On January 28, I took the train to Gardermoen. I, Alexander, was heading to Stockholm to try the new SimCity game before its March launch. While I was packing my things before check-in, I met Kimia, whom I had worked with at the SimCity stand at SpillExpo. It was nice to meet another Norwegian and not have to travel completely alone.
We barely had any time before the plane left at 07:45. We were a little delayed, but we made it to the venue where we would get to try the new SimCity. The day began with a presentation from Kip Katsarelis, who showed us the basics. After that we were allowed to play freely for a full hour. We started in the same region that was available in the beta, though I chose another plot. I thought the available city areas felt a little small, almost like a small village with skyscrapers, but larger areas may still appear in the final game.
It was great to have access to all the buildings. When I zoomed in, the detail in the city was extremely clear, almost like looking down at a model city you could touch and play with. The graphics and the way the new game plays felt very impressive.
City Specialization
After playing around with the basics, we had another presentation about specializing a city around a theme. SimCity has a dedicated city-specialization tab with several options for what your city should focus on. Kip explained that the team had looked at real cities and noticed how many of them build around one or more specialties, such as oil or tourism. In the build we played, the options included oil, coal, trade, electronics, tourism, gambling and a few others I did not manage to write down. Each specialization also has its own headquarters.
You can mix specializations in one city. If you focus on tourism, for example, the buildings you place will develop into hotels and other tourism-related services. The same idea applies to the other categories.
I focused mostly on oil in my city. I made that choice because I turned on the new data layers at the start and saw that my plot had a lot of oil. I built heavy industry around the oil field and moved the residents up to the part of the city without oil. I only managed to use the first oil rig because I could not pump enough oil yet, but it already showed the new module system well. I could extend more roads from the rig and add more pumps, which lets you exploit the whole oil area.
An oil city and a trade city go hand in hand. I built a trade building where I could sell my oil to other cities and to the global market. The building can be expanded with tanks that store oil before it is sold. You can also add a port and ship goods by boat, or do the same by train.
The Global Market
We did not get to test the global market very deeply, but we were shown how it works. In my oil city, once the trade building was placed, I could sell raw materials to the global market or to my friends. When goods are sold on the market, the price changes based on supply and demand. If many cities need oil, the global oil price rises.
I think this gives the game a completely new dimension. SimCity will really have its own economy, and that is very exciting.
Playing With Multiple Cities
After another hour of play and a little food, it was time for a new presentation. This time we learned how several cities can work together inside one region. The region overview has a menu that resembles the one inside your own city. From there you can see how many Sims commute from a neighboring city to work in yours, and how many travel the other way. You can also inspect shopping, school travel and service use.
The region view also lets you decide whether to share services such as ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and garbage trucks. You can sell power to other cities or buy power from them. The same applies to water and sewage, where your sewage can be sent to a neighboring city for treatment. You can even inspect what class of Sims travel between cities.
If your city has a university, the other cities in the region do not need to build their own. They can share yours. Students will be picked up by bus and driven to your city for their education. All you need is bus stops; buses from the neighboring city will collect the Sims and bring them in.
Sims use the highway to travel between cities, but over time there will be more cars and more congestion in and out of town. Then it can be smart to invest in a proper bus system, a train system or ferries if there is water between the cities. Sims are quite smart in this version of SimCity. They can drive to a bus terminal, park there, take a bus to a neighboring city, use that city's train system and then return the same way. The data layers let you see how Sims are moving around.
Great Works
Another regional feature is the Great Works site. This is a place where every city in the region can cooperate on one large project. In the region I played, there was only one such site, but larger regions can have more. These projects require a lot before they can be built: high population numbers and materials produced by the cities.
The available Great Works included a solar farm, an international airport, a space station and an archaeology center. The solar farm fills the area with solar panels and can provide enough power for the whole region. The international airport can bring in many more tourists, especially for casino and tourist cities. The space station lets you build a large station with spaceships that can be launched repeatedly, which is useful for research. I did not get much information about the archaeology center, but it seems to involve digging old creations out of the ground.
I am personally really looking forward to trying this with my friends.
Playing With Friends in a Region
SimCity is fully connected to Origin, which lets you play with friends who have SimCity and Origin. You can chat, accept or decline friend requests directly in the game, and you have your own SimCity profile where you can see friends, points and more. You can also visit your friends' cities to see how they look.
Even if you play in a private region, all players are connected through SimCity World. That means SimCity tracks what is happening in your city: population, pollution, crime and many other values. These feed into high-score lists where your region can be compared with others, including your friends' regions.
There is also always a live challenge in SimCity World. We got to try one multiplayer challenge with two other players. The goal was to collect one million through taxes in the region as quickly as possible. I am not sure whether we fully made it, but it was a lot of fun.
That is everything I had to say about the new SimCity. If you have questions, you can ask them here. Finally, I want to thank Joyce and Maxis/EA for sending us on this fun trip to Stockholm to try this fantastic game.