SimCity Societies

Richard dishes out an ASBO

Electronic Arts and Maxis have had a long and healthy relationship when it comes to the SimCity series. Many of us I'm sure spent long nights building a bustling metropolis before launching an alien invasion or a citywide fire, cackling madly. But for this instalment, EA has passed the name to Tilted Mill Entertainment, famous for Caesar IV and Children of the Nile, both top city-builders.

Let's be clear by stating that this is not the next instalment in the franchise - Tilted Mill Entertainment have taken the name and built a new system. It all hinges on the six Societal Values - Productivity, Prosperity, Creativity, Spirituality, Authority, and Knowledge. Which type of society will your new city be? That is the question that Twisted Mill is asking - but it's not a particularly good one.

Basically, in order to produce these Societal Values, you need to build some workplaces, houses for yours workers, and venues in which they can enjoy themselves outside of working hours. Some buildings, such as the Bank, will produce Authority and Prosperity, while others, such as the Charity Shop, will spend Prosperity in order to generate other benefits. Houses may also produce or spend values, depending on whether they are a nice place to live or not.

It's best to decide which type of city you want at the outset, as you can then place the buildings that produce this value. Perhaps you will choose an oppressive police society, with plenty of Authority being produced and spent. Or will you go for an enlightened society dedicated to learning, with a large Knowledge turnover? The choice is yours.

Once decided, you can start placing homes (which use different values - the more expensive ones keep the inhabitants happier, and may produce a small societal value on there own - more unpleasant homes up the crime rate and annoy their inhabitants) and workplaces. Each home has a number of inhabitants and then a (surprisingly small) proportion of these are workers. A standard ratio may be 500 inhabitants, and 12 workers. However, the inhabitant number of your city is largely irrelevant - it is really only the workers we are interested in. The non-workers are invisible and apparently are just cooped up in their houses all day.

You need to place some workplaces near homes to produce money. A worker will find a job, head over there on the days that it is open, and produce money for your city treasury. This workplace can be a police station, a science lab, or an office block. In general, the workplaces that produce societal values will produce less money for your coffers, while another workplace may consume a large quantity of societal values but give you a fat pay check at the end of each day.

Unfortunately, the buildings seem to have production and consumption of values pretty randomly assigned - seemingly similar buildings, such as the Alien Artifact centre and the Observatory, will be wildly different in their apparent value to the community (in this case, one is producing and one is spending a lot of Knowledge). This is a bit frustrating, and really prevents you from choosing to place the buildings you want. In the end, you find yourself just playing the numbers - searching the building list for something that produces a lot of value, or a lot of money, and placing that. Who cares what it is?

Anyway, your workers now need a venue in which to "let off some steam". Again, these can produce or spend societal energy in a similarly random fashion. But the main purpose is that each worker can visit on their time off and get a happiness boost. These venues can be cinemas for example, where a worker simply spends some time there, or perhaps a shop. The worker can spend some time in this building and come out with a new possession (clothes or a gadget, for example), which provides a further happiness boost for a short time.

Again, there is really not a whole lot to choose between venues - in general, they spend rather than produce a value, so it is probably best to place one that spends a value you have a surplus of. Without venues, your workers will get annoyed and stop working - they may even "go rogue" and temporarily shut down their workplace.

This leads me to a major issue I had with the venues. They were virtually all open during the day, but all closed down at night. I often ended up with some workers walking the streets at night, looking for a venue but complaining that "none are open". They would get more annoyed until they went rogue, in short, each night a madness seemed to overtake my city, and it would always re-awaken with a few rogue workers shutting everything down. I was able to place some 24-hour venues - but these were all the Authority based structures, such as the jails or asylums, which condition your workers rather than make them happy. This seems ridiculous for a game which claims to allow you choose your city, and yet forces you to place structures of a certain type for it to function correctly.

Next, let's take a look at the city infrastructure. Always a major part of previous SimCity titles, it has taken a back seat in this one, only really dealing with Power and Transport. With Power, you can choose power plants based on how much power they produce, and how polluting they are. The better ones become available when your city is producing more Knowledge. However, once your city is producing the (small, easily attainable) amount to unlock the high output, zero pollution Nuclear Power Station, there is really no reason at all to place anything else - a somewhat irrelevant addition to the game.

Transport is also largely wasted - in theory you need your workers to live close to their workplaces, and enough venues to keep them happy. Unfortunately, there is no real way to tell this except to pick a worker, watch them for the whole day, and judge for yourself if they are spending too much time travelling. It is much simpler to just place the bus stops and subway stations everywhere - it is a one-off cost and they take up next to no space in your city. Again an addition that brings next to nothing to the table.

Each building list (Homes, Workplaces, and Venues) also has a filter. You can show only the buildings that would fit in the theme that you choose, such as Cyberpunk or Authoritarian. This makes it easier to produce the city that you envisage, and is a relatively nice touch.

The sound is nice and atmospheric, but the graphics aren't overly good - you need a really nice machine to enjoy it at its fullest, and with the graphics turned down the city really doesn't look very nice. With a surplus of a certain value, the city will change to fit this surplus, such as placing cameras everywhere for an abundance of Authority. Again, this is a nice touch but does not save the game.

I feel there are people who will enjoy this game in the Sandbox mode - unlimited money, everything unlocked. You can place what you want and not worry about making the game work via illogical mechanics. For that reason, I have given the game a better score than I might have. However, from a gaming perspective it is a disappointing offering and a wasted opportunity. It is almost as if halfway through development, the designers realised they couldn't really make a fully-fledged game that would work correctly around this concept and gave up. It is just SimCity Lite, and really provides no new challenge or choices. Of course, I did still enjoy raining a meteor shower on my metropolis - probably a little too much, thanks to the frustration I had built up while playing.

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By Richard Bright