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tomwotsit's avatar
tomwotsit
2 years ago

Re: Simcity Societies Destinations only loads base game

Hi All,

For anyone who actually plays SimCity Societies Destinations and is looking for solutions, I did manage to solve this myself.

The EA App installs SimCity Societies in its own folder within EA Games in Program Files. For this issue, the Destinations expansion was installed in a subfolder, SCS Destinations.

THE SOLUTION: What I did was extract the Destinations folder. To play it safe, I cut and pasted the SimCity Societies folder to desktop, and pasted Destinations as its own folder within EA Games. This solves the issue. Make sure to open the SCS Destinations launcher (SimCity Societies, with the old base game icon, located in SCS Destinations\Launcher.

There's a separate issue too, with sound. In some save games only some of the sound channels play, with no music. This leads to a pretty quiet town absent of the normal ambient building, vehicle and sim noise. You just have to quit to main menu and open a new city, exit out of this city, and reload the save. Repeat this process 1-3 or so times until the sound is fully restored. You'll know when the music starts playing as normal on loading the game.

Some people have an issue where the game won't load properly at all, there's just a black screen and it crashes to desktop. I fixed this by deleting the video settings files located in My Documents\SimCity Societies (if in doubt delete the whole folder, but this will delete your saves and profile(s)). If that doesn't work then God help you.

All in all, can't complain, this game is well over 10 years old, and wasn't designed to be compatible with Windows 8, 10 or 11.

5 Replies

  • irrrdc's avatar
    irrrdc
    2 years ago

    Thanks for your detailed solution! However, it's not working for me.

    At first, I followed your steps directly, but the game could not launch because the EA App did not recognize the game as installed.

    Next, I tried cut+pasting the Destinations folder to the desktop, then using the EA App to re-download and repair the files. After, I pasted Destinations back in as a separate game, in its own folder, and started the program from the Destinations folder launcher. This once again launches Societies without the Destinations expansion

    Are there any other steps to your solution that you have not clearly described?

  • irrrdc's avatar
    irrrdc
    2 years ago

    I found a different solution that works.

    When installing SC Societies and its add-ons from the EA App, the app will first install the base game Societies and then install Destinations immediately after. If you cancel the download of the base game Socieites, the queued download of Destinations will proceed to install the expansion without installing the base game.

  • irrrdc's avatar
    irrrdc
    2 years ago

    I tried again a week later and that solution failed.

    Now, a month later, the executables associated with Destinations (SCSDestinations.exe and  SCSocietiesLauncher.exe) fail to launch the game at all. They prompt me to restart and update the EA App. After restarting, nothing is changed.

  • Stenni1's avatar
    Stenni1
    9 months ago

    Using a Nocd patch resolved the issue for me:

    Reinstall the game, then:

    google: 'simcity societies deluxe lone bullet' - follow instructions which are simple

  • Stenni1's avatar
    Stenni1
    9 months ago

    Once you've got it working,  there are mods too which improve the camera function and I have a few which add buildings/textures etc.

  • MarcosFull's avatar
    MarcosFull
    New Novice
    5 months ago

    Hi. Thanks for your suggestion, but is it really safe? Usually the antivirus detects these files as malicious and sometimes it is not known if they are false positives.

  • Andymaniacs's avatar
    Andymaniacs
    New Novice
    4 months ago

    This solution does not work, and neither does the 8 replies under this. I have 2 dif computers running windows 11. Ive tried moving around the files, copy and pasting, EA app breaks and redownloads the content. compatibility mode does nothing. it just keeps running the base game without the DLC content. The DLC content made this version of simcity playable and I would really like to play it again. Please someone find a real solution that isn't fake or tricking me to download malware. 

  • Andymaniacs's avatar
    Andymaniacs
    New Novice
    4 months ago

    You need reported and ban for spreading malware links to people trying to find a solution that's nowhere. 

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