SimCity Societies Totally Explained

Everything about Simcity Societies totally explained

SimCity Societies is a city-building simulation computer game of Electronic Arts (EA) and is part of the Sim games series. The game was developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment and was released worldwide on November 13 2007. Rob Humble, head of EA's Sims Division, indicated that EA representatives had asked Tilted Mill to create the game at E3. Fans reacted poorly on the official forums of the developer towards this game. Responses directly from the developers attempted to ease some concerns.

Gameplay

While previous mainstream SimCity titles could be best described as mayordship, or "God" simulators, SimCity Societies is different, as foreshadowed by the previews and statements from the developers, by being a "social engineering simulator" rather than a city-building simulator.
Public works and a tax system don't play a part in the basic game. Instead, players get daily income from workplaces in the city. However, a downloadable update includes gameplay modes where a daily tax is incurred based on the buildings within a city. Transportation networks have been simplified to dirt roads, paved roads, subways and bus stops. Players don't build zones, a key element of past SimCity games; instead, they've the ability to directly place individual buildings, something not seen in previous editions, and similar to Monte Cristo's game City Life. There are also six "social energies", called societal values, which allow players to learn about the characteristics of the citizens. The six societal values are productivity, prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority, and knowledge. The city will look, and act, in accordance with the energies the players choose. Players may focus on satisfying one, several, or all of these values. An improved version of the reward system introduced in SimCity 2000 has been included in the game.
The game is "fully customizable" and allows the players to customize individual buildings, decorations, citizens, and game rules. Prior to its release, when mentioning the depth to which the game will allow customization a Tilted Mill representative stated that those who were proficient in C# and XML will have easy access to every asset of the game and that basic tools would be provided for building editing.

Societies

Authoritarian: Built up with a focus on authority, authoritarian cities are reminiscent of communist capitals such as Moscow or Bucharest, or the fictional London from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four—complete with surveillance cameras, secret police, propaganda ministries, opulent buildings for the leadership, and slum housing projects.

Capitalist: Focus is on productivity and prosperity. Capitalist cities feature buildings such as department stores, skyscrapers, stock markets, corporately-owned condos, and major company headquarters.

Contemplative: Focus is on spirituality. Buildings include cathedrals, pagodas, monasteries, evangelical centers, megachurches, dojos, and golden statues of Buddha.

Cyberpunk: A futuristic city built with the use of knowledge and authority, complete with flying cars and holographic sport stadiums.

Fun City: A city built up entirely of venues to maintain the happiness of its citizens. Buildings include ferris wheels, carnivals, zoos, casinos, water and amusement parks, and candy shops.

Industrial: Industrial cities are primarily made up of polluting industry, slum housing, high crime, sweatshops, and factories to produce various wares, similar to Pittsburgh in the 1900's.

Romantic: Focus is on providing prosperity to the Sims while maintaining cultural and artistic elements. Buildings include concert halls, opera houses, baroque fountains, and cobblestone streets, like Rome or Venezia.

Small town: Focus is in Europe, country style buildings. Buildings include windmills, sheriff stations, butcher shops, corner delis, town houses, and farms.

Spooky: (Download addon). It features new spooky buildings and textures.

Normal: An average North American city with no extremes on social energies. Buildings include a mix of buildings from the societies listed above.

Buildings

In SimCity Societies there are four types of buildings: power plants, houses, workplaces, and venues. Houses are where citizens live (granted the Sims are not homeless), workplaces are where Sims work (granted the Sims are not unemployed), and venues are places that provide happiness to citizens. Power plants provide power to the city, and generate income. There are also decorations such as plazas and sculptures.

Reception

SimCity Societies received both positive and negative reviews. IGN criticized the changes; GameSpot commented that this version of SimCity was a "lackluster spin-off" and cited that the game was “way too easy” with the frame rate being mediocre even on higher-end computers. Other reviews reached as low as 3 out of 10 saying the game had completely gotten rid of the "city feeling". However, GameZone praised the game for taking the simulation franchise in a "bright and bold direction" and containing "great graphics". GamePro added that the game has "pretty architecture," but the game is "far too simple" with "some frame rate woes". The review went on to add that the new direction taken by SimCity Societies was a good idea, but unsuccessfully implemented. Aggregate review sites result in scores of 63% on Game Rankings and 62 (out of 100) on Metacritic.
In response to criticism a second update was released designed to fix bugs and add new features to the game. In this update three new modes are introduced into the "Creative play" mode. These modes are, in order, "Basic", "Hardcore", and "Nightmare". Basic mode is the easiest of the three but is more difficult than the most challenging mode from the game's release version. A third update adds a UFO attack, bug fixes, performance improvements, and content from all previous updates. A fourth update, for which a release date hasn't yet been announced, will add a new disaster called "Monster!" to the game. There are currently no updated reviews of SimCity Societies that take into account the changes made in the game through updates.

SimCity Societies: Destinations

EA has announced the first expansion for SimCity Societies. The new expansion, SimCity Societies: Destinations will focus on a new strategic scene in SimCity, this time tourism and transportation.

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