'Major' SimCity update 2.0 coming April 22
EA will release its 'first significant update' for SimCity on Monday, April 22 at 1pm Pacific Time (9pm UK).
http://cdn.medialib.computerandvideo...mb_wide300.jpgSimply entitled Update 2.0, the major patch will introduce "a number of top-requested bug fixes and improvements".EA warns that due to the significant changes being made to the game, servers will be taken offline "for a few hours" as the patch is applied.Here's the full changelog:What's New
- Mayors Mansion: Mayors will now drive their fancy cars to work. Mayors will take their helicopter, limo, or sports car if the modules are present.
- HUD: Now color-corrects when in a colorblind mode.
- Data map: Data maps show the filtered color when a color filter is enabled (unless in a colorblind mode)
Fixes and Updates
- Cities not Processing: Mitigates some of the issues that were causing cities not to process. We are continuing to work on and improve this issue.
- Region Filters: Now sorts regions with available cities to the top
- Invitations: Invitations to join a region should be sent and received more quickly.
- Tourism: Fixes for unexplained fluctuation of tourists. Tourists more smartly counted on transit.
- Cruise ships are now more effective at bringing medium and high wealth tourists in coastal cities.
- New tourists will now decide to come into a city once leaving tourists reach train stations, bus depots, or cruise ship docs instead of waiting for those tourists to go out to the region first.
- This change will reduce the downtime of tourist buildings.
- Casinos: Casinos tuned so that Gambling will be a more profitable specialty. Players can bulldoze and replace existing casinos to see effects of tuning.
- The larger casinos now invite more tourists into the city which helps keep them full.
- Note that existing casinos will need to be replaced to take advantage of this change.
- More Casinos: Raised module limit on Sci-Fi and Sleek Casinos to 6 modules.
- Region Play: Cash gifts can now be received in a bankrupt city.
- Education: Fixed school buses getting stuck at the high school. Existing Schools will fix themselves.
- Education: Fixed school buses picking up students at neighboring cities that didn't have school bus stops.
- Education: Fix to more accurately track regional student population.
- Education: Fix where kids leaving the school bus stop would teleport to the nearest pedestrian path instead of walking directly into the school.
- Education: University wings now give the proper bonus.
- Recycling: Fix for the Recycling Center where it would sometimes stop working, recycling services will visit other cities.
- Air pollution: Fixed issue where air pollution would appear to come from nowhere. Fix issues where your regional air pollution would be reflected back into your box for a double penalty.
- Fire Service: Fire Trucks don't clump, dispatch to fires more efficiently.
- Water: Water pumps are now capable of pumping water from rivers at a larger radius so they can take better advantage of the water table in a city.
- Disasters: Cooldown for random disasters: Some players were getting hit too frequently with random disasters, this introduces a cooldown where no random disasters will occur.
- Trade: Fix for trade ports that suddenly stop shipping.
- Transit: Street Cars and Buses go to high volume stops first.
- Transit: A city with residents and public transit will now provide the accurate amount of workers and shoppers to its neighbors.
- Transit: A transit vehicle stuck in a pick-up or drop off loop will now go back to a garage instead of trying to pick up more people.
- Transit vehicles should recover automatically after the update. If players want to force the recovery, turn off the stops that are having looping issues, wait a few game hours, then turn them back on.
- Transit: Neighbors buses will now come in lower numbers into the city and do a better job at picking up local passengers first.
- Residential Tuning: Residential-only cities have failure state.
- Buildings are prevented from going up in density when they don't have power or water.
- The amount of happiness gained from low taxes, police, fire, and health outreach has been lowered.
- Fixed some cases where buildings would not go abandoned when they should have.
- Higher density residential buildings are no longer blocked from going abandoned due to not having enough money.
- Happiness from low taxes does not double up every time it is given.
- Losing happiness due to not having a job is more impactful.
- Budgets: Fixed bug that prevented systems like fire, abandonment, garbage, and sewage from turning on when they were supposed to.
- Audio: Fixes issue where audio will stop working after creating a large city or where phantom audio sounds play in a city.
- Demolish: Fixes issue that occurred when players demolished buildings that had service vehicles, delivery vehicles, or agents out in the city or region. Previously, the agents would be in a state of limbo and would not recover when new buildings of that type were placed. This will no longer happen.
