Sim City Societies
A new Sim City was recently announced, and the SC community has been up in arms. And rightly so. Societies is going in a completely different direction, focusing on “culture” instead of micromanagement.
I’m a SC fan, but I sometimes feel like SC4 is too involved, so I’ve been trying to keep an open mind. But from what I’ve seen, there’s absolutely nothing appealing about Societies.
The really sad thing is that there’s plenty of room for improvement upon SC4 that doesn’t involve more micromanagement.
Diagonal lots
SC4 introduced diagonal roads, but they without diagonal buildings, they just look wrong.
Regions
SC4 also introduced regions, but they were clunky. Other than neighbor deals, they felt like autonomous cities. It would be nice to be able to smoothly go from one city to another, and see traffic maps showing inter-city commutes. Imagine being able to zoom from street view all the way out to a full region view.
Waterfalls
This is mostly just aesthetic, but it’s something the modding community has struggled to add since SC4 was released. If you could have a lake up in the mountains that fed a stream down to the ocean, I think the realism would be greatly increased. It’s one of those little things that wouldn’t come up a lot in gameplay, but it makes a difference.
Planning
One thing I’ve always disliked about the series is that there’s no advantage to planning ahead. You can always instantly, and cheaply, demolish any building, terraform the terrain, and rezone. It would be nice if changing something actually took time. Like in real life, replacing a two-lane road with a large divided highway should take time, and should require alternate route planning.
Online
I have an idea for an online game that places you as a citizen, but gives you the power to build a city by proposing and voting on development plans. Each player can create plans and votes determine which gets built. Players can also run for office to become more influential and have more power. This allows the hardcore players to keep busy managing the city and the casual players to provide as much feedback and as many ideas and they wish.
Simtropolis also has a long thread full of ideas.