In the coming weeks blog posts about the simulation in CITIES XL will appear on the official website: citiesxl.com.  In the first part of the series Monte Cristo talks about “effects”. Topics include the effect of different resources (Water, fuel, electricity, agriculture, services, etc. ), services and the living environment of your citizens.

The availability and accessibility of different services like hospital to your citizens will depend on how much time it costs to get to the location:

Residents will take into account the distance that separates their home from a building providing a service. This distance will be calculated based on roads and transport facilities. It’s not much use being close to a hospital as the crow flies if you’re actually on the other side of a river and there’s no bridge…

Similarly, traffic jams will in effect increase the distance from a service. Players will therefore need to improve the transport infrastructure by building highways and providing bus services.

Colour gradient on the roads show the accessibility of the hospital(blue cross)

This is a huge improvement if you compare it with the area circle used in SimCity 4.

Read more about the “effects” and the living environment on the cities xl website, or discuss it on our forums.