Even if you have enough power capacity (e.g. buying enough from a neighbor and your gauge says no excess and no deficit) not all buildings may get power. I wait and wait to hope that the power eventually reaches them, but it seems to be taking a long time! Are there some buildings who use up all the power before it reaches these outlying buildings? Or is it because my road system has a lot of dead ends that are not being reached?
In SimCity 4 I enjoyed organizing and upgrading the road system to make sure there was no ‘red’ traffic lines. We now have dirt roads, low and medium density streets, and medium and high density avenues, and a high density avenue including street car tracks which is cool. But there are no highways!? I guess it makes sense since we don’t have a large city size. But how are we going to deal with large amounts of traffic coming in and getting stuck at traffic lights? As soon as it hits a cross road there’s going to be a street light.
Here’s the region highway view. Quite a bit of traffic trying to get into my city!
Here’s my solution, more high density avenues. But it’s not working! I even added an extra road on the right to try to get some cars to get off the road early! But for some reason they all want to turn left. I added more bus stops, and maybe I’ll start to use the street cars to see if that helps. But they would need a park and ride depot of some sort.
Here’s a view of inner city traffic that may be resolved by high density avenues.
But wait, there’s no one-way streets? I used these a lot in my downtown areas in SimCity 4! They seem much more efficient than large avenues everywhere. They would need to have high density one-ways though.
I don’t think I like the algorithm for traffic to find the right path. It seems they turn around in the strangest places, I guess just to get to the other side of the road for businesses on the other side.
Well, I guess I’ll keep playing and see how it goes.
I signed up for the 2nd SimCity Beta and was able to play the 1-hour long beta a few times on Feb 16th. There were some problems claiming cities and even connecting to EA’s servers, but I was hopeful they would fix it by the time the game was released, and could continue making patches after that. So I pre-ordered and started playing SimCity 2013 when it was released March 5. I know there have been some problems, but I’m hopeful they’ll get them fixed eventually. Here are some notes and some initial screenshots I’ve taken. I’ll make new posts as I find new things about the game.
Lots of people have complained about server connectivity issues and being unable to claim new cities. Luckily I haven’t noticed too much of a problem but I have only started a few cities. I have noticed strange things like clicking the Claim button and then finding out it was already claimed? I also haven’t tried starting my own region yet.
I think it was Wednesday the 6th EA shut down their servers for an update, and we weren’t able to log on at all. That was annoying, but I’m not sure how long it lasted. Maybe half an hour to an hour? Why couldn’t they update a single server at a time?
So I was very hopeful that the emergency response system would be great with this new game engine. Maybe it’s something weird about the road system. But I see firetrucks go down a bunch of roads somewhat close to a burning building, but never the right road. They keep turning around and going down a different but still wrong road, taking a long time to go to the actual house burning down! I’m pretty sure they weren’t meant to do that, they keep going down the same wrong street over and over. Also, ALL of your fire trucks may be at the same burning house, while you have other houses burning down. At least some of them should leave if another fire is worse!
I haven’t followed ambulances around to see how well they drive to injured or sick sims, but I have noticed them take a long time at the clinic or hospital. They should quickly unload the sick or injured sim and immediately go out to get more! I always have a sick person complaining about the sniffles but they don’t go to the clinic?
MaxisMan can be sent out to heal injured, but I tried following him the first time he was sent on patrol, and he didn’t immediately go to someone injured. It’s more like a patrol I guess. How is he supposed to find anyone?
The health system is one area I somewhat struggle with in my cities. I check the Germ data map and see air pollution, ground pollution, and other factors. I know we can add the Wellness Center and Disease Research center on the Hospital to start combating sickness in the city. But how do you reduce the air pollution and water pollution? In SimCity 4 I think all you could do was plant more parks and trees. There was also a third-party plugin that was a huge air filter. I loved that!
What do you love and hate about this new SimCity?
This latest patch, 1.5 is causing a lot of problems for people. I had trouble getting through the installer since it was such a large patch this time, over 1 GB! I waited a day or so and was able to install it. Luckily I don’t have major problems like others have reported. I didn’t worry about any saved games because I recently had to re-install all of the Sims on a new hard drive. But I have found a few minor issues:
Several of my badges/achievements are listed in the Game profile menu as Not completed when I know they are completed, and the website also reports them as completed. This is the most annoying because I am working towards achieving all badges, and don’t want to keep checking the website for ones I’m truly missing.
A rendering issue causes some neighborhood adult sims to appear like little people – about half the size of normal sims.
FIX: According to this post on EA forums, just replace the elder’s cane with a new cane. It appears to have worked for me.
Others have reported things like:
No Travel option from the phone or computer — the menu options in the phone have been reorganized. I found Travel under Real Estate and Travel Services… option. I haven’t tried it out to see if it still works.
I’ve seen this before before this patch, but rarely. Try resetting the Sim.
Hopefully there will be another patch coming soon to fix these!
How do you get a Sim sunburned in the Sims 3 Seasons?? I’m thinking it’s a bug in the game because my Sims take a nap outside in their bathing suit in 90 degree weather and only get a sun tan. I’m trying to complete the ‘Fair Skinned’ badge of getting a sunburn and haven’t been able to. Just wondering if anyone has been able to yet.
I noticed this in the Supernatural expansion pack. Your Sim meets some ghosts, but when they are not in the same lot as your Sim anymore, their thumbnail picture disappears from your Sim’s acquaintances panel. You can still call them by doing the ‘Call Sim’ option on your phone. But I click on the thumbnail image as a shortcut to calling them or inviting them over. And this bug is very annoying!
After getting the Supernatural expansion pack, I started seeing these whitish/gray oval objects on the ground that I knew were rendering glitches because they would have rendering issues as you would rotate your view around it. It definitely seemed out of place, not part of the normal view or like any normal object. Hovering over it did not bring up any info, and I was in a community lot at the time, so I couldn’t go to Buy mode to see what it was. Just now I saw two of the ovals in my Sim’s home. I went to buy mode to try to pick it up, but it said object was in use. I then used the MoveObjects on cheat to pick up the object. It is described as a Social Jig 2 person. A quick search brought up a forum post about it (back in August 2011). The poster says it’s something the game uses to make sure two sims are positioned correctly for a social interaction, and you shouldn’t be able to see it, because the game should delete it after the social interaction is over. Weird how I just started seeing them in Supernatural. Another forum poster said it was blocking traffic, so if this is the case I guess I’ll have to use the MoveObjects cheat to delete it.
Here are a few screenshots of my latest adventures (Supernatural EP)!
While attempting to collect one of every type of Gem, I found out on Carl’s Sims Guide that one of the display cases has a special function to transform a set of gems into a Skull Cut or a Soulpeace Gem! So I had to give it a try.
Add a combination of gems and gem cuts, then click ‘Activate’
The transfiguration can create Skulls or a raw Soulpeace gem (in the corner is Brilliant cut).
If you get toadified, you can catch some flies at the beehives.
I finally figured out what the Orb of Answers is from a forum.
I didn’t think a ghost would be able to hold a baby!
I would love to be able to adopt stray animals in the Sims, but it seems impossibly hard to do. First of all, even with the ‘Strays are Welcome’ gnomes, there aren’t that many visits from stray animals. When one comes, a Sim may get to do a few interactions with it, but the cat or dog suddenly leaves the lot, and the tool-tip over the disabled social interactions say the animal is “Going Home”. If it’s a stray, how can it have a home?!?! This is so frustrating! Now my Sim is an animal lover and has the Adopt 6 Strays Lifetime Wish. She has become acquainted with a few wild horses in the neighborhood, but she’s having a hard time building up the relationship high enough to even pet them! I think finally she’s able to let them sniff her hand without them running away. She met a unicorn once and was able to build up the relationship much faster than normal horses! I’ve been able to find the wild horses in the neighborhood a few times, so I don’t have to wait for them to visit the lot thankfully. But I wonder if adopting the wild horses would count towards “Adopt 6 Strays”, since they are called wild instead of strays? I don’t think I’ll be spending much more time on this Lifetime Wish.
Unicorns can be more friendly than wild horses.
Is it just me, or is this challenge worded strangely!! My Sim has skill level 10 in alchemy, and just got a challenge to Return any 2 of each gem or metal to the vault of antiquity. My first thought is I had to have 2 of every type of Gem, OR 2 of every type of Metal. But a forum said it just means 2 different (any) gems AND 2 different (any) metals. Well, this is correct. My sim has 2 different gems and 2 different metals and he’s able to deliver them now. Whew! Avoided a very hard quest. But I’m working on an Achievement to cut one of every type of Gem on the Gem Cutter machine, with another sim in the household. So, I’m in the process of collecting all the gems anyway. I have the collection helper Lifetime reward to help, but I hate the fact that it doesn’t allow you to select JUST gems. You have to select Rock and Gems, and waste time picking up things that you don’t want, especially Space Rocks!! But it just so happens that the Any 2 of Each Gem or Metal challenge game my Sim the power to see the locations of each gem or metal in map view, with a little icon and tooltip on each one to display EXACTLY what it is, i.e. Moonstone, blue topaz, Gold, silver, etc! So… I will not be turning in his two gems and metals until I take him exploring and find some rare Gems that I’m missing 
EDIT: Wow, you don’t even need 2 DIFFERENT gems and 2 different metals. Just 2 of the same gem and 2 of the same metal will work!
UPDATE: The challenge of 2 gems and metals is not ‘activated’ when you travel abroad, so you aren’t able to see each metal and gem’s location. Major bummer!! I think there are some adventures that give you this ability, but I don’t want to spend the time to do adventures just to try to find it!
