Hi Will Steel,
you posted a lot of things - some I even forgot about a long time ago.
Nope, not at all. Cities Skylines is a very good game, but it lacks a lot of actual management features that Simcity 4 had. There are a lot of examples such as:
- It was actually possible to build realistic rural villages in SC4 vanilla. That is simply not possible in Cities Skylines, where your tiny village of 200 people will demand the same things that your city of 200,000 does.
In fact, I had entire maps (large tiles) where I managed to build a realistic "commuter nation" thing where villages dotted the forested outskirts of the map, each with a few hundred people, who commuted to work in the rich industrial town in the middle.
Yep. I think the main reason for this are the expanding map and the lack of regional play in C:S. Though I like the idea of expanding your city in the game's progress, it sill has its downsides.
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In SC4, there was an approval rating system, and you had to keep an eye on that. Meanwhile it is actually very hard to make your citizens unhappy in Cities Skylines and your citizens are always happy for some reason. Happiness simply doesn't matter in this game.
I agree. Actually, happiness only matters in the starting phase before milestone 1 before any public services are available. In this phase the citizens will become unhappy over time. (Yes, I'm a very slow player and I take my time - even with milestone 1.
) After placing the first school, the happiness will normalize.
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SC4 was more realistic in that if you made your citizens live in squalid conditions they didn't simply pack up and leave at the slightest discomfort. They would try to deal with their problems for a while, allowing you to build realistic cities with poor services if you wanted.
Partially - when it comes to unemployment, your Sims leave the city faster than they've moved in, while your Cims just stay where they are.
High crime in C:S also isn't a guarantee for your Cims to move out, as welathier Sims will leave the crime ridden parts of your city aswell.
When it comes to power and water shortages, both Sims and Cims act quite similiar: "Give me what I want, I won't wait too long for it."
Okay, poor Sims are usually quite hard boiled in most cases, but medium wealth Sims aren't that patient and high wealth SIms... Seriously. Most of the time, I don't think high wealth SIms are worth the trouble they always cause.
So, I don't think Cims are that whiny as you portrait them.
You could actually see their condition within the game - when you cut off garbage collection you could actually notice trash piling up on the streets and homes. Areas with bad police coverage were full of gun shooting, drug deals and broken homes. Lack of access to clinics would give you plagued neighbourhoods. Without piped water, the game would state how people are being forced to buy bottled water from shops. Without services, that part of the city would start looking like a realistic shady area with dirty unmaintained buildings.
Some details are visible in C:S aswell, like the trash cans i front of the building, but yes: SC4 had a lot more details here. (And don't forget the sad sight of a degraded building, including a very sad ambience.)
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..Meanwhile cims in Cities Skylines are precious little snowflakes who flee the city just because policeman didn't drive by 5 minutes earlier or garbage truck didn't come around right from the start of the game.
As I mentioned before: I don't agree with you on this one. Both Sims and Cims have their stronger and their weaker points.
- Related fact - you could build an actual ghetto or an urban-slum type region in SC4 based on above facts. It would even give you a good source of poor uneducated factory workers and labourers. Cities Skylines doesn't even have any poor building models - every structure is clean and straight from some $$$ area. This game lacks wealth simulation, and "levels represent wealth" is a poor excuse.
- SC4 tied traffic to wealth in a realistic way. So for example in rich areas you would see limos and sports cars, whereas in poor areas you'd see sloppy used cars and such, and a healthy mix in middle class areas. Your own assigned Sims (up to 8 of them) would upgrade their cars with wealth.
- Wealth also affected traffic behavior of citizens - wealthy people would always prefer riding in their cars to taking public transport while the masses made good use of bus and metro systems. Wealthier citizens would commute more towards businesses and unique buildings, while working class made more trips (and in far larger numbers) to their work rather than shopping.
Yes, this hits the nail.
Though, also SC4 isn't perfect in this one - more than once I had to declare every building as historical to prevent mansions from being built there just beacause of high demand - it still did quite a good job here.
Okay, the Level 1-3 high density residentials look quite poor here and there. But yes, they're still too clean.
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Cities Skylines has no protests or riots (which come with looting) - a very realistic thing that every Simcity game had.
But they're hard to trigger in SC4. Seriously, I had to make a dedicated city just to see the riots - though it was worth it.
- Cities didn't always need foreign connections in SC4. There are merits and demerits for that, but it allowed you much better flexibility. You could create independent city states.
Yep. Though I don't miss this too much.
- Building levels are very similar to each other in Cities Skylines. Compare that to SC4 where each building had three types of wealth, each divided from 9 to 12 different levels. You cannot build an elite rich suburb full of large manors and celebrity homes.
And don't forget the maximum building level avaible. This means, skyscrapers are possible in the city centre but are very unlikely to be built in the outskirts.
- You cannot manage budgets of buildings individually in Cities Skylines like you could in SC4. If I wanted to build a school that services only the elites living in single specific area and no more, it is simply not possible. If I wanted to run my wind power plants at full capacity but my coal plants at half capacity, the game simply doesn't have that feature.
As I mentioned in my starting post.
This level of micromanagement was really great in SC4. Well, at least for me.
- Skylines is limited to 4-slot grids alongside roads. SC4 actually had a lot of variety in building sizes, from manors with gigantic garden lawns to wall-to-wall high rises. And as I said you could actually build rural areas and villages with giant farm estates and fields, whereas they were the most pathetic and annoying joke until the latest expansion in Skylines.
Yes. The limitation of the growable buildings' size is quite annoying. I don't think, there will be a proper solution for this in C:S 1, as ploppable buildings are just a workaround. (Not a bad one, though, but still a workaround.)
- Education was actually more important, because it was more effective in SC4. There were things like libraries, colleges and museums. It had a lot of impact alongside making supply usage a bit more efficient, significantly cutting crime and such. In Skylines you have only three types of education buildings, which only serve to provide workers and maybe have some negligent effects like reduce trash per home.
Yes and no. Education was in very important in SC4 for the industrial level and for wealthier inhibitants. As there is no wealth system in C:S, it doesn't have such an impact.
But it's still important for buildings to level up.
I'd say this - even as bad as Simcity 2013 was, it had even better system of education.
I think, you're exaggerating on this one.
- Parks in SC4 weren't restricted to road access. This allowed you to build courtyards and plazas of all kind.
Before Park Life, this was really annoying. Especially, when you picked a park that fits into a specific spot - if you could rotate it.
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Buildings in SC4 had condition system - things like power plants would degrade over time and realistically lose their capacity to run unless they were rebuilt decades later. Skylines doesn't have that.
And I really don't miss this at all. At least, if it could be handled as in SC2k, where you had the option to rebuild it on the spot.
Instead, checking your power plants every 50 years in the game, demolishing and rebuilding them might be quite a bit of realism, but it was only annoying to me.
- Bulletin board notifications of SC4 were far better in terms of location accuracy and helpfulness than random 1-sentence tweets this game has. Chirper is cute but sometimes its usefulness is dubious.
Not really. It was SC3k, that was really shining here.
But SC4's pager wasn't as annoying as chirper, that's true.
- Statistics were cleaner and more detailed in SC4, and could be scaled very flexibly. This area has needed improvements in Skylines for a long time.
- RCI display was more detailed as well in SC4, because it was part of the statistics.
Yes, yes and again yes.
Putting the info graph into the options menu was a very bad design choice. And without any way to change the time scale, this graph isn't nearly as useful as it should be.
And yes, the RCI demand was quite better explained, though as in C:S and also in any SC game as well, I just loosely follow the RCI demand. But this is purely play style dependent.
- SC4's zonal-based power transit was maybe simplistic, but it was better than having to constantly demolish and rebuild power lines in the early game.
Although I have to admit this is true, ironicially I prefer it in the way C:S handles it. (I like to leave power lines in industrial and poor areas and SC4 removing them for me was always annoying.)
- Did you know that SC4 had elevated ground metro system - something that has never been present in Skylines at all, except a few very glitched modding attempts?
To be fair: SC4 had neither trams nor canal fearies wothout modding.
But I miss the possibility the elevate the metro to ground level in C:S aswell.
- Parking lots were actually a game feature in SC4. They allowed people to switch transit easily. Skylines only gets them with mods, which aren't always consistent.
They were quirky in SC4. How often did I watch citizens going to work by car - and returning home by bus.
The only thing SC4 did better than C:S: A car was only available when the journey was started by car. There were no pocket cars.
Skylines is an amazing games in all other things. Particularly after patches and expansions. But it is not complex or deep enough to be comparable to the Simcity series yet.
Yes and no again.
Yes, as of all these things you mentioned were done more or less better in SC4.
No, because (and this is IMO) when you figured out the game mechanics, both games are quite easy to master. (Well, except traffic flow maybe, but this could become a true nightmare in SC4 aswell.
)
So yes, Skylines is a close second but SC4 so far remains the king of modern city builders, especially when it comes to features. Unless more
civic depth features are added in C:S, it will remain so no matter how much the blind fanboys try to claim otherwise.
Now you've got me. Yes, I am a Cities:Skylines fanboy - but also an old SimCity fanboy, too. Hmm, quite the conflict here...
But I agree so far: As good as C:S is nowadays, there is still room for improvement. I like this game very much, aswell as I still like the old SimCity games (SC4 and older).
Most of the people who call C:S better than SC4 have never actually played it.
I didn't do it after release. But after the release of all expansions, I'm not sure about it any more...
Well, in the end, it's all about opinion anyway. So I dodge this question and say instead: I really love both games.
Best regards,
sys
