Sim City IV

version 1.0.272.0

company: Maxis (www.maxis.com)/
	 Electronic Arts (www.ea.com)

homesite: www.simcity.com

This patch applies to versions shipped in
South America, Africa (except South Africa), Europe, Russia, Mexico and
Central America.


Performance Improvements

* Zoom and rotation switching is faster in all cases, due to changes that made
building graphics loading more conservative.

* AutoZoomChange:off

* Simulation and Frame rates in general are faster for many cities, due to bug
fixes and performance improvements related to the traffic simulation and
neighbor deals.

* The application's memory cache is more aggressively reduced at runtime, so
that memory will be freed for other uses, resulting in less paging on systems
with less memory.

* Control-Shift-Alt-S (or holding down Alt while clicking on the city save
button) saves the city without updating the region thumbnail and should
significantly improve the game save time, especially on memory-strapped
systems.

* Game default detail options have been made more conservative with respect to
memory and processor speed. Because of the additions to the graphics options,
your previous settings will be lost and reset with new default settings.

* The game no longer forces itself into the underground view unless you have
explicitly picked an underground tool.

* Three new graphics options have been added under in-game graphics settings.
They are: building detail, texture quality and building load speed. These
options are initially set at conservative defaults and can be altered for your
specific machine needs. Building detail will enable you to load one building
style set per rank. (1 set=low, 2 sets=medium, all 3 sets=high). Texture
quality will alter the textures based on the zoom level. Building load speed
will enable tuning options for the rate at which buildings are loaded in
memory. For example, at the low setting buildings will appear at a slower rate
but there will be greater responsiveness to the mouse and scroll movements.


Caveats

* Very large and dense cities with complex road and underground networks will
continue to be a problem with computers that have less than 256MB of RAM
unless the user turns graphics options down via the options dialogs and turns
down day/night transitions via the God menu. It wouldn't hurt to turn down
audio options via the options dialog as well in these cases. The immense scope
of SimCity makes it difficult for it to run quickly at full breadth on
machines with lower RAM, particularly when running complex operating systems
such as Windows XP.

* In our efforts to increase the speed and responsiveness of zoom changes and
scrolling we had to make some trade offs. You will notice quicker response
when changing zooms but one trade off is that the back ground loader will take
more time loading in buildings. The result is that when loading there may be
black boxes in view. This issue can be controlled to some degree by adjusting
the new graphics option, "building load speed", to better suit the performance
of your specific machine.


Additional Update fixes

* Addressed Life Expectancy issue in how averages were calculated. This solves
problems with sudden drops and oddly low values.

* Addressed commuting issues related to highways and double counting on
subways.

* Addressed twitching for left hand turning vehicles.

* Addressed graph (jobs & population) with multiple occupant types to toggle
each type or with hover query.

* Improved art for the heavy truck (industrial prop). It was previously
rendered with 8 bit alpha instead of 1 bit giving it a large blocky black
background.

* Addressed neighbor deal status on rail query.

* Streamlined garbage graph to display just the current capacity of landfills
and garbage produced by the city.

* Addressed several issues in highway connections to neighboring cities.

* Addressed issue for airports and seaports initially showing up distressed.

* Alphabetized region names in the UI.

* Addressed issue regarding incorrect lot texture on a high wealth residential
building and a texture with a high wealth commercial building.

* Update for a connection-related neighbor deal problem associated with water.

* Change neighbor deal to allow deals to continue for a short period of time
even if the buying city runs out of money. This addresses the "neighbor deal
cancelled too quickly" issue.

* Added a desirability threshold to prevent abandonment if lots have high
desirability.

* Increased RCI demand max (allowing the largest structures to build easier).
This is better known as the Stage 8 issue.

* Addressed airport queries to report efficiency.

* Addressed landfills to combine easier if drawn adjacent to each other. Still
problematical if drawn between two landfills, so try adding them one at a
time.

* Lowered the alpha on distressed and abandoned so cities don't look so
devastated.

* Addressed Neighbor deal issues (escalating rates, canceling during
suspension and canceling during obliteration).

* Addressed issue of fires starting with missile silo while game was paused,
Also helps stop fires starting from other special effects while game is
paused.

* Addressed issues related to power line occupant leaks that were causing some
problems with saved games.

* Tax fields in budget can now be entered directly in addition to using the
spinners.

* Addressed incorrect links to budget in multi-neighbor deal messages.

* Addressed cost escalation to network tiles after drawing bridges/tunnels.

* Addressed updates for automata (less getting stuck in intersections, better
synching of lights, better stopping for trains).

* Addressed issue for "go to disaster" link if auto go to disasters is turned
off in options.

* Addressed some network draw problems related to drawing highways over other
networks diagonally.

* Added support for crash report generator. This enables the creation of a log
file if the game happens to shut down unexpectedly.

* Addressed issue for flipped network piece (two diagonal roads against
orthogonal T intersection).

* Improved support for cities built with plugins opened by users who do not
have those plugins.

* Control-Alt-Shift-X will bring up cheat panel as stated in the strategy
guide.

* Lowered 'hotspot' effect for fires. This results in less fires breaking out.

* Lowered frequency of busses (visual automata only) in large cities.



Update 2 also includes these fixes from the previous update.

* Addressed issue related to conflict between MySim and Transportation Pack.

* Addressed issue related to SIS video chipsets.

* Addressed several incorrect links in advisor messages.

* Updated car zots to display properly.

* Addressed issue where the catalog was showing the incorrect capacity for the
Recycling Center.

* Addressed issue where industry development would occur even when commuters
could not reach the zone.

* Added support for ATI Radeon R300 series that add backing store capability.

* Added option to turn off auto-road when zoning behavior by holding the
shift-key while zoning.

* Added option to change orientation of lots when zoning by holding the
alt-key while zoning.

* Added whales to the game.

* Retuned pollution values for airports and seaports.

* Port efficiency is now displayed correctly.

* Airport upgrading now works correctly.

* Freight trains can now drop cargo at ports.

* Updated new zone graphics to better indicate the front of lots.
