Hello, and I'm here to ask you what you think Sim City 5 will be like? If you know anything, or think of anything that would be cool, tell me, because I'm exited to her your answers! :D

I'm all ears! :yes:

1.Wider angle of history
~cities grow with time; you start out in a select year (dating as far back as say 1300 AD)
~transportation and growth will relate to the year: horses will be the equivalent of cars up until the 1910s, boats will be the equivalent of planes until the 1940s when jets can arrive (will still be in use throughout)
~skyscrapers cannot appear until 1885 (unless you started your city/region sometime after that) 1885-1930 (neoclassic, beaux arts, neogothic, chicago school) 1931-1950 (art deco and less sophisticated form of modern architecture) 1951-1980 (the infamous boxy modern buildings...sometimes newer isn't always better!) 1981-future (sleeker modern, art deco revival/postmodern.)
~Highways arrive in the 1950s, subways in the 1920s

2.Climate, weather, and terrain
~wider variety of terrain options; I think a random region terrain thing would be awesome
~city growth and culture reflects climate (option to have a warm, mild, or cold climate)
~weather please....rain, snow, blazing heat waves, etc. would really add a nice touch Sim gamers have been waiting for

3.Disasters and other happenings on the streets
~Floods and hurricanes should return!
~Random disaster mode...some complain fires happen too often, but my complaint is that you never see random tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. popping...it can get boring in a too happy go lucky city :devil::clown:
~New ones! Chemical spills, blizzards, lead poisoning, plague, etc.
~Parades and conventions! I would like to see marathons, concerts, sports team pride, banners, and shows all over the city. Unlike SC3000, it would no longer have the auto-goto for the parade.

4.Transportation
~Good gravy, how about a "road sketch" mode so we can draw roads/streets that go beyond 90 and 45 degree angles? I need curved streets...
~One way highways. You've surely driven on one, but maybe never noticed. Highways often split off from it's other half and go wondering off. Skyways and junctions onto other highways would be other functions for the one-way highways. Say good-bye to always having to use cloverleafs and t-intersections.
~Traffic lights up the wazoo: cable strung, horizontal, whatever makes it look more like a city than the default metal bar.
~Cul-de-sacs! Ultimate suburban living!

5.Zoning, construction, buildings in general
~Really, there needs to be a mixed-use zoning option. Take the John Hancock Tower for instance: people live there, people work there. SC5 should include this type of zoning.
~Cranes should rise way the hell up in the sky. When I see the construction phase in SC4, I always find that the crane is often just the jib and is just above the building's roof. They should have the tower and rise well above it. Just a complaint about the graphics more than the gaming style...but it would be nice to make the switch.:rant:
~Another graphics complaint: have the buildings construct from the bottom to the top (I know we've all observed that the roof is built first.)
~Agriculture is cool, but how about mariculture? I think it would be nice to have fish farming as an option.
~Separate zoning for commerce: I would rather not have services and offices mixed up all the time.

6.Data/Graphs
~Abandonment chart. Baltimore and New York use a program called CitiStat which can point out where there are abandoned houses. Too often I have to look around for individual houses to get the skinny on neighborhood conditions.
~Industry chart. Yes, going back to Sim City 2000, the industry would be broken down on their production. ex.The graph would show if the city was manufacturing food, petroleum, automobiles, textiles, computers, steel, etc.
~A little Emporis/Skyscrapers thing to list the skyscrapers in your city, just for fun.
~Density/poverty charts. Which areas of the city are in most need for education or pollution reduction?
~Annual crime reports. How many homicides, rapes, etc. were going on?
~Bring back the newspaper! I love how SC2000 had the "*city* Journal" pop up. I don't like the little news ticker on the bottom of SC4...plus, the headlines are often outdated. I would be told to build hospitals ONLY AFTER I place my first one down.

7.Miscellaneous
~A "skyline view" mode. I would love to see how my cities would appear as though I were a pedestrian strolling along downtown. Just a horizontal panorama would suffice, so as to not have such a high lagging problem.
~In the budget menu, you should be able to manipulate INDIVIDUAL building funding. I can't tell you how tedious it is to have to query every single school every month, because a new building went up and so forth. Automatic funding would have my utmost approval as well, so the schools and hospitals would automatically just lift the funds in increments everytime a capacity was met.
~Default hospital should have less patients per radii. The large medical center really doesn't cover that wide a radius and it takes no time for it to go over capacity. I think an average life-scale city (about 5 times larger than the largest map in SC4) has only 8-10 hostpicals. I would be FORCED to build many in large maps, even in my richest cities.

Thank you for reading. I hope my ideas at least help your ideas or you can understand what I am saying. :)

What do you think the graphics will be like?

Furiine
Very good ideas, all of them are exelent :okay:
I like your idea about history, it would be very interesting to watch a city grow from 1300 A.D till nowadays or further.

A "skyline view" mode. I would love to see how my cities would appear as though I were a pedestrian strolling along downtown

This is something a lot of people want to see in the game, EA should really take more of what the people say instead of of working allways on their fancy graphics.
EA games allways have some outstanding graphics but the game's content is not very rich and makes gamers to get boring in a very short time.

Furiine, is this more of a request thread than what you really think? :laugh: Seriously, those are all very good ideas. I like the idea of the curved roads and one-way highways, which is similar to the "Interchange Tool" I have been wishing for. Well, those would all be nice, and then my City Journals at ST would be unbelievable!

I really like the idea of starting in the early years. Thats a great idea, I never would of thought of that! :)

When do any of you think it's coming out, 2005, 2006? (I hope not 2006, because I'm always exited to hear about new games coming out. :clown:

How far to the future would you like it go? I find that it would be cool to go to how far you can like in Sim City 2000! :)

I really like the idea of the disasters that you think would be there. I reall like using the floods, ETC. :D

Thanks for the comments guys.:) I think Sim City 5 will sort of, hopefully, be like my requests and everyone else's ideas. You see tons of forums out there with many Sim City 5 ideas from many gamers and I think Maxis really does get down to the core of their fans to see what they want. And in turn, they may try to take the ideas to heart to make a game that would be based on what we all want to see.

I bet you EA is working on Sim City 5 plans right now and are most likely looking through Sim City fan sites to get ideas. Sim City 4 was both a huge step forward and a step backward. They should take what they introduced in SC4 and 3000 and go back to old ideas that were left behind in 2000 (like the futuristic and historic buildings.) Pre-made cities...that is another thing I really wish they added in Sim City . Yeah, I guess towns of 12,000 people qualify, but that's not really a good model compared to a full grown city to give new gamers ideas.

Yeah, it could sort of be like the old Streets of SimCity

Buildings and cities should be in 3D completely...

the fact that the Building Architect Tool is actually a 3d engine but makes a 2d graphic of the buildings is dull: create a wonderfull fast engine and make SC5 3d!

then besides that there should also be the possibility for users to create and really set all the parameters and values for that buildings they make:

AND share them in a even better building exchange then there is now. (buildings could be rated so good they instantaneously appear in a user's city when he switched on the " auto-update-exchange " in his copy of SC5).

Yeah, it could sort of be like the old Streets of SimCity



That would be sweet. :)

SimCity 5 must include the following transport options:

Trams
Monorail
Ferries - already available in the new version of SimCity 4 I think..
Bus network that doesn't need bus stops which take up a whole tile!! Crikey!!
Roundabouts (British thing I know - but they do work!)

Also I want to be able to name everything!! Streets, districts, buildings, etc. Makes things more personal. :)

Way cool, I didn't even know there would be 5!

It better have an architect tool..........

When is the game coming out?

It sounds cool so far.....

Roundabouts are becoming trendy in Idaho.

We've got round-abouts in Australia. Some country towns don't even have any traffic lights, just round-abouts.

Monorail and Ferries are both available with the Rush Hour Expansion.

But I think you should be able to connect you ground level rail to Elevated and subway. I find it stupid that you can only connect Subway and Elevated rail.

I think they should also give you the option of putting a highway underground, in a tunnel. I hate having my cities 'divided' by a huge highway. They should just have possible limits on the density that can be built above so it's realistic, and then have exits from the tunnel that take up 2 tiles.

Another thing that would be cool is if we could walk through our city in a walkthrough.

I think it would be so cool if the city you had could Host:
-The olympics
-The Workd Cup (Soccer)
or other things... that would be really cool though almost impossible -_-...
but hey, dare to dream right

Oh ahhaha! I forgot... I feel guilty because I barely bought simcity 4, yes I knoe I have been missing out, but I am keeping my dreamcast alive alright!..., but I am still playing sim city 3k... I'll submit my latest city with pix and stuff... hgope you guys like it.

Yeah.
I like the idea of an historical city that grows in time.

I'd build a medievel city and wall it.When the industrial revolution arrives I'd make the whole area historical so all new developement would occur outside the walls.

That brings me to another point.The historical button should be a drag and click option.It would be a pain in the arse clicking every building

if you could get a massive car plant with thousands of jobs. of course this plant would take up many squares in the city and would have horrible traffic around it so you would have to plan and connect it up really well.

I think it would be so cool if the city you had could Host:
-The olympics
-The Workd Cup (Soccer)
or other things... that would be really cool though almost impossible -_-...
but hey, dare to dream right

Yeah, I totally agree. Aren't those things trademark or copyrighted though, Maxis would have to alter the names????
There should be scenarios like there was in SimCity 3000 Unlimited.
To predict what there'll be in SC5, take a look at teh differences between SC3000 & SC4. I think that this would give you a good idea. :cheers:

hey there---i have 3 ideas ----

they are rushed sorry

1--disasters,have tidle waves,upgrade building destruction and fuk the ufo out

2--city,have a building artutect tool but have 1 that is easy to use

3--improve ya mam in bed mates but i mean th 1st 1

bye

Interchange Tool-------------i want it

I also think that some of the house of worships should look different.

I also think that some of the house of worships should look different.

You should be able to choose between a Church,Mosque,Pagan temple,Hindi and Buddist temples,etc......

So far, excellent ideas!

I am overflowing with new ideas, as well:

Let me break them down into sections starting with Infrastructure and Zoning.

1) General
All infrastructure should be placed not only on a 2-dimensional grid as is the case now, but on a 3-dimensional one. This means that, in addition to defining the location of something North, S, E or W, you also define it by elevation. So, as someone has already pointed out, highways can be underground or at ground-level or above ground level. I suggest a 4-level scheme. This would allow you, for instance, to setup your downtown as such: Ground Level are city streets, sub level 1 are power lines, sub level 2 are highways, sub level 3 are subways and sub level 4 are pipes. These are net set in stone, you decide where you want things. For example, a subway can emerge from sub level 3 to sub level 1 and then go 2 levels ABOVE ground.

2) Subway and other Rail
To begin, let's use the destinction of Local Transit and Long-Distance transit instead of Subway and Elevated rail and ground rail etc. As discussed above, a subway could start underground then move to ground level then the elevated. Similarly, as in NY, the main rail lines start out at ground level and then move underground. So, there should be one tool for local-rail and one tool for distance-rail. Also, no two stations are alike. They vary in size depending on demand and number of tracks. Therefore, I think instead of a station object, there should be a platform object. You build one station building, and add platforms and tracks to it. Furthermore, trains don't just randomly choose tracks. We should be able to design lines and routes and name them. Check out the New York subway map (http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/nyct/maps/submap.htm) . So how in Sim City? Start with the track tool and pick a level or sublevel. Lay your track and add platforms and stations at major intersections. Then select the Route tool. Click on a track, it becomes red. Want it to switch tracks and head downtown? then select an adjacent track that later heads into the city. Sim city adds a switch to the track and the line now follows that track. Trains will then follow that route, making stops whenever there is a platform connected with that track. Confused? OK, now you can add another line, that crosses UNDER your exsisting line. ALSO, you can make express and local lines, because trains only stop where there are platforms. Setup 4 tracks and the middle two are express, and only have platforms at major stops. Then you should be able to look at a transit map and see all your lines! Just like New York! Ha.. IM me at CMation201 on AIM if you are completely confused. I also think that what rail is elevated above ground level, you should be able to build directly on top of streets.

3) Busses, too, can have routes. Stops shouldn't take up an entire square, though. Instead, you select a part of a road and the bus stop tool will add little shelters on the sidewalks there. Then you can use the "Bus Terminal" building for a larger station. Oh, which reminds me, if a local transit train is underground, the subway station should be like a bus stop and only make a stairway on the sidewalk, rather than an entire square.

4) Highways and Roads
Someone pointed out that highways in either directions can be quasi-independant. So instead of laying highway in both directions at the same time, lay lanes individually. Same with roads. A road can be 1,2,3,4 lanes in either direction then. On ramps should then be nothing more than roads that merge onto Highways. Here: Lay a road (i.e. Main st.) at ground level that crosses under a highway at level +1. This highway is 2 lanes in each direction. Then lay another road that splits off Main st. and rises up to Level +1 and connects to the highway. Then you can add a lane to the highway at that point. Later, do the opposite, making that new lane an "exit only lane". Why? Because highways usually become congested when the go through big cities, but you don't always 4 lanes do you? Again IM me if I'm being unclear, or email me (CMation201@yahoo.de).

5) Power and Plumbing
You should consider laying power underground in cities. Also, what about a difference between Gas and Water pipes? Maybe that's just too rediculous, I dunno. I don't wanna go overboard.

6) Sea and Water
OK I suppose, with the exception of subs and flying boats (why not?) boats just stay at one level. But let us design or own ferry routes just as rail. Also, someone mentioned industry at sea, such as fishing. GREAT idea. Also, what about cruises... And I also liked older versions of sim city where seaports (and airports) were zones instead of objects. That way, you decide how large it is, and each seaport can be a little more unique.

7) Airports
Like I said, zone them. But maybe with the exception of terminals; setup 4 terminals in your zone for instance, and then you have a place to make subway stops or parking lots etc. Again probably too much detail... but just writing my thoughts down... forgive me

OK, so these were my thoughts on infrastructure. More to come on Zoning.

Love,
Clayton

OK, Zones.

1) General
As with infrastructure, zoning should occur on many levels as well. This means, as one person pointed out, a building can have shops, bedrooms AND offices. How? Click down to sub level 1. Zone parking here. Ground level, zone Commercial-Shopping. Level +1, zone residential. Level +2 or +3, zone Commercial-Financial. The result: a high-rise that provides parking underneath, shops facing the street, second story apartments and then offices above that.

2)This leads me to my next point; Commercial zoning distinctions.
As someone brought up, there ought to be a difference between Shopping commercial and Office commercial.

3) Parking
Yes, parking should be zoned as well I think. In any major city I think you'll find most parking is underground. In a smaller city, above ground in parking garages. In smaller towns, ground level. You should also be able to make a parking fare for the city, much like you would taxes for other zones. As the city grows, so does the demand for parking (which can now be represented on the graph with the other demanded zones). Another last minute thought is about on-street parking. I think you ought to be able to designate streets as parking or No-parking streets. Thoughts?

4) Whoever said marriculure or whatever you call fishing is a friekin genious.

5) City-type
What if there was an option to catagorize your city? This would mean identifying your city as a town vs. a metropolis. Why? I guess to separate types of zones. You probably wouldn't see a big apartment building in a small villiage, nor a house in a big city. I guess what that would entail is simply limiting how densly populated a city can get. In my home town, every house legally must have 1 acre of land. In most cities, you're lucky with a 2-room apartment. Not a big deal though, I don't think.

Now about the region play:

1) I think we should be able to draw our own regions, mapping city size and whatnot. For some computers, the large cities are too large. For others with big bucks, even the largest cities availible now are not realistically large enough. So we should draw our own borders.

2) It would also make sense if we had the "God" tools availble to us from the region view. So we could carve valleys and make mountains without having to go into each city.

3) Lastly, the borders should be able to bend and curve. For instance, a river could be a city's border. (which reminds me I forgot to mention curved roads, too, in my last post.)

You have some very interesting ideas in your reply.

Most of them are taken care of by all the modding going on right now in Simtropolis.

The one thing that I havent seen in a mod is your 4 level proposal.Very sensible and realistic in my opinion.A great idea.

I would really like to sink alot of my suburban rail and highways below the surface and above or below the subway.The idea is makes so much sense.Ive played a few Japanese city simulation games that allow you to build different trainlines on different levels all through the city.This particular game,titled A5,allowed 10 different levels with 4 underground and 6 above.Which is about the same intensity of Tokyo,the cloesest city in the world in appearence to Corrisant(the city in Star Wars)

SimCity 5 must include the following transport options:

Trams
Monorail
Ferries - already available in the new version of SimCity 4 I think..
Bus network that doesn't need bus stops which take up a whole tile!! Crikey!!
Roundabouts (British thing I know - but they do work!)

Also I want to be able to name everything!! Streets, districts, buildings, etc. Makes things more personal. :)


In SimCity 4 Rush Hour are Ferries indeed already available.
Monorail is also available in Rush Hour....... it is also possible to name streets.

It would be nice in SC 5 if you could just walk through all the streets and look up to the giant skyscrapers :rock: :rock: :rock: ! And it would be perfect if you could also entrance most of the buildings (like the Empire State Building observation deck, but I don't think it is possible)

I think that the early years would be great, but I would like it to go all the way to BC. Then you could make like the Spartan Army! :) You could also get invaded by the Persians. Ok, a bit too far, but it would be awsome! :cheers:

Creating cities from different periods of history is a good idea. Furthermore, the idea should expand not only backwards in time, but forward. Naturally, there must be limits to how far. With this in mind, cities would have the abilty to age, taking on new advances in design and building techniques. However, I don't think it should get too carried away; one should be able to choose the scope of time he wishes to employ when beginning a new region or city.

A little more about regions...
Give regions a little more geographic identity in the sense of bordering regions. You have the opertunity, then, to establish any number of regions as a nation. Next, name a capitol city. Depending on the game play so far, would it be unreasonable to assume an entirely new characteristic: International politics? So in Region (or Nation) mode, there is game play involved. You can make treaties or invent new deals with neighboring nations (either online or with a computer player) or something as drastic as an economic sanction or even war. In the case of war, you would be able to call on cities with military bases to deploy their troops.

Back-tracking a little, I read another suggestion about city borders that proposed a thoughtful consideration. When working in a city, you can see a few tiles (maybe no more than 5-10) into the neighboring cities. Instead of returning first to region or nation more, you can simply switch back and forth between neighboring cities.

The environment is another important issue. For instance, someone mentioned using lakes as resevoirs and obtaining a city's water through it. Great idea... then consider when a city is large, it consumes more of the water and the lake can be drained, causing other environmental problems. Polution should also travel from city to city perhaps.

Cheats:
I like them. While it is always fun to build a city without them, a "sandbox" mode would also be fun. Basically, a game in which income automatically is xx% higher than the year's expenses so you can't run out. Additionally, demand for zoning is alway at a peak, so, whatever zones you place, construction will immediately take place. I just think sometimes it's fun to build a huge city without having to spend ages on it. Just for fun. Am I alone in thinking this?

Another quick commont on roads:
I also read somewhere the suggestion for Turn-Only lanes. Great! Also for Road/Rail possibilities for instance street-cars. Maybe that doesn't need to be a new tile, but instead, when you place "subway/local rail" over a street or visa versa, it assumes a combination scheme. Germany has a lot of this type of transit, much similar to Boston or Philly and San fran systems.

More later!

Given the suggestion for incorporating international politics into Sim City, What about local politics? This might be more realistic.

First step, bring back newspapers. Then, SimCity.com can offer public Nations and Public cities. These are already somewhat developed cities, but with one difference: They don't have a fixed Mayer. So every ____ amount of time, a city has a realection. Registered users can enter the election by presenting work they've done on other cities. For intstance, in your own cities, the game will automatically make a report of your job as mayor, like your approval rating over time, the number of trade deals, the quiality of the economy, the poverty level, etc. This can then be submitted to the campaign city and a candidate can be elected. This idea is very primitive and needs refining, but I think it is something worth considering.

Cheers!

The Politics would be a great idea. I also think that you should know who's famous in your city or not. Also it should say who's President for several things.

-roads, tunnels and bridges can be built in any angle.
-buildings can be in any shape but not in squares
-airports and ports are in zoned areas.
-should add theme parks (in zoned areas too)
-etc

i want the transportation netowrk to be on a x,y,z scale [3d] so we can make better interchanges unlike the current system x,y [2d]

I never liked the zoned airports. And that would be stupid if suddenly a theme park popped up in the middle of commercial offices. If there was a seperate zone for theme parks, I would like that.

These are all nice ideas for the next game. I have a few of my own, and I'd like to outline them here.

~ Realistic Utilities
Once I was on a trip across the Western Seaboard on the U.S., and while I was in southern California, I was on a small highway going to Los Angeles. I knew where the City gets it's power from, so I wasn't mystified at the sight I saw. I drove right under five highways of Massive Powerline Towers.

Later, thinking about those, I came up with the idea that Sim City should have Things like these. Power lines can carry up to a certain current. Higher class lines should be used for more power supply from a distant source. The same should work for water as well, while maybe without larger pipes, I think the Number of pipes can suffice.

~ Get down into the City
Like Grand Theft Auto III, and Vice City (perhaps without the violence), Sim City should have a Sim Mode, where you can be a sim. You can get in cars and drive, or simply walk around. Entering buildings would be left to debate, however doubtful.

As long as you have a radio station in your city, you should be able to customize your own playlist to listen to while in the car, and maybe even a way to port Internet Radio from the net to be played this way. :) Say, from msn.com or yahoo.com or some place.

I'd go over more ideas, but I'm out of time. I'll post again with some more commentary later.

~Ænru

I don't know if it was already fixed with a SC4 patch or with the Rush Hour Expansion, but I have problems to select buildings which hide themselves behind bigger buildings and I don't want to turn the map. So a button to show hidden buildings would be nice.

bus stops should return and roads should be able to be made wider.

there are bus stops already!

I like the idea of having a river or lake as a border- more realistic. That way u could have industry across the river from a populated area w/out having the negative effects of pollution.

I've been doing mutli-level cities for awhile now. I don't like having rail or highways goin thru most of my cities so when I begin I make the city "stepped" (kinda like a wide pyramid) and run them 1st so that the majority is underground w/just enough above ground to make a few stations. It takes some time and can look kinda fake if u don't blend the tunnel entrances to the surroundings but it's worth it to spend some time on it. The same method is good for streets too- that way u have an unobstructed route from one side of the city to the other instead of numerous intersections w/other roads that increase commute time.

One question- does anybody know if u can rotate the region view?

I have an idea: how about the option to build ON OTHER PLANETS!!! That would be really neat. Although that would only be available if you choose a start year beyond 2050 or something.

Also, here's another good idea: make sc5 LESS demanding on your computer and graphics card than sc4 is. I have a relatively fast computer, but after less than one day, the computer says that it's already "out of virtual memory." I'm rather sick of not being able to properly destroy a good metro.

I once placed a Chicago building in one of my towns, then dropped a tornado on it. It actually stood through it! I tried the ufo attack. Yep, still stood! The zoom also should be able to zoom out even farther, maybe up to, say, "Planet View?"

Of course, I like the idea of bringing back the cheats... :runaway:

(PS, I like the smilies here, but what exactly does "tiasd" :tiasd: mean?)

Other planets is a great idea! Good thinking, person who thought that! Also a good idea is the Ability to zoom in or out (maybe all the way to planet view as suggested) in Region Mode and also be able to pivot the view. That way you'd also be able to see regions next to yours, that can be governed by either the computer, youself, or another internet player.

The whole concept of introducing history and future into the game made me think of something as well: No matter how encompassing the time-scale is, different types of road and highway should always be available. By this I mean, what about making a cobblestone road in the center of a city. Or a dirt road in a small town, or concrete or asphalt.. And sidewalks as well could use more than one material.

Another idea! The sim mode was a great idea but what about taking it one step further. Market a 3-game package that includes Sim City Infinity, The Sims 3, and Sim Tower Revived!! I know Sim Tower has been somewhat dormant recently, but a new version would allow you to, in one game, construct an entire building from ground up. Then, in Sim City, you could import the towers. Then you would import your sims. Since you designed the tower as well, you could choose which floor the Sim lives on and actually view the inside of the building. What's more, you shouldn't have to close one game to open the other. They should all somehow share one similar interface, and be incorporated together.

Oh and someone else mentioned pedestrian only roads. Good idea. Perhaps there could just be a sidewalk tool. You could either build sidewalks next to your roads, or build them elsewhere and in whatever size you want.

As far as cheats go, sometimes they really are great. I suggest a cheat or even a MODE readily availible in which the following occurs:
*Peak-Level RCI at all times
*Automatically balanced budget
*Free capital construction
Why? Cause sometimes you just wanna build an awesome city and design it really well and bask in its glory. Other times you wanna actually play the game. I've seen other games that call this "sandbox mode". I think it would be fun and allow more people to build cool cities to their exact specifications in a much more managable period of time. For those of us in the real world, it's often impossible to devote as much time to building a city as would be necessary.

So those are my most recent thoughts...
Bis später von Deutschland, Tschüß!

I like traffic, loads of it! hundreds of cars who don't disappear at the corner!
Traffic jams and realistic accidents with more jams. I also like better passenger and highspeed trains. Big railwaystations to wich you have to connect your lines instead of leading them along the station.
And of course trams! Many trams. I'd like to decide the color and the sort of tram myself (older or newer models)

That would be cool!

ooh, and maybe some cyclers with cyclingpaths! :)

How about, "Airplane View?" You can see your city from a passenger window just behind the wing as the plane flies around and takes off or lands, OR you could take over the jet plane and *ahem* smash it into your own buildings! But THAT would be up to the game's creators... :runaway:

3d

undefined I found something shocking and i'd like to tell everyone.... I think that they should let u put the elevated rails over the roads caus there r lots of big citys that have that done to them like Chicago or New York. secondly for sim city 5 they should make this ginormas online game with all the sim products in it like... for example: the ppl that have sim city 5 manage the city and other ppl that have the Sims have to find a home in one of these citys and make a living in it according to all the setting the mayor of sim city 5 has made like the tax amount the amount of jobs and the only way the zones can develop r when A SIM in ''the sims'' decides they want to live in that city and buy the house or land there. They could also have the ppl that own roller coaster sim make the theam parks in the city. They could make this more in depth too like have 5 ppl manage the city, one is the boss of bosses witch is the mayor another person could be in charge of education and health funding another the city planner, a financial planner or advisor, a transportation planner or adviser, enviorment planner or advisor. So pretty much all the stuff u have in sim city 4 but with real ppl and onlin all around the world to form the biggest and greatest game EVER!!!

Get down into the City
Like Grand Theft Auto III, and Vice City (perhaps without the violence), Sim City should have a Sim Mode, where you can be a sim. You can get in cars and drive, or simply walk around. Entering buildings would be left to debate, however doubtful.



That's what SimCity 3000 was going to be like actually. I have a magazine with screenshots of it. I should scan them if I can find them. :)

Sim City 5, something I've been waiting to hear something about.
I have some suggestions for Sim City 5.
1. Better advisors: In the original Sim City on the PC, you had your advisors actually talk to you on the screen, or a movie would pop up and tell you about something, if the utilities director wanted to complain about no power, they would pop up and yell at you. If a disaster was about to happen, a special news report would pop up. So it would be interesting if you had the advisors actually tell you some things, not everything, but the very important things. So if a disaster happened, let's say a tornado, you would get a special report before the tornado, maybe saying that a tornado has been sighted in the area, and telling people to get indoors, and afterwords, telling about the disaster, maybe a very diversionary thing such as "less than $100 in damage", or "more than $10,000 in damage". And if a power plant is overloading, the utilities advisor would come up while people are running around in the background.
2. Disasters: I agree with the idea of more disasters, it would be a good thing to add. But also to add a bit of information, bring back the emergency warning siren. But also bring back some disasters like:
Hurricane, Flood, etc.
But it would be a good idea to have a delayed effect for the disasters, have some warning time before hand, and also have lasting after effects, so people won't just "magically" go back to normal, but there will be damage and such for months or years.. So for example, a hurricane would bring up someone or something telling you that you're under a Hurricane Watch or Warning. And then before the storm, the commercial traffic will go up alot, and people will clear off the streets a bit before the storm. Also, make it so you can sound the siren a bit before the disaster, so if it declared a watch or warning, you can sound the siren.
3. Time: Slow things down, have the slowest option move hour by hour, while the fastest can move month by month.
Also, don't just magically build a police station, mayor's office, etc. have them constructed over periods of time, and have a building be set for demolishing instead of just blowing it up.
4. Money: Budgeting was a bit harsh in Sim City 4, maybe they should change the budgeting to a bit easier format.
5. Weather: Have weather effects happen once in a while. It would rain one day, or be overcast the other day. During a Hurricane, it would be very rainy with lots of wind. Make the rain a necessary part, without it, the lake in the center of your city would dry up, or there might be a water shortage.
6. Damage and debris. Instead of the 3 building states: Normal, abandoned, and destroyed. Have a bit of damage, after a hurricane, have the building's roof ripped off. Also, don't make the destroyed buildings in the residential, commercial, and industrial building sectors up to the people who live there, if it doesn't belong to the city, it should automatically rebuild itself.
7. Transportation: I agree with the "more roads" idea. But instead of the accidents just clearing up, have the car accidents really affect traffic for that area, if someone smashes into another car on the highway, have a police car there, and close a few lanes. Also, it should be made that roads decay over time no matter how high the funding is, so you have to close a road, and have a crew repave it. Also, if the user decides to close a road, he/she can set up a detour route to help the computer with the cars.
8. Special events: Have the parties, parades, etc. in the control of the mayor. Not entirely, have the normal parades etc., but have it so the mayor can select to throw a party at his/her house, or close a road for a parade.
9. Connection to The Sims 2: Have an option that allows you to upload a neighborhood from The Sims 2 for your city, as a residential section, but still a "place-in" building, the same as a fire department or something.
10. Emergency response: The fire department should automatically send a truck to a location within it's range, along with police. Also, bring back the National Guard. Also, improve the AI on the fire plane, it had some problems. (it crashed and never came back again)
11. Emergency evacuations: When it comes to the attention of the mayor that an emergency situation may occur, the mayor should be able to order evacuations for areas, turning all roads in that area into one way away from the evacuation area, in the direction that is decided by the mayor. These situations would increase the mayor rating, and also decrease the cost for repairs, along with the loss of life.
12. Power probems: Eventually, every city has power problems, but instead of just having everyone complaining about "you need new power plants", for a certain amount of time after a natural disaster, the lines should be damaged and require fixing by the utilities director, and you should have some time after the disaster to restore power without a negative effect to the city's population or rating.
13. Post-disaster: After a disaster, have extra police going around, maybe have some white tents set up at the airport, or at the fairground, or a farm, or if nothing else, just in some large field.

Well, that's the end of this one.

Seen the intervals of recent Sim City editions. I think Sim City 5 is due for late 2006 early 2007.

ye man.

if u could walk around like in GTA Vice city it would be cool..

walk around in your own city.. HELL THAT WOULD BE GREAT!!!!

aplz : PLEASE SCAN 'EM :)

SimCity 5 must include the following transport options:

Trams
Monorail
Ferries - already available in the new version of SimCity 4 I think..
Bus network that doesn't need bus stops which take up a whole tile!! Crikey!!
Roundabouts (British thing I know - but they do work!)

Also I want to be able to name everything!! Streets, districts, buildings, etc. Makes things more personal. :)

SO IT WAS THE BRITISH THAT INVENTED ROUNDABOUTS HEY!..............Just kidding!

I think in Sim City 5 you should have more choice in architecture!! It's way to American! Nothing against america, but in the suburbs I build in the current version I want to have the average modern home that sits on 1/4 acre blocks like in suburban Australia. We should be able to choose what architecture we want if we want to build a city like London we select 'British' or something like Sydney we select 'Australian' or maybe they should bring out a version suited to the nation it's sold in.

I also think it would be good if you could build and extend suburban shopping malls as demand increases in a particular area of you city.

Have more choice in type of parks such as grand entrances to new housing estates etc.

WHAT DOES EVERYONE ELSE THINK?

what i think would be cool for simcity5 is if they made expansion packs for it that were themed. like meidevil simcity, wildwest simcity, or moon colony simcity, etc.

oh and another thing---

for simdity 5 id like to see more customized trasportation. how about being able to choose your bus routes? or be able to build underground freeways, rail, etc. wherever you want without having to munipulate the terrain. and every dang building that isnt a single house should have employement. if you think about it someone works at the powerplants, bus stations, and watertreatment plants in real life. By the way, what ever happened to the desaltanization water pumps?

I would also like to seem them step up the A.I for sims and how they utilize mass transit. i could never get my sims to ride mass transit they way the should unless i deprived them of roads. once roads get conjested. sims should be smart enough to choose to take the train or subway as a better means for travel instead- especially in the inner-city, high density areas. (and whatever happened to the density map?).

and how about cities that arent perfect squares and rectagles, but are defined by physical boundries such as, mountains, rivers, lakes, etc.

and recreation should play a bigger role in the game to keep your sims happy. how about different types of museums (art museum, history museum, museums of flight, museums of sience, museums of llamas?), arcades, ski resorts, water sports, fairs, conserts, movies, etc. etc. and they should all give employement!

i too support the idea of curved roads!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they definitely need more realism in the game. i wouldnt mind a small sacrifice in graphics to do so. however, i have heard from maxis that they intend to simplify simcity 5 so that newbies who have never played a simcity game before can jump on and know how to play without being confused or having to take a long time to learn how to play.

Everyone so far has had many good ideas. How do I know? Because I've read all of them. Perhaps before posting a reply, everyone would follow suit and do the same. I only suggest that because so many ideas are simply being restated over and over; it seems to me a more constructive approach to add NEW ideas or to improve upon or suggest upon ideas that have already been made. I am not the only one to see my own suggustions come up almost identically in several other posts. I think many people have posted ideas that have gone unread and therefore this thread has become very repititious.

What's the problem with this? Quite simply, it's anti-productive. If the intention to post a reply was simply to revel in your own thoughtfulness and creativity, then I can think of several other media in which that would be more appropriate. This thread and others like it, however, have the potential to be a tool that Maxis can use to truely improve the game that all of us seem to be in love with. Let's try to have a little more cooporation in mind, and add to eachother's suggestions instead of copying them.

I'll begin: Themed expansion packs are a great idea. So, too is the architectural themes that someone else suggested. I would add that, with the next Sim City should come a program that allows the user to create his own architecture set (that is actually easy to use!) and also allow him to invent new region or planet types. I believe it is the intention of some downloadable programs to allow for new building design, but I still have no clue how it works. Furthermore, it does not have the capacity to add any buildings to a set, as I think the author of that suggestion was implying. Thoughts?

And I also wish, like in the Sims 2, or the original, you could construct your own building and make it as high as you want it to be. You can also construct plazas, gardens, and junk like that, just like in the Sims 2! And you could also choose what you want the building to be for. And, depending on your demand you could raise the amount of jobs or residents in a certain building. So if your demand is high, more residents or jobs will come, and boost your population. You can also make it as high as up to 150 stories... that would be awsome. And, you could also construct canals instead of having to download them. Oh, and something with the building construction, just to make it go faster, you could say like copy this story to be same as the next story, and you could also save it to use in different buildings. I wish you could do that. I've always wished that ever since I bought the original Sims right when it came out.

with themes any one remeber the fun they had importing them all in SC2000 ?

I Soooooooooooooooooooo hate it when you get a really nice skyscraper and then it turns black because they move out before they even move in.

I create a small little housing estate on the outskirts with houses built in court locations connected to a main road that then connects to an avenue, they are surrounded by parks and a coulpe of local shops at the main entrace to the estate, although, it has as much traffic as down town New York or something?????????? even with bus stops, subways and monorail.

The public multi leve car parks have been the most useless item I have built. Built next to a monorail station, bus stop and subway in suburbia, no one uses it???????

I just thought of this! That would be cool if it were like Civilization III games!

the car parks are useless, they never work for me.

I would like to see the natural resources of your city's region take an active and obvious part of the local economy. When you create your region, you can either choose natural resources or maybe it will be a random thing. For example, maybe your region has huge coal or iron ore reserves; therefore there will be a large demand for heavy, polluting industrial zones with lots of smokestakes. Maybe there could even be different factories for different industries.

In addtion, I would like there to be many, many types of agriculture which you could choose if you wanted, or could be random. So if wheat is grown in your region, then big silos might pop up by the port or railway stations. Or if vegetables are grown nearby then the cities would have canneries, etc. This would definetely enhance the game for me.

I have some great ideas!

first off, they should make it much easier to build on angle streets(or streets that don't travel directly north/south or east/west). I always hate having to zone on angle streets because the buildings don't face the road. I hate that. Also, it is hard for me to build a good downtown area. instead of having one large downtown area I have about 12 small groupings of skyscrapers and high rise condo buildings in my cities. Another thing that really annoys me is that you need to build proportionally way too much industry to satisfy the amount of residents you have. Sometimes in poorer cities almost half the map is industrial. I can't think of any city in the world besides maybe gary indiana that have the city is filled with industry. Instead of having the map covered with all these little factories that employ about 60 workers, there should be a couple of mega factories that employ several thousand. That would be much more realistic. Many small cities in the United States depend on one or two large factories where the majority of the citizens that live in that town work there. This would also get rid of pollution being almost the biggest problem one must deal with in the game. And further down the road (maybe Simcity 7 or 8) it would be cool to maybe have a light rail being able to go in between the freeway(something like what the "El" does in Chicago on the Dan Ryan Exp. and parts of the Kennedy). I think that sim city 4 is just too hard to build up a huge city. I also hate the fact that for the light rail stops, it has to be placed on a street that runs parallel to a street. This pretty much forces you to have to have your light rail line running next to a street which could be used for walk-ups or small business instead. What they should have done was to put the stops over busy sreets that intersect with the light rail line like what they do in real life. I find that I get to maybe 100 to 200 thousand people and my city just stops growing for as far as I can tell no apperant reason. Plus I think they should make the Freeways wider. I think they are too narrow in proportion to other things in the game. For example, the freeways are only 2 spaces wide, while a small little side street is one. This means that expressways are only twice as wide as small little side streets, when in reality they should be atleast four or five times wider. I also think it would be cool to be able to make freeways either 2 lanes or 3 or even up to maybe 6 or 8, depending on the volume of traffic that needs it. In simcity 4, I am often amazed at peoples low patience levels. I often click on a house and see where they are commuting to see that their place of work is only 2 blocks down the street and it says that their commute time is long. Other times they must commute across the city and it will only be at medium. I also hate when I see a housing Project being built in the back yard of a victorian mansion. I think in the previous simcity games they did a better job of keeping seperate rough neighborhoods with other wealthier neighborhoods. Thats part of the reason that simcity was so intreging to me. I could look around my city and each neighborhood had their own uniqness to them and different character. Some were working class areas and others were rich areas. Now in simcity 4 everything is kind of blended. And I can't figure out the crime thing either. I often click on a house and it will be high crime and next door it will be no crime???? In simcity 3000, they did a much better job on that as well. Plus it was much more realistic in a way that poorer areas had higher crime rates. In simcity 4, when I looked at my crime maps it looked as they crime was just places rabomly all over the city. And also I really can't see major affects of Police Stations. I also think if they must bring back the region thing, make it easier to blend cities more naturally. Often times I will find streight points in the corners of my individual cities. For someone who read the whole rule book and strategy guide, I have had a lot of problems getting what I wanted to get out of the previous simcity game.

I agree with the agriculure thing but keep in mind this game is about building huge metropilises and monster cities. If they are to improve the game they should concentrate the improvements on urban aspects of the game. Most people i talk to don't even bother with agriculure in the first place and find it to be a waste of time.

I like traffic, loads of it! hundreds of cars who don't disappear at the corner!
Traffic jams and realistic accidents with more jams. I also like better passenger and highspeed trains. Big railwaystations to wich you have to connect your lines instead of leading them along the station.
And of course trams! Many trams. I'd like to decide the color and the sort of tram myself (older or newer models)

That would be cool!

ooh, and maybe some cyclers with cyclingpaths! :)
This guy knows what hes talking about and really has his act together! The more realistic the better for me. I love it when I click on a train station and its getting 152% use. Unfortunatly most of my stops are hovering around 0 to 3%. I often sometimes even try to make traffic jams on my freeways and go out of my way to promote the use of rail and freeway.

heres to the people that want to build on other planets.
Simcity is not the game for you. This game is all about building huge cities(on earth).
The more realistic the better for me. If I wanted to play some sci-fi game I would go to the nearest wakl-mart and pick up a copy of half-life 2!

1 GTA like 3d city
2 Sandbox Mode
3 Enormous area
4 All Sims active
5 Organise and run public transport
6 Create your own missions and movies within city
7 Building Architecht includes internal architecture (stairs, furniture, etc.)
8 Become President of the wider state and country - control armies, declare wars
9 Many things interactive - you can watch and play in a sports game, go to the theatre, watch TV
10 Interactive media you can create and control

I didnt like that when i tried to make my city road grid North East to South West crossed with North West and South East, the roads all tried to intersect weirdly.

It would be good if the game wasnt so heavily based on the grid squares.. make it more like Age of Mythology where u could place things anywhere. You should be able to choose the rotation of ur road (say the first piece) and it would make then if u wanted to ontinue at that angle hold down on the selected piece and drag it out and it would all go at that direction.

# I love all your ideas on new transportation. Especially being able to creat tunnels for roads, highways etc. Instead of just being able to build them in to hills.
# Also in Som City 4 I had a lot of trouble with people not having jobs. It was way to hard to keep everyone employed. I think they should get rid of that. Instead just have a message telling you, that you need to create more jobs.
# I think you should be able to choose where you wont Expensive or Poor Areas!
# To be able to set building heights. So you can create CBD'd etc.
# Make better disasters. Floods would be awesome. And I like the idea of having storms, hurricanes and being able to REALY see the effects.
# Being able to have a city thats a huge commercial district, then in a city next to it have resedential, and another with industry. But they'd actually be able to survive, with good connection's though.

I think we all have great ideas. I wish EA should make a website for us to post all our ideas, then take in-some!

I also think you should be able to choose when you wont high-rise's.

That would be easy, but it is not fun. It's cheap. What would be cool if you could build your own building creating its size (How tall and wide,) buy the city's demand.

Being able to have more building sets and making your city look very poor and dirty which is quite hard on Sim City 4. New Disasters like bombing, waterspouts, Typhoon, more powerful earthquakes, floods (I miss them), air crash (must!), firestorm, oil ships leakages/sinking. Also you have a better choice for airports.

1) War Mode
-Industry booms
-option to "prepare your city" - guard towers, barracks, airfields etc.
-few years later.....a battle unfolds through your city, little troops and tanks roll through your streets, enemy bombers bomb your city.....depending on how prepare your city or how well you fight, the victor is decided.....and rebuild your city using the reparation money

2) Customisable Airports, instead of pay and plop

3) Customisable freeways, down to the lane details ... lol

4) Cheats, no. Sandbox mode, yes.

5) Research - another budget expense, depending on how much cash you have on hand, you could have the upper hand over other cities by having expressways in like the 1920's while others may wait till later....

6) Abandoned buildings in the middle of a prosperous area can be kinda annoying; and buildings that has just built and been abandonned in a few weeks :/

7) Less buggy/system intensive

8) Random Economic events.....higher/drop inflation, higher/drop interest rates

Countries, each big map like in SimCity 4 is a country, then you have a globe map which has all the countries/big maps". The mayor runs for president and commands all the cities...

OR

Play like Poleis, greek city states going to war with eachother hehe...

Great ideas, but the sucky part about that is that is when a war breaks out, chances are that your cities will be eliminated FIRST. And, one city can not possibly hope to win a war unless you are fighting another city, (Which rarely happens).

All great ideas but i dont know if any of it will happen because i remember Will Wright saying that he wants Sim City to get back to the basics of fun city building because he believes the series has backed itself into a corner and is getting so complex that there is only a select few who enjoy playing it.

I don't want any disasters, wars or negative stuff going on in any of my cities if I can help it. I wish there weren't even fires..... they just annoy me when I'm trying to do something else. I want it to be about building a city.... ideally a city free of those things that inhibit growth.
It took me a week to figure out all the details of the game but it isn't so complex that it can't be figured out. I hope they certainly wouldn't dumb-down the next version.

When EA talks about dumbing it down I hope they intend to do something about making it run well on the average computer. I have a fairly new computer and a good 128 video card and still it slows down noticeably once the city gets going. Really annoying having to wait so long for stuff. As far as the details go, I have to admit that the more detail the better but at the same time I don't want to get dragged away from whatever I'm planning to take care of some freeway expansion or firehall budget for example. Well, actually , the freeway expansion I kinda like the idea of but you get the picture I'm sure.
One thing for sure though, they have to do something about the ratios of residential to commercial and what not. I mean, I've never been to a city that was forty percent office towers and the rest a split between apartments and the occasional factory. Just not realistic that way. But whatever, anything that speeds up the play and is more reality based will be just fine with me.

just dreaming :D

http://img68.exs.cx/img68/2830/magmilesm0fy.jpg

http://img68.exs.cx/img68/2339/loopsm6zc.jpg

http://img68.exs.cx/img68/5548/beachsm7nt.jpg

You should be able to go to AD 0 to start and keep with the architecture of the time.

How about a new disaster: "Day After Tomorrow Superstorm!" :D

Simple. It would be real snowy for, say, 30 seconds, then the "eye" passes over and superfreezes everything, and there's 30 more seconds of snow.

Good idea, but in the next sim city they should not include animal related disarsters, like locusts or animal stampedes.

In the new Sim City, will be nice Rain/storms and Snow

Yeah, great idea, Victhor! I know you were just dreaming, but if I saw that in the game I think I would pass out.

In the new Sim City, will be nice Rain/storms and Snow
There could be a blizzard where the city's water goes frozen.

I love your thinking on the Skyline View. I have always thought that myself. I would love to be able to pick different points and angles in my city to see a skyline view. That would be too cool!

I think there should be an option to have the weather effect the city.

Like a snowstorm -- it rises upkeep significantly, and slows down traffic, causes accidents.

I also think there should be a nuclear bomb disaster... :runaway:

you should be able to create height restrictions in defrent areas of the city thast way it would be easy to chose were you want your CBD. Screw the commute times they suck and r really bugged not even the patch fixes them. I remember in my old city i saw a house that said Long commute and the person just WALKED RIGHT ACROSS THE ROAD! they complain too much bout comute sometimes and once u screw up ur commute then it really dosent fix what ever you do. No FIRES they r annoying and unrealistic. in real life the mayor of a city with 2million people dosent dispatch the fire crew. Instead of just budget hav like an Economy. Having a Good looking costal city could be good for tourism etc.

As mentioned before I would like to be able to tunnel avenues and freeways under certain parts of my city. Also as mentioned before better mass transit connections. Climates would be awesome. I have mountain cities a few regions from the beach region and it would be awesome to have snow capped mtns and the option for award attractions like building a campground, ski area or have white water rafting to affect the local economy. It would be nice to choose to travel from one city to another via any connections made IE rail or road. or hell even ferry. Also I hate that if I want a lake I have to use canyon to get the earth deep enough. Sim 3K I would do a lot of canals and its impossible to do that kind of terrain design with sim4k. Also it would be awesome to control the width of freeways with a construction option to widen if tiles are available from 3 to 4 or 8 lanes on one side, also to tie into mass transit park n rides and the option to build freeway with hov lanes. It would also be awesome like when you use the dropdown to select what type of street you want to choose a street with bike lanes... and when you query on a building when it shows transport stats it includes bikes :) also the choice for light rail on avenues...... aerial trams like the one in NYC. Do I sound like a needy bitch? Hells yea I want more!

Bombing from another city/region.

i only want to see the construction of the cores go up like in real life not the whole building raise

[QUOTE=Furiine]1.Wider angle of history
~cities grow with time; you start out in a select year (dating as far back as say 1300 AD)
~transportation and growth will relate to the year: horses will be the equivalent of cars up until the 1910s, boats will be the equivalent of planes until the 1940s when jets can arrive (will still be in use throughout)
~skyscrapers cannot appear until 1885 (unless you started your city/region sometime after that) 1885-1930 (neoclassic, beaux arts, neogothic, chicago school) 1931-1950 (art deco and less sophisticated form of modern architecture) 1951-1980 (the infamous boxy modern buildings...sometimes newer isn't always better!) 1981-future (sleeker modern, art deco revival/postmodern.)
~Highways arrive in the 1950s, subways in the 1920s

2.Climate, weather, and terrain
~wider variety of terrain options; I think a random region terrain thing would be awesome
~city growth and culture reflects climate (option to have a warm, mild, or cold climate)
~weather please....rain, snow, blazing heat waves, etc. would really add a nice touch Sim gamers have been waiting for

3.Disasters and other happenings on the streets
~Floods and hurricanes should return!
~Random disaster mode...some complain fires happen too often, but my complaint is that you never see random tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. popping...it can get boring in a too happy go lucky city :devil::clown:
~New ones! Chemical spills, blizzards, lead poisoning, plague, etc.
~Parades and conventions! I would like to see marathons, concerts, sports team pride, banners, and shows all over the city. Unlike SC3000, it would no longer have the auto-goto for the parade.

4.Transportation
~Good gravy, how about a "road sketch" mode so we can draw roads/streets that go beyond 90 and 45 degree angles? I need curved streets...
~One way highways. You've surely driven on one, but maybe never noticed. Highways often split off from it's other half and go wondering off. Skyways and junctions onto other highways would be other functions for the one-way highways. Say good-bye to always having to use cloverleafs and t-intersections.
~Traffic lights up the wazoo: cable strung, horizontal, whatever makes it look more like a city than the default metal bar.
~Cul-de-sacs! Ultimate suburban living!
~Make roads or highways how many lanes you want. I hate seeing when you can't fix a traffic problem by adding lanes.

5.Zoning, construction, buildings in general
~Really, there needs to be a mixed-use zoning option. Take the John Hancock Tower for instance: people live there, people work there. SC5 should include this type of zoning.
~Cranes should rise way the hell up in the sky. When I see the construction phase in SC4, I always find that the crane is often just the jib and is just above the building's roof. They should have the tower and rise well above it. Just a complaint about the graphics more than the gaming style...but it would be nice to make the switch.:rant:
~Another graphics complaint: have the buildings construct from the bottom to the top (I know we've all observed that the roof is built first.)
~Agriculture is cool, but how about mariculture? I think it would be nice to have fish farming as an option.
~Separate zoning for commerce: I would rather not have services and offices mixed up all the time.

6.Data/Graphs
~Abandonment chart. Baltimore and New York use a program called CitiStat which can point out where there are abandoned houses. Too often I have to look around for individual houses to get the skinny on neighborhood conditions.
~Industry chart. Yes, going back to Sim City 2000, the industry would be broken down on their production. ex.The graph would show if the city was manufacturing food, petroleum, automobiles, textiles, computers, steel, etc.
~A little Emporis/Skyscrapers thing to list the skyscrapers in your city, just for fun.
~Density/poverty charts. Which areas of the city are in most need for education or pollution reduction?
~Annual crime reports. How many homicides, rapes, etc. were going on?
~Bring back the newspaper! I love how SC2000 had the "*city* Journal" pop up. I don't like the little news ticker on the bottom of SC4...plus, the headlines are often outdated. I would be told to build hospitals ONLY AFTER I place my first one down.

7.Miscellaneous
~A "skyline view" mode. I would love to see how my cities would appear as though I were a pedestrian strolling along downtown. Just a horizontal panorama would suffice, so as to not have such a high lagging problem.
~In the budget menu, you should be able to manipulate INDIVIDUAL building funding. I can't tell you how tedious it is to have to query every single school every month, because a new building went up and so forth. Automatic funding would have my utmost approval as well, so the schools and hospitals would automatically just lift the funds in increments everytime a capacity was met.
~Default hospital should have less patients per radii. The large medical center really doesn't cover that wide a radius and it takes no time for it to go over capacity. I think an average life-scale city (about 5 times larger than the largest map in SC4) has only 8-10 hostpicals. I would be FORCED to build many in large maps, even in my richest cities.

Cemeteries should be a zone rather than an award.

I don't like some of those idea microphon had regarding city history. It's my city, and I'd like to be able to decide how it grows.

^ True.

The tree's on SC4 realy pissed me off. It was great how they grew, but annoying how after a few years the disapeared.

Buildings:
1. Height Restrictions, I wont to have high density burbs, but not huge towers. I dont wont a Sao Paulo.
2. Building Style. I wont to be able to have the ultra-modern comercial highrise's over there, there 20th century box's over there, and the 1930's New York style over there.
3. More options for each zone.
Commercial -
High rise Office, Service,'s Low Rise Office, Malls, Local Store, Tourism.
Industry -
Research Labs, Service's, High Tech, Dirty (Yuk!!), Medium.
Resedential -
High Rise, Flats, Medium Sized Apartment Blocks which are like joined.

Transportation:
1. More Types. Trams, High Speed Rail etc.
2. Commute time's piss me off. As long as you provide good transportation there should be no problem in getting to work. The sim's take the easy route.
3. Be able to encourage the sims to ride on mass transit systems. A residential tower block in one of my citys, the sim's there live right next door to a subway/rail station which connects to a huge subway, rail connection but choose to drive to the other side of the city, using the highly congested freeways, rather than using the transit which has a stop right next to the work.
4. Lanes. Choose how wide your roads, highways, avenues, rail are.
5. Tunnels were ever you wont, on to be able to create exits off them. I realy wont my highways to go under my CBD and have exits off it.

Diasters/Climate:
1. They need to introduce climates for the regions. I wont it to rain in my tropics region, snow in my tundra region, and be a mild season climate in my other region.
2. Floods, Tsunami's, Asteroids (that actually are more realistic, if one of though's asteroids hit my town there would be a lot more damage than a little crater), Storms, Cyclone's, Blizards etc.
3. Scrap the volcano and the machine (UFO and that space guy), realy tacky they are.

Economy: (Someone has already said this, they need to scrap the whole budget thing)
1. Tourism, be able to see the numbers, to be able to create a industry around it.
2. Real taxing, like land rates and all that crap.
3. To be able to see the regions economy, the region and city's are so seperate, they need to be with each other kinda thing.
4. If you have a high-tech, rich glam city next door, it should effect the citys around it.

Thats about it. But, GET RID OF ABANDOMENT. If a owner of a building wonts to move it doesnt go brown, it goes up for sale, and gets bought, eventually. Same with office blocks, I have to many of them, so most of them are 200-500 people understaffed, so what do they do? They turn brown. They should be able to get more employings. The area near the highway doesnt have enough jobs, why dont they come and work in the CBD. Does anyone know when EA will release Sim City 5? Please dont tell me there just going to make more expansion crap for SC4.

Oh, also please let there be something built under the highway. like roads, so that we can stack them above each other and also let there be zoning and development under highways, like medical centres, public toilets, bus stops etc.

i just don' want it to be on 4 cd's like Sim 2 i mean 2 discs for sim city 4 was too much for me and make it LESS of a systems hog!

lets think simtropolis... basically an expansion pack if you download the right stuff... i reckon its better than rush hour

i wont recite others... i hope... just something...

CLIMATES like tropical, desert, actic etc. and you get disarsters depending on that... like floods, droughts, blizzards

CULTURE induvidual object sets depending on country... personally i dont care what buildings houston had in 1990, i mean here on the gold coast we have unique buildings like japaneese buildings are diferent to new york and all that object sets that change everything not just RCI

+ I WANT AUSSIE SUPPORT i HATE driving on the wrong side of the road!!!

_______________________________________________________________

Aussie and Simtropolis (well i can try) ambasador

'+ I WANT AUSSIE SUPPORT i HATE driving on the wrong side of the road!!!'

I agree!! Im sick of that. And I might have already mentioned, more control over my city.

In the latest PC magazine they were talking about the new coming chips for PC's. They will now have dual chips, both with Hyperthreading. The Computers will also be 64 BIT. This will help Sim City 5 along quite nicely. It will really help Sim City 4! I can't wait...I never really saw a realease date but it will probably be early next year or at the earliest this coming fall.

Oh. Thought of a good one. As long as you have enough job's for your city, it doesnt matter if the job's are on one side of the city, and the people are on the other side! In a lot of my citys, the CBD has office tower's that are 50% empty, but in the suburbs, there are people with out jobs.

Like the sims will be more reasonable with commute times. Whenever I build a living quarters, and they have to pass like four small sized neighborhoods, they go CRAZY about it. They dont know what a route is for me to get to school. It takes me about 45 minutes to drive there. Its just hectic ya' know.

two words: 64-bit!!!
like what TarheelsCubs said, except the technology exists, just not real software support or general applications. i just got my 64-bit processor system running this weekend; sadly, i've got to run 32-bit OS because of a lack of drivers for the Windows 64 beta, and i don't have time to mess around with Linux. anyway, the game runs great. full on everything.

and if i ever get time, this new machine'll be great for BAT work.

-

I don't know about anyone else here, but I think that this whole impending combination of The Sims and SimCity franchises is going to ruin the whole pretense behind both games. Don't get me wrong, I love SimCity and The Sims was alright, but I think big-nosed Maxis is just doing what will get the most people to buy their game, therefore getting the most money they can. Think about it: they'll release a brand-new collaboration from "the people that brought you The Sims and SimCity" and it release as one game. As they see people buying it, they'll raise the price to $100. Instead of making $80 off of two games, they're making $100 off of one game. Don't believe me? Look three times at the American economic system and then tell me I'm wrong (see if you can figure out which three times).

BTW, I have a ton of great suggestions for SC5, but I have not yet compiled them yet. I'll get those in soon.

I think it would be so cool if the city you had could Host:
-The olympics
-The Workd Cup (Soccer)
or other things... that would be really cool though almost impossible -_-...
but hey, dare to dream right
You could host the World Cup in a Sim City 3 mission.

I don't like some of those idea microphon had regarding city history. It's my city, and I'd like to be able to decide how it grows.

yeah, several cities had subways before 1920.

-

I'd like to see slums or ilegal settlements in the outskirts of the cities , so you have to provide em with appropiate zoning or public housing and services
The farms should be automatic when you start a city .

Oh, a new thought. When some one doesnt have a job, they dont straight away pack up and leave the city. They become un-employed and look for work around the city. And the buildings dont instantly turn black, they go up for sale.

LYSD,

I'm gonna wait until the new Operating system comes out before I get a new PC (64 bit) (Longhorn) I know some athlons are already 64 bit. I really don't know how to build a PC, so I'm just gonna wait till I can buy one that already has everything. And if i wait, I will be able to take advantage of the dual chips! With 2 chips you will be able to run an endless amount of things without your PC slowing down. I only buy a new PC like every 4 years, but when I do, its always the best!

^ i seem to buy a new one every 2-3 years. and it's damned good, and a bargain. there's really nothing to building a PC...you just put the parts together, make it fit, plug in some cables and you're good to go.

-

they also need to make it to where all the buildings dont face the same direction!!! so there are diagonal buildings for DIAGONAL roads..

^ you know those buildings that are like, double buildings? those'd be cool.

-

Sim City 5? Damn! I've just ordered SimCity4.........

I was thinking how about having a map where as your city expands your city limits expand too, as your city grows you can incorperate existing smaller villages and towns to your city . That was you can have districts that have set purposes - such as a coastal village for tourism or small towns in mountain ranges so you can have ski resorts!

Another idea I had is stolen from a few other games. In SC4 we had farms, well what about oil wells - which when found then reduce costs to building oil based powerstations?
I also think that a research option would be good. This would give the player the option to choose the direction the city goes - its kinda like the existing budget screen - But better!

And I agree with a few others with the idea of underground highways etc.
And I hope I aint ripped anyones ideas off!

They should really pay more attention to tourism.
I mean I've got a beautiful city on my computer, it has beaches, landmarks, mountains, woods, islands, stadions and skyscrapers. In real it would be flooded with tourists. But you only see the flood of workers in your town, on the highways and on the airports. They really should pay attention to tourists and make the oppurtunity to build hotels and earn money to the tourists

Oooooo wow. I never would have thought of that. Kinda' like New Orleans. They are flooded with tourists during breaks.

'+ I WANT AUSSIE SUPPORT i HATE driving on the wrong side of the road!!!'

I agree!! Im sick of that. And I might have already mentioned, more control over my city.

You do realise there's a mod somewhere on SimTropolis that switches it for SC4?

I keep it the way it is because otherwise all the road signals are on the wrong side. lol. :bash:

And yup... tourism needs to be considered. I could so easily build the Gold Coast given the time (it is well suited to SC4's tendency to over-build once you reach a certain point), but you'd never get the horrendous traffic that is one of its trademarks...

I wish they would completely elimante the whole "Lick's Ice Cream" effect.

(You know, thats what they called it)

But when they said they elminated it, (before the release of SC4), Its even worse then ever! I get those red-roofed inn hotels, cloaging whole blocks at a time. Also, they need more diversity in the skyscrapers + buildings, I know they could do better.

ELIMINATE L.I.C. Effect! :)

Walk around in your city? like GTA? they'd have to start a new game, and you'd have to have the best computer ever for it to not lagg or even work. Thats a bit of overkill.

On a side note, its sad that many people on Simtropolis have to mod to make it better, when it should have been better in the first place!

Also

Transportation:

Subway & Bus stations shouldn't take up an entire 1x1 block. Its really annoying! They should be able to be on the side-walks, and allow buildings to be infront of it. (unlike the toll booths). Make parking meters, more income to the city. Rail Lines should be able to cross roads better. Roads should be able to go under bridges, and tunnels should work better. And the roads need to "curve" better, instead of assuming all the blocks are just perfect squares, everything at a right angle.

Region:

I hate doing god mode, to do the land+water, and have to go to another city to do so. Its a real pain in the butt, and it never turns out as you hope.

Architeture:

I love the BC idea, because SC5 would need more + better architecture. Also, bring back the billions of Landmarks from all over the world! (like in SC3). And have the option to make it to how every you grid your streets. (i.e. 4x4, 5x5, 6x6) but that would also depend on the landmark's size.

Police/Fire/School/etc:

They need to have a set of differnt buildings. I hate seeing the SAME police station, and the SAME fire station, and same school... its really ugly, and doesn't have any character. And I wish there was like a Main police station, and a Main city jail, instead of just the same thing over and over.

I love most of the ideas, there really what we all want, so EA + Maxis should listen! ;)

On simtropolis you can download bus stops on the side of the roads, also train stations which run along the side of the tracks. Simtropolis is the best, EA needs to look at the site, see the area's which are most downloaded and wonted and make that into there game!

I hated the auto-roads. Whenever I tried to zone a 6x6 square, it would always put in auto-roads so I had to zone 3x3 zones at a time. They should have an option to turn of auto-roads or an option where if possible, fill up the entire zone with out auto-roads or just eliminate them completely.

Wind, say if you built industrial areas up wind to your city, your city becomes smoggy and polluted, so people like it less, that way yopu have to think where the wind goes. of couse the wind will change very slightly every now and again, but theres a main point that it goes too...

I would like some angled placed tiles

I hated the auto-roads. Whenever I tried to zone a 6x6 square, it would always put in auto-roads so I had to zone 3x3 zones at a time. They should have an option to turn of auto-roads or an option where if possible, fill up the entire zone with out auto-roads or just eliminate them completely.
You can in Sim City 4 already, just hold down the 'Ctrl' key while you zone and it will lay a zone without adding roads automatically. :)

man! i never knew you could just hold ctrl and make it so you don't have those stupid annoying auto-roads! i'm gunna play it now that i know you can do that...... haha

You can in Sim City 4 already, just hold down the 'Ctrl' key while you zone and it will lay a zone without adding roads automatically. :)

:eek2: Thank you! You are my life-saver. I am forever in your debt! :master:

No worries. it pissed me off until I found this out too! The manual that comes with the game sucks!

1.Wider angle of history
~cities grow with time; you start out in a select year (dating as far back as say 1300 AD)
~transportation and growth will relate to the year: horses will be the equivalent of cars up until the 1910s, boats will be the equivalent of planes until the 1940s when jets can arrive (will still be in use throughout)
~skyscrapers cannot appear until 1885 (unless you started your city/region sometime after that) 1885-1930 (neoclassic, beaux arts, neogothic, chicago school) 1931-1950 (art deco and less sophisticated form of modern architecture) 1951-1980 (the infamous boxy modern buildings...sometimes newer isn't always better!) 1981-future (sleeker modern, art deco revival/postmodern.)
~Highways arrive in the 1950s, subways in the 1920s

2.Climate, weather, and terrain
~wider variety of terrain options; I think a random region terrain thing would be awesome
~city growth and culture reflects climate (option to have a warm, mild, or cold climate)
~weather please....rain, snow, blazing heat waves, etc. would really add a nice touch Sim gamers have been waiting for

3.Disasters and other happenings on the streets
~Floods and hurricanes should return!
~Random disaster mode...some complain fires happen too often, but my complaint is that you never see random tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. popping...it can get boring in a too happy go lucky city :devil::clown:
~New ones! Chemical spills, blizzards, lead poisoning, plague, etc.
~Parades and conventions! I would like to see marathons, concerts, sports team pride, banners, and shows all over the city. Unlike SC3000, it would no longer have the auto-goto for the parade.

4.Transportation
~Good gravy, how about a "road sketch" mode so we can draw roads/streets that go beyond 90 and 45 degree angles? I need curved streets...
~One way highways. You've surely driven on one, but maybe never noticed. Highways often split off from it's other half and go wondering off. Skyways and junctions onto other highways would be other functions for the one-way highways. Say good-bye to always having to use cloverleafs and t-intersections.
~Traffic lights up the wazoo: cable strung, horizontal, whatever makes it look more like a city than the default metal bar.
~Cul-de-sacs! Ultimate suburban living!

5.Zoning, construction, buildings in general
~Really, there needs to be a mixed-use zoning option. Take the John Hancock Tower for instance: people live there, people work there. SC5 should include this type of zoning.
~Cranes should rise way the hell up in the sky. When I see the construction phase in SC4, I always find that the crane is often just the jib and is just above the building's roof. They should have the tower and rise well above it. Just a complaint about the graphics more than the gaming style...but it would be nice to make the switch.:rant:
~Another graphics complaint: have the buildings construct from the bottom to the top (I know we've all observed that the roof is built first.)
~Agriculture is cool, but how about mariculture? I think it would be nice to have fish farming as an option.
~Separate zoning for commerce: I would rather not have services and offices mixed up all the time.

6.Data/Graphs
~Abandonment chart. Baltimore and New York use a program called CitiStat which can point out where there are abandoned houses. Too often I have to look around for individual houses to get the skinny on neighborhood conditions.
~Industry chart. Yes, going back to Sim City 2000, the industry would be broken down on their production. ex.The graph would show if the city was manufacturing food, petroleum, automobiles, textiles, computers, steel, etc.
~A little Emporis/Skyscrapers thing to list the skyscrapers in your city, just for fun.
~Density/poverty charts. Which areas of the city are in most need for education or pollution reduction?
~Annual crime reports. How many homicides, rapes, etc. were going on?
~Bring back the newspaper! I love how SC2000 had the "*city* Journal" pop up. I don't like the little news ticker on the bottom of SC4...plus, the headlines are often outdated. I would be told to build hospitals ONLY AFTER I place my first one down.

7.Miscellaneous
~A "skyline view" mode. I would love to see how my cities would appear as though I were a pedestrian strolling along downtown. Just a horizontal panorama would suffice, so as to not have such a high lagging problem.
~In the budget menu, you should be able to manipulate INDIVIDUAL building funding. I can't tell you how tedious it is to have to query every single school every month, because a new building went up and so forth. Automatic funding would have my utmost approval as well, so the schools and hospitals would automatically just lift the funds in increments everytime a capacity was met.
~Default hospital should have less patients per radii. The large medical center really doesn't cover that wide a radius and it takes no time for it to go over capacity. I think an average life-scale city (about 5 times larger than the largest map in SC4) has only 8-10 hostpicals. I would be FORCED to build many in large maps, even in my richest cities.
Thank you for reading. I hope my ideas at least help your ideas or you can understand what I am saying. :)

Great Ideas! I agree with u 100%!

Hey Im an english sim city fanatic :weirdo: having played sim city 2000, 3000, 4 and the rush hour expansion pack already and am eagerly waiting for sim city 5. :eek2:


:) My ideas are that i think you should use the world around you like using oil rigs and having pipelines through your city and tankers out at sea you could also make underground mines which you couldnt build over due to unstable ground.

:) Also you should have more natural features like tides if you have a coastal townand maybe be able to craft the scenery using weathering to craft cliffs and rock structures like those in the desert.

:) Also i feel the housing arrangments in sc 4 are strange as when theres a house te size of my shed 9 people live inside HOW DO YOU DO THAT?
there should also be alot more vareity in house building.

:) What happened to disaters :bash: over 2000 and 3000 you had flooding, air crashs and whirl pools and 4 nothing amazing or orignal so maxis how about tsunamis, landslides and terrorism as there are some evil dr greif wannabes out there.

:) Ive read all the emails in the forum up to date and have seen some excelent ideas from all members and these inspired me to think ahead and not only on sim city 4.

:cheers: Cant wait for e3 in 2 days time because ive got a specal feeling theres going to be an announcement about sc 5 after hearing romours :lurker:
here in the uk about an appearence at e3. :rock: :righton:

PS ON SIMCITY.COM YOU CAN DOWNLOAD LANDMARKS AND ALSO IF YOU GO ON SIMCITYSCAPE WHICH IS AN ONLINE PROGRAM ON WH=ICH YOU CANPUT ON YOUR OWN CITYS OR DOWNLOAD OTHER PEOPLES CITIES WHICH IS REALLY COOL YOU CAN ALSO GO ON SIM CITY EXCHANGE OF WHICH YOU CAN DOWNLOAD BUILDINGS WHICH OTHER PEOPLE HAVE DESIGNED:IE MOES TAVERN, AN PEDESTRAIN BRIDGE AND REAALY COOL RAILROAD STATIONS AND EVEN NEW BUILDINGS FOR RCI. iF YOU WANT AN CLASSIC AND OLD LOOKING CITY THEN LOOK AT VANDERAAP'S WORK AS HES PRATICLY GOT A WHOLE BUILDING SET. AT THE MOMENT IM TRYING TO PERSAUDE AND AUSSIE TO DESIGN A ROUNDABOUT FOR ME BUT SO FAR IVE FAILED.


Thanks for reaging
penguin
AKA Deppressed lonely teenaer.

I hope it will include the option to declare capitols, and better regional affect of airports and seaports, and bring back land height and depth measurements from sc3000 and I like the idea of active weather brought up earlier, and bridges connecting cities and diagonal bridges.

Continuing from my letter yesterday ive got bad news :badnews: I heard and read in the magazine gamesmaster from as year ago that saidthat ea and maxis have decided that they may not use all our quality ideas from all the forums and use the ideas they have thought up them selves.

:wallbash: This really annoys me as theyve got the buildings people have made themselves and all our ideas so why dont they use them.

I don't know about anyone else here, but I think that this whole impending combination of The Sims and SimCity franchises is going to ruin the whole pretense behind both games. Don't get me wrong, I love SimCity and The Sims was alright.

Mattsal is right as even though i dont like the sims i can see that the two franchise dont work so they should be separated completely as they are completely different games but on another point of view the the sims part of sc 4 did add a completely new element to the game but if you asscocaite them any more then you will ruin the game maxis if youre listening.

I think they should take everything they had from every sim city game and put it all in to 1.And add alot other new changes also.

screw it, if they mess up on SC5, we will just keep playin SC4 right?

Maxis was a good bunch before EA got involved...IMO.

Oh well maybe we can hope for another expansion soon.

Intresting thinking buffcity but i think sim city has improved alot graphic wise since ea have partnered with maxis so as long as they dont asscocaite the sims with sim city then all will be fine.

A great new idea ive had is about motorways (highways) you should be able to have barreirs not concrete walls for the sides and have an earth enbankment instad and also have motorway service stations. Very english i know but the english will definately agree with me

Bring on the uk edition like 3000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it would be nice to be able to buy expansions based on different countries...kinda like the sims system.

Continuing from my letter yesterday ive got bad news :badnews: I heard and read in the magazine gamesmaster from as year ago that saidthat ea and maxis have decided that they may not use all our quality ideas from all the forums and use the ideas they have thought up them selves.

:wallbash: This really annoys me as theyve got the buildings people have made themselves and all our ideas so why dont they use them.
Well, that really sticks in my craw! :mad:

screw it, if they mess up on SC5, we will just keep playin SC4 right?

Maxis was a good bunch before EA got involved...IMO.

Oh well maybe we can hope for another expansion soon.

nope I'm bored of SC4 already and its constraints. Frustrating. Bought SC3000 UK edition to try that out as some think its beter, but it doesn't work on XP Pro :(

THE ANSWER IS VERY SIMPLE - FULL3D ENVIRONMENT !!!

Ive got some great new ideas

:) How about having real places as your city like having new york and having to complete scenarios like saving the city from a bombing or flood.

:) You could have real maps of places and have all its geological features like in san fransisco you could be liable to earthquakes and so you need to build buildings or have an ordiance saying that you have to build earthquake resitant buildings.

:) You could also have signs on the roads saying traffic lights coming up or roadworks and traffic jams.

Those things on simtropolis are really cool so you can make your cities much more relistic with canals and more believable buildings and not boring train stations but proper ones which are all diffrent

whats the rumor about EA and Maxis wanting to go backwards with SC5 and not 3D like we all anticipate?

- street-trams

- curvy roads

- option for limiting buildings heights in an area

- street-trams

- curvy roads

- option for limiting buildings heights in an area


I like the last idea alot!

Get back those massive archologies.

Hi with simcity 5i think the disasters should be more realistic like terrorist bomb explosions. A nuclear power station explosion/ bomb which should also include a shock wave too. The asteroid attack in sc4 was missing the shock wave effect which can cause loads of damage. :weirdo: Also volcano should maybe create a ,massive cloud that blocks sun and if it lasts then all the plants could die due to no sun so all the parks are dead. :runaway:



Bridges should be more manageable like curving them or picking colours or choosing to cross a bridge over rail or dry land or between 2 mountains unlike sc4 which only allowed them over water.

Make city life more real like during 18th - 19th century all people are wanting to live in centre of city with it cramped and polluted too. Then in the late 20th and to now people want to move into subhurbs with more open areas and gardens/park.

Regarding history why not go further than 1300s ( i know american cities cant ) but you could go back alot further i know for example CHESTER where i live in the UK is over 2000 years old. We could have ruins under new buildings that get excavated and kept as tourist attractions. ( well its a thought).

I love the idea of curved roads and roundabouts as well as traffic lights. :cheers:

WHAT ABOUT not just having to lay pipes and power. What about gas pipes, telephone cables, tv cables and sewerage pipes. That could add loads to gameplay.

Have the ability to add not just roads but also pavements for seperate footpaths through parks or near sea etc also could have cycle routes i know that over here in the uk we have a national cycle path system that covers the country utilising our old rail lines.

NE WAY gotta go sorry to fill a big space but hey was very excited :)

I don't know about gas lines and stuff. I know its realistic but... I want to play the game and not waste my time with that stuff. Its a cool idea but it would be time consuming.

the ideas for SC5 are endless, I would like to see some more realism in it, but I guess Maxis and EA also have to think about marketability.

I honestly think there should be an option for choosing lots and determining the development that happens on that lot, kinda like have a pop-up box with hundreds of buildings, there could also be an auto option for selected zones that you would choose. In conjunction with my "no-repeated" buildings idea, SC5 would look very realistic.

i don't care what they do to it as long as they don't put it in 3D i think all 3D games look like absolute and utter crap they are not refined enough when you look at the 2D of sim city 4 its very detailed and interesting to zoom in and get a good look at everything but with 3D it doesn't look detailed or refined. i just think a game like this in 3D would be bad. games like C&C generals didn't look good most likely not a good example also i could be totally wrong about 3D and it would make 5 look like the most amazing game out there i don't know

hello my new idea for sim city 5 is that ea and maxis should use all the good ideas on simtopolis and sim city.com and maybe even ask people to use them surely theyve got the tech and sim city 5 could be done quickly and efficently and if under budget then pay the people who made them good money.

Where the hell is everyone??????????????????

i don't care what they do to it as long as they don't put it in 3D i think all 3D games look like absolute and utter crap they are not refined enough when you look at the 2D of sim city 4 its very detailed and interesting to zoom in and get a good look at everything but with 3D it doesn't look detailed or refined. i just think a game like this in 3D would be bad. games like C&C generals didn't look good most likely not a good example also i could be totally wrong about 3D and it would make 5 look like the most amazing game out there i don't know

Punctuation is your friend, chief.

lol, wow

i want to drive in my own city , just like GTA

Grand theft Auto
Streets of Victoria

I think they should make cross sections of the buildings. Nothing very complicated but still being able to look at all the floors of the building. That would be cool. Also the city age idea is cool. Starting at early 1800's or something and then into huge cities with mile high skyscrapers. I think that when you load a new city that the other surrounding ones don't disappear so its like your looking at a piece of rock floating in space. Sort of like in SC3 when you went to make business deals.

I just want it to not lag like hell so I can actually play it

sim city 5 will have scenarios in cities all around the world and you will be able to create an entire country

What about this? You know how the city tiles are only so big. Well no real city is in the form of a square. You should be able to select the shape and land area of you city, and then annex land.

another one, why are churches and cemetarys a reward? shouldn't that be like hospitals or something?

something else, there should be university zoning, because the universities don't have buildings like observertories or athletic facilities.

Last, there should be more pro sports rewards other than baseball and soccer.

they need to go more in depth with neighborhoods as well. Able to create track homes, sprawl, estates, gated communities, mansions. the same ol neighborhoods of SC4 are tiresome. Create the bel air's/ malibus, and the east la's. or the high rises rich folk, and the less expensive lofts. just a few ideas.

All spectacular ideas, and vote for maglevs, more involved politics, volcanoes that blow lava or ash clouds, nuclear weapons, and to get rid of the blue grid(you should be able to move around your regions and world with city selecting to focus on one in particular). But, are we asking for a lot. Of course we are, and if current trends in computing power continue or grow even more than all of these wishes will be possible if at least considered. And with the Internet 2 on the horizon(by 2015-20 some predict) using photonic technology, we will all be able to create a Simerse. Visit our own and others worlds and cities, live on them and in them and create a simverse that Will would be most proud of.

B 4sandybrownarial

I think simcity5 should have the option of going to war with different regions or even within the region. You would have to have military bases and put a certain amount of money into it but it would be very cool to have.

Someone mentioned it previously, but when I visited Boston about a month ago with a friend we were walking around, talking about SC4 and I said that the new SC should have underground highways!

I also like the idea of round-abouts. A lot of American cities use them, I know Pittsburgh has one...it's called the West End Circle. It's not the Brit way of doing it, it's the half-assed American way.

But I have a complain w/ EA and I'm wondering what others think.....

I hate the fact that every 3-4 years they come out with a brand new version of SC. Why can't they keep SC4 and just add expansion packs? They added Rush Hour (which I think should have just been included in the original SC4). But I don't get why they can't just expand the game??

They did expansion packs with The Sims and after several years they brought a new version out....but it was SEVERAL years in between the original Sims and Sims 2. With SC they never seem to keep one around long enough.

I'm not exactly sure how you could have seperate expansion packs for SC, but I'm sure it's possible.

My biggest beef is paying like a ton of money for the game and then having to toss it aside in a few years only to get the newer one.

(And I use a Mac, so I had to wait much longer for SC4 than you PC users did)

I think SC5 should have more industrial zone types; Farm, Low Med High Factory,Hightech. And that shacks should be in the game, if your city is poor.

-I want another "Streets of Sim City " for SC5
-I want SC3k's manstion zoning back
-More Transportation options
-Hight limits
-FIX TRAFFIC my god, make it so people actually use the freeway!
-Try and sell buildings before they are abandoned
-Make slums like in SC3K
-Have the industry graph to see what kind of goods ur city is producing like in SC2K
-Less CPU intensive (I have 3.6ghz with hyperthreading and a 256mb radeon9800pro and it can lag once in a great great while... but thats still unacceptable...i just got this computer a year ago)
-More SKYSCRAPERS! Stop the Lick's Ice Cream affect
-Cul-De-Sacks
-More variety in buildings like hospitals and schools
-More Architecture (tilesets like of like in sc2k)
-WEATHER... snow, rain, sleet etc being able to affect ur buildings
-Bring back Hurricane, Flood, Whirpool, Locust and have Blizzard and nuclear bomb and such like in sc2k and sc3k)
-more


- EA leaving Maxis ;)

There should be real poverty possible with mud houses and refugee shacks apearing next to the freeway (without zoning them). If you demolish them you will get a hell of crime. so its better to solve this problem with other methods like public housing, free education, police enforecemnt, and more employment possibilities.

Beside this the economic system should be much more sophisticated than in previous versions. Perhaps it should be possible to built youre cities in different countries. One very poor country where most new citizen are poor, uneducated farmers who stream into your city for a better live. Then a medium developd country and a rich first world country where people get attracted by natural scenery, good schools, high income jobs and public transportation.

Cultural differences should be more implemented as well. An arabian, western, african and asian tile set would be nice.

Beside this there should be different climate zones including arctic, temperate, desert and tropics. Then you can have season changes with rain- and dry season or snowy winters.

perhaps the game can be made much like the Sims...just have the initial copy, the main game and lets assume the North American version of the game, after that release expansion packs (like Rush Hour) for national versions of Europe, Asia and any other places where the market would demand location.

I would like to see more specific zoning, better night mode, faster on computers (which we all agree on) and my biggest gripe about SC4...the city tile sizes, I think we should be allowed to choose how big we want the tile and perhaps establish the city limits within that box (SC4 largest tile is actually only 2.78 x 2.78 miles, thats less than 9 square miles and most major cities are 40+ square miles.

There is alot, I hope that Maxis / EA will look on Simtropolis for ideas.

I'd like to see (besides most of the stuff you mentioned...and a little repeating):

-Bike/Walking Trail (trail + park space next to it in one tile)
-An option to design bus routes and frequencies so you can better spend your transit $ (perhaps could simply be a click and drag thing rather than wasting a tile on a bus stop)
-trenched highways (and tunnels)
-railroad bridges over highways and roads (or ways to create narrow elevated land)
-a better transportation modeling system...or an option to dedicate more CPU to a more accurate modeling system

I have just a few simple request

1. Get rid of disasters. How can you people think that is cool? First off they look so fake. And most important, who wants to deystroy their city after spending months if not years working on them? Whoever mentioned the war thing I hope to god they don't that. Sim City should be about building cities, thats all.

2. Have a better variety and greater number of buildings. Small and large. The big skyscrapers in sim city 4 are so lame. Then if you want to build a small city there are no buildings like fast food, subdivisions or Big box retail. Unless of course you download them. If Maxis waste time on disasters it will mean less variety of buildings.

3. Get rid of those stupid arrows when zoning. It drives me crazy! If you go in later to add subways or bus stations you almost always have arrows not pointing towards the road. Then that stupid car symbol is there.

4. Make it easy to connect highway to highway and region to region. I almost burst blood vessels trying to simply connect a highway. The stupid things never line up.

5. Back to the diasters thing. The more Maxis concentrates on disasters, the less the important things will end up in the game. Such as, variety of schools, Hospitals, Police stations, fishing Piers, Highways, buildings, parks, trees, plazas, cars, people, transportation, bridges, airports, mass transit, more rewards, Landmarks,water, terrain...you guys get the drift. Those are the important things. Not deystroying stuff. Or those stupid U drive it missions. God what a waste.

ergggggggggggg. :)

here ya go...

Have SC5 connect to the net via the game itself, so while playing the game you can look over the database of buildings on the net (STEX database for example) and add these buildings as you play instead of playing the plugin game.

This way when your city needs something and it is not already in the initial game load...boom, have the option to go online from the game and get lots right from there.

when is it going to come out? i wanna buy one :)

good idea :)

my largest city was 176,000 people, but i'm trying to go for a million

Have more kinds of Transit and mixed zoning. Bus stops shouldn't have to take up an acre. The commuting thing needs to be refined as well. I think the size for a small city is around 1.2 km x 1.2 km. I calculated that the most anyone will walk is less than a hundred metres which is ridiculous.
You should also have other ways of raising money like user fees and a sales tax.

I still think the idea of being able to invest money...like Bonds with an interest rate would be cool, so that 10 years from when you start the payments, once complete you can do a major project without going broke or having to use cheats.

Another idea is to have the game automatically line all buildings on the 45 degree angle streets and roads along that street, no at a half angle and leaving a triangle infront of every building.

i think that it would be better if you could make tunnels under other things...
like under rivers and if you have a two large cities and the mass transits are too crowded have them connect by a tunnel.

also the cars/ buildings should be stuff from now adays... it would make more sense

the zones should have some change.....make like Beverly Hill style homes..or slums..instead of having low/medium/high density zonging.

i dunno y the cars disaper? but that should be changed.

the city should have more things to do and more things that we see.. instead of seeing buildings that ive never heard of have stores like Abercrombie and Fitch ...and Wal-mart...and fast food///mcdonalds and burger king....

a few things are right, but in order to publish the game for retail, they would have to get permissions from all the companies it would want to use like McD's BK, A&F ect ect.

More Area!

thats true they would need buying rights
but for EA games..it would be easy and both of the corporations would benefit from the advertisement

id like to see the option of having the elevated line over streets and roads.and also as far as crime goes.id like to see certain areas with graffitti.and when you play the udriveit missions you should feel like your behind the wheel.also the game should have options where you need to maintain things such as streets and roads and subway lines.everything gets old.also they should have a seperate section for textures so you can decide what look you want for the neighborhood.such as different sidewalks and street and road textures.what would actually really be good is if Maxis had it so where if u zoom to a certain area of the city you would hear whats going on.atleast have some sirens going off or something to let you know things are happening.

When does SC5 come out

MORE STATS!

I wanna know my cities Crime Rate, Unemployement-rate, Medium Income, ecetc etc etc... all kinds of stats..

you should be able to make subway stations and bus stops on the footpath instead of having to knock tall buildings down just to put in a bus stop

you should be able to make subway stations and bus stops on the footpath instead of having to knock tall buildings down just to put in a bus stop, also you should be able to choose where rich and poor areas are and you need to be able to build slums

I want more local events, like asking the mayor if they want a city parade or things like that, host some national sports games, or even to host a funeral on the busy street :D and a serial killer is on the loose in a poor barrio of your city, "the grape harvest is bad this year"...

Well, i'l start with the hardware. Better hardware can make it possible for us to:

- Better physical simulation. For example, sandbeaches, will not need to be only textures in the future, but they could actually be grains of sand with physical attributes and characteristics.
Lets put the idea in a shooter game to make it more concrete. Lets say i shot at sand with my Magnum gun, a shot from the magnum gun may have twothousand "ITEMPOINTS", which means it can affect 2000 items (grain of sand) in a particular way, in this situation, to get thrown up in the air becouse of the impact. The computer choose twothousand grains of sand beginning exactly where the bullet hits and then away in a radius direction, until it has affected exactly twothousand grain of sand. The ones closest to the impact gets affected the most by the impact and gets thrown up highest in the air.
This was just an programming idea in how to make this work realisticly. We can push it one step further, now useable in a game like simcity (even the previous idea was, when people walk on the beach the sand can get affected by footsteps). The sand may get new attributes in contact with another mass, WATER! And create clay, making the sand darker and behave in a new way when being affected my for example impacts.
All this, ideas in how to make the world of the videogames, especially SC, more realistic in detail. This could be used for a lot of stuff, Buildings can be build up be a lot of polygons and act as a real building, if a car hits the building in one side, that side gets damaged!
Everything to increase the realism by just making more complex physics.
Wind can make sand get thrown upp on the nearby roads, a tornado may throw the sand several hundreds of meters upp in the air! Making a fog of sand lie down over the city. Sunbeams during the day makes us see further trough the water etc.

- Different temperatures, alsoo partly a part of the physics ideas, more hardware power makes it able for the computers to simulate temperatures. If its really hot during a week in the game, it starts to rain becouse of all the water evaporating during the hot time. Fabolous i say!

- More detailed simulation of the population in the citys. They dont got any parks to play in and are surrounded by 10 cheap fast food restaurants, well, the results? Half the neighbourhood gets fat!!! Which in turn gives your citizens bad health, giving your municipal hospitals more expense.
Sims should be able to take there car out of the garage when going to work, you should be able to zoom in and se them open the car door, getting in and driving to work (or anywhere they are going) leaving it in a garage nearby, or if there is not enough parking space, even worse, cars will gather outside the officebuildings stopping other traffic causing problems.
(i got more ideas, i will update this later, give me your ideas to, il appriciate any contribution to develope my ideas further)

- Relations between sims, the ultimate population simulation. The sims should be able to be friends or hate their neighbours. This should be affected by their MOOD. If they have a lot of parks, open areas, great traffic, everyone is happy and friends. But if they are no schools, no open areas to relax. Its over dude, the people will start fighting becouse they dont got anything to do, they will not have education so they will form gangs and paint graffiti on the structures.

- Better gfx, of course, the graphics will look better, not only becouse of the capability to make more detailed 3D-models and higher resolution textures, but also the way the world behaves, becouse of the great physics, will make citys look neat.

- The effectivness of schools etc. How much impact they make in the society. How much better will it get if you place a new school? Well, depends on where you place it in SC5, if i get what i want. If you got a RICH neoighbourhood, full of schools and open areas, and you build another school, not that much difference, maybe even the other, POOR side of the town will get angry becouse of this. The poor side doesnt got enough schools and open areas, its a hell of a mess. People have a tough time living there, they feel they are not a part of the community in the town. If you place the school there, it will have much more impact! Becouse there is need of improvement in the area.

- And if you want to introduce social allowance/supplementary benefit and a welfare system, that should also have great influence in making sure no one got it bad in the city. Of course, this requires higher taxes and expenses. If you have free, costless school/education a la Sweden then you will not end up having unsuccessfull prostitutes on the streets and criminals robbing stores. They will be able to get another chance for free in school.

- The possibility to turn on a, whats it called i English, hm, you know the squares that make up places to plopp things. Well the possibiity to click on a button and make them a lot smaller, the squares. This would create the possibility for more detail work, like plopping lampposts, palms and other tree's, recykling containers. This would make citys more unique, and you could prevent radical angle differences.

-The possibiity to plopp things on existing stuff. Like plopping a container in a park instead of having to change the whole base. This will alsoo ad to detail work.


NEXT, what is missing in SC4 RH:

- The ability to give money to repair damaged buildings!

- Zebra crossings/cross walks, and also pedestrian overpasses.

- Possibility to creat ponds and canals through the city where ferrys could go though.

AND, is there anything completely new that would make the SC experience better:

- Even more detail work. Like in the highway thread. Ability to choose the number of lanes on the highway. To make roundabouts and yeah, alsoo more detailed statistics about the trafic.

It would be really cool if there was hurricanes and tsunamis. Also, cities below sea level, so you can build levee's and what not. It would also be cool if you would place outdoor warning sirens, sounding them always brings out the better effect of the situation. Also, evacuation zones would be cool.

its funny how this thread brings in a hell of alot of new users. i suppose many people search for sc5 on google and there directed here?
welcome to the forum

I want more alternatives.

ex. I would rather put a rehabilitation center than a jail

ex. I would like better $ buildings. I hate it when your $$$ buildings get dirty when $$ or $ sims move in. I think that it is stereotypical to believe that $ people always live in dirty, ugly and rundown buildings.

ex. I would like more ordinances that help poorer sims aswell

No, better yet, I want the opportunity to erase class from simcity. Just because we live in a class society, it does not mean that we should force our sims to live in one aswell. :bash:


If this game really aims to give one the opportunity to plan the way our sims will live, I want the ability to have everyone be of the same class: sims. :)

I would like a terrain where Hotels can be build!from camping sides to Burj Al Arabs ;-)!!!

I don't think the ideals of Sim City are those shared in the socialist and communist circles of the world...it's kinda capitalist of a game, odd.....?!

The one thing I want is to be able to walk/drive around my cities at street level. You could walk into important buildings and ride your transit network around (subways/bus/rail/monorail/etc). Ideally, it will be part of the main game, instead of being an add-on.
Using this mode could also add some more reality to being mayor. Like if you decide to build a new museum, or a new library is opening, you should GO there to turn the sod/cut the ribbon. Doing this kind of thing (it would be optional) would also help keep your mayor rating up, kind of like an enhanced U-Drive-It mode.

Wouldnt it be cool if you could start the city and in and when you start like in 3000 you get to choose the type of terrain, the achitecter and in sim city 5 you could choose what type of town you want like: Market town, capital city, farm land or even a carravan town.

Where is everyone?

we're right here. :)

that walk/drive around the city at street level idea would be really cool. Great idea!

the game better just be faster and more realistic than SC4...nuff said.

^Ditto

the game better just be faster and more realistic than SC4...nuff said.

by realistic do u mean better graphics?

Something easier to create land where there is water, it costs me lots of time when I do it myself.

And NO MORE SIMILAR BUILDINGS.
Have you ever seen a city with 5 exactly the same scrapers? No, except from a row of some residential towers, I didn't. It doesnt look realistic and every city looks the same. SO I think that there must come a endless variety of buildings, NEVER MORE THAN 5 THE SAME BUILDINGS.
Exception for: residentials which are built next to each other.

click on uk.ea.com and contact the team's - ask them questions on it... when it will be done etc. or a little info on some features, if they've gotten to that stage!

I would, but im Mr. Lazy :(

And NO MORE SIMILAR BUILDINGS.
Have you ever seen a city with 5 exactly the same scrapers? No, except from a row of some residential towers, I didn't. It doesnt look realistic and every city looks the same. SO I think that there must come a endless variety of buildings, NEVER MORE THAN 5 THE SAME BUILDINGS.
Exception for: residentials which are built next to each other.

said this before, it's one of my biggest gripes with the game. I dunno if they could ever get the STEX type thing to plug into the game...or something.

click on uk.ea.com and contact the team's - ask them questions on it... when it will be done etc. or a little info on some features, if they've gotten to that stage!

I would, but im Mr. Lazy :(
I heard someone from somewhere say that it would come out late 06 or early 07. That's a long time, so I guess this thread is gonna go for longer. :eek2:

And a better AI, I hate it when my inhabitants always choose the shortest road to a destination, even when this road is traffic jammed and there is an alterniteve route just 1 block longer, Sims are so stupid people.

if there so stupid, make your city accessible to stupid people. :D

lol

It would be great if the next simcity is not that America-based. I always wanted a historical innercity in different styles like the Hausmann-style (Paris), de Herenhuizen (Amsterdam) or architecture like Barcelona.

Another idea: the possibility to build bigger forests in less time, it takes to long to build a really dense forest.

they should make multiple editions, so the game can be local no matter what region it's sold.

Forest,

Hold - SHFT ,CTRL, ALT and choose the god mode while playing your city...vs. Mayor mode or Sims mode.

pick the trees and have fun.

Sim City5 Building WorldWide:
The next simcity should have just liek forza said not taht american, But I want aslo to see deserts abd snow. And jungleforest. With eskimos and indians and nomads etc. etc.

Sim City5 Building WorldWide:
The next simcity should have just liek forza said not taht american, But I want aslo to see deserts abd snow. And jungleforest. With eskimos and indians and nomads etc. etc.

Man, you're typing is the worst I've ever seen, your english is well though;)
I agree with your ideas:)

"I don't think the ideals of Sim City are those shared in the socialist and communist circles of the world...it's kinda capitalist of a game, odd.....?!"

Well, you should be able to choice. Actually that gave me an idea so...


here once again my ideas, updated with more text:
__________________________________________________

Well, i'l start with the hardware. Better hardware can make it possible for us to:

- Better physical simulation. For example, sandbeaches, will not need to be only textures in the future, but they could actually be grains of sand with physical attributes and characteristics.
Lets put the idea in a shooter game to make it more concrete. Lets say i shot at sand with my Magnum gun, a shot from the magnum gun may have twothousand "ITEMPOINTS", which means it can affect 2000 items (grain of sand) in a particular way, in this situation, to get thrown up in the air becouse of the impact. The computer choose twothousand grains of sand beginning exactly where the bullet hits and then away in a radius direction, until it has affected exactly twothousand grain of sand. The ones closest to the impact gets affected the most by the impact and gets thrown up highest in the air.
This was just an programming idea in how to make this work realisticly. We can push it one step further, now useable in a game like simcity (even the previous idea was, when people walk on the beach the sand can get affected by footsteps). The sand may get new attributes in contact with another mass, WATER! And create clay, making the sand darker and behave in a new way when being affected my for example impacts.
All this, ideas in how to make the world of the videogames, especially SC, more realistic in detail. This could be used for a lot of stuff, Buildings can be build up be a lot of polygons and act as a real building, if a car hits the building in one side, that side gets damaged!
Everything to increase the realism by just making more complex physics.
Wind can make sand get thrown upp on the nearby roads, a tornado may throw the sand several hundreds of meters upp in the air! Making a fog of sand lie down over the city. Sunbeams during the day makes us see further trough the water etc.

- Different temperatures, also partly a part of the physics ideas, more hardware power makes it able for the computers to simulate temperatures. If its really hot during a week in the game, it starts to rain becouse of all the water evaporating during the hot time. Fabolous i say! Also, more sims should stay inside in different weatherconditions.

- More detailed simulation of the population in the citys. They dont got any parks to play in and are surrounded by 10 cheap fast food restaurants, well, the results? Half the neighbourhood gets fat!!! Which in turn gives your citizens bad health, giving your municipal hospitals more expense.
Sims should be able to take there car out of the garage when going to work, you should be able to zoom in and se them open the car door, getting in and driving to work (or anywhere they are going) leaving it in a garage nearby, or if there is not enough parking space, even worse, cars will gather outside the officebuildings stopping other traffic causing problems.
(i got more ideas, i will update this later, give me your ideas to, il appriciate any contribution to develope my ideas further)

- Relations between sims, the ultimate population simulation. The sims should be able to be friends or hate their neighbours. This should be affected by their MOOD. If they have a lot of parks, open areas, great traffic, everyone is happy and friends. But if they are no schools, no open areas to relax. Its over dude, the people will start fighting becouse they dont got anything to do, they will not have education so they will form gangs and paint graffiti on the structures.

- Better gfx, of course, the graphics will look better, not only becouse of the capability to make more detailed 3D-models and higher resolution textures, but also the way the world behaves, becouse of the great physics, will make citys look neat.

- The effectivness of schools etc. How much impact they make in the society. How much better will it get if you place a new school? Well, depends on where you place it in SC5, if i get what i want. If you got a RICH neoighbourhood, full of schools and open areas, and you build another school, not that much difference, maybe even the other, POOR side of the town will get angry becouse of this. The poor side doesnt got enough schools and open areas, its a hell of a mess. People have a tough time living there, they feel they are not a part of the community in the town. If you place the school there, it will have much more impact! Becouse there is need of improvement in the area.

- And if you want to introduce social allowance/supplementary benefit and a welfare system, that should also have great influence in making sure no one got it bad in the city. Of course, this requires higher taxes and expenses. If you have free, costless school/education a la Sweden then you will not end up having unsuccessfull prostitutes on the streets and criminals robbing stores. They will be able to get another chance for free in school.

- The possibility to turn on a, whats it called i English, hm, you know the squares that make up places to plopp things. Well the possibiity to click on a button and make them a lot smaller, the squares. This would create the possibility for more detail work, like plopping lampposts, palms and other tree's, recykling containers. This would make citys more unique, and you could prevent radical angle differences.

-The possibiity to plopp things on existing stuff. Like plopping a container in a park instead of having to change the whole base. This will alsoo ad to detail work.


NEXT, what is missing in SC4 RH:

- The ability to give money to repair damaged buildings!

- Zebra crossings/cross walks, and also pedestrian overpasses.

- Possibility to creat ponds and canals through the city where ferrys could go though.

AND, is there anything completely new that would make the SC experience better:

- Even more detail work. Like in the highway thread. Ability to choose the number of lanes on the highway. To make roundabouts and yeah, alsoo more detailed statistics about the trafic.

- A city is bound to the rules etc of a country. When you start a city. You should be able to choose what kind of country you're in, if it's very kapitalistic, communstic, liberalsocialistic or if you want it to be in a state of it's own (not neccesarely a country, think of Monaco). Furthermore, you should be able to choose if you want the state of the state (lol) to be able to change from one to another. Like getting a new government. You should if you choose that be able to follow elections every fourth year. Or if you wish you can make the condition constant (dictatorship or just so it doesnt change).
In the regionmap you should be able to see which country different parts of the region is a part of.
The state (if the city is not choosed to be a state of its own) can affect by giving extra money to the city for developement, raising funds for schools etc. But also, it puts tax on your citizens and demands on the city (and you as a mayor, if not followed might get fired).

- When playing in an onlineregion or as an own state, you should be able to sign Free trade agreements with other cities/regions/countries affecting how the market and economy developes. Also, you can boyott other cities/regions/countries. Sign other agreements etc. When playing online a lot of options should be available and important in the online gameplay.

- When playing online. Plugins should be able to be supported. Everyone should be able to start a region on maxis servers with plugins. The serverstarter should be able ad more plugins/BAT's later to the server. The plugins should also be in the server and when the regionstarter (founder) adds plugins, othe rplayers who sets up a city in the region or already have one automaticly can get em downloaded and installed so they can keep playing in the region with the same conditions.

- Be able to regulate what should be able to be developed. Like in an area you can regulate it to "Only hotel" in another, "only high tech industry". However this should give consequences. Especially if sims want to develope other businesses but they cant becouse of regulations, maybe they will protest or move out of the city (those particular sims, and other unhappy sims)

- Customisation of things you build! Like highways, not only should you be able to choose design and number of lanes. But also the traffic lights. For other things, you should be able to customize in other ways.

- Ability to sell/rent out municipal land to private companies/persons. This would create an income. When sold/rented, you could choose agreement options, like what they are allowed to do with it. Of course some things you cant regulate. Like what they should build there. But you can limit it to like, that they can build anything radioactive etc. This has it's negative consequences, and positive.

- Research, raise money for research if you ahve universities and such. After year 2010 in game, you should be able to research about hydrogen production.
Which as a result should create hydrogenproduction companies settle in the city, and petrol cars being replaced by environment friendly hydrogen cars! NO POLLUTION. Should be different types of hydrogen production companies/facilities, also such owned by city. One type could be nuclear-hydrogenproduction, another coal powered hydrogen production or solar energy powered hydrogen production. Having its advatages/disadvatages. And why not Fussion-hydrogen production, the ultimate solution. Also electrical cars and cars driven by compressed air.

- Filling stations for vechicles. The game should restrict it to like, one every XX Km, so that they dont build to many. Or maybe, they should have their own zooning option so you can choose where they should develope as mayor. They shouldnt be neccesary but improve certain traffic things i think.
__________

IDEAS YOU HAVE POSTED AND I AGREE WITH:

~Random disaster mode...some complain fires happen too often, but my complaint is that you never see random tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. popping...it can get boring in a too happy go lucky city

- I think you should be able to choose if you want random disasters when you start a game. Its great. And in online regions, the regioncreator should choose yes or no for the option. A region should be able to be more or less vulnerable for vulcano eruptions and earthquakes, or tornados etc. When creating a region you should be able to choose from a scale from 1 - 100 how likely it is for each TYPE OF DISASTER to happen, depending on how the nature looks. Preset regions should have it set.

~New ones! Chemical spills, blizzards, lead poisoning, plague, etc.

- I say, why not, however the likelyness of it happening should be affected by how the citie's condition looks like. Especially poisoning etc.

~Parades and conventions! I would like to see marathons, concerts, sports team pride, banners, and shows all over the city. Unlike SC3000, it would no longer have the auto-goto for the parade.

- For sure! I would like it to be able to be arranged by the mayor, or sims themselves! If sims want to arrange it, a proposal from the sim in question should arrive in the mayor (players) office in game. And you can accept it or prohibit it. It should have effect on sims mood and health.

~Good gravy, how about a "road sketch" mode so we can draw roads/streets that go beyond 90 and 45 degree angles? I need curved streets...

- Another great idea where we can make us of better hardware.

~Traffic lights up the wazoo: cable strung, horizontal, whatever makes it look more like a city than the default metal bar.

- Agree, read more in my ideas.

~Really, there needs to be a mixed-use zoning option. Take the John Hancock Tower for instance: people live there, people work there. SC5 should include this type of zoning.

- Sure but thats mostly for highrises, isnt it?

~Another graphics complaint: have the buildings construct from the bottom to the top (I know we've all observed that the roof is built first.)

- "minor" adjustment, big change ;).


I ADD TO THE IDEA

When BATing buildings, you should be able to choose core width and strucutre material (steel, concrete etc). This should make simcity 5 "know" how the construction should look like. Even more options could be added. Also, add visible workers to construction sites at least 12 hours a day.

~Agriculture is cool, but how about mariculture? I think it would be nice to have fish farming as an option.

- You can't possibly say no to the addition.

~Separate zoning for commerce: I would rather not have services and offices mixed up all the time.

- As i've said in my own ideas. You should be able to regulate zoning more in detail if you want, make regulations, but it shold have it's consequences.

~Abandonment chart. Baltimore and New York use a program called CitiStat which can point out where there are abandoned houses. Too often I have to look around for individual houses to get the skinny on neighborhood conditions.

- All ideas are good.

A "skyline view" mode. I would love to see how my cities would appear as though I were a pedestrian strolling along downtown. Just a horizontal panorama would suffice, so as to not have such a high lagging problem.

- Yes, why not be able to look around in 3D mode if you want to, at least in a "Photo mode". It can have its restrictions.


the fact that the Building Architect Tool is actually a 3d engine but makes a 2d graphic of the buildings is dull: create a wonderfull fast engine and make SC5 3d!

- Neccessary for many ideas here.

SimCity 5 must include the following transport options:

Trams
Monorail
Ferries - already available in the new version of SimCity 4 I think..
Bus network that doesn't need bus stops which take up a whole tile!! Crikey!!
QUOTE]

- Yes, trams for sure! Rails should be able to be built in on the asphalt, so you can put them on the road.


[QUOTE]1) General
All infrastructure should be placed not only on a 2-dimensional grid as is the case now, but on a 3-dimensional one. This means that, in addition to defining the location of something North, S, E or W, you also define it by elevation. So, as someone has already pointed out, highways can be underground or at ground-level or above ground level. I suggest a 4-level scheme. This would allow you, for instance, to setup your downtown as such: Ground Level are city streets, sub level 1 are power lines, sub level 2 are highways, sub level 3 are subways and sub level 4 are pipes. These are net set in stone, you decide where you want things. For example, a subway can emerge from sub level 3 to sub level 1 and then go 2 levels ABOVE ground.

- Awesome idea, ive also thought about that. Would give a lot of advantages and possibilities. One step closer to reality.

2) Subway and other Rail
To begin, let's use the destinction of Local Transit and Long-Distance transit instead of Subway and Elevated rail and ground rail etc. As discussed above, a subway could start underground then move to ground level then the elevated. Similarly, as in NY, the main rail lines start out at ground level and then move underground. So, there should be one tool for local-rail and one tool for distance-rail. Also, no two stations are alike. They vary in size depending on demand and number of tracks. Therefore, I think instead of a station object, there should be a platform object. You build one station building, and add platforms and tracks to it. Furthermore, trains don't just randomly choose tracks. We should be able to design lines and routes and name them. Check out the New York subway map . So how in Sim City? Start with the track tool and pick a level or sublevel. Lay your track and add platforms and stations at major intersections. Then select the Route tool. Click on a track, it becomes red. Want it to switch tracks and head downtown? then select an adjacent track that later heads into the city. Sim city adds a switch to the track and the line now follows that track. Trains will then follow that route, making stops whenever there is a platform connected with that track. Confused? OK, now you can add another line, that crosses UNDER your exsisting line. ALSO, you can make express and local lines, because trains only stop where there are platforms. Setup 4 tracks and the middle two are express, and only have platforms at major stops. Then you should be able to look at a transit map and see all your lines! Just like New York! Ha.. IM me at CMation201 on AIM if you are completely confused. I also think that what rail is elevated above ground level, you should be able to build directly on top of streets.

- Good idea, however, also it should be mentioned in the game the pollution in Subways, all metalparticles gathered in the close room, gets into the lungs. So it should be more pollutionfree and friendlier to sims to build trams.

3) Busses, too, can have routes. Stops shouldn't take up an entire square, though. Instead, you select a part of a road and the bus stop tool will add little shelters on the sidewalks there. Then you can use the "Bus Terminal" building for a larger station. Oh, which reminds me, if a local transit train is underground, the subway station should be like a bus stop and only make a stairway on the sidewalk, rather than an entire square.

- Sound like busstations could be a part of my "detail work" idea :) .

1) General
As with infrastructure, zoning should occur on many levels as well. This means, as one person pointed out, a building can have shops, bedrooms AND offices. How? Click down to sub level 1. Zone parking here. Ground level, zone Commercial-Shopping. Level +1, zone residential. Level +2 or +3, zone Commercial-Financial. The result: a high-rise that provides parking underneath, shops facing the street, second story apartments and then offices above that.

- Simply great idea as a solution for how it could work

3) Parking
Yes, parking should be zoned as well I think. In any major city I think you'll find most parking is underground. In a smaller city, above ground in parking garages. In smaller towns, ground level. You should also be able to make a parking fare for the city, much like you would taxes for other zones. As the city grows, so does the demand for parking (which can now be represented on the graph with the other demanded zones). Another last minute thought is about on-street parking. I think you ought to be able to designate streets as parking or No-parking streets. Thoughts?

- I agree, so you dont only have parking buildings, but also parking plots and parking on streets. Maybe someting for my detail work idea, should only work on broader streets.

2) It would also make sense if we had the "God" tools availble to us from the region view. So we could carve valleys and make mountains without having to go into each city.

- How many times havn't we wished for that? :D

3) Lastly, the borders should be able to bend and curve. For instance, a river could be a city's border. (which reminds me I forgot to mention curved roads, too, in my last post.)

- Awesome idea, ive thought about many ways of how to create more options for player, more realistic gameplay. Never thought of this!




________


More to come.

Now i will read through the thread hoping to get inspiration from other posters. Maybe then we can send a collective e-mail with our gathered ideas to Maxis ;).

I think they should have a zoneing for high tech indust
Insted of haveing it under indust

perhaps the game is based on and targets to the higher percentage of it's buyers...most likely Americans.

let's face it, it was created here, it got big here...it is here.

Id like: Many tilesets. How great to have an American city with sprawling suburbs or even a city like Athens were all the buildings are 5storey commie blocks!

Id also love if we got proposals for large buildings that need to be approved by the mayor. No more Fires that the mayor has to sort out. i mean, how many mayors dispatch a fire crew in a city of 5 million? Also id like Parades and street partys, large parks and reserves for people to host events on...needing permission of course.

Trams. They can run along avenues. How cool would that be!

The ideas are endless

"Also id like Parades and street partys, large parks and reserves for people to host events on...needing permission of course."

You can put together grass and parks yourself to greater parks. However, i agree with your idea. My solution would be, when you have put together a lot of green areas and parks, you should be able to use "park and green area zooner", and choose the area with a lot of parks and green areas etc (and others), and after you have zooned em with the tool, they dont only act as several units(parks), but also as one big unit (green area/park), which would get its points/values from what is in the zooning. You could then check info not only in the single parks but the parkzoone you created would also act as one, with info, values and the area would be considered as one big park complex by the sims.

I hope you understand what i mean.

Thats what i mean. You could put like 10 green parks togther, but they would be 10 seperate units. i want HUGE parks that you can zone. You then give them a name (Central Park) and investors ask permission to hold an event (concert, Build F1 Race Circut etc.)

Grand Prix would be SOO good! Image if we could zone out a street track in your very own city! then u see people all gather up for the event!

Grand prix is a great idea. Thre could be several kind of grand prix, and if your city has enough status, you should be able to host F1 gp once in a year (season). That could drag investors to the city, and tourism.

More events i say, the more the better! Just make it good, balanced, and meaningful. Everything that can bring more detail to the cities, and closer to every sims life. And closer to reality.

There is really no ending for how good a citysimulator can be, to judge by the ideas presented in the thread. The question is, are we, and is the hardware ready for all of them?

Well Grand Prix could EASILY have been done in SC4, just a graphic to block of streets and basically a tool were we can zone a track. The biggest thing i want though, is to move the camera freely, and more buildings.

What I hope it will be like (I've included ideas from others I have read on the web, not all my own work, also some things may contradict each other, but they are ideas)

Transport;
Ability to set routes for public transport, rather than just stops and stations (eg London Underground map and NY Subway map), numbers, letters, colours, whatever. (this includes ferries, see Sydney)

Subways and Bus stops on Road squares, rather than losing a lucrative tile.

Subway stations built underground, exits either on pavements, it's own above ground station or in commercial/industrial buildings.

Rail Ground to Elevated, rather than level crossings, can also cross highways that way.

Taxi's, licenced by mayor (black cabs, white cabs, medallion, a global choice)

Water taxi's?

InterCity travel - Big Rail Stations, high speed links to next city, different to local rail,
same with buses, Big bus terminal, Intercity Buses (Long Haul). Specific My City to Your City bus route, rail link, same for passenger air and sea transport.

Subterranian Options - Road tunnels, rail tunnels, parking etc (this would include utilities).

Heliport?

Ability to add Terminals to ports and airports providing space allowed for.

Footpaths, cyclepaths,

Choice of how many lanes per road.

30deg as well as 45 and 90deg bends/curves (if it takes up more tiles, so be it!)

New transport proposals, advisor gives the mayor the options, mayor picks one it gets built, or do it yourself the old fashioned way.

Attributes panel for specific roads/highways, when you lay a road at the end a panel will give you the option to name it (it can provide traffic states later as well), also the named road can be included on transport schedules routes. When a road is named on a bus schedule stops are placed automatically.

Canals?

River/Canal freight routes (your city to my city)?

Trade deals with neighbours, your industry (dirty) supplies metal/concrete to my city which is more high tech.


Utilities;
Inclusion of Comms (internet, ADSL, Broadband etc), Gas, Cable, mobile/cell networks (masts etc.), all on neighbour deals.

More Alternative energy, geo-thermal, hydro, wave power etc. (with related industry tech benefits, ie export tech to other cities/regions).

Subterranian Options - as for transport, all services under ground.

Electricity deal - further the distance from station the bigger the powerlines, bigger pylons etc.

Allow some independant initiatives like solar panels on private buildings, tax rebate?

Flood relief schemes/planning.

Options for treatment plants ie UV, mechanical, chemical etc.

Desalination plants? (I think there is one on STEX?)

Education;

Majors in subjects - University in one City majors in Economics (benefit is more banking/insurance companies) and so on, politics, Sport, business studies, science, art, this is reflected in High Schools and Colleges.

Increased education points for technology incentives (probably under city ordinances) internet connection, laptops for pupils etc.


Zoning:

New Tourism Zones option (Hotels, Resorts, Parks, Arts including Theartre, Opera, Movies, Galleries, Museums)

Tourism marketing budget (to advertise to other regions or cities)

Option to mix use zones, as in Retail, Residential, Commerce, Tourism in same location

Z plane in zoning, showing how high you will allow building (height capped to safety also, proximty of fire stations etc.)

Fishing industry included, farmed fish and inlet or sea fishing.

Mayor has final say on large projects.

Slums; built in unzoned land without permission when you haven't kept pace with demand and policing is inadequate, result can be sudden rise in crime, low desirability, utility tampering.

Ability to reserve land for future development, new roads, expansions etc.

Naming neighbourhoods.

Ethnic regions when cities begin to expand, Spanish quarter, Little Italy, Chinatown etc. with bearing on architecture (possible policing issue, tensions between groups (or is this to real?))


General:

More world influence in Archtecture, culture.

Big Corporate deals for land use, (big) factories (for example Car Plants), etc.

Civic Awards, for outstanding firecrew, police, teachers, doctors, to up moral in cities.

Events hosting, marathons, parades, carnivals, concerts, general sporting, expo's, foriegn visitors; royal, political or otherwise, boost to moral, business.

What celebrities have started buying homes in my cities, Who's who.

End of year/term (5 years) Summary, whats built, whats bankrupt, profit and loss, tranport in/out, import export, commutes (Averages).

Legalised Prostitution?

Public opposition/enquiries into new proposals or preservation orders.

Letters from city busy bodies (the ones who moan about everything) or requests from particular neighbourhoods, a new park, a playground etc.

Smoking bans, drinking bans (in public places etc. see how it affects your pops).

Naval base, customs base (for example Governor's Island, NY?), Military Airstrip, associated commercial/industrial benefits (see legalising prostitution above!).

More seasonal weather (climate picker).

Navigation like google earth, ability to tilt the view like the Manhatten area with buildings switched on.


Disasters:

If you have an Army base in region or city, the ability to deploy troops for riots of floods, viral outbreaks etc. to support emergency services.

Option to call on neighbours emergency services, (neighbour deals) additional fire support(use of landing strip), police in riot conditions or large events, ambulance services and medical backup (if neighbour has disease research centre etc.).

Funding for early warning systems.

Potential disaster budget.


No doubt there is more I could think of, but that is for starters. Hope this helps, maybe inspire others with some ideas. Any questions/clarifications just ask.

ps more on the singing haunted cats story!

pps I'll just add my thanks to some of the people threading here, my game plan has improved remarkably since. Main people Buffcity, Muyanggunaing, G!oRgOs, Boris550 to name but a few, but many thanks to you all.

THERE WILL BE NO SIMCITY 5 !!!!!!!!!!

dont say that :D:D:D
i cannot live without simcity :P

me either...

THERE WILL BE NO SIMCITY 5 !!!!!!!!!!
Heresy! :|

Here's my wishlist.
Variable road types: they're doing better with Rush Hour but what about 6 and 8 lane avenues or 4 lane roads with no median, sporadic overtaking lanes or roads and bridges with Tidal Traffic Flow control! - another big one is curvy roads (to realistically replicate many suburban streets - in Aus at least) and proper Cul-Des-Sacs.

The introduction of Single Point Urban Interchanges, Volleyball interchanges and Half Cloverleafs wouldn't go astray either!

Shopping Malls I'm talking rather than just a reward - have major shopping malls spring up under the right conditions - I mean most commercial development in cities these days are undercover malls!

Brands It's cheesy but lets see Maccas, Pizza Hut and KFC dotted throughout the city.

Public Transport Much improved in Rush Hr but a link is needed between elevated and ground rail, also trams are a must, I'd also like to see a bus stop that doesn't take up an entire tile! More like you can just 'place them' where ever you need them.

God Function I read further up an idea about including the terraforming option in Region View YES PLEASE!!!!

Finally the ability to have houses and buildings line up properly on diagonal streets would be a huge advantage.

[QUOTE=Jimmy James]Here's my wishlist.
Variable road types: they're doing better with Rush Hour but what about 6 and 8 lane avenues or 4 lane roads with no median, sporadic overtaking lanes or roads and bridges with Tidal Traffic Flow control! - another big one is curvy roads (to realistically replicate many suburban streets - in Aus at least) and proper Cul-Des-Sacs.

I think this a great idea but aswell as those lanes you can have bus lanes and praticuly steep hills 2 lanes on the side going up so that cars can overtake slow lorrys, both english ideas of course

The roads are a very good idea

The God Mode needs to be upgraded too, it is very hard too really make a realistic big mountain because you can see easily where a region stops.

major cities need to be bigger than 5 square miles.

make the city tiles larger in size...alot larger.


if anyone remembers an old old version of Sim City 2000, the Network Edition I think it was, you had to buy land before you could develope it, Sim City 5 should bring that back, so that cities could have the ability to be as big as we want them to be in area.

^The tiles are alot larger... they're called regions.

When you invent a cheap PC that can run a comprehensive city model on a much larger map, you should go ahead and patent it, and become a billionaire.

:soapbox: I think SC5 should have something like an olympic bidding process where you have to design an olympic stadium, and have the proper sport venues to use. (ex: baseball stadium, convention center, etc.) It would be neat if you could get online and go against other cities with a Simcity olympic commitee or something. (you should also be able to create a logo [ex: London 2012 ribbons])And WHERE ARE THE FREAKING NFL STADIUMS? I would love to host the Superbowl. (even though my city is way too small.) There should also be things like personalizing sport venues. Heck, if your team is the Tigers, then lets have the local newspaper showcase the schedule. If your stadium is getting old and worn out, lets have the team coach come up to you in a pop-up window telling you about the proposal for a new PERSONALIZABLE stadium that will actually take 2 years or more to be built.

I would actually like to see my city evolve, so when you start building there are villages and towns (i.e roman, medievil, victorian etc) and then come up to modern day and futures, then you would have a more realistic city, I suppose you can get older style buildings from Simtropolis etc but anyway just a thought :o)

How about Regional Disasters, which happen at regional level aka Nuclear bomb, earthquake, volcano.

Also should have these disasters: terrorist attack (plane flies into building or bomb) "great" fire, more optionals for the pisonous cloud, and smog, if your city has high pollution.

We ought to have things like christmas decorations coming up in our cities at the right time. That would be great if the game could just start playing christmas music when December begins. Also, I'd really like it if at the begining of every year, all of the advisors give you an update on how the past year went. (Ex: pollution, balance sheet, mayor ratings in the past year):)

Also you could have a famous rating for your buildings aka a building must be above 100 meters designed well and should be standing for some time.
Technology changes into the future, it stops abound the year 3000 when your city has megascrapers which could be 5 miles tall, flying cars, the end of roads, and the end of all ground transportation.
Also you should privaitse your cities assets! See which ones will be more cost effective when you privatise it.

anyone see Age of Empires 3 yet? thats a RTS game.

How about political philosophies? The options could be:

Neoconservative
Compassionate Conservative
Centrist
Liberal
Socialist
Communist
Fascist
Moderate Authoritarian
Libertarian
Anarchist

There are a lot of great ideas coming up but one must consider certain things

a. The differant planets thing was a good idea but a little far fetched. No?
b. For maxis to program all of this little details and facts would take ... forever.
c. I agree that the square "cities" must be changed to have custom borders.
d. The curved roads are a wonderful idea but how would one construct such roads to fit in with the grid?
E*. I have read most of the opinions placed on the site and the ones that i do not agree with are the ones that want to give the game too many little nitty griddy options such as a sidewalk tool. I think that maxis sees the shortcomings in SC4 and they should change it for the next installment. Also ... expansion packs often times are a way for them to rake in money from players. Spend 40 dollars on an expansion pack? yeah right... just give me the whole game!

I agree with the idea that the bus stop shouldn't take up a whole block. It's ridiculous.

On STEX there are downloads that are of Bus stations on the roadside, eliminating the 1x1 size lots for the station.

Something that would be really cool but also very hard to do would be the game becoming more realistic so that there would be reflections of buildings and other objects in things such as water and other glass buildings. ie- reflections of a skyline in a nearby waterfront. That would look really cool especially at night. I'm not too worried about what new buildings they come up with since the user created buildings on simtropolis are better than most of the maxis ones.

I think on SC5 you should be able to build road bridges across land and over railways etc .

I'll agree.

MORE STATS!!

unemployment stats..
Nationality stats (so you can see how diverse your city is)
Medium income
Crime rate
etc etc etc..

"Nationality stats (so you can see how diverse your city is)"

There is only one nation in Simworld, and that nation is Simland or something. You can watch crime rates and also income levels (not specificly in numbers).

1. I agree that curved roads are a great idea. I've been longing for that myself. They could just create a large 10x10 block with a curved road through it, with pre-fitted buildings that pop up along the curve. I'd also like to see buildings orientate properly to angled roads, so that you don't get those weird triangular sidewalk spaces between angled roads and buildings.

2. There should be a way to design a commercial area to include certain types of development. For example, to dictate the development of neighbourhood ammenities, such as a supermarket, shopping mall, gas stations, banks, community centers, etc. This would help avoid the problem of sims travelling too much, and would make neighbourhoods more realistic.

2A. An interesting idea would be for companies like Walmart to partner with Maxis, so they can request approval to build a big box store or whatever in a certain area, and the mayor can decide to allow it or not. Extra money for Maxis, advertising for Walmart, more realism for players... Everybody wins! Of course, there should be consequences to each decision, such as increased traffic, more low-paid employment, neighbouring small businesses going bankrupt, etc.

3. The sims shouldn't demand such an extensive transit/subway system. Real city neighbourhoods don't die when people have to walk 5 blocks to the train, nor should they in SimCity.

4. Skyscrapers should have to pay taxes commensurate with their density. Bigger skyscrapers pay more money. In real cities, this type of density is encouraged, because more people are served with the same infrastructure. It's a cash cow for the city. Currently, I don't think SimCity skyscrapers pay any taxes, do they? In addition, a commercial skyscraper should create a few thousand jobs, just like a real one does.

5. The width of streets and highways should be more in keeping with reality. In a real city, the streets are a minimum of four lanes wide to accomodate parking. Regular commercial streets are usually six lanes wide to accommodate parking. Bridges and main arteries are sometimes ten lanes wide, or even double that. SimCity doesn't have to go that far, but little two lane streets are just asking for traffic jams.

6. It should be possible to build a spaghetti ball, california style freeway interchange, with roads heading in every possible direction, just like on the SimCity Box!!

7. They should create an add-on to the game that lets you cruise through the city in your cobra or vette or whatever, and see how it all looks from ground level.

8. There should be a canal digging tool that allows you create Chicago, St.Petersburg, Amsterdam or Venice style canals throughout your city, with small bridges crossing at every street, and sidewalks along the banks. Currently, you can only do this in God-mode, and it ends up with exaggerated hill-like banks on both sides of the "canal", making it impossible to put bridges across them.

9. It should be possible to criss-cross streets at various angles, like in Washington DC, and have the spaces filled with triangular shaped buildings.

10. The mayor should be able to establish districts that ask for money for beautification, clean up, ammenties and other improvements, and he should be able to decide which areas get what.

That's all I can think of for now. If I have more ideas, I'll post them.

cheers!

"Nationality stats (so you can see how diverse your city is)"

There is only one nation in Simworld, and that nation is Simland or something. You can watch crime rates and also income levels (not specificly in numbers).


Alright.
with diversity i mean that you should be able to create ethnic towns.

I think you should be able to chose what type of politics you like and initiate it on your Sims.

I think you should be able to chose what type of politics you like and initiate it on your Sims.

yeah.. that would be great!

With that there could be elections, you always stay in however you have a different name, and would have a different form of politics. You should also chose if you want to have elections or not, but Sims will seriously complain/protest/riot if you don't.

this has probablly been said before but,in sim city 5, you should be able to decide how many lanes you want in your raods,highways, avenues,one ways etc.
plus no abandonment!!! i hate those no job zots. Also, abandonment should only happen under extreame circumstances like if you destroy a hospital or a large portion of business to place an airport etc. commute times shouldn't play such a big part in if someone losses a job or abandons there house. My cities completely colapse if my commute time is too high when real people who have to commute 1,2,3 hours to work still go to work. sim city4 is way too unrealistic.