Its 50% off right now and Ive heard than an offline mode is added.

The base game is 15$ but I can get either the PLUS edition (includes cities of tomorrow expansion) or the DELUXE (includes DLCs, but no C.o.T.) for 20$

Anyone have a suggestion which version to get?

Sim City 4. ;)

In all honesty, I think that the offline mode does not address the main problems of the new Sim City, which are the limitation to very small areas to build your "city" in, and the abysmal citizen AI.

If you want to give it a try nonetheless, I'd suggest getting the base game only. The DLC isn't really worth it unless you are particularly interested in playing cities of a specific country. I'm not sure about Cities of Tomorrow, but I heard complaints that it's basically just a reskin and doesn't include many new features.

But it's not really a game I'd spend 15$ on.

I heard from some people who play the game that CoT is a good expansion, therefore I'd say that you should get the Plus version. Looking from afar those DLCs don't even look all that good or important.

If the deluxe included cities of tomorrow I'd say get that.

As psyringe said while offline is what gets all the press the underlying issues of city size and sim AI are still there. Cities of tomorrow addresses these issues a little (with things like megatowers. monorails and drones) while the other DLCs don't add much.

From all SimCity games I only played the 4th installment and it's a great game I can heartily recommend.

So to answer you question, you should probably give yourself a slap and either get SimCity4 Deluxe or if you really want to spent 20$ on city-building game, here:
http://www.gog.com/game/banished
Haven't tried it myself, but I can bet it's way better than SimCity5 will ever be.

Apparently the AI is much better nowadays, and while the DLC is probably not worth the full price of it, it does have gameplay changes.

Then again, those two points are based on reviews only, as I don't own the DLC nor have I played Sim City 5 in half a year.

I've seen SC5 on sale for 50% off quite a lot lately (Origin and Amazon in the past few months) and I did a ton of research for it back then. The game sounds like it has some neat things to offer, but then spoils them with city size and bad AI. Folks online were showing just how small the cities were and how badly the AI can be manipulated. Everything the developers were saying that they had set out to do just wasn't done (they had said they wanted sims to have jobs, go to their job, come back home, generate foot/road traffic while doing it). Instead (this is from memory, a few details may be off), the AI wakes up every day, decides to go to work at the nearest unoccupied job, then return to the nearest unoccupied house after their shift. So even with all your planning, your sims are switching housing and working location every day. It sounds like a few teenagers I knew back in high school. :)

After watching it all, I realized that my SC4 was by far the superior product.

Nonetheless, if you want to try SC5 no matter what, go for it. Try it out w/ CoT expansion and let us know how you like it.

Show these companies what we want. Don't purchase it and make your voice heard so Electronic Arts (EA) can sell SimCity 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free on gog.com and on Steam :).

But whatever it's up to you.

From what I've read I can only conclude:

Simcity 4 is a SP game with 'feasible' MP.
Simcity 5 is a MP game with 'feasible' SP.

Apart from that there are serious AI issues.

Will not buy... ever... (well except maybe if someone someday hacks it into oblivion).

Considering it sold 2 million units by July of last year, I seriously doubt anything will change EAs stance on DRM.

Sim City 5 is more like The Sims: City Builder. It's very simple, aimed at casual players who prefer some light entertainment and a management system that basically runs itself. If that doesn't bother you (some people prefer that kind of game), then I'd say go ahead and buy it.

Sim City 5 is a game for casuals? Based on what?

It may appear simple, but is has lots and lots of statistics and complex whatevers to take into account. I wouldn't say it's a casual game.

Any game except SimCity 5.
I mean, you probably didn't read any reviews about it by yet, but that game is horrible.

You should have got yourself recently the Caesar, Pharaoh and Zeus game from the GOG sale and you'd have a lot lot lot more fun!

It did suck badly for a long time, I tried it again after every major update. As of the offline patch when I last played it's really not that bad a game. The offline mode seemed to fix any remaining complaints I had, like server sync issues that have never been fixed since launch.

Is there better ways to spend 19.99? Sure, like Banished or the other management classics mentioned. But Simcity 5 in it's current state at the current price isn't a terrible buy.

Do you want to be cramped in a tiny box, or do you want to build where and how large with your own cities connected?