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SimCity Expansion 'Cities of Tomorrow' Coming November 12

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MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Electronic Arts today announced the first expansion pack for SimCity, called Cities of Tomorrow. The expansion is designed to take place 50 years in the future, incorporating new technologies and experimental urban planning techniques for futuristic world-building capabilities.

"Will the world of tomorrow be a utopia powered by clean energy or an industrial society consumed by mass commercialism?" said Patrick Buechner, General Manager, Maxis Emeryville.

"With SimCity Cities of Tomorrow, players can build the future as they imagine it. Transport your Sims on MagLev, power your cities with fusion reactors or tidal wave generators, manufacture a legion of drones to serve your Sims and build massive MegaTowers that dwarf modern skyscrapers. We're giving you plausible technologies to take your cities onto a journey 50 years into the future. What will you create?"
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Cities of Tomorrow will include new regions, technology, city specialization, and transportation methods. Cities will be able to be built vertically using MegaTowers, and an all new disaster is exclusive to the expansion pack.

While Cities of Tomorrow will be released for the Mac and PC on November 12, EA also has a small charity set available for immediate purchase. Priced at $9.99, The SimCity American Red Cross Disaster Relief Set features a Red Cross Relief Center, Red Cross Tents, and Red Cross vehicles that will help citizens during disasters. 80% of the purchase price of the set goes directly to the Red Cross.

SimCity is available for both the Mac and the PC and can be purchased from EA's Origin website for $39.99 or $59.99 (Deluxe Edition). Pricing is not yet available for the upcoming Cities of Tomorrow expansion.

Article Link: SimCity Expansion 'Cities of Tomorrow' Coming November 12
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/09/19/simcity-expansion-cities-of-tomorrow-coming-november-12/
H

HarryPot

macrumors 65816
Sep 5, 2009
1,061
515
SandboxGeneral said:
Is that Morgan Freeman's voice in the video?
Click to expand...

It seems it is.

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So, they are releasing a new expansion pack when they haven't even fixed the current game? What a joke.

The game, currently, is barely OK. Give us bigger maps, that would truly make the playing experience much better.

But they'll take their time to fix things. Just like Blizzard with Diablo III, they decided to close the auction house about one year late.
 
D

djra8

macrumors member
Jun 18, 2013
48
0
unless the city size is expanded sim city 5 will remain a joke. not enough room to build.
 
H

HarryPot

macrumors 65816
Sep 5, 2009
1,061
515
djra8 said:
unless the city size is expanded sim city 5 will remain a joke. not enough room to build.
Click to expand...

The funny part is that small cities go against the very center of the game.

They want you to play with your neighbors, have interconnected cities exchanging goods and creating a "global" economy. But, small cities make this impossible.

Just building one airport for "attracting" high wealth tourist takes a HUGE amount of my city!
 
roadbloc

roadbloc

macrumors G3
Aug 24, 2009
8,784
215
UK
Be nice if they fixed the game and Origin first before selling an expansion. Oh, wait, this is EA we're on about isn't it?
 
cerote

cerote

macrumors 6502a
Mar 2, 2009
843
269
Bet they charge 60$ for this. They charge 5-15$ for a single building.

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djra8 said:
unless the city size is expanded sim city 5 will remain a joke. not enough room to build.
Click to expand...

I believe they said there will be new maps but there will be no increase in map sizes.
 
ahbiteme

ahbiteme

macrumors member
Feb 25, 2008
40
45
Sydney, Australia
I'd so love to buy this game because I love SimCity, but I can't bring myself to buy it with all the bad reviews and limited city space. I do hope they fix it. In the meantime, I'm stuck playing the very old iPad version. It's OK, but the touch controls can be a bit fiddly.
 
Analog Kid

Analog Kid

macrumors G3
Mar 4, 2003
8,857
11,370
I'm enjoying the game, but I agree the city tiles are too small, and I miss subways.

Also, I think it's telling that EA is skimming 20% from donations to the Red Cross. It couldn't have cost them much to put that pack together-- it would have done great things for their tarnished image to funnel 100% to the Red Cross rather than showing their single minded focus on short term profit.
 
SkyBell

SkyBell

macrumors 604
Sep 7, 2006
6,603
219
Texas, unfortunately.
Pssh, I still blow hours a week in SimCity 3000; perhaps soon I'll find SimCity 4 in a bargain rack somewhere and give that one a shot. :)


This new one sounds...awful. Always has, probably always will.
 
I

iMiiTH

macrumors newbie
Jun 7, 2010
6
0
Have they figured out how to build cities larger than a square kilometre in the future?
 
W

World Citizen

macrumors regular
Feb 21, 2011
168
1
50 Years in the future my ass... Let them try to fix the game first. That will take them 50 years to begin with.. Damn wankers!
 
R

rmwebs

macrumors 68040
Apr 6, 2007
3,140
0
Dont waste your time with this junk.

Instead of fixing the issues with the glassbox 'fudge' engine, and increasing city size limits from village to town, they instead decide to....build taller buildings. :rolleyes:

EA are scum - don't support them.

Wait for Banished to come out - it'll wipe the flaw with EA and their failed attempt at SimCity.

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iMiiTH said:
Have they figured out how to build cities larger than a square kilometre in the future?
Click to expand...

It wont happen without a HUGE reduction in what the game engine can do - it was flawed from the drawing board and EA knew it.

Here's the issue. Everything runs as a glassbox entity. This is everything from every single vehicle, to every pedestrian, water, electricity, trash, poop, garbage, goods, raw materials, etc.

The issue is that even in a small city, you're at the limit of what a modern computer can handle. There's too many processes going on for it to keep up.

The plan was to offload this onto the servers, however that would cost MILLIONS a month to run - right now all EA's doing is running simple servers on Amazon EC2 instances in Ireland. Each of those is just sending and receiving a json array of your city data - no other processing happens, and they still struggle to keep up with the load.

So the only way the game can get bigger maps is to:

A) Recode glassbox from scratch (not gunnu happen - it's cost EA millions to make)
B) Remove items such as water, power, trash, etc so that they are either 'on' or 'off' - no 'pumping' around the city. This is the most plausible option and would only take a month or two to change, but would likely not be compatible with current cities.
C) Do nothing and piss off customers by insulting them with crappy DLC for a $70 game. This is what EA chose to do.
 
n-evo

n-evo

macrumors 68000
Aug 9, 2013
1,764
1,482
Amsterdam
I've been a huge SimCity and played countless hours with SimCity 3000.

This time around I can't help but feel like a sucker if I actually pay those sixty euros and I don't know how much more for those extras and expansion packs. They released a mediocre game with a lot of bugs. Fix that first before asking customers to pay even more money for what is essentially a broken game.
 
B

bryanescuela

Suspended
Jun 27, 2008
187
93
Really

I wonder who is stupid enough to but this and keep "feeding" EA after such a terrible game launch and support
 
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