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SimCity Societies

Platform(s): PC
Genre: Simulation
Publisher: EA
Developer: Tilted Mill

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'SimCity Societies' - v1.04.243 Patch Available NOW

by Rainier on May 23, 2008 @ 4:12 a.m. PDT

Featuring an all-new, revolutionary feature set, SimCity Societies allows players to construct not only the cities they desire, but create their cultures, societal behaviors and environments as well. Build an artistic city, haunted town, green city, spiritual community or most any society you want! Using the accessible, innovative and versatile city-builder, players can create their own kind of city in SimCity Societies.

Get the SimCity Societies v1.04.243 Patch off WP (160mb)

v1.04.243 Patch:

New Features:

• Scenarios - Six scenarios have been added. In a scenario, you’re asked to meet the needs of a particular city. There, buildings might work slightly differently than you’re used to, certain events might be more or less rare, and it’s possible for you to lose your job as mayor. Scenarios range from relaxing, like A Land Apart (build a cosmopolitan, refined city where artists rub elbows with wealthy patrons) and Simplify, Simplify (with modest resources, create a refuge from hurry and waste) to very challenging, like Futurology (build a massive city to serve as the nerve center of a globe-spanning corporation).
You can find them from the “Play SimCity Societies” screen by clicking the button with the red, orange, and blue arrows. The data files for these scenarios (in the Data/XMLDb/Scenarios folder) are highly commented to encourage modification, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with.
• Policies (Creative & Strategic modes) – At any one time, you can enact up to three special rules for your city, such as World Market Investment (your treasury fluctuates with the stock market), Universal Healthcare (your healthcare buildings are open to more visitors), or Indoctrination (your educational facilities keep Sims’ moods in line). The full list of Policies, and the requirements to enact them, are on the City Management Screen (press ‘I’, or click the little city to the left of the mini-map). Policies often work best with certain buildings or in certain societies.
• New Maintenance system (Strategic modes) – Buildings have a wider variety of maintenance costs. The new costs are more appropriate to the type of society you’re building, and present more strategic options. We’ve also grouped buildings into four maintenance categories (Government, Infrastructure, Social Services, and General), and you can control the budget for each category individually, weighing the risk of those buildings falling into disrepair against the cost of maintaining them. The sliders to control maintenance are on the City Management Screen.
• New Budget Graph (Creative & Strategic modes) - To help track your Simoleons, a larger and more detailed budget screen is available.
• New City Management Screen to help you organize all of the above in one location.
• Terrain leveling tool - you can now flatten terrain when a slope prevents you from building. Hover over the Bulldozer tool to reveal it.
• There’s a special reward for you if you can earn the Jack of all Trades trophy in Nightmare mode (check for ‘Monument of Mastery’ in your Decorations menu if you’ve already earned the trophy).

Gameplay Changes:

• Income has been rebalanced for both modes of play, further emphasizing the different ways in which different types of societies generate income. Buildings costs have been rebalanced as well.
• The effects of strategic game modes have been re-balanced to provide a better overall progression from one mode to the next.
• The Eyesore effect now exists on small buildings in a small radius for buildings like the Dive Bar, or Slum Apartments.
• Improved feedback for the Eyesore system.
• Increased diversity of UI changes based on city profile.
• Power plants can function when damaged (at reduced efficiency). This should prevent your city from shutting down due to a single maintenance failure.

Plus Improved Stability and Performance, and Other Fixes, Including:

• A limit of 1500 buildings per city, added to help prevent out-of-memory errors. This is enough to earn all the trophies and win all the scenarios, and most players never build a city that large. We don’t recommend doing so, but if you’d like to experiment with larger cities than that, and you don’t mind living on the edge, you can adjust this limit in DataXMLDbConstantsConstants.xml; search for ‘MaxLimit’ under the Building Constants heading.
• Fixed an infinite loop of social energy adjustments that could occur with certain uses of the Free Press ability.
• Added workarounds for some stability issues with newer ATI drivers.
• The follow cam now will track the correct Sim after a fight.
• Performance improvements to texture streaming.
• Additional help and tooltips added throughout the game.
• Fix for buildings under the influence of multiple effects not always updating properly when a building causing one of the effects is demolished.
• Fix for a crash if you have settings that are invalid for your current video card (because you had played the game with a different card and have swapped them without changing your settings).
• In that long fraction of a second between the intro movies and the main menu where there was nothing to do before, you can now admire a pretty loading screen.
• The building variant hotkey wasn't playing nice with the Housing Project. Now it does.
• Fix for a circumstance in which deleting a save game would delete two instead.
• Fix for some stability issues with repeated settings changes.
• Fix for some situations where icons could hang out above deleted buildings indefinitely.

Known Issues

• Game Crash: if user changes Graphics Quality from high to low during a Killer Storm on a vista machine with a Radeon HD3870 video card.
• Previously modded buildings lack the new maintenance functionality. These mods will need to be updated in order for the building maintenance to function properly. Two new files need to modified for proper maintenance: Maintenance Categories and Maintenance Groups.
• Please be sure you have all the latest Windows Updates and Service Packs, particularly if you’re running Vista. Microsoft has issued several fixes for bugs in Vista that can lead to excessive memory use or instability when running SimCity Societies.
• Some players with Radeon Crossfire video cards may experience flickering in the animations. Disabling “crossfire” when possible or running a single card corrects the issue.

v1.03.140 Patch:

New features:

In all modes of play:

  • Added The Burgazoid 6000 disaster. he product of an experiment in efficient cheeseburger service gone awry, the Burgazoid 6000 shoots laser beams. His footfalls cause mini-earthquakes
  • Added The Ornithosaurus Wrecks disaster. A gigantic horned bird-like monster who hurls fire from his beak; his footfalls cause mini-earthquakes.
  • Six new events: epidemic, investment bubble, riot, strike, scientific breakthrough, pilgrimage,
  • Two new crises: religious holiday, counter-cultural revolution.
  • New building abilities for Eyesore, Minor Eyesore, Contagious, Inspiration
  • Mod management tool, accessible from the main menu. Enables you to enable/disable or delete mods. Provides link to the mod exchange online.

New Buildings:

  • Additional variants of 15 home types.
  • Two new venues – Supermarket and Carousel
  • Two new workplaces—Warehouse, Low-rise Office Building

Fixes and improvements:

  • Fix for Having a very large city with a very high worker population while the Happiness Icon indicator is turned on causes the game to crash
  • Fix for - GREEK - The HotKeys "V" and "Shift+V" are not functional
  • Fix for crash that could occur on exit with a fire in the city
  • Fix for: Hitting return to the main menu skipping prompts for save/load when it comes after an achievement
  • Fix for goto nearest firestation button not working with district fire stations
  • Fix for camera not focusing on UFO attack after focusing on Fire (However, it is still possible for the camera to be below the UFO if the UFO is very high when the “!” button is clicked.)
  • Fix for Creepy smoke and ghost effects don't activate when entering haunted profiles
  • Fix for building costs not updating in gallery when cost modifier is in effect
  • Fix for crash for unaligned particle memory with new ATI Catalyst 8.3 drivers
  • Fix for Building Ghosts not displaying Custom Textures as they are being placed
  • Fix for Culture Car Sets not being expandable
  • Fix for ambients being unable to be overwritten by mods
  • Fix for custom bump maps not showing up in game
  • Fix for: high-resolutions textures are not swapping out even when camera is too high to benefit from their detail. Reduces memory usage.
  • Fix for: error in shadow and batch rendering that may have been causing some DirectX errors / slowdowns
  • Changes in materials handling and in UI texture pinning reduce memory usage

v1.02.119 Patch :

New features:

In Strategic modes of play:

  • When you meet the criteria for an Achievement reward in any of the strategic modes of play, you are offered the opportunity to accept that award. Doing so will restrict you from winning any other achievement in that city (including the Jack of All Trades – if you’re looking to unlock the next difficulty level, save your one achievement for that).
  • Sims may get sick even when they haven’t visited a building that causes illness.
  • Workers who were late to work finish out their full workday, even if they have to stay late.
  • Increased event frequencies in all strategic modes.

In all modes of play:

  • Many building actions can now be set to automatically fire as soon as they are available. Building actions with this capability are marked with a yellow border; right-click them and they will activate whenever possible.
  • Additional messaging and tools to help you find and fight fires. Click the red button to center on a fire. Click the blue button to center on the nearest fire station.
  • A message has been added to notify you when you might wish to change settings to improve performance.
  • A new road placement method has been added that simplifies road drawing. Use it by building a “Rigid” road. The existing road placement method is still available as an “Adaptive” road.
  • A UFO Attack disaster has been added. (UFOs show up in your city and destroy buildings. Your citizens flee in terror.)
  • A filter for finding buildings by their role in the game (law enforcement, for instance) has been added. You can also create your own set in XML and add it to the filter.

Fixes and improvements:

  • Cities with large worker populations use an internal model to abstract a portion of the Sim population. This improves large cities performance and can be adjusted to your taste and machine.
  • Memory footprint reduced.
  • Fix for a problem with terrain level-of-detail on low settings that could lead to a crash.
  • Fix for an overwrite in memory pool allocation which could lead to a crash.
  • Fix for a situation where alerts wouldn't disappear correctly if you clicked at just the right time.
  • Ice cream trucks will now work properly when the building spawning them is set back from the road 1-3 tiles.
  • Sims saved in a waiting state will now correctly still be waiting when the game is loaded.
  • Pathing through Wind Farms and Major Wind Farms is now allowed.
  • Items added by mods were sometimes not getting their names until the second run after they're installed. That’s been fixed.
  • Music xml files are correctly additive to make adding new music to the game easier.

Also includes Game Updates #1 and #2

No need to install previous Game Updates; the improvements and content from Game Updates #1 and #2 are included in Game Update #3. Game Update #3 can be applied to the base game, or the game with either or both of the previous updates already applied.

Build an artistic city, haunted town, green city, spiritual community or most any society you want! Using the accessible, innovative and versatile city-builder, players can create their own kind of city in SimCity Societies.

Players start by choosing from a variety of more than 350 building types, each of which allows them to combine, connect and re-arrange structures freely. Players can challenge authority and experiment with what happens when citizens flagrantly disobey power in an unruly Orwellian society. Or if players are feeling happy, they can build a Fun City filled with Ferris Wheels, Gingerbread Houses and Chocolate Factories! Inspiration can come from a wide range of architectural periods ranging from the realistic to the fanciful; from the industrial age to futuristic designs, with each structure reflecting its name and nature, many offering a click-on action for fans to play upon! As each city evolves, players will be able to unlock new buildings that can help advance - or regress - their society.

SimCity Societies introduces an all-new, revolutionary feature set for players to combine buildings that will produce or consume new kinds of resources called "social energies." How you mix and match these resources - industry, wealth, obedience, knowledge, devotion, or creativity--determines the social energy of your city. Will your city be happy and creative, spiritual and knowledgeable, will it be wealthy and powerful or obedient and fearful? Its fate is in your hands!

Not only will players be able to build from any or all energies, but the cities will look and behave differently depending on the energy combinations the player makes. From futuristic metropolises and fantastical haunted cities to obedient Orwellian states and devout contemplative towns - what to combine and connect is up to the creator.

SimCity Societies is being published by Electronic Arts and developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment.

It is scheduled to be available in retails stores across North America and Europe in November 2007.


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