you have to manage the diplomacy between USA, Russia and Europe as well as keeping the different factions in the city happy

I had originally planned on avoiding politics. I debate on the necessity of it. I remember playing the 3rd or 4th sim city and starting to get annoyed with the amount of social politics I had to trouble shoot. but at the same time, I feel like the game improved because of it as well. I'm a little worried about making sure any political engineering remains fun for most players. Do you have any recommendations on the political aspect? how it was presented to you, etc...?

You can actually implement policies which helps to propel your island forward in a certain direction. For example, if I wanted the city to rapidly increase in population, I can basically allow immigrants, regardless of the skill level to enter the city.

Interesting. In most city builders its really about doing things to attract population at all, and not really focusing on the quality of constituents.. I hadn't really thought of tagging a useful nature to the population. but I think thats a great idea.

Also aesthetics! I want to have nicely laid out streets and blocks of buildings ... not a big mash of structures in order to get all the necessities into the smallest space possible (An the only way it seems your citizens can access them is taking a shortcut through their neighbors backyard).

Thats a really good point. I've been thinking more towards traffic now, particularly in my game its more fine tuned like a dictatorship, where you are also classifying what capabilities factories get. So if a factory that's building tires is all the way across town from a factory thats building cars, it will take longer for completed materials to be done. And adding more of a focus to the types of manufacturing and craftsmen are in the same building, the better that building/product will be produced.

I think you also pegged the nature of SimCity 1 (and many others) where you called out an area and the city would just build it up for you. Where you could make a 20x20 area, with no roads in it, only around it.

Well, using Simcity, Civilization and Settlers as a basis, I personally just love the economic aspect of it and propagating/evolving something out of nothing. Trying to figure out the system, learning how to earn the most money, how to dominate and ultimately how to get the most "points" is what drives me to play these games.

I've been a little demotivated after the SimCity reboot though, but I do like a good economy game if it's deep enough. But it does need to be deep enough, that's one of the most critical parts of these games IMO. Very easy to become too shallow. EVE Online is superb with regards to depth, but the only problem I see with that game is that it's too slow-paced for my liking. So pacing is definitely a factor as well, that whole idea of feeling that you have to wait forever for something. If a player needs to wait, then you should occupy him with something else to do that's similarly enjoyable. That's what creates true depth in a game, IMO.

Personally I enjoy the "What if" aspect of design and management.

How can things be arranged in such a way as to produce a favourable and productive outcome?

Ideally there should be more than one way to tackle any given problem, and no truly dominate solution that completely outstrips any other.

I'm also a very big fan of general sandbox form with light goals, or alternative paths. Choice is a big factor, so if there is really only a single style that works, or very few options with which to use to advance, then the game is less interesting. (On the other hand, if anything and everything 'works', then the game is generally boring as there become no setbacks.)

One part that I feel is really lacking in city builders is some semblance of actual realism. I would be very interested in a project that focused more on how a real city works within a larger geo-political framework than itself, of which the city has some influence but no control.

Another thing that I would really like to see more of is better road and traffic simulation to a reasonable scale. SimCity has a horribly small and disappointing scale, with utterly foolish traffic simulation for things like emergency response vehicles. (As in taking months for a firetruck to make it two blocks while half the city starts catching fire)

Something more organic in nature where the player buys land to build roads and services, basically to modify the environment from its default set of conditions, and from that 'people' come in/grow up, and 'do stuff', like buy/sell land to build homes and businesses. You then set policies and deal with some form of a petition system that is generated by the 'people', and your choices then feed back into the system to change the outcome and how things develop.

@DtCarrot, thank you for all your feed back, its been most valuable.

I'm just curious, what type of setting are you looking at? Ancient, medieval, modern, futuristic?

The current plan, is that it is actually the future, but ruled by a corporation that keeps technology to them selves, while everybody else lives as if it is the dark ages. Then the corporation tries taking over planets with dragons on them who fight back. The corp then starts allowing human settlements/towns to start building up and providing them with troops, vehicles, tanks, etc for war. An odd mix of stone houses, wooden barns and tank factories put together to fight dragons.

So pacing is definitely a factor as well, that whole idea of feeling that you have to wait forever for something. If a player needs to wait, then you should occupy him with something else to do that's similarly enjoyable.

Thank you grump cat! :D I think thats a good point. Especially during that early point when you don't have as much to do. It seems like the game should provide you with another direction to follow as well. I'm not quite sure what. Perhaps when the city becomes busy to the point that you can't do anything else until you get more funding, a clock marked 5PM flies up, and you get to head out on the town, visit bars, houses, arcades, etc... That won't be my solution, but an interesting thought.

If you want to give the player "Something to do" while they wait, then either remove the need for the wait with good time advancement options (if single player), or provide a robust "Advanced planning" system where they can lay out what they will do in the future and try different options.

Another big thing is that a player should never have to guess about how things will advance. I finally got time to spend with my PC and an up to date copy of SimCity while I had access to an internet connection on that machine. I haven't played in months, but managed to put in several solid hours of tinkering with a pair of small mutually supporting cities. However this has basically ended in frustration. Why? Because The developers in their infinite 'wisdom' designed it such that the lower tier buildings are smaller than the levels above them. This lack of information to the player meant that despite using the grid lines on road ways have a very sub-optimal city layout for hitting the second and third density levels, as about 1/3 of the developed space has 'room' to increase in density.

Ideally buildings would be based on general areas/volumes, not fixed lot sizes, and structures will conform to the city layout rather than forcing the user to design the city layout purely to the buildings. Do you really think a developer in New York City would say "Oh no, I won't use that extra twenty feet between these two roads... we'll just leave that as nothing and generate zero profit from it". You should still have minimum sizes for various things, but the user should not be completely blocked from expanding something just because they didn't leave an area in the dimensions you as a designer picked. If something is normally 5x5, but I have something 4x7, then I should not be completely without reasonable options.

Reasonable flexibility on remodelling should also be a feature if you have various transit/connector options. I have always hated having to decimate part of a city in order to upgrade it, rather than simply paying that much more if I need to run a wider road through an area. (Especially in relatively 'low density' areas. Properties could have a 'set back' value, how much room they have from the centre of the road they are built on before the building itself must be demolished to expand the road. Low set back then being less desirable for most property types)

Anno 2050 - I like the way citizen needs became more complex over time, and that satisfying those needs offers direct rewards to the player. I also enjoy that resources aren't generically available everywhere, so islands have variety. There's a reason for shipping industry to exist, transporting goods from one place to another. And the ship routing mechanic is a real treat to work with.

I dislike most facebook 'city-builders' which are just push the upgrade button and wait. But there's a subsystem in Farmville 2 that gives me something akin to pleasure. It's the way that cooking/crafting is executed, in a heirarchical click-fest which I just like. But navigating the recipe book is a disaster.