- Device
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- Username
- Phyllo Game Over
To me, this seems to be the closest alternative to AC I found so far.
I copy my post from the SimCity Build it thread here since I cannot move it. If an admin wants to delete it there, feel free to do so.
I've started to play a bit with Virtual City Playground but not much yet. So far, I like it. Here are some first impressions and my understanding of the basics, I haven't read any guides on strategy yet, so I have probably done some things wrong but so what?
You get a city that starts with a garage in the center. In this garage, all trucks need a place, so you need to upgrade the garage step by step as your city grows.
You start by byuing a farm, then a mill and you buy your first truck to drive from the farm to you set to drive from the farm to the mill.
Next comes a dairy and a bakery and you need trucks to drive milk and flour to the bakery.
Of course, you also need residents, so you also build residential buildings, a cinema to entertain them, a mall to buy stuff, a bus stop to get them from their houses to the cinema or the mall, ... For this, you obviously need to buy a bus.
You need to build parks and fountains as well to keep the city's air clean. You can also plant trees for that.
All houses produce litter, so you need a garbage truck that collects it from everywhere and brings it to the recycling center.
Buildings that need raw material like the dairy run out of that after using up their pile and you need to restock it manually but you can do that for free. Production just stops if the building runs out of it while you are not in the game.
Each producing building has a its own warehouse where it can store x items and it stops production when the warehouse is full until the truck comes again to pick up products. You can see nicely how the animation of that building stops then and you might want to upgrade the truck that picks up goods there then but you should keep a balance with the other bu ildings and trucks to keep production smooth.
Another key element in the game is energy.
You gain one point of energy every 5 minutes and can then use it on whatever you think is most important.
When you buy something, you need cash and to then build it, you need energy.
When you buy a truck, you need energy to setup a route for it.
When you upgrade a building or a truck, you need energy.
When you want to move a building, you need energy as well, so it pays to think about which building produces what to keep those related close to each other to keep the truck driving times low. I had not thought of that because it was all new and I'll need to use a pile of energy to reorganize my city. That is why I won't build any new buildings for a while now until I sorted out how to best organize my buildings without having to move too many.
The nice thing about the game is that the energy simply piles up and you do not need to be there right when the 5 minutes are up but can simply build a pile of it for whenever you have time again. To me, this is more relaxing than AC where I was also frustrated because my productions kept moving further back since e.g. catering was due every 12 hours and I needed to be there right then or the next would only come later. You also earn money while you are not in your city since the trucks simply keep driving their routes and earning money for you even when you're asleep.
You can buy slices of land for cash and diamonds and you earn diamonds by completing side tasks and leveling up. There are also side tasks that cost diamonds like "remove a hill" which costs 3 diamonds and then 3 energy but it gives you more land to build on.
You can build monuments like big ben which give you 1-3 extra energy every 5 minutes depending on the type of building. As a side quest, you should buy big ben for a rebated price of 3 instead of 30 diamonts and since it doubles your energy from 1 to 2 every five minutes, those are well spent diamonds.
You can also build special buildings like an airport, a big stadion, a casino, a skyscraper, a hangar, a space pad and so on later but I don't have any of them yet so I don't knnow what they offer.
It can happen that a building starts to burn and you need to extinguish the fire. I just spent 500 coins on that which is ridiculous since I have over 300k already but it stops the production of that building of course until I get into the game to extinguish it. To extinguish it, a red helicopter flew in and threw water on the building - and as my reward for extinguishing it, I can now build a fire brigade. There is also the option to use a protective shield to prevent any fires for the next 24 hours but I don't know yet how to obtain this so I did not yet complete the side task to do that with the one I got for free.
Similarly, a truck can break down and you can use a protective shield against that for 24 hours. None of mine broke down so far but after the experience with the fire, I assume I can build a garage once I repaired the first.
I haven't found anything like collections yet but maybe I'm too early in the game for that - or they might introduce collections later - but I can live without them as well.
You can invite friends, either existing, anonymous players or players you know by nickname and send them gifts. I don't have any yet since I would prefer to know the friends I add like I did in AC.
You can send gifts to friends and "with the next update", you can also visit your friend's city. A big bonus is that you can chat with your friends in game and do not need to rely on a forum for that. I do not plan to leave the forum but I would always have loved to have this feature in AC even though the forum offers the option to talk with your friends.
If anyone wants to give it a try and add me, I'm "Phyllo E" since "Phyllo" was already taken by whomever, so that is NOT me.
The game is being developed by G5 Entertainment which somehow reminds me of another company's name and the names of the developers sound Russian, too. I don't know if the two companies are related in any way though.
Here is a screenshot of my still tiny town and yes, you see the trucks driving around all the time, gather products in one building and unloading them in another, you'll like it, @Mia. In this view, you see the list of my trucks at the bottom, they even change their looks in this selection line depending on their load, e.g. the third was empty when I took this screenshot.
View attachment 7644
I copy my post from the SimCity Build it thread here since I cannot move it. If an admin wants to delete it there, feel free to do so.
I've started to play a bit with Virtual City Playground but not much yet. So far, I like it. Here are some first impressions and my understanding of the basics, I haven't read any guides on strategy yet, so I have probably done some things wrong but so what?
You get a city that starts with a garage in the center. In this garage, all trucks need a place, so you need to upgrade the garage step by step as your city grows.
You start by byuing a farm, then a mill and you buy your first truck to drive from the farm to you set to drive from the farm to the mill.
Next comes a dairy and a bakery and you need trucks to drive milk and flour to the bakery.
Of course, you also need residents, so you also build residential buildings, a cinema to entertain them, a mall to buy stuff, a bus stop to get them from their houses to the cinema or the mall, ... For this, you obviously need to buy a bus.
You need to build parks and fountains as well to keep the city's air clean. You can also plant trees for that.
All houses produce litter, so you need a garbage truck that collects it from everywhere and brings it to the recycling center.
Buildings that need raw material like the dairy run out of that after using up their pile and you need to restock it manually but you can do that for free. Production just stops if the building runs out of it while you are not in the game.
Each producing building has a its own warehouse where it can store x items and it stops production when the warehouse is full until the truck comes again to pick up products. You can see nicely how the animation of that building stops then and you might want to upgrade the truck that picks up goods there then but you should keep a balance with the other bu ildings and trucks to keep production smooth.
Another key element in the game is energy.
You gain one point of energy every 5 minutes and can then use it on whatever you think is most important.
When you buy something, you need cash and to then build it, you need energy.
When you buy a truck, you need energy to setup a route for it.
When you upgrade a building or a truck, you need energy.
When you want to move a building, you need energy as well, so it pays to think about which building produces what to keep those related close to each other to keep the truck driving times low. I had not thought of that because it was all new and I'll need to use a pile of energy to reorganize my city. That is why I won't build any new buildings for a while now until I sorted out how to best organize my buildings without having to move too many.
The nice thing about the game is that the energy simply piles up and you do not need to be there right when the 5 minutes are up but can simply build a pile of it for whenever you have time again. To me, this is more relaxing than AC where I was also frustrated because my productions kept moving further back since e.g. catering was due every 12 hours and I needed to be there right then or the next would only come later. You also earn money while you are not in your city since the trucks simply keep driving their routes and earning money for you even when you're asleep.
You can buy slices of land for cash and diamonds and you earn diamonds by completing side tasks and leveling up. There are also side tasks that cost diamonds like "remove a hill" which costs 3 diamonds and then 3 energy but it gives you more land to build on.
You can build monuments like big ben which give you 1-3 extra energy every 5 minutes depending on the type of building. As a side quest, you should buy big ben for a rebated price of 3 instead of 30 diamonts and since it doubles your energy from 1 to 2 every five minutes, those are well spent diamonds.
You can also build special buildings like an airport, a big stadion, a casino, a skyscraper, a hangar, a space pad and so on later but I don't have any of them yet so I don't knnow what they offer.
It can happen that a building starts to burn and you need to extinguish the fire. I just spent 500 coins on that which is ridiculous since I have over 300k already but it stops the production of that building of course until I get into the game to extinguish it. To extinguish it, a red helicopter flew in and threw water on the building - and as my reward for extinguishing it, I can now build a fire brigade.
There is also the option to use a protective shield to prevent any fires for the next 24 hours but I don't know yet how to obtain this so I did not yet complete the side task to do that with the one I got for free.Similarly, a truck can break down and you can use a protective shield against that for 24 hours. None of mine broke down so far but after the experience with the fire, I assume I can build a garage once I repaired the first.
I haven't found anything like collections yet but maybe I'm too early in the game for that - or they might introduce collections later - but I can live without them as well.
You can invite friends, either existing, anonymous players or players you know by nickname and send them gifts. I don't have any yet since I would prefer to know the friends I add like I did in AC.
You can send gifts to friends and "with the next update", you can also visit your friend's city. A big bonus is that you can chat with your friends in game and do not need to rely on a forum for that. I do not plan to leave the forum but I would always have loved to have this feature in AC even though the forum offers the option to talk with your friends.
If anyone wants to give it a try and add me, I'm "Phyllo E" since "Phyllo" was already taken by whomever, so that is NOT me.
The game is being developed by G5 Entertainment which somehow reminds me of another company's name
and the names of the developers sound Russian, too. I don't know if the two companies are related in any way though.Here is a screenshot of my still tiny town and yes, you see the trucks driving around all the time, gather products in one building and unloading them in another, you'll like it, @Mia.
In this view, you see the list of my trucks at the bottom, they even change their looks in this selection line depending on their load, e.g. the third was empty when I took this screenshot.View attachment 7644
Mia
david smith
LAX
