Game is Very "Sluggish" - Freezes 4 times every few minutes

Same with me since the new season began.

It's ridiculous. They are making the game too detailed for the phone tech to handle.

MLD927,

Spot on! We received the service 2 update on March 5, 2026 and ever since then we get this game freezing when we access our inventories - in our capital city, and not our regional cities. 

Food for thought here: Why is this, that the freezing only exists in our capital city? In our regional cities we do not get this same freezing effect. In fact we have "re-built" all of the damage caused by service 2 in our regions. Cost of rebuilding was astronomical to say the least.  Over 7 million simoleans plus all the time and effort. And one other set-back, it takes up more space because of the now limited capacity of the services - we had to put more services in to meet this new demand factor. This is taking up needed space where otherwise could be used for residential buildings.

We now play out of our regional city Green Valley. Our happiness has gone down to a low of 18 percent in our capital city and tax collection is suffering. We still make 30k-50k per day in income through various channels. So if EA is trying to put all of us seasoned players (8-10 years or more) out of business, they better try harder.

We have contacted EA's in game help so many times now, we have lost count. Their reply: "give us time, we need time to fix this" and in the meantime go on this forum and post our issues. HA that's a laugh - how many hundreds of complaints on this forum, if not in the thousands does it take to get something done?

Our guess is that EA is not going to fix this.

 So one has to wonder is EA is doing this on purpose? To weed out the seasoned players that do not spend money anymore, or is this a "out with the old, and in with the new" tactic? Yes the newer players will be fooled into spending money on this game. Or is this a way of ending SCBI all together? One thing for certain if EA wants to continue this "cash cow" of a game some heads should roll in the development department.

Only time will tell.

I'm playing on two different phones. A Motorola and a Nord Plus 2 phone, the latter has between 12 and 16 GB ram depending on the virtual memory settings.

First phone had the lagging/freezing issues for years, but only shortly after logging on as a lot of stuff still had to be loaded apparently even when you were already in the game.

Then a few weeks ago this stuff started happening on my other phone (phone 2) but persistently, even though it never had to deal with these issues before. At the same time, the issues disappeared entirely for phone 1.

Now that other phone (2) is doing fine again, but now the issues have returned and worsened to the point of being ever-present on my first phone.

It's definitely not an issue with our phones, the switching pattern seems to indicate their servers aren't able to service all players at the same time. So some players experience lag at one point and then later another part will be dealing with these issues.

Either way, it needs to be fixed. The game is unplayable like this. I can't even select a park or a tree in the Design Contest (so even on an empty map the issues persist!) without having to wait three or four times between opening the menu, scrolling through it and actually selecting the tree, placing it and then moving on (I've deliberately typed out every detail here, because each and every step becomes an entire process of its own!).

it not depend on phone 

if play offline it can play smooth

service log show game connect to service every few sec (5-10 sec) make game freeze because some service not response in 15 sec

I completely agree with the previous post. I am playing on a Samsung Tab S9 FE (8GB RAM) and experiencing the exact same issues. Even on a nearly empty map in the Design Challenge, the game freezes for every single step (selecting a park, placing a tree, etc.).

I have been monitoring my RAM usage: the game starts at about 4GB free RAM, but as soon as I enter the Design Challenge or the HQ, it drops down to 27% (around 2GB). This drop in performance is so significant that even the UI of ad clips often freezes, making it impossible to close them.

Like the previous user said, it feels like a server-side synchronization issue that overwhelms the device's processing power, regardless of how much RAM we have. Instead of having fun, playing has become a major test of nerves and patience.

This player of 10+ years, level 99, has consistently been buying season and Vu passes until Services 2 completely ruined my game. Too many issues to mention but the consistent freezing after making one move or being kicked out of the game has made this game almost impossible to play.  As a result, EA or whoever now owns this game is not getting any more money from me. Took me over 10 minutes to post two items in my store.

Yes, I am getting a lot of freezing. Have to close out and restart.

I'm also seeing the freezing/lag every so often. It happens for me in all cities (capital, friends cities, everywhere). Not sure if it's related to the coin trade-in timer, but ever since the new season started, this has been a nagging issue. 

So I don't suppose this is ever going to fixed? Like all the other issues that have popped up recently, such as us having to redo our service buildings again, after having fixed everything already?

I've got a phone with 12 GB RAM and to even produce some wooden beams or metal I need to wait two or three times: first you select the metal or wood - game will freeze. Half the times when you try sweeping to put it in the factory, it will just close the factory menu instead. Try again, put your finger on the metal or wood icon again. It freezes once more. But with some luck it won't close the factory menu again. You can start swiping. It only fills four out of five boxes. Try again. It freezes again. And then, finally, after trying three times, you can produce five metal.

People at EA or whoever publishes this game: this is literally one of the simplest thing to do in the game and I have to spend up to half a minute sometimes, in ever growing frustration to try and accomplish it (for the record: producing stuff in a SINGLE factory - not all of them, just starting production in ONE can take up to half a minute). Now imagine collecting Neo-sims to fix the bloody mess with the utilities and having to tap countless buildings because tapping two or three quickly after another isn't working anymore. Or, even more of a horror, try making a design for the Design Contest, when placement of every tree, every park, every service building or building a road is as complicated as I just described for producing some of the simplest items.

This is NOT how the game should be working. If you can't fix it because the game's become too complicated (again, I have 12 GB of RAM) then you should think about releasing a lighter version that doesn't have all the bloat like trains, monsters, VU towers and (every other season) countless coins floating everywhere. I started playing the game and paying for it to design cities anyway, not deal with all that nonsense.

If it can't be made to work properly, delete it or give us the ability to opt out.

This was my problem and soluion I had postet some time ago:

 After the update, I experienced severe lagging. Upon checking my tablet’s storage settings, I found that the App Data (not the cache) had increased to a staggering 33 GB.

Solution found:

I performed a full uninstallation and a clean reinstall. The app data is now back to 360 MB, and the game runs smoothly again.

Perhaps it can help you