SimCity 2.0 Patch Released!

Hello mayors!

I am so happy to announce that SimCity 2.0 update is released! At the moment (21:26 GMT -1hr), login is currently disabled whilst servers are being updated and patched.

Community Manager Michael Donahoe said:

We have an update for you, Mayors. An update about our next Update, in fact – this Monday, April 22 starting at 1pm PST we’ll be releasing Update 2.0, which contains a number of top-requested bug fixes and improvements. Here’s the full list of changes included in the Update:

What’s New

• Mayors Mansion: Mayors will now drive their fancy cars to work. Mayors will take their helicopter, limo, or sports car if the modules are present.
• HUD: Now color-corrects when in a colorblind mode.
• Data map: Data maps show the filtered color when a color filter is enabled (unless in a colorblind mode)

Fixes and Updates

• Cities not Processing: Mitigates some of the issues that were causing cities not to process. We are continuing to work on and improve this issue.
• Region Filters: Now sorts regions with available cities to the top.
• Invitations: Invitations to join a region should be sent and received more quickly.
• Tourism: Fixes for unexplained fluctuation of tourists. Tourists more smartly counted on transit.
• Cruise ships are now more effective at bringing medium and high wealth tourists in coastal cities.
• New tourists will now decide to come into a city once leaving tourists reach train stations, bus depots, or cruise ship docs instead of waiting for those tourists to go out to the region first.
• This change will reduce the downtime of tourist buildings.
• Casinos: Casinos tuned so that Gambling will be a more profitable specialty. Players can bulldoze and replace existing casinos to see effects of tuning.
• The larger casinos now invite more tourists into the city which helps keep them full.
• Note that existing casinos will need to be replaced to take advantage of this change.
• More Casinos: Raised module limit on Sci-Fi and Sleek Casinos to 6 modules.
• Region Play: Cash gifts can now be received in a bankrupt city.
• Education: Fixed school buses getting stuck at the high school. Existing Schools will fix themselves.
• Education: Fixed school buses picking up students at neighboring cities that didn’t have school bus stops.
• Education: Fix to more accurately track regional student population.
• Education: Fix where kids leaving the school bus stop would teleport to the nearest pedestrian path instead of walking directly into the school.
• Education: University wings now give the proper bonus.
• Recycling: Fix for the Recycling Center where it would sometimes stop working, recycling services will visit other cities.
• Air pollution: Fixed issue where air pollution would appear to come from nowhere. Fix issues where your regional air pollution would be reflected back into your box for a double penalty.
• Fire Service: Fire Trucks don’t clump, dispatch to fires more efficiently.
• Water: Water pumps are now capable of pumping water from rivers at a larger radius so they can take better advantage of the water table in a city.
• Disasters: Cooldown for random disasters: Some players were getting hit too frequently with random disasters, this introduces a cooldown where no random disasters will occur.
• Trade: Fix for trade ports that suddenly stop shipping.
• Transit: Street Cars and Buses go to high volume stops first.
• Transit: A city with residents and public transit will now provide the accurate amount of workers and shoppers to its neighbors.
• Transit: A transit vehicle stuck in a pick-up or drop off loop will now go back to a garage instead of trying to pick up more people.
• Transit vehicles should recover automatically after the update. If players want to force the recovery, turn off the stops that are having looping issues, wait a few game hours, then turn them back on.
• Transit: Neighbors buses will now come in lower numbers into the city and do a better job at picking up local passengers first.
• Residential Tuning: Residential-only cities have failure state.
• Buildings are prevented from going up in density when they don’t have power or water.
• The amount of happiness gained from low taxes, police, fire, and health outreach has been lowered.
• Fixed some cases where buildings would not go abandoned when they should have.
• Higher density residential buildings are no longer blocked from going abandoned due to not having enough money.
• Happiness from low taxes does not double up every time it is given.
• Losing happiness due to not having a job is more impactful.
• Budgets: Fixed bug that prevented systems like fire, abandonment, garbage, and sewage from turning on when they were supposed to.
• Audio: Fixes issue where audio will stop working after creating a large city or where phantom audio sounds play in a city.
• Demolish: Fixes issue that occurred when players demolished buildings that had service vehicles, delivery vehicles, or agents out in the city or region. Previously, the agents would be in a state of limbo and would not recover when new buildings of that type were placed. This will no longer happen.

Because this is our first significant Update, we wanted to inform you in advance that we’ll be taking down all servers for a few hours while these changes are being issued. Choosing a time to issue a major Update is never easy, but after looking our peak player time, we’ve concluded 1pm PST is the best window for us to make these improvements. As you can see from the list above, the wait will be worth it.

Thanks, Mayors!

Now that this patch is released, there will be many more articles to come! If you haven't already, sign up for our forum!

I cannot wait to play SimCity with these major bugs fixed!
Keep reading!
~JMR 

2.0 is coming on the 22nd & forums are back!

Greetings mayors,

Today, I have 2 great announcements!

2.0 is coming on the 22nd! View all the details here: http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/0/9453148.page
To see what is currently in development, go here:
http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9437292.page


Also the forums are now back! Click here to go to the forums.

Now that a great deal of fixes have been done, you'll be seeing more of me!

~JMR

Bridge... Madness?

Hello mayors.

I was experimenting with roads, I thought I should share you what I ended up with.

Interesting huh?

I will post more as I experiment with roads more.
~JMR

More fixes on the way!

Greetings mayors.
Just a short news update.

Many of us have been experiencing these many, horrific bugs. The worst of them being loss of work. When your city crashes and fails to process, or when a roll back happens, causing you to loose many hours of hard work.

Well keep your hopes up! SimCity senior producer Kip Katsarelis, just did an update on the official SimCity website on what state they are at, as far as fixes are concerned.

"Keep in mind, if you don’t see a particular fix present in an Update, this doesn’t mean we’re not working on it, or we’re not aware of it. Our team is constantly getting reports about the top issues being raised and this is helping us prioritize what we need to address."

said Kip as he emphises how hard the team are working.

Kip also mentions the team working hard, heads-down to bring cheetah speed and the leaderboards back as well as many other issues.

Want do you want most? I personally can't wait to see no more city crashes and loss of data.

I recommend you check it out, I read it just after experiencing loss of work myself. I found it refreshing to know that the team at EA are hard at work, right now. So go ahead, click here and refresh yourself, more fixes are soon to come!

This was just a short update, to let you know that more fixes are coming.

Thanks for reading mayors,
~JMR

How freight works - Understanding industry

Hello there mayors!

I have learnt a lot in the past week. I thought I'd share with you in how freight works. How to make sure freight gets shipped correctly and why freight shipments are important.

Freight is produced by industrial zones. This freight is then shipped to commercial zones and also shipped outside of your city. Freight shipments to commercial zones is not a must, but however, does provide more profit to your industry.

Industry also, is not a must, but is capable of providing a nice income.

Freight shipments make your industry money, no freight shipments = no industrial income. Commercial zones sell the freight you produce.

So better industry = more freight  = more commercial zones wanted = more profit. Simple.

Freight icon graphic by JordanMRichards

So how do you get better industry? Well, industry is based off a few things, I will explain them and how you can improve on them.

Tech level

- Build more schools | libraries and try to increase the amount of sims that enroll.

• School

  - Max-Tech level: 1 

• High-School

 - Max-Tech level: 1 

• Community College

 - Max-Tech level: 2 

• University

 - Max-Tech level: 3 

How many available places to ship freight

-  You could build an airport and place the cargo terminal extension

- You could build a trade port and place the freight shipping warehouse and ship freight via rail (freight rail terminal) or by ocean (cargo ship dock)

- You can also build a trade depot, but it will only be shipped by road.

- You could zone more commercial
- There are also specialization buildings that freight can be shipped to.

How freight is shipped

- All depends on traffic.

I try to separate my residential traffic from my freight shipments|worker traffic.

Hint: they will always take the shortest route, if that route is highly congested, they will take the next least-congested shortest route.

Density - Workers' Happiness

- Density of industrial zones are based off the workers' happiness. 

To make the industrial workers happy, they want enough places to ship their freight, as explained above.

Here's what your industry workers care about generally in the day:

- They want to get to work on time

- They want to produce and ship the freight they have made to a location

- They want to finish shipping all their freight before the end of the day

- They want to arrive home at least for a few seconds before the next day starts.

 If you accomplish all of these things, your density will shoot up & you won't find many industry building being abandoned.

If your industry is high tech though, they will want skilled workers, if they don't get enough skilled workers, they density can fall and if you leave them moaning for too long, the industry building will get abandoned.

To make it easier to understand, I spent a while making this algorithm illustration. (Click for larger|easier viewing)

Success
- Potential upgrade in the density of the industrial building
- Potential increase to sims' happiness.
- Potential increase in hourly industry profits.

Ok
- Potential decrease of sims' happiness
- Potential decrease of  hourly industry profits
- Things may stay as they were from the day before

Bad
- Definite decrease of sims' happiness
- Potential abandonment of building
- Definite mid|minor decrease in hourly industry profits.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, you should visit our forums.

~JMR

3/22/2013 Patch Notes! 1.8

Greetings Mayors! Our governmental body (EA) has passed a bit of legislation in attempt to make our lives easier. 

General 
Police station can no longer hold more prisoners than the capacity.
Added missing roof texture for certain commercial building.
Added completion moment cinematic for Great Works.
Visiting police cars have avatar of neighbor above them.
Arcology Population reflects the population of the Arcology, not the city.
Fixed a clog in the pipes where sewage would sometimes get backed up and act jittery.
Region Wall will pop up when a new chat message has been received.


Road Improvements 
Improvements to cases when connecting a new road to an existing road that goes over uneven terrain.
Tuned some of the road snapping priorities to address some edge cases where it wasn’t behaving as desired
Fixed a case where a new road would sometimes cause an existing road to change its shape drastically.
Made Upgrade Roads mini-tutorial appear at appropriate time.
Fix to four lane bridge to improve divider line placement.


Text Improvements 
Clarified alerts about residents not moving in because of high taxes to state if it is residents, commercial businesses, or Industry that won't move in because of high taxes.
Improved text and icons on cities in region view.
Updated text for "Become a Suburban City" mission to improve clarity.
Updated requirements text for HazMat garage for clarity.

Frenzytoast's Thoughts
The EA Government is definitely trying to improve the way our cities function but there are still a few issues that need addressed to allow certain city specializations to function better. There is a major issue with Recycling Plants. It seems that if they reach 20/20 tons of recyclables they will freeze up and stop processing recyclables altogether. 

What results from this is a plant costing 2,900/hr (fully upgraded) and a city complaining about trash/recyclables piling up. It also causes a major break in production of processors/televisions/computers unless the city map has an abundance of oil/ore/coal. 

Traffic is also still behaving irrationally. I've watched a car change lanes 4 times before going straight through the intersection. 

I don't mean to sound ungrateful for the changes that are being worked on and I do want to praise EA for frequent patching.
They have been releasing patches every 2-4 days which shows they are diligently working at improving our world.

Keep it up EA, we can't wait to see what you do next. 

The solution to an endless supply of water!

Ground gone dry? Desperate for water? The solution to an endless supply of water!

Hello mayors,

Just thought I'd post this quick tip. As it has helped me and my cities a lot.

Have you got to that point where your water pumps have taken the last drop from the ground? Have you got to that point where the tap icon keeps going yellow, explaining that the ground is going try?

Well I know I have, quite a few times and well, it's very annoying! But not as annoying, when you know the solution to getting, basically an endless supply of water.

The trick - SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT:

Yes, yes, yes, I said it. All that poop can be worth something.

Plop a sewage treatment plant. Then give it some time. Next open up the water data layer. You'll notice that there is a patch of water right where the sewage treatment plant is! Fresh clean water!

The reason of this is because, when the treatment plant, treats the sewage - it lets of fresh clean water into the ground. Because of this, you can easily just plop a water pump right next to it.

& There you have it, an endless supply of water. But bare in mind, you need to keep that plant going and enough people going to the toilet! Maybe some commercial curry shops near by will h... Anyway.

Thanks for reading!

The long way - waiting for rain

You could wait for it to rain, which does fill the ground back with water. But I don't think this is a reliable way to make sure that your cities water supply is under control. Unless of course, you had H.A.A.R.P in your city.

~JMR