June 2015
June 2015 and I have the same problem...really EA?
June 2015
Sadly I'm not holding out much hope for SimCity 2013 anymore mileysad:
April 2016
Well, it's April 2016 and issue still not resolved... Cant claim another city in a private region that im already in.
August 2016
August, 2016. Having same issue. Friend and I are stuck, we want to play something other than our starting cities.
May 2017
This error persists...May 2017. What a pile of * this game is.
May 2017
same error here
October 2020
Okey guys, 7 years after the original post, I might have figured out what is the reason for the bug. I played with my friend, who was playing as offline. We both quit the server and joined again, and he changed his origin status to online aswell. This made me able to take over a region again!
February 2021
It's now 2021 and this issue still exists. I spoke with support twice in the past 24 hours and got the "no players have reported this recently, so you should report it as a bug and someone may look at it" response. I cleared the game cache as instructed. Completely uninstalled the game and Origin as well as deleting residual directories for both off of the computer. Issue persists. Tried a different computer. Issue persists. I believe it's safe to state that this is NOT a computer/player issue and is a server issue. My friend and I tried the different suggestions shared here to no avail. Eight years and the bug still exists.
If you are the owner of the private region, there's no issue. It's only if you are invited to the region and try to start up a second city that you get the issue. My friend has invited me multiple times, we've tried different ways of inviting - none of the invites actually ever show up for me. I've tried multiple ways of trying to claim a city. No success in anything we've tried doing. EA phone support was a complete waste of time and effort.
February 2021
I guess I should mention details.
Server: USA East 1
Region: mia
Started: It's been too long to remember
February 2021
Hi @silent_jeune - This is a very frustrating issue, I understand your frustration. This is purely my opinion, but due to reading many many posts about this issue, it seems that there is a limit of 2 cities per friend that is invited to the region.
I've seen one workaround reported. Try dropping each other from your SimCity friend lists. Then re-add on the friend list and have the owner send you another invite to the region/city.
I've never tried this myself, so I can't confirm for sure that it works. If you try and it works, I would appreciate it if you let me know, as it would be great to have direct confirmation. Remember that you have to be on each other's SimCity friend list to do the invite, not just the Origin friend list. That requires both of you to be on the same server (which shouldn't be a problem since you're already on the same region). Here's the old Friends in SimCity FAQ for reference.