If you want more "city" and less traffic management, you need to be very clear about what it you want and how it should work. Part of the reason we get traffic and roads in the game is that those are parts of the urban landscape that we are familiar with, because we all use them everyday. They are also the parts of cities that city governments have the most direct control over. And they are the easiest to model. Decisions about what to build and where to build it are easy to implement, and have obvious effects on the built environment - and make good eyecandy.
What else do cities spend money on? Police and Fire, schools and parks. Some universities or community colleges, some museums. But larger universities and museums are usually nationally or state funded, except in the biggest cities. Cities may administer low-income medical clinics, but most medical offices and hospitals are privately operated (profit or non-profit, for public or private insurance) or funded at the national level.
The problem is that each of these services are not so easily modeled. Among other things, if there were easy or obvious solutions to these problems, they wouldn't be so contentious. IN order to implement them, the devs have to decide how important they are, and what the right answer is. They have to pick sides in political disputes. In America right now, debates over policing involve over-militarization, body cameras, "broken windows" vs. "community policing", and racial profiling. How do you incorporate those into a game? How do you avoid all the political landmines and keep your game's mass appeal? CS has a "Legal Weed" policy - just barely mainstream, with tiny and slightly humorous effects. Can you imagine a similar policy for "Legalize Guns", or "Ban all Guns"? Because then the devs have to decide if banning guns reduces crime or increases it!
Cities run homeless shelters, needle exchange, rehab clinics, orphanages or foster systems, and public housing. But these start to get much more culturally specific and politically sensitive. Every additional choice the devs have to make is one more that will alienate customers on the right or left. Do the game's needle exchanges improve health? Do they increase drug use? Do they increase crime or hospital costs? Should the city provide public housing, or just shelters, or just a bunch of boxes and bootstraps, and in the game which will be the best cost value, and for who?
Finally, like nearly all city builders, the game has a terribly naive approach to tax policy and the effects on the economy, although still better than SC4. Cities don't get to pick what industries thrive in them. The number of failed "Local Silicon Alley" boondoggles is legion, and most efforts to lure auto plants or movie studios rarely generate gains because so much of the increased potential tax revenue is given back to the companies in loans and sweetheart deals. But that is a gameplay choice because players want control, like a Civ-style game. Where are the neighborhood NIMBYs, the local activists, the public unions, the rich plutocrats and real estate developers, the connected industrialist who bankrolled your mayoral campaign, or her arch-rival judge who keeps indicting your chiefs of staff and declaring your pet projects illegal?
What else do cities spend money on? Police and Fire, schools and parks. Some universities or community colleges, some museums. But larger universities and museums are usually nationally or state funded, except in the biggest cities. Cities may administer low-income medical clinics, but most medical offices and hospitals are privately operated (profit or non-profit, for public or private insurance) or funded at the national level.
The problem is that each of these services are not so easily modeled. Among other things, if there were easy or obvious solutions to these problems, they wouldn't be so contentious. IN order to implement them, the devs have to decide how important they are, and what the right answer is. They have to pick sides in political disputes. In America right now, debates over policing involve over-militarization, body cameras, "broken windows" vs. "community policing", and racial profiling. How do you incorporate those into a game? How do you avoid all the political landmines and keep your game's mass appeal? CS has a "Legal Weed" policy - just barely mainstream, with tiny and slightly humorous effects. Can you imagine a similar policy for "Legalize Guns", or "Ban all Guns"? Because then the devs have to decide if banning guns reduces crime or increases it!
Cities run homeless shelters, needle exchange, rehab clinics, orphanages or foster systems, and public housing. But these start to get much more culturally specific and politically sensitive. Every additional choice the devs have to make is one more that will alienate customers on the right or left. Do the game's needle exchanges improve health? Do they increase drug use? Do they increase crime or hospital costs? Should the city provide public housing, or just shelters, or just a bunch of boxes and bootstraps, and in the game which will be the best cost value, and for who?
Finally, like nearly all city builders, the game has a terribly naive approach to tax policy and the effects on the economy, although still better than SC4. Cities don't get to pick what industries thrive in them. The number of failed "Local Silicon Alley" boondoggles is legion, and most efforts to lure auto plants or movie studios rarely generate gains because so much of the increased potential tax revenue is given back to the companies in loans and sweetheart deals. But that is a gameplay choice because players want control, like a Civ-style game. Where are the neighborhood NIMBYs, the local activists, the public unions, the rich plutocrats and real estate developers, the connected industrialist who bankrolled your mayoral campaign, or her arch-rival judge who keeps indicting your chiefs of staff and declaring your pet projects illegal?
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.. so really you all agree.. The game currently is mostly a transport management game whether thats how its suppose to be or not.
