One of the more disappointing gaming experiences I've had in my life was realizing that the core loop in this game basically boiled down to the proportion of zones to each other.
Everything else, all of the other settings, all of the other proportions like schools or police or whatever, doesn't matter. All window dressing. Bummer.
Technically you must balance the population and jobs numbers rather than the number of zoned tiles, but that is only one step away. Most of the challenge becomes maintaining the balance as the density of your zones changes over time.
Cities: Skylines has a much more interesting simulation, but if you examine the CPU requirements you can easily imagine why Maxis didn’t take the same approach until 2013.
exogeny · · focus · HN ↗
Everything else, all of the other settings, all of the other proportions like schools or police or whatever, doesn't matter. All window dressing. Bummer.
db48x · · focus · HN ↗
Cities: Skylines has a much more interesting simulation, but if you examine the CPU requirements you can easily imagine why Maxis didn’t take the same approach until 2013.