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Personally, I've never compared Tropico with Sim City. Tropico focusses more on the political aspect in your city while Sim City lets you play in a "peaceful" city.
But even CS and SC are not that easy to compare with each other. Cities in CS tend to stand or fall with the efficency of your traffic. You have to wait longer until you can build schools, public transport and so on. You don't have as much money as in SC but you recieve a cash bundle every time you reach a milestone (which you throw out again to place the new buildings), It's easier to have a positive income. The game has a slightly cartoony look (a bit like Sim City (5) and The Sims). SC looks more realistic than CS despite the 3D graphics.
Short: Skylines kicks you right into the game but holds your hand from time to time. Rewards are shown more visually like mini-achievements. To make it more like Sim City you should use a mod that unlocks everything from the beginning and another one that let's you start with more money. So you won't need to destroy many residental, shopping and industrial buildings as often as you do.

In SC you can build most needed buildings right from the beginning but you must decide which ones you build first and which later - and you adjust their budget more often. Traffic is easier to handle and more forgiving. Cities in SC look more like cities because the space between buildings is filled with detailled props.
Short: Sim City also kicks you right into your game and you plan more because you extend your existing city instead of destroying half of your city. So later, bigger cities have an inner core and more and more layers of extensions as they grow.

All in all it is good to have both games :)
I'd say both have their existing rights and everybody should
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Darvond: How does we don't have the rights to the jazz soundtrack sound on the plausibility scale?
Now that I didn't know. So I guess it's in some kind of legal limbo? Do they know who owns the music instead?
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sxnc: I see, I just get the feeling Paradox won't budge on selling the game on GOG or any other distributor because they need to maintain online connectivity to make the workshop/modding components work.
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cw8: You don't really need the silly steam workshop or online functionality to get mods:
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/category/2-buildings-bat/?dosort=1&sort_key=file_downloads&sort_order=desc

Mods have been available for Simcity since the late 90s. I've been in the Simcity community since the Internet kinda became mainstream in the 90s, so I should know about that. Back then the custom content for Simcity 2000 were called SCURKS.

And Skylines as well:
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/category/25-buildings/

It's Paradox's epic bullshit about being too troublesome to maintain stuff like patches and mods outside steam.
Lets also not forget there love for dlc ether.
From the looks of it, at least part of the reason it's not on GOG is because there's no GOG Galaxy yet for frequent updates.

Here's a recent article on Paradox that shows frequent updates is a technique they use to discourage piracy:

Paradox on How to Fight Back Piracy & Cities: Skylines Pirated Copies during Its First Days

Cities: Skylines is the best selling title for Paradox Interactive and Shams Jorjani – VP of Acquisition at Paradox – revealed how the company will fight back piracy, as well as the percentage of pirated copies for Cities: Skylines these first two days.

As Shams said, Paradox will simply have to make a great game even better through free updates. Shams believes that this will make it more convenient to use Steam instead of downloading a pirated version of the game.

As usual our plan for pirates is to make a great game even better through free updates – making it more convenient to use Steam instead.

— Shams Jorjani (@ShamsJorjani) March 12, 2015

Shams believes that frequent updates will make the paid version more attractive and a superior product to the pirated one.

It's all about offering the superior service. That's how we bring down piracy. By making the paid experience a superior one.

— Shams Jorjani (@ShamsJorjani) March 12, 2015

Now most of you will say that pirates will go ahead and crack each and every update of Cities: Skylines, right? Well, not exactly. Paradox experimented with this idea in Magicka. And as Shams revealed, pirates stopped posting new pirated version of Magicka after a while.

adsdasdasdas

Lastly, Shams revealed that on its first day there weren’t any pirated copies of Cities: Skylines. On its second day, however, Paradox had 16% piracy.

Here are a few small tidbits of info about Cities: Skylines – day 1 we had 0% piracy. pretty cool. Day 2 16%.

— Shams Jorjani (@ShamsJorjani) March 12, 2015
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/paradox-on-how-to-fight-back-piracy-cities-skylines-pirated-copies-during-its-first-days/

I'm sure mods being tied to the workshop is highly preferable to them for the same reason. You can pirate the game, but without having it on Steam you won't have access to the workshop mods, meaning for those interested in mods, you'll have a better experience if you bought the game than without.
Post edited March 16, 2015 by Pheace
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IronArcturus: Now that I didn't know. So I guess it's in some kind of legal limbo? Do they know who owns the music instead?
I'm guessing. As it turns out, the composer is still working with EA, so that lowers the likelihood.
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Pheace: From the looks of it, at least part of the reason it's not on GOG is because there's no GOG Galaxy yet for frequent updates.

Here's a recent article on Paradox that shows frequent updates is a technique they use to discourage piracy:
Maybe that's the reason why their DLCs are not DRM-free on steam while the vanilla game is. Luckily I only buy the gameplay DLCs at -75% discount. They're lucky because normally I ignore DLCs.
Not sure about SimCity, but Skylines has a huge amount of mods (including a complete GTA V map recreation) and since it's from Paradox (which is very known for treating good the PC players) I would choose it.
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sxnc: I see, I just get the feeling Paradox won't budge on selling the game on GOG or any other distributor because they need to maintain online connectivity to make the workshop/modding components work.
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cw8: You don't really need the silly steam workshop or online functionality to get mods:
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/category/2-buildings-bat/?dosort=1&sort_key=file_downloads&sort_order=desc

Mods have been available for Simcity since the late 90s. I've been in the Simcity community since the Internet kinda became mainstream in the 90s, so I should know about that. Back then the custom content for Simcity 2000 were called SCURKS.

And Skylines as well:
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/category/25-buildings/

It's Paradox's epic bullshit about being too troublesome to maintain stuff like patches and mods outside steam.
Thanks for the links! I haven't played a SimCity game since the 3rd one and I wasn't aware there were mods for it. :)

It sounds like Paradox isn't willing to release stand alone patches and updates without the aid of an online client like Steam. But doesn't GOG provide download links whenever a patch/update for a game is released? It seems like the work is placed more on the user rather than the developer.
Post edited March 16, 2015 by sxnc
Pisses me to no end that people compare this to Simcity and says how much better it is. They don't realise Simcity is made in 1989 and is the first game of the great franchise and probably one of the first city builders? What they're referring to is "Simcity" 2013, the shitty cashgrab by EA which they conveniently named Simcity. There's also an F2P game called Simcity on mobiles. Gosh... I really really hate EA.
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cw8: Pisses me to no end that people compare this to Simcity and says how much better it is. They don't realise Simcity is made in 1989 and is the first game of the great franchise and probably one of the first city builders? What they're referring to is "Simcity" 2013, the shitty cashgrab by EA which they conveniently named Simcity. There's also an F2P game called Simcity on mobiles. Gosh... I really really hate EA.
Yeah, even all the other DRM infested posers couldn't compare to SC 4 (Deluxe for the win).

Just an amazing game, and still hasn't been superceded by any of the imposters/successors . . . . well, maybe graphically, but not gameplay/modability wise.


Cities: Skylines looks very intriguing, but it's DRM'd for one, and doesn't even have Tunneling (as of yet) for another.

I've seen rave reviews on it, but the above two short comings have me quite leary.
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cw8: snip
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sxnc: Thanks for the links! I haven't played a SimCity game since the 3rd one and I wasn't aware there were mods for it. :)

It sounds like Paradox isn't willing to release stand alone patches and updates without the aid of an online client like Steam. But doesn't GOG provide download links whenever a patch/update for a game is released? It seems like the work is placed more on the user rather than the developer.
Yeah, but then they would have to send their patch to two stores, that's way too much work for them.
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sxnc: Thanks for the links! I haven't played a SimCity game since the 3rd one and I wasn't aware there were mods for it. :)

It sounds like Paradox isn't willing to release stand alone patches and updates without the aid of an online client like Steam. But doesn't GOG provide download links whenever a patch/update for a game is released? It seems like the work is placed more on the user rather than the developer.
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dksone: Yeah, but then they would have to send their patch to two stores, that's way too much work for them.
You're both completely missing the point. They want those patches to be tied to Steam so they need to be cracked first before pirates get to use them, hoping the high ratio of patches discourages crackers to keep up, at least for a while.

Having drm-free patches completely negates that effect.
Cities Skylines is what SimCity (2013) should've been. I never liked SC4 and much preferred 3000 unlimited, but Skylines gets close enough to the enjoyment level of that game, especially with already available awesome mods like in the Lazy Game Reviews' collection.

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Darvond: How does we don't have the rights to the jazz soundtrack sound on the plausibility scale?
I'm going to cry if it's re-released WITHOUT that soundtrack. I mean, I can't imagine playing it without hearing this beautiful sax.

Heck, I'm even playing Cities Skylines with SC3000's soundtrack. Not to knock off the orchestral score, but you just can't beat that jazz.
Post edited March 18, 2015 by WesleyB
Just got called a "pirate" ARRRRRR by a Paradox dude on Reddit when I implied that the game not working without Steam should be added to the bug list. lol
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IronArcturus: Any chance Cities: Skylines will make it to GOG?
Well doesn't hurt to wish for it!
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/cities_skylines