So I guess I really got sucked into this game. I've been playing it almost every waking moment since yesterday. I actually lost sleep over it.
The funny thing is that Star Ruler 2 is not all that much like the original Star Ruler. There are similarities - some of the aliens have returned, and certain planetary anomalies are the same - but Star Ruler 2 is glossier, sleeker. It is not quite so driven by menus and text and displays more of its information in graphical form. Technology, in particular, is no longer an open-ended math problem. As a result, the original Star Ruler's most striking figure - the breathtaking scale of its exploding numbers isn't really present. At least not to the same degree.
You still have very large fleets, but the way you gain and deploy them has changed. You now have to center a fleet around a flagship and then build support ships that hang around it in a cloud, and the ultimate size of your fleet is determined by your flagship's logistics rating. This can be very generous, especially with the larger ships, but maintenance costs act as a kind of soft cap. Too large a flagship and you'll wreck your empire's budget. . .
Which is probably better from both a realism and a gameplay perspective, but I admit I'll miss having 10,000 planet-sized ships in the late game.
But what Star Ruler 2 lacks in gross excess, it makes up for in neat ideas. It probably has the best diplomacy system of any 4X game I've ever played. Basically, your empire earns influence points by having certain resources and building in play and you can spend those resources to by diplomatic action cards. Some cards give you special diplomatic actions like building a powerful university or annexing a star system. When you play these cards, your action goes up for a vote in the galactic senate, and you can play other cards to influence the vote - either to support the propositions of you and your allies or to block the propositions of your enemies. It's very engaging. So much so that the back and forth of the cardgame can actually distract me from the other business of empire-building, which has to be a first for me in a 4X diplomacy system.
Planet management is also kind of fun. There are different tiers of resources and to build up a bigger and better planet, you have to arrange complex trade webs where each planet of a certain rank is supported by a gradually widening pyramid of lower-ranked planets (to get a maxed-out level 5 planet, you need about 38 level 0 planets). Figuring out how to arrange the random assortment of worlds you start out with in order to maximize your empire's potential is exactly the sort of challenge I thrive upon.
The biggest flaw of Star Ruler 2 is that total conquest still appears to be the only victory condition. I haven't run into it as a huge roadblock yet, because I've mostly been experimenting with the different factions and learning about the tech tree and planet management systems, but if I ever get around to playing the late game, I'm certain it will annoy me to have to go around conquering everyone just to get a win.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Monday, April 4, 2016
Star Ruler 2 - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Take command of a vast interstellar empire and safeguard your species from total extinction in a procedurally generated 3D galaxy (with the option to flatten it) from 1 System to 10,000+! Prove your species' ingenuity through a deep and intricate combat system where anything (from individual components on ships to the stars themselves) is a target of opportunity.
Twist other Empires into submitting to your galaxy-class wit with diplomacy and wheel-and-deal your way to supremacy.
Research new kinds of weapons, engines, shields, and more, all of which retain their unique benefits as the game progresses, with a research web whose contents are shuffled every game at your option.
Exploit interstellar phenomena such as asteroid belts and stars and exploit them for yourself or destroy them to deny your foes. Create and destroy new worlds through advanced technological research.
Match your strategy against up to 10 other opponents (online or LAN-linked). Save the game when dawn breaks and boot it back up at dusk. It isn't over until you say it is! Drop in and drop out at any point; disconnecting players will not disrupt the game!
Your weapons, your ships, your rules: Almost the entire game can be modified through Notepad! Easily add new models and particle effects to the game with “out-of-the-box” developer tools. Create new weapons in seconds; create new AIs through scripts! The Galaxy is yours!
Previous Playtime
46 minutes
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
I bought it as part of a bundle with the original Star Ruler and for exactly the same reason - I like complicated strategy games and the store page made a pretty strong pitch. Of the two games in the bundle, Star Ruler 2 was the primary one that I was interested in, but of course I have a weakness for complete series'.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I've already played the tutorial and the game's complicated planet management and deep tech tree are enough to convince me I'll probably enjoy it. I'm a little worried that it will be as strongly combat focused as the first Star Ruler, but given that this wasn't enough to turn me off that game, I'll probably have a pretty good time.
Take command of a vast interstellar empire and safeguard your species from total extinction in a procedurally generated 3D galaxy (with the option to flatten it) from 1 System to 10,000+! Prove your species' ingenuity through a deep and intricate combat system where anything (from individual components on ships to the stars themselves) is a target of opportunity.
Twist other Empires into submitting to your galaxy-class wit with diplomacy and wheel-and-deal your way to supremacy.
Research new kinds of weapons, engines, shields, and more, all of which retain their unique benefits as the game progresses, with a research web whose contents are shuffled every game at your option.
Exploit interstellar phenomena such as asteroid belts and stars and exploit them for yourself or destroy them to deny your foes. Create and destroy new worlds through advanced technological research.
Match your strategy against up to 10 other opponents (online or LAN-linked). Save the game when dawn breaks and boot it back up at dusk. It isn't over until you say it is! Drop in and drop out at any point; disconnecting players will not disrupt the game!
Your weapons, your ships, your rules: Almost the entire game can be modified through Notepad! Easily add new models and particle effects to the game with “out-of-the-box” developer tools. Create new weapons in seconds; create new AIs through scripts! The Galaxy is yours!
Previous Playtime
46 minutes
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
I bought it as part of a bundle with the original Star Ruler and for exactly the same reason - I like complicated strategy games and the store page made a pretty strong pitch. Of the two games in the bundle, Star Ruler 2 was the primary one that I was interested in, but of course I have a weakness for complete series'.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I've already played the tutorial and the game's complicated planet management and deep tech tree are enough to convince me I'll probably enjoy it. I'm a little worried that it will be as strongly combat focused as the first Star Ruler, but given that this wasn't enough to turn me off that game, I'll probably have a pretty good time.
Star Ruler - 20/20 hours
My last few hours with the game were mostly spent experimenting. I did manage to win a total victory in a 100-star map, but I found that mode of play to be highly uneven. Expanding your borders and creating new ship designs was fun, but cleaning up the various enemy empires when they inevitably declared war on you was fairly tedious. It's one of those situations where you win long before the game is formally over, but the AI can't acknowledge that, so you're stuck fighting a completely one-sided war over territory that doesn't really matter.
Normally, I enjoy that, but the slowdown that comes from trying to move hundreds of ships in a dozen different directions at once is kind of a bummer.
Luckily, Star Ruler gives you a lot of leeway setting up your game options. So I created an ultra-small galaxy with four stars and four factions. That was a bust because the different species quickly reached a stalemate where their defenses were basically impregnable (I once launched an assault on a planet with 180 defensive satellites, which is kind of a ridiculous number to face with the sort of force that can be assembled from a single star system).
The next thing I tried was a huge universe of 500 stars, but only 1 AI opponent. That looked to be shaping up pretty well, with each of us controlling roughly half the galaxy. Unfortunately, just as we were gearing up for our epic clash of civilizations, the game crashed.
My final experiment was to tinker with the research cost settings. You can actually adjust the cost of technology so that it scales slower than your increase in research power from advanced laboratory buildings. I tried this on a solo map with one star system, because I was curious if you could build a ringworld without a galaxy spanning economic base, provided your tech was high enough. It turns out you can, but it's trickier than it appears.
My first attempt I set the, I crashed the game, presumably due to some kind of overflow error.
My next time through, I adjusted the tech speed down quite a bit, but then I ran into another problem - my economy crashed because the cost of high-tech buildings was far too high to actually build without slight less high tech buildings, but my tech was increasing faster than the buildings could be built.
So I fiddled with the numbers again, setting the tech rate as low as it could go while still allowing for runaway geometric growth. Then I carefully micromanaged my production and research so that I could keep up with the costs. It was pretty cool. I built a ringworld in less than a second and then used the ringworld to create some things that were even more ridiculous - like a size 10 million ship which dwarfed my entire star system.
I think, if I played the game again, I would have to set the tech growth rate to either be equal to the lab growth rate or just a little bit less, so that the soft cap on tech would be in the 100+ range (as opposed to the about 30-40 levels you get on a moderately sized galaxy) because creating bizarre, game-breaking ships was definitely the best part of the experience.
I'd say that Star Ruler has two big flaws that keep it from being a truly great game. First, diplomacy is a joke. Not once was I ever able to get a decent deal from the AI. Either they'd hold out against peace even in the face of their inevitable extinction or they'd ask for rare resources far too early in the game for me to possibly have them or they'd offer redundant deals long after their available quantities of resources had ceased to be anything other than a rounding error for my empire.
The other big flaw of Star Ruler is that it's unstable as hell. Even when I wasn't trying to break the game by flaunting its sense of scale it would frequently crash or freeze for no apparent reason. I really enjoyed the game's incredible scope, but not so much that I can overlook having to restart or alt-tab out every hour or so.
I'm actually really looking forward to playing this game's sequel. From what I could gather based on the tutorials, they're actually quite different games, but if Star Ruler's spirit of bold embrace of excess carries over into a game that doesn't fall apart every time I breathe on it hard, then I will be a very happy man.
Normally, I enjoy that, but the slowdown that comes from trying to move hundreds of ships in a dozen different directions at once is kind of a bummer.
Luckily, Star Ruler gives you a lot of leeway setting up your game options. So I created an ultra-small galaxy with four stars and four factions. That was a bust because the different species quickly reached a stalemate where their defenses were basically impregnable (I once launched an assault on a planet with 180 defensive satellites, which is kind of a ridiculous number to face with the sort of force that can be assembled from a single star system).
The next thing I tried was a huge universe of 500 stars, but only 1 AI opponent. That looked to be shaping up pretty well, with each of us controlling roughly half the galaxy. Unfortunately, just as we were gearing up for our epic clash of civilizations, the game crashed.
My final experiment was to tinker with the research cost settings. You can actually adjust the cost of technology so that it scales slower than your increase in research power from advanced laboratory buildings. I tried this on a solo map with one star system, because I was curious if you could build a ringworld without a galaxy spanning economic base, provided your tech was high enough. It turns out you can, but it's trickier than it appears.
My first attempt I set the, I crashed the game, presumably due to some kind of overflow error.
My next time through, I adjusted the tech speed down quite a bit, but then I ran into another problem - my economy crashed because the cost of high-tech buildings was far too high to actually build without slight less high tech buildings, but my tech was increasing faster than the buildings could be built.
So I fiddled with the numbers again, setting the tech rate as low as it could go while still allowing for runaway geometric growth. Then I carefully micromanaged my production and research so that I could keep up with the costs. It was pretty cool. I built a ringworld in less than a second and then used the ringworld to create some things that were even more ridiculous - like a size 10 million ship which dwarfed my entire star system.
I think, if I played the game again, I would have to set the tech growth rate to either be equal to the lab growth rate or just a little bit less, so that the soft cap on tech would be in the 100+ range (as opposed to the about 30-40 levels you get on a moderately sized galaxy) because creating bizarre, game-breaking ships was definitely the best part of the experience.
I'd say that Star Ruler has two big flaws that keep it from being a truly great game. First, diplomacy is a joke. Not once was I ever able to get a decent deal from the AI. Either they'd hold out against peace even in the face of their inevitable extinction or they'd ask for rare resources far too early in the game for me to possibly have them or they'd offer redundant deals long after their available quantities of resources had ceased to be anything other than a rounding error for my empire.
The other big flaw of Star Ruler is that it's unstable as hell. Even when I wasn't trying to break the game by flaunting its sense of scale it would frequently crash or freeze for no apparent reason. I really enjoyed the game's incredible scope, but not so much that I can overlook having to restart or alt-tab out every hour or so.
I'm actually really looking forward to playing this game's sequel. From what I could gather based on the tutorials, they're actually quite different games, but if Star Ruler's spirit of bold embrace of excess carries over into a game that doesn't fall apart every time I breathe on it hard, then I will be a very happy man.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Star Ruler - 13/20 hours
I think I may have broken this game. I decided to play on a 500 star universe against a half-dozen other opponents and I was doing really well. I'd colonized half the galaxy in the space of just a couple of minutes, thanks to my technological superiority and I was gradually getting things under control. Then, one of the AIs decides to declare war on me, for no real reason I can discern, and I have to turn my massive manufacturing prowess to military matters.
So I go into my systems control panel and press the button that selects all of my currently idle planets at once and I order them all to build a heavily-armed battleship. Then I wait a second and do it again, in order to take advantage of all the various planets in my empire that can build a battleship in less than a second. Then I keep doing it.
Before I know it, I have more than 20,000 high tech battleships. When a single one could probably solo the average enemy star system. It's a glorious feeling, but there is a problem.
Modeling that many objects at once makes even my new computer cry out in agony. The simulation speed dropped to a crawl, even when run at 10x. Plus, it turns out that I don't have what it takes, mentally, to single-handedly command a massive space armada in a coordinated galactic invasion. Basically, it involved giving thousands of ships dozens or hundreds of commands in the space of just a few minutes. I suppose I could have taken my time and systematically eliminated the enemy with my overwhelming force, but it offended my sensibilities to do so when I had the resources to win with a single wave.
So I just declared myself the victor of that game and restarted on a much smaller map, with only 100 stars.
I then lost patience a couple of times when faced with early-game rushes that I was inadequately prepared to deal with (I hate to go to war with anything less than an absolute economic, technological, and numerical supremacy). My most recent game is going well except that I'm constantly fighting off pirate attacks. Though I can at least credit this with keeping my military up to date.
Star Ruler has more combat and less empire management than I normally like in my 4X games, but the feeling of snowballing when you cross some nebulous threshold and your empire's power starts feeding into itself in a rapidly growing feedback loop is so amazing that I'm willing to overlook it. That said, I'm not sure about this game's intended mode of play. At high levels of empire power you can do a ton of stuff very rapidly, but you don't really have the tools to manage them effectively. When I was dominating the 500-star galaxy the soft limit to my strength was as much the cognitive load as it was the relative weakness of my computer.
I'm nonetheless pleased to be playing this game, though. Even if I'm not totally in control, I like fiddling with planets and setting my tech order and designing bigger and better ships. It may just be the optimization of numbers, when boiled down to its purest essence, but it turns out that optimizing numbers is something I really like to do.
So I go into my systems control panel and press the button that selects all of my currently idle planets at once and I order them all to build a heavily-armed battleship. Then I wait a second and do it again, in order to take advantage of all the various planets in my empire that can build a battleship in less than a second. Then I keep doing it.
Before I know it, I have more than 20,000 high tech battleships. When a single one could probably solo the average enemy star system. It's a glorious feeling, but there is a problem.
Modeling that many objects at once makes even my new computer cry out in agony. The simulation speed dropped to a crawl, even when run at 10x. Plus, it turns out that I don't have what it takes, mentally, to single-handedly command a massive space armada in a coordinated galactic invasion. Basically, it involved giving thousands of ships dozens or hundreds of commands in the space of just a few minutes. I suppose I could have taken my time and systematically eliminated the enemy with my overwhelming force, but it offended my sensibilities to do so when I had the resources to win with a single wave.
So I just declared myself the victor of that game and restarted on a much smaller map, with only 100 stars.
I then lost patience a couple of times when faced with early-game rushes that I was inadequately prepared to deal with (I hate to go to war with anything less than an absolute economic, technological, and numerical supremacy). My most recent game is going well except that I'm constantly fighting off pirate attacks. Though I can at least credit this with keeping my military up to date.
Star Ruler has more combat and less empire management than I normally like in my 4X games, but the feeling of snowballing when you cross some nebulous threshold and your empire's power starts feeding into itself in a rapidly growing feedback loop is so amazing that I'm willing to overlook it. That said, I'm not sure about this game's intended mode of play. At high levels of empire power you can do a ton of stuff very rapidly, but you don't really have the tools to manage them effectively. When I was dominating the 500-star galaxy the soft limit to my strength was as much the cognitive load as it was the relative weakness of my computer.
I'm nonetheless pleased to be playing this game, though. Even if I'm not totally in control, I like fiddling with planets and setting my tech order and designing bigger and better ships. It may just be the optimization of numbers, when boiled down to its purest essence, but it turns out that optimizing numbers is something I really like to do.
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Star Ruler - 5/20 hours
Like many 4X games I've played, Star Ruler has managed to suck me in, though it was kind of a rough start. My AI opponents were very aggressive, declaring war against me with no provocation and while I was still struggling to figure out the tech tree. Luckily, Star Ruler has a feature no other strategy game would bother with - you can turn off all of the AI competition and play in an empty galaxy.
The first time I did this, I was swarmed by pirates within minutes and thoroughly wiped out. The next few times I did it, I was able to meet the pirates with a fleet that wasn't quite large enough. They just kept on coming, more than I could handle.
So I turned pirates off too.
It was an interesting way to explore the tech tree. I never really got a good benchmark for ship power, but I did get to see a few cool civilian things. There is something awe-inspiring about having a hundred well-developed worlds, going into your systems-control screen, ordering them all to build exactly one colony ship, and then seeing a massive swarm spread out into the galaxy. Then setting the speed up to 10x, waiting a couple of minutes, and then doing it all again. Spreading out with geometric growth is just an incredible experience. I highly recommend it.
Alas, I have not yet built a ringworld however. I've started one, but the resource requirements are an three orders of magnitude higher than what my planets can churn out. I expect that it requires mastery of the use of haulers and other resource-shifting tricks. I need to figure out some way to concentrate a galaxy's worth of resources into a single system.
It's a learning process, and one I enjoy despite the fact that I'm basically just playing solitaire. There's a lot about this game I still don't understand and the opportunity to explore without the pressure to win is one I value.
I think I'll start another solo game in a smaller galaxy and see if I can build at least one ringworld (and perhaps some other high-end ships) and maybe get a handle on the game's more powerful tech combos. Who knows, I might get through the whole 20 hours without ever going up against an actual opponent.
The first time I did this, I was swarmed by pirates within minutes and thoroughly wiped out. The next few times I did it, I was able to meet the pirates with a fleet that wasn't quite large enough. They just kept on coming, more than I could handle.
So I turned pirates off too.
It was an interesting way to explore the tech tree. I never really got a good benchmark for ship power, but I did get to see a few cool civilian things. There is something awe-inspiring about having a hundred well-developed worlds, going into your systems-control screen, ordering them all to build exactly one colony ship, and then seeing a massive swarm spread out into the galaxy. Then setting the speed up to 10x, waiting a couple of minutes, and then doing it all again. Spreading out with geometric growth is just an incredible experience. I highly recommend it.
Alas, I have not yet built a ringworld however. I've started one, but the resource requirements are an three orders of magnitude higher than what my planets can churn out. I expect that it requires mastery of the use of haulers and other resource-shifting tricks. I need to figure out some way to concentrate a galaxy's worth of resources into a single system.
It's a learning process, and one I enjoy despite the fact that I'm basically just playing solitaire. There's a lot about this game I still don't understand and the opportunity to explore without the pressure to win is one I value.
I think I'll start another solo game in a smaller galaxy and see if I can build at least one ringworld (and perhaps some other high-end ships) and maybe get a handle on the game's more powerful tech combos. Who knows, I might get through the whole 20 hours without ever going up against an actual opponent.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Star Ruler - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Take command of a vast interstellar empire and safeguard your species from total extinction in a procedurally generated 3D galaxy (with the option to flatten it) from 1 System to 10,000+! Prove your species' ingenuity through a deep and intricate combat system where anything (from individual components on ships to the stars themselves) is a target of opportunity.
Twist other Empires into submitting to your galaxy-class wit with diplomacy and wheel-and-deal your way to supremacy.
Research new kinds of weapons, engines, shields, and more, all of which retain their unique benefits as the game progresses, with a research web whose contents are shuffled every game at your option.
Exploit interstellar phenomena such as asteroid belts and stars and exploit them for yourself or destroy them to deny your foes. Create and destroy new worlds through advanced technological research.
Match your strategy against up to 10 other opponents (online or LAN-linked). Save the game when dawn breaks and boot it back up at dusk. It isn't over until you say it is! Drop in and drop out at any point; disconnecting players will not disrupt the game!
Your weapons, your ships, your rules: Almost the entire game can be modified through Notepad! Easily add new models and particle effects to the game with “out-of-the-box” developer tools. Create new weapons in seconds; create new AIs through scripts! The Galaxy is yours!
Previous Playtime
79 minutes
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
I got this game back in a period when I was shopping heavily and compulsively, so I didn't really have a great reason for buying it. I'd been periodically following conversations about various 4X games and the Star Ruler series came up in a favorable light several times, so when it went on sale I bought it.
That said, it was one of my more confident purchases. You can build ringworlds! I love sci-fi megastructures and not enough games have them, so I'll pretty much jump on any game that throws them in. It's a real draw for my builder instincts.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I played the tutorial twice. The game crashed about 90% of the way through. Of course, I had no way of knowing that at the time, so I had to start from scratch just in case.
Random bugs notwithstanding, what I saw of Star Ruler has filled me with optimism. The game looks nice and complicated with plenty of planetary development and logistics. My only worry is that it also seems very military-focused and so it might be a situation similar to the Age of Empires series, where I like a lot of the game, but not its overall strategic goals. I want to explore and tinker with planets, and if the game lets me do that without forcing me to constantly defend my borders against one annoyance after another, I expect I'll like it a lot.
Take command of a vast interstellar empire and safeguard your species from total extinction in a procedurally generated 3D galaxy (with the option to flatten it) from 1 System to 10,000+! Prove your species' ingenuity through a deep and intricate combat system where anything (from individual components on ships to the stars themselves) is a target of opportunity.
Twist other Empires into submitting to your galaxy-class wit with diplomacy and wheel-and-deal your way to supremacy.
Research new kinds of weapons, engines, shields, and more, all of which retain their unique benefits as the game progresses, with a research web whose contents are shuffled every game at your option.
Exploit interstellar phenomena such as asteroid belts and stars and exploit them for yourself or destroy them to deny your foes. Create and destroy new worlds through advanced technological research.
Match your strategy against up to 10 other opponents (online or LAN-linked). Save the game when dawn breaks and boot it back up at dusk. It isn't over until you say it is! Drop in and drop out at any point; disconnecting players will not disrupt the game!
Your weapons, your ships, your rules: Almost the entire game can be modified through Notepad! Easily add new models and particle effects to the game with “out-of-the-box” developer tools. Create new weapons in seconds; create new AIs through scripts! The Galaxy is yours!
Previous Playtime
79 minutes
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
I got this game back in a period when I was shopping heavily and compulsively, so I didn't really have a great reason for buying it. I'd been periodically following conversations about various 4X games and the Star Ruler series came up in a favorable light several times, so when it went on sale I bought it.
That said, it was one of my more confident purchases. You can build ringworlds! I love sci-fi megastructures and not enough games have them, so I'll pretty much jump on any game that throws them in. It's a real draw for my builder instincts.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I played the tutorial twice. The game crashed about 90% of the way through. Of course, I had no way of knowing that at the time, so I had to start from scratch just in case.
Random bugs notwithstanding, what I saw of Star Ruler has filled me with optimism. The game looks nice and complicated with plenty of planetary development and logistics. My only worry is that it also seems very military-focused and so it might be a situation similar to the Age of Empires series, where I like a lot of the game, but not its overall strategic goals. I want to explore and tinker with planets, and if the game lets me do that without forcing me to constantly defend my borders against one annoyance after another, I expect I'll like it a lot.
Cities: Skylines - 20/20 hours
I have a space elevator!
I thought that my garbage problem was going to doom Roundberg, but I was wrong. My economy was doing so well that I was able to simply buy my way out of the hole. By building incinerator after incinerator until my town was far over capacity, I was able to obviate the inefficiency of my transportation network. The same thing happened a couple hours later when I started to have trouble with body disposal. Being the town with the most per-capita crematoriums might not be the most impressive claim to fame, but it worked. Roundberg grew beyond my wildest expectations, and the collapse I'd feared 10 hours ago never came.
What wound up happening instead was that I hit an equilibrium. After about 100,000 people, my growth rate really dropped off. Sometimes it would dip into the negatives and then I'd demolish some abandoned buildings (a bafflingly pointless chore, by the way) and things would turn around and my numbers would inch upwards again, but at no point did my RCI demand graph budge from zero. There was no call for further dramatic expansions.
Maybe, long-term, the equilibrium might have broken up, but as of hour 20, my population was 103,000 and there was no indication that it would ever get any higher.
Still, I have a space elevator. You see, by reaching various milestones in the course of the game, you can unlock special buildings for your town which, in theory can have a dramatic effect (the Hadron collider, for example, sends your town's education value through the roof). I didn't notice much of a difference with the Space Elevator, but ultimately that didn't matter. I had a freaking space elevator!
The trickiest part of unlocking the special buildings was that some of the prerequisites required you to do foolish things like build 300 municipal buildings or have seven colleges. Others required you to actively tank your city by getting up to 50% crime or unemployment. Luckily, once you unlock a building in one game, it's automatically unlocked in all your other save files, so I was able to fork my town and earn all of the bad buildings in Mirror Roundberg.
The only one I was unable to get was the "build 20,000 commercial squares" building, which would have let me build something called the "Eden Project" which sounds pretty damned cool. Unfortunately, it doesn't count if you just have the squares zoned. Your simulated citizens actually have to develop the plots, so my complete lack of demand pretty much rendered that impossible. Maybe if I'd stuck with it the deadlock would have eventually broken, but for now it was a disappointing way to end my time with the game.
Looking back, I really enjoyed Cities: Skylines. It was a slicker and more sophisticated city-builder than SimCity 4, which is not surprising given that it was released 12 years later (!). I loved the 3-D modeling of the buildings, which let you pan the camera practically down to street level. It really felt like all my various towns were real places I could personally explore. SimCity2000 had an amazing feature where if you had SimCopter or Streets of Simcity, the games would load your city data to create their worlds and you could fly or drive (respectively) down the streets of your virtual town. I would pay good money to be able to do that in Cities: Skylines.
My biggest regret is that I never mastered the traffic mechanics. Each time, I got a little farther, but as far as I can tell from online research, it was a lack of easy transportation that caused Roundberg to stall. The city budget was thoroughly in the black (to the tune of about 70k a week), the citizens were content (90% happiness), but apparently the thought of navigating to new suburban expansions gave them nightmares.
I think I know where I went wrong, and could possibly correct it in a future save file, but sadly, this is not the game I want to master. It was fun, and I loved seeing my city grow from a humble village to a mighty metropolis, but the mechanics are so fiddly that it would take many hours more to see true improvement. I simply don't have the time.
So, good-bye Cities: Skylines. I may not have been a legendary mayor, but I think I did credibly for a beginner, and I will always look upon with pride the things you let me build. Even the ones that didn't work taught me some valuable lessons.
I thought that my garbage problem was going to doom Roundberg, but I was wrong. My economy was doing so well that I was able to simply buy my way out of the hole. By building incinerator after incinerator until my town was far over capacity, I was able to obviate the inefficiency of my transportation network. The same thing happened a couple hours later when I started to have trouble with body disposal. Being the town with the most per-capita crematoriums might not be the most impressive claim to fame, but it worked. Roundberg grew beyond my wildest expectations, and the collapse I'd feared 10 hours ago never came.
What wound up happening instead was that I hit an equilibrium. After about 100,000 people, my growth rate really dropped off. Sometimes it would dip into the negatives and then I'd demolish some abandoned buildings (a bafflingly pointless chore, by the way) and things would turn around and my numbers would inch upwards again, but at no point did my RCI demand graph budge from zero. There was no call for further dramatic expansions.
Maybe, long-term, the equilibrium might have broken up, but as of hour 20, my population was 103,000 and there was no indication that it would ever get any higher.
Still, I have a space elevator. You see, by reaching various milestones in the course of the game, you can unlock special buildings for your town which, in theory can have a dramatic effect (the Hadron collider, for example, sends your town's education value through the roof). I didn't notice much of a difference with the Space Elevator, but ultimately that didn't matter. I had a freaking space elevator!
The trickiest part of unlocking the special buildings was that some of the prerequisites required you to do foolish things like build 300 municipal buildings or have seven colleges. Others required you to actively tank your city by getting up to 50% crime or unemployment. Luckily, once you unlock a building in one game, it's automatically unlocked in all your other save files, so I was able to fork my town and earn all of the bad buildings in Mirror Roundberg.
The only one I was unable to get was the "build 20,000 commercial squares" building, which would have let me build something called the "Eden Project" which sounds pretty damned cool. Unfortunately, it doesn't count if you just have the squares zoned. Your simulated citizens actually have to develop the plots, so my complete lack of demand pretty much rendered that impossible. Maybe if I'd stuck with it the deadlock would have eventually broken, but for now it was a disappointing way to end my time with the game.
Looking back, I really enjoyed Cities: Skylines. It was a slicker and more sophisticated city-builder than SimCity 4, which is not surprising given that it was released 12 years later (!). I loved the 3-D modeling of the buildings, which let you pan the camera practically down to street level. It really felt like all my various towns were real places I could personally explore. SimCity2000 had an amazing feature where if you had SimCopter or Streets of Simcity, the games would load your city data to create their worlds and you could fly or drive (respectively) down the streets of your virtual town. I would pay good money to be able to do that in Cities: Skylines.
My biggest regret is that I never mastered the traffic mechanics. Each time, I got a little farther, but as far as I can tell from online research, it was a lack of easy transportation that caused Roundberg to stall. The city budget was thoroughly in the black (to the tune of about 70k a week), the citizens were content (90% happiness), but apparently the thought of navigating to new suburban expansions gave them nightmares.
I think I know where I went wrong, and could possibly correct it in a future save file, but sadly, this is not the game I want to master. It was fun, and I loved seeing my city grow from a humble village to a mighty metropolis, but the mechanics are so fiddly that it would take many hours more to see true improvement. I simply don't have the time.
So, good-bye Cities: Skylines. I may not have been a legendary mayor, but I think I did credibly for a beginner, and I will always look upon with pride the things you let me build. Even the ones that didn't work taught me some valuable lessons.
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