{"id":19904,"date":"2013-03-11T12:55:31","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T19:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/?p=19904"},"modified":"2013-03-12T10:12:55","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T17:12:55","slug":"simcity-societies-better-living-through-knitting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/2013\/03\/11\/simcity-societies-better-living-through-knitting\/","title":{"rendered":"SimCity Societies: better living through knitting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"fancybox\" rel=\"19904\" href=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/SewCity.jpg\"<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/SewCity.jpg\" alt=\"SewCity\" width=\"600\" height=\"353\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19905\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you may know, Electronic Arts publishes one of the worst citybuilders you can play, and one of the best.  I&#8217;ve been heartily enjoying the latter now that I&#8217;m no longer playing the former.  SimCity: Societies, a 2007 game created by the folks at Tilted Mill who know citybuilders like no one else, takes a unique approach to the genre.  Love it or hate it, you haven&#8217;t built a city like this.<\/p>\n<p>Many citybuilders are based on a &#8220;gardening&#8221; model.  You stake out rows for particular crops, make sure the conditions are right, and stand back while they grow.  It&#8217;s an organic and arguably realistic approach to how cities develop.  But SimCity Societies is nothing like planting a garden.  It&#8217;s more like fitting together unique pieces to create elaborate clockwork systems with unique personality.  And one of the game&#8217;s strengths is how much personality you&#8217;ll find in the different pieces.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>After the jump, let me tell you about one of the pieces.  Bring your knitting needle.<\/strong><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"fancybox\" rel=\"19904\" href=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/breadbasket.jpg\"<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/breadbasket.jpg\" alt=\"breadbasket\" width=\"600\" height=\"375\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19906\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the agricultural expanse that constitutes to northern part of Crow&#8217;s Landing, a burgeoning community that&#8217;s in no danger of butting up against a border anytime soon.  Crow&#8217;s Landing is an actual place I know only from the exit sign on Interstate 5 on the way to the Bay Area from Los Angeles.  I have no idea what it is, but it&#8217;s a cool thing to name a city.  I&#8217;ve maintained my city&#8217;s identity by limiting myself to buildings in the &#8220;small town&#8221; category.  I make most of my money from sprawling farms, compact orchards, and tiny chicken coops.  Most of my citizens live in homesteads and farmhouses.  Sometimes I build a hacienda, an upper class house that cashes in on my community&#8217;s prosperity.  Literally.  Prosperity is one of six values represented by a pool of points available to spend.  I don&#8217;t have a lot of prosperity, which tends to come from skyscrapers and malls.  But Crow&#8217;s Landing gets a bit of prosperity from its savings and loan office and bank.  I can use that prosperity for fancy houses.  Such as the $1800 hacienda.  <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"fancybox\" rel=\"19904\" href=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/full_price.jpg\"<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/full_price.jpg\" alt=\"full_price\" width=\"600\" height=\"268\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19909\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But $1800 isn&#8217;t always $1800!  One of the workplaces in SimCity Societies is this modest cabin called a quilting circle.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"fancybox\" rel=\"19904\" href=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/knit_picking.jpg\"<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/knit_picking.jpg\" alt=\"knit_picking\" width=\"600\" height=\"368\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19907\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a small building.  It&#8217;s easy to fit into a cranny where you might otherwise drop a chicken coop or a gazebo.  Five people can work here to earn a bit of money for your city.  It has a very low maintenance cost.  But the main value of a quilting circle is its special ability, called a volunteer drive.  After being staffed by 12 workers with a high level of happiness, a green border will flash around the cabin.  This means I can click on it to declare a volunteer drive, which makes my next house cost only 10% of its normal price.  <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"fancybox\" rel=\"19904\" href=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/sewing_discount.jpg\"<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/sewing_discount.jpg\" alt=\"sewing_discount\" width=\"600\" height=\"269\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19908\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My next $1800 hacienda is only $180.<\/p>\n<p>Micromanagement?  Well, yeah, if you&#8217;re used to just watching buildings sprout like flowers in the spring.  But that&#8217;s not how SimCity Societies works.  You choose the pieces, and sometimes you manage them directly.  It&#8217;s pretty easy to notice the flashing border when a quilting circle fills up.  If I want, I suppose I could cheese out by building a block of quilting circles to support new home construction.  Basically, an army of quilt makers paving the way for ridiculously cheap housing developments.  Is that balanced?  Is a 90% discount too much?  Is this a foolproof strategy I should include in every city every time I play?  Should I include quilting circles in my polluted urban dystopia so that I get cheaper stacks of sleeping tubes?  Frankly, I don&#8217;t really care whether SimCity Societies is balanced so every strategy is as valid as every other strategy.  I&#8217;ll take personality over balance any day.<\/p>\n<p>Up next: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/2013\/03\/12\/simcity-societies-think-of-the-children\/\">think of the children<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-diaries"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>SimCity Societies: better living through knitting - Quarter to Three<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/2013\/03\/11\/simcity-societies-better-living-through-knitting\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SimCity Societies: better living through knitting - 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