Cities XL single player?

from Stardock Forums

So Cities XL is on sale for 10 bones and I loved the Sim City games (hated 4).  This looks pretty cool but all the reviews I've read say that single player is actually pretty sad because the "trade" system is against you every step of the way.  I don't want anything to do with online in a city building game.

 

Did later patches correct this issue?

And are you still required to be online all the time to play or just to register it?

56,615 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Don't bother. The mechanics are terrible and the game is incredibly unoptimized. They designed the whole game around the MMO aspect and failed. The single player is tacked on.

Seriously, Sim City 1 would be better than this pile. Not even worth the download time if it was free.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, there was always something about this game that rubbed me wrong, and I LOVE city builders. It ran ok...but some of the mechanics were just shite. The aforementioned trading system basically tried to force you into MP by not giving you enough of the basic stuff, and the trade ratios were, shall we say, predatory?

That and I remember some micro aspects of that just made me go "ugh, i do not want to **** with this in an advanced game."

Don't get me wrong, some of it was beautiful and the city designing was pretty fluid and what you'd expect out of this gen of a city builder. But all the crap hanging around the game....the Avatar Creation, the community thing, some poor performance in certain areas, and some really terrible mechanics....

I gave it 4 hours and never looked back.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

The game was garbage and now completely abandoned. The new company continues to sell it but they have no intention on building on the game at all and what they call support... Their focus is on City XL 2011. It's close to a crime that City XL is being sold at all. 2011, who knows. I mean it is a new company, the old one took a nose dive after this disastrous release, so 2011 might be okay. I am skeptical though.

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

Oh - well, sad to hear that... this one was on my radar, but I appreciate the feedback and will stay away. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't own the game, but didn't they release a number of large patches (for free) that severely improved upon the game?

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting TheProgress, reply 5
I don't own the game, but didn't they release a number of large patches (for free) that severely improved upon the game?

Well that would depend on how you look at it. I believe the large patch installed luxury items like buses which should have been in the game in the first place. I think they had to fix the issue that single player had to phone into MC's servers each time too. If anyone is serious about XL or 2011, you could jump over to www.simtropolis.com which has a rather large following. If you're not familiar with their forum, be warned, as Cities XL began to crash and burn, the mods pretty much nuked the bad press and negative responses probably because MC was so worried about it  themselves they killed their own forum and sent people to simtropolis instead. Again, 2011 is not this old ridiculous company but another so how 2011 will be handled is still unknown.

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

ok reading this made me not going to buy it was hoping for sim City 4ish game but i guess no one can ever do it.... whys stardock got a funny look in their eye's now?

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

This is a game I was hoping would be Simcity 5, but it went so very wrong. Shame.

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks for the feedback guys.  I found the developers forums and here is what I found:

1) The original publisher went under so the stupid MMO aspect crashed and burned and a patch was released later that made trading better in single player.

2) However the new developer is about to release Cities XL 2011 in a week or two so really no sense in getting the original at this point, even for just $10 bucks (in my mind anyway). 

Hopefully 2011 version will be better and they get a demo up for it quickly to try.

Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Tarkus01, reply 10
The new 2011 has SecureRom DRM.

 

Tark

 

 

SecuRom has many forms, including a basic disc check. Judging form the official forums, this version seems to have some sort of online activation attached to it. And according to Steam

3rd-party DRM: SecuROM™
5 machine activation limit

Which makes it a completel pass for me. I do not pay for games with activation limits.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

It's kind of impressive how even when they get a do-over with this game, they still manage to screw basic things up.

Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

meh... still better then Sim City Screw you we want just your money, though the game stuffers from missing things i have not played Cities XL before so this is new but they still are lacking basics but meh... guess city building is all about just being a G game .... wanted that nuclear power planet to go meltdown, till they get disaters im not happy till Black White 3 and that better have EPic Multiplayer they seem to busy screwing around with fable lets hope fable 3 has some replay at least.