You will have to destroy a road completely if you wish to increase its width, but as you can see from the never-ending road construction across the country, this too is realistic. Changing roads to a different type or switching them to a one-way is as simple as clicking the road and selecting a new status for the road in a pop-up box. Cul-de-sacs, one-way circles, thoroughfares are all very easy to set up, and you are really only limited by your in-game budget. The game basically uses a waypoint system: your first click is the starting point of a given road, and each subsequent click sets a new waypoint for the road to go to, until you do a double-click or end the path on a road that has already been placed.
Gone are the days of SimCity's grids, and Cities XL also adds curved roads, allowing you to make some rather impressive displays of macro architecture. Speaking of roads, one of the most pleasurable activities is in laying down your road network. After you lay your first or second zone, laying more will feel so natural that you can do it in your sleep. That means sticking a zone on a corner will change its orientation just by a little flick of your mouse, rather than a silly combination of holding ALT and Shift as in SimCity 4. A lot of this is streamlined: after you build your roads, buildings and zones will orient themselves to the roads, and will face the direction of your cursor before your click. Luckily, aside from a couple minor quibbles, city building is absolutely fantastic and really makes you feel like an all-powerful city planner. The core of the game is, of course, the city building if that was broken or subpar, then the entire game would fall apart. That said, Cities XL has indeed pushed the genre in the right direction, streamlining some of the more annoying parts of Maxis's juggernaut while adding features that were long overdue. While reviewing Cities XL, we try not to draw too many comparisons to the SimCity franchise, though we know it's ultimately an exercise in futility. (And the less we talk about the abhorrent SimCity Societies, the better.) Maxis in general and SimCity 4 in particular have been collectively established as the true city simulation king, but French developer Monte Cristo has attempted to overtake the throne with the release of the PC-exclusive Cities XL.
SimCity 4 hit the shelves in 2003, with its expansion coming out the same year, and no game has even come close to its scope since.
It's been a long time since we've had the pleasure of a true city-building simulation.
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