[mr_coleman]

Didn't someone write a patch the day it came out that stripped out all the phoning home in single player and the game played perfectly ok in single player. I seem to remember it being a large embarrassment to EA at the time due to EA saying that parts of the single player were run on the remote servers. City Skylines is better and I'm not going back so water under the bridge.

[cragfar]

Yes. EA responded to the always online complaints by saying the game couldn't possibly run offline due to servers processing information. It was then 0 day cracked showing it was a complete lie.