.

Q. Why no subways?

A. They’d like to work on subways at some point but they aren’t planned for now.

This week, Maxis has finally released the first gameplay footage of the new Simcity.

When you first start the game, you choose an area to build a new city. You want to choose a location to strategize with the type of city you’d like to build. If you want to do an industrial type city you could choose to build along the river for cargo ships.

If you’re building a casino city, building near the train tracks already laid out in the region would be a good choice to bring tourists.

 

Once you have chosen a location, you need to build a connection to the outside world. The region has highways already in place, all you need to do is make some connection to them.

 

As with previous Simcity games, there are three major zones, Residential, Commercial, and Industrial. After you place some zones, builders will arrive to construct houses and families will move into the city.

 

You can keep track of each individual Sim in your city. You can hover your mouse over a car and see that Sim’s name and follow them around to see where they are heading to.

In the user interface, you may note some of the icons pulsate when your sims are requesting a particular utility. The power icon pulsates red requesting you to add some Power plants.

 

When selecting the Wind Farm plant, you can click on it to get a focused view (everything else turns white) and you can add additional modules like wind turbines or dirt roads.

 

You can switch to the electricity data layerto see how power flows along your roads. Yellow lines indicate power has reached the area.  Power “flows” out like water, so it takes a short amount of time to reach a distant location.

 

In the water table data layer, you can see which areas of your city contains the most water, but every building you build in this version of Simcity needs to be placed alongside a road for Sims to reach to. After building a road, you can place a water pump in the deepest blue area. Water flows out from the source along the roads. You can visually see this as blue dots running across your city.

 

When your Sims use water, it converts into sewage. This can be viewed in the Sewage Data Layer. If it gets out of hand, sewage converts to ground pollution which creates sickness and lowers the land value. You can fix this problem by placing a sewage plant along the road.

 

Sims will also produce garbage, place garbage dumps at the outskirts of the city. These trucks will travel along the roads to collect garbage. You can track the garbage truck en-route throughout the city, a bar will indicate when it’s full and has to return to the dump. When garbage reaches capacity you can either burn the garbage, or build more dumps.

 

When placing police stations, a green line will fade out indicating the distance the police will patrol through the area. When placing casino’s there’s a button on the bar indicating “big business” that allows you to choose from a variety of different gambling halls.

 

Each gambling hall caters to different types of people, the cheaper one of course attracts lower income tourists. But in order to gain these tourists you’ll need to make more connections to the outside world, you can do this by placing a train station and connecting the rail next to the train tracks placed along the region.