Previews: SimCity Hands-on Preview (part 2)

Multiple Cities

Once you've built the first bits of your first city, it's time to head out of that town and into the region. There are two to sixteen city areas within each region, connected to each other by a highway and/or railroad. If you've already loaded a city, the first thing you'll want to do to get all this goodness, is go to the region view.

Region view provides its own data layers which show information regarding resources/utilities, transport and wind (more about that later). This gives some global insight in what the area provides. The region view also show all the other available or claimed towns in the area. You can visit (as spectator, if you're not the mayor) or load the other claimed towns and play on. If an area is unclaimed, you can load it up and start a new town to either help the region or to simply leech off it.

Sharing & Caring

Cities in a region will be able to share many things - including workers who may travel across the region to go to work. As such, RCI demand for cities is influenced to some (small) extent by the other cities around you. This effect didn't feel as strong as it did in SimCity 4, but then again I've only been able to play the game for a very limited time to experience this properly. I'm also not sure if the effect becomes stronger if you get a working railroad connection. It would've been nice to have a regional subway as a fast mode of transport - even if it's all tied to the roads, much like bus stops - but alas, we won't be seeing those when the game ships initially.

Some buildings - particularly the city hall departments - influence the region as well, as they may unlock new buildings. I already mentioned the tax setting which is influenced by the department of finance; similarly it may be necessary to have a certain type of building in the region to unlock others. It may take a bit of strategy, but it means you don't have to duplicate the same buildings in each city over and over again. Instead, you should play the region as a whole and have each city get benefits from the others.

In region view you'll also be able to set up some trading, for example if you want to purchase electricity from a neighboring town. When doing so, you won't need the power plant in your own town. Your neighbor can keep all the dirty air in their own place (well... more about the wind in a moment...), while you pay up to get some electricity. Similarly, water and waste disposal can be exchanged for simoleons.

Depending on how well you like your neighbors - or if you're in need of a bit of cash - you can also volunteer extra service vehicles to the area. In case of an emergency they will be used by your neighbors at no extra cost. You will however get a bit of extra cash for being so nice. Finally, if you're really in a helping mood, you can gift resources or money to other cities in the area to help them out. This means that you may be able to sustain an overall profitable region even if some of the towns lose money every hour.

If you're in a bit of a nasty mood, however, you can check out the wind direction and play evil. Set up some dirty industry, coal/oil and other polluting power plants and make sure the wind is blowing in the right direction. The pollution will move straight to any neighbors. All in all there's plenty to be shared - good or bad - in the region.

Works of Greatness

Besides sharing resources in the city, you'll also be able to cooperatively build a great work. There may be several Great Work sites in a region - though at least one. A great work site can hold one project, which all cities in the region can participate in. The entry level is high though: you generally need a million simoleons and some specific buildings in the region, and even then it takes many, many resources to complete the project. Projects include a large Solar Power Plant and an International Airport. Once completed, the great works presumably influence all the participating cities, e.g. by providing cheaper electricity or bringing in more tourists.

Unfortunately, due to the steep entry barrier, we didn't have the option during the play time we had to start up a project and see how it really works. There's definitely more to discover in this area once the game is out.

Resource Scarcity

The region also defines the difficulty of the game. During the hands-on we played a fairly regular region. One town had a bit of oil, furthermore there was water everywhere and the area was stable. That's now how it'll always be though. Each region may present its own challenges. Some examples Jason gave include a region which has no water in a large corner, or a region which has a city on top of a very steep mountain. That means there's only a limited area to build on and the infrastructural costs are steep. Besides water, the other minable resources may also be limited. In fact, while water will replenish through rain, other resources may run out over time.

Each region becomes a bit of a puzzle this way, so you shouldn't stop at the first region you come across. There will definitely be a lot more to explore and regions should not be the same. In fact, the starting region seemed a bit easy: getting profitable cities wasn't too hard and even though the prices of buildings may be a bit high at times, it didn't feel like a real challenge. I'm not sure if regions are defined with parameters which influence the simulator, like costs, demand, tourism etc. so the difficulty may vary even more.

In that regard it's quite unfortunate that - at least at launch - it will not be possible to customize or create your own regions. Maxis will ship (an unknown number of) various regions in the game at launch. Right now they are also entirely focussed at shipping the product, so questions about modding possibilities were kept unanswered. One of the biggest pain points for many fans of the series is the lack of terraforming and considering that the terrain really impacts the difficulty means that there are a lot of opportunities there for players to come up with new and exciting puzzles - if only they could. On the other hand, Maxis has not given a definite "no" as an answer yet, so there is hope for the future.

It must be said that overall the region play is a strong point of this new SimCity. There's a lot of criticism regarding the small city size (even I mentioned it in my previous GamesCom preview), and while that's understandable to some extent, this game is all about the region. Once you've played with a couple of cities in the same region, it's unlikely that you'll stick to playing just one city afterwards.

This is so good, I'll lose all my friends!

No you won't; in the next part we'll be discussing the multiplayer aspect of the game, as well as various other features. Make sure you come back for more!