simcity-2013 game sourced
SimCity (2013)
A SimCity reboot built on the agent-based GlassBox engine, in which agents carry workers, power, water, and goods between buildings and small cities share a region over an always-online connection.
parts
14 mechanics, as SimCity (2013) does themcore · 4
Agent pathfinding
Sims go to the first job and first empty home they find; vehicles take the shortest route rather than the one with spare capacity.
Asynchronous shared regions
Cities in a region connect by highway, rail, and water, trade resources, share services, and pool wealth into Great Works such as an arcology.
Traffic congestion
Jams emerge from masses of commuting Sim agents on the road network.
Zoning
Residential, commercial, and industrial zones are painted along roads; buildings develop inside them.
supporting · 10
Building placement
Deposit depletion
Map resources are mostly finite, though groundwater recharges.
Fluid pipe networks
Water and sewage move as units through pipes between pumps, treatment, and buildings.
Pause and speed control
Pollution spread
Pollution and traffic cross city borders within a region.
Population strata
Residents and businesses come in wealth levels with different demands.
Power grid
Power is carried as resource units from plants to buildings.
Service coverage
Service buildings dispatch vehicle agents to calls.
Supply-demand pricing
A simulated global market raises and lowers prices of key resources with supply and demand.
Treasury and budget
core loop
zone along roads -> GlassBox agents carry workers, goods, power, water, and sewage between buildings -> specialize the city in industries such as manufacturing, education, or tourism -> trade surpluses and share services with region neighbors -> pool resources into Great Works
design notes
GlassBox replaces statistical maps with units that hold resource bins and agents that move resources between them, so a house holds a count of people and food, water travels as units, and traffic jams are the visible sum of commuting agents. Agents take the first available job and the first empty home rather than keeping persistent lives, and vehicles take the shortest route instead of the least loaded one, which players read as pathfinding errors. Cities were smaller than earlier games by design, and region play links them asynchronously through shared services, trade, and Great Works.