Game Update #5 Now Available

http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?p=188824#post188824

Notes for Game Update #5 (releasedMay2008)

EA and Tilted Mill are excited to announce the most significant update to SimCity
Societies yet, with six scenarios, city-wide policies, budgetary controls, and more.
In this update, we introduce powerful new ways of playing SimCity Societies, as well as
further refinements to both Creative and Strategic modes of play.
This update wouldn’t have been possible without feedback from our users on Tilted
Mill’s, EA’s and other gaming forums, and we are grateful for everyone’s input.

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 Data\XMLDb\Constants\Constants.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.

http://simcitysocieties.ea.com/updates/scs_updates.php

Hopefully this sorts out a lot of the lock-ups Smiley Blink

It also seems as if it might even add extra different gameplay Happy Dance