Every advisor has their own little personalities which is shown through the way they talk and the way they are animated so there will surely be ones you like and dislike. Don’t worry about being stuck with one you don’t like because different advisors come along now and then and you are given the choice to swap. It’s a bit sad when you choose to replace your current advisor and watch them complain but there can only be one advisor.


No more water pipes, just these maps to look at.
Next up is that EA has done away with the water pipes and also the circles that show the range of your essential services such as schools. Instead you have to rely on a data map to see if the services are reaching areas and most of the time it works out well because you can see it all at a glance. However, for some reason, the data map covers all the main services apart from the health and education facilities. Not only that, the stats you usually get when you use the info tool on these buildings are also gone. This makes it hard to judge where to place them when there are complaints asking for more or you just generally want to increase the welfare of the city.

Speaking of complaints, you actually get visitors to your office now and after agreeing to meet them you have a choice of whether to meet their request or not. Nothing actually happens if you just ignore them because basically they’re just there to give you advice on how to improve the city. It’s a kind of alternative to just the news ticker. It actually starts out quite fun because every time you agree you get to sign a document giving you that feeling of being important but, it doesn’t last long. Eventually you’ll just want to ignore the visits.


We want more baseball stadiums!
As you watch the city prosper, time ticks by and technology advances but this time apart from being able to set the city name, you can’t actually decide what year to start in. In the past the advantages of starting the future are fairly obvious. With all the advanced technology available, you could create cleaner environments and bigger, better looking cities. This time however, technology doesn’t just rely on time – it relies on funds too!

The game actually starts off with this new research funding set at zero but it can go all the way to 200% as with all the other facilities. It’s always good to see the Professor coming along with something new but the problem is when you’ll have to go through this every time you start a new city. And with only two speed settings normal or fast, new cities can get off to a slow start after you’ve been building a few.