Dev cheats
But yes we're hoping to get as many options available as possible so that our players can chose how they want to play!
Sounds good. I think its fine having a standard mode done in a specific way, but i think when it comes to sandbox, then the whole idea would be to play how you want to play, rather than to some constraints. If we can have a sandbox mode, and enable all buildings, all tilespaces, but disable unlimited funds... i think a lot of people would like that. Again, it goes back to rulesets, which hopefully we'll have, because that way we'd be able to tune the game to a point where feel its balanced. You'd still leave a 'regular' mode, but an open mode with rulesets would be idea.
Out of interest, seeing as i've only just heard that it'll be possible to mod the game to unlock all the map tiles, was there a reason behind the intention to lock the vanilla game to just 9?
Is it perhaps performance issues, so by launching the title with 9 tiles as standard, its an easily achievable performance target for respectable hardware, while at the same time, the community is able to unofficially unlock the other squares at their own risk (hardware stress) without being able to complain about minimum specs being insufficient.
I suspect this is the case, and if it is then i most certainly applaud that decision. The decision from EA/Maxis to lock the maps to a fixed size, while selling the game for low-end hardware, while ignoring the capability of higher end hardware, was something that really annoyed a lot of people, theres no doubt in my mind the maps could have been comfortably run multiples bigger than they were for a lot of people. Its understandable that a title needs to appeal to a wide audience, and should be the same experience for all, its just incredibly annoying when the lower spec hardware causes an inferior end product.
