Comparison to Sim City 4, and agriculture

[Scanner]

What are the advantages to this game over Sim City 4? I understand this game has what it calls plugins, but there are already a lot of mods for Sim City 4. What is this game's "unique selling point"? (I hate that term!)

Also, does TheoTown have agriculture in it? So that farms and small hamlets can be placed, which over time can organically grown into a city.

[Xam Huad]

Unique selling point?
This feature works nicely:
Zones (Res, Com, Ind) come in three tiers and every tier
has its respective selection of building graphics.

When placing zones, the zone will gradually grow in estate value,
buildings get replaced due demand and change in graphic.
It doesn't stop there, one can select a building to stop changing.

In sandbox mode it is even possible to build that particular building graphic
including its specific parameters (every building graphic has its own).
For instance: a tier 2 residential flat (series 6) may be 1x1 with 15 housing,
a tier 1 commercial office (series 12) may be size 3x3 with 156 work spots,
a tier 3 industrial factory (series 30) may be size 6x6 with 1056 work spots.
Once built, can even select the building to stop being monumental
and have it revert to its particular zoning standard (dynamic graphic & properties).

There are also a rather large number of 1x1 decorations,
infrastructure attachments, building extensions (etc.) available.

Agriculture?
TheoTown has Farms: dynamic (industrialised) barns, crop fields & varied tractor traffic.

That said, not too familiar with SC4. Have played the original SC and SC2K though.

[Scanner]

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed answer, X4MHD. I never use sandbox mode in any games, and the rest sounds just like SC4. Exactly like SC4 even!

I played both SC and SC2K when they came out (I'm showing my age!). I know a lot of people have a love for SC2K, but I while I don't mind old graphics, I have no love (or nostalgia) for old user interfaces!

[Xam Huad]

Well, it's not like everything about TheoTown was mentioned.
The query was about the main selling point in reference to SC4.
Don't think have ever seen the selling point in any of the SC franchise,
hence it was mentioned.

There are numerous differences between the 2 though.
For instance, there are more financial options now to stay afloat.
The traffic overlay is awkward, however the options available are beautiful.
The interface is functional and simplistic, nothing too fancy & gets the job done.

And yeah, SC and SC2K were fun at their time (dread to play it nowadays).
Personally didn't enjoy the GUI of SC3K and SC4.

[༼ つ ◕◡◕ ༽つ Dray2k]

In my opinion, the biggest sellingpoint for me was the good pixel art and level to detail. But I kept playing the game because of the phenomenal map size.

Maps can be like 16 times as big as Sim City 4 biggest regions. The small maps you could buint cities on were my biggest gripe with SC4.

[yusuf8a684]

Originally posted by ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Dray2k:

In my opinion, the biggest sellingpoint for me was the good pixel art and level to detail. ...

I agree with you. I like making or using plugins much. Sometimes coding being realy hard (talking about complex ones) but I like pixel arting in that game's scale.
It is doubling with community too

[༼ つ ◕◡◕ ༽つ Dray2k]

Originally posted by yusuf8a684:

*snip*

Yeah, perhaps I will also look into making plugins. I really want to control a helicopter in this game, that was one of the most fun things in Sim City 4: Deluxe.

What I may do is making a Sandbox city, like "sculting" one like those Cities Skylines videos. Theres certainly enough room to have a BIG city to showcase.

Hopefully new features will come in as time goes by. This game came out of nowhere and I don't even know its history. Hopefully its future looks bright.

[Scanner]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I hope this doesn't sound like I'm slating the game, but I expected to read of more differences! Perhaps there just aren't very many. The larger sizes is of the most interest to me. I haven't played SC4 for a long time, and I've been thinking about starting a new game. I like to start with a lot of agriculture land, and a few houses, hamlets, and villages dotted around. Then grow it slowly, and organically without much planning, over a long time. So the larger map size would be nice for that. It's a good price, so I'll pick it up and see which I prefer.

[༼ つ ◕◡◕ ༽つ Dray2k]

Originally posted by Scanner:

I like to start with a lot of agriculture land, and a few houses, hamlets, and villages dotted around. Then grow it slowly, and organically without much planning, over a long time.

This approach in building a city is absolutely possible in this game (also the style of houses really fit the style). But besides that, if you see if its not for you enturely you can simply wait a few months/years and come back later. This game does seem to be constantly updated and improved. Even if there aren't any patchnotes apart from two that are visible on Steam, the vesion number seems to change almost daily.

The longer you build, the more you unlock. You can't just go build a huge skyscapper from the beginning. The normal game forces you to start small and the less density buildings are perfectly looking for small cities. the high density buildings (and the monuments) basically result in the city to look like they kinda do in the Steam screenshots, though you have to have some foresight into making your city look pretty, but its fairly easier to do than in SC4.

And as X4MHD already wrote there is a Sandbox mode where everything is unlocked and where every house is placeable right from the start. You can build your dreamcity no matter what.

[Scanner]

Well, I picked it up. I've only played 40 minutes. Initial thoughts are that agriculture seems to need too many employees, and often basic dwellings start as blocks of flats/apartments instead of individual houses (the game seems very geared towards urban). Perhaps there are plugins to fix those things. I will spend more time with it and see. And if not, maybe the game will change over time, or I can write plugins myself. I'll try sandbox mode too --- I've not given it much of a chance yet, just giving my initial thoughts.

[༼ つ ◕◡◕ ༽つ Dray2k]

Originally posted by Scanner:

Well, I picked it up. I've only played 40 minutes. Initial thoughts are that agriculture seems to need too many employees, and often basic dwellings start as blocks of flats/apartments instead of individual houses (the game seems very geared towards urban). Perhaps there are plugins to fix those things. I will spend more time with it and see. And if not, maybe the game will change over time, or I can write plugins myself. I'll try sandbox mode too --- I've not given it much of a chance yet, just giving my initial thoughts.

Hmm, we seem to have a diferent approach to what accounts as a village as small settlements with single houses "dotted" in the grid are absolutely possible to make. There are almost no apartments during the early stage and the earliest houses you can build resemble 15th century central european buildings which is pretty much the essential basis of a farming village, historically and even during modern times but I guess it depends where you live.