Has anyone heard about this new Simcity game? I got a newslettery email thingy from EA and one of the games it talked about was Simcity Societies. It's not being developed by Maxis, because quite frankly, they're too busy with Spore. Rather, it's being developed by Tilted Mill, the same development team responsible for Caesar IV and some other city building games. It sounds a bit different to other Simcity games, although the basics are mostly still there.

Apparently, EA think that Simcity 4 was getting too complicated to play, with all the micro-managing and whatnot, which I can't really argue with. They're trying to simplify the game, but without taking out the challenge. I think it sounds (and looks) really good, myself. Instead of focusing on the micromanaging of things like power and water, and instead of your cities all being basically the same, Tilted Mill are focusing more on something they're calling Societal energies. There are six different societal energies which can be mixed and matched: knowledge, creativity, spirituality, obedience, wealth and industry. The way you make your city affects the atmosphere of the city. For example, if you make your city very creative and happy, the lampposts will change into candy canes or something like that. If you focus on obedience, the lampposts will all have cameras on them, and so forth. The way these societal energies are mixed and matched should make for some very interesting scenarios.

It sounds like the game's less about zoning (i.e. residential, industrial, commercial) and more about placing buildings yourself and stuff like that. Even though it's different to the previous games, I really want to try it, because it looks like it's going to be it's own kind of awesome, while still Simcity-ish. I really like Simcity, I hope Tilted Mill don't screw it up. Anyway, here's the official page about it, it's apparently supposed to come out Q4 this year. Anyway, I think it looks rad, I hope it'll run on my compy...

Hmmm...this has the potential to be fantastic. I'm not surprised about Maxis not developing it, what, with Spore and The Sims 3 (which is apparently in development for 2009 or something), but I'm sure Wright is a little gutted about not working on his old brainchild.

I'm glad the whole micromanaging is gone. Whereas I don't mind placing power-lines and building power-stations, the whole water piping thing annoyed me to no ends, but their removal will probably cause an uprising amongst the original SimCity buffs.

I'm not too sure about the whole fantasy element. Whilst I'm all for imagination, I really think having (as the website puts it) 'gingerbread houses' is going to take away from the traditional SimCity experience, but I guess the whole point of this game is the breakaway from the old. I'll still miss recreating places like New York and London, as I doubt they'll be putting the landmarks back in. :(

Still, I can't wait. Anything that allows me to run my own fascist city-state has to be worth buying. :P I'm not looking forward to the release of the game specs: something tells me my MAXIMO-OVERDRIVER TURBO FX500 won't be able to handle it, which'll annoy me to no end. Having said that, I have Tycoon City: New York, and that can be pretty demanding (although my comp does start to chug once it starts rendering the entirety of Manhattan in one screen), but at street-level, and with a few graphical what-nots turned off, like shadowing, then it runs okay.

Fingers crossed. :P Nice bit of news there dave, can't wait. :D Heck, if enough of us get it, we can start swapping cities, and it'll be cool to see what each of us designs. :)

you're definitely right about the Simcity buffs going flip out, I'm talking to D43M0N and he's flipping out about how it's going to be crap :P. I think people need to come to terms with the fact that it's not Simcity 5. However, I still think it looks awesome.

Also, Sims 3? Really? I can't say I'm surprised, though... I hope it's DX10, with, like, uber awesome graph0x and better pathfinding... Anyway, Simcity Societies, yeh. As you were saying about the fantasy parts of it, it sounds like that's only one way you can make a city. You can definitely make a more traditional city if you want. Also, it sounds like there could be a lot of fun from combining polar opposites like Obedience and Creativity, I hope they don't screw it up.

Yeh, I'd really like to know the system requirements for this game, and also whether it's DX10 or not. The fact that Simcity 4 sometimes chugs is not a good sign, though... Also, I was pretty surprised to hear that it's set to release this year :o

EDIT: from the screeshots that I've seen, I'm going to wager that it's not DX10, but we'll see, it doesn't really matter to me, because I still has an X800XT :P

I was really looking forward to the next simcity. But this doesn't look like what i was expecting. I was hoping for some more realism, but this just got more cartoony. EA f*cks up everything it touches this is not sim city nor does it deserve the brand of sim city. they f8cked up C&C now they must move on to other games to turn to sh(t, thanks EA.

yeh it's definitely different, but it sounds like the decision to have a different dev team make it other than Maxis was because Maxis are just too busy. So the way I see it, that means that we'll have Simcity Societies and then maybe in a couple of years get Simcity 5 from Maxis, which I think is better than just having to wait for Maxis to finish their other projects and release Simcity 5 in a couple of years anyway, with nothing in between. They've said that this isn't going to be Simcity 5, but as I've said I still think it looks like it's own kind of good. However, it would have been awesome if Maxis wasn't so busy making other games and then could be working on Simcity 5, but as I said, as they couldn't be making Simcity 5 proper right now, I think this at least looks like it's own brand of good. However, I understand; Simcity 5 would be awesome...

Yeah, I've been keeping my eye on this a bit, being a massive sim city fan and I have to say that while the early reports sounded great, I'm a bit sceptical of the concept behind this and the screens look terrible. Here's hoping it's a very early build.

The rumours I'd heard were that the city design would be more organic and less reliant on the grid system (so you could have curved roads and weird shaped blocks). But that doesn't look like it's happening at all.

I want my city to look like London, Paris or Berlin. With small streets mixed with big streets that has many curves and stuff. I don't want to have a city that is totally square. The makers of this game should take a hard look at a map of a typical Européan city and not just think that all city's in the world looks like a game of chess.

I really hope this doesn't turn out like City Life. Playing a game like City Life just made me appreciate all the Sim City games even more. But with a title like "SimCity Societies" and the screen shots it looks like it might be like City Life. It's too early to tell so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt but I hope the Sim City franchise isn't ruined because of this. I was so looking forward to the next Sim City game.

You're right Q, this does sound alot like City Life. I only played a rubbishy demo of it, but I definitely remember there being certain groups like 'white-collars' and 'trailer-trash' or something along those lines that all had to be pleased. It ended up being messy: log cabins beside skyscrapers? Realism.

I thought I'd revive this thread to express my disappointment over IGN's review of this game. 5.8/10 if you can't be bothered clicking the link.

My optimism was misplaced, I want Simcity 5! :(

It sounds interesting,and it has just been released in europe a while back.
Worth a buy maybe..... <_<

Really, I don't think that this Simcity will be as successful as other games EA has edited. It will be a game like another, which won't get lots of good reviews.

Nevertheless, I hope Spore will be a good game, it seems to get a lot of attention in Maxis.

Fanatic: according to IGN and probably other reviewers, it's not very good, which is why I revived this thread - to express my disappointment...

I'm just not excited by this game... And i'm a long term SimCity fan, since the SNES version and SimCity 2000. I'm not so sure fantasy is a road they have to go down, but simplifying it seems like a clever idea. I enjoyed the challenge, but it was frustratingly hard.

well I was a bit excited until all the critics gave it about 5/10...

I think the main reason why people don't like this game much is coz' the game is so simple. That's all. Just ask someone how long they spend finishing Ceasar4 and how long for this game.