SIMCITY - HINTS



Hold SHIFT, type FUND and get $10,000.  It will cause an earthquake every

third time, so do it before you start your city.



Another tip is to set the citizen's taxes to 0%.  Then just before tax

collection (December or November if playing at fast speed) quickly set the

taxes up to 20%.  Then after you collect taxes, put it back down to 0%.  This

way the citizens think they are not paying any taxes.



You can build land on water. Find a straight (horizontal or vertical),

stretch of coastline and string a powerline along it. Next, move one

square over, out into the water and string another powerline parallel to

the first. Repeat as many times as you want. Then just

bulldoze all the excess powerlines and you can build on the new land.



To MAKE land you simply make a 3 lane highway across any water source.

When you make a road by putting 3 sections of road on top of three section

of road on top of three sections of road (3 by 3) you make 1 section of

land in the middle.                WWWWW   WWWWW     To make more land, just

                                   WRRRW   WRRRW     move you roads over, or

           L= land                 WRRRW = WRLRW     make your roads 4 by 4,

           W= water                WRRRW   WRRRW     5 by 5 etc.  Play with

           R= road                LLRRRLL LLRRRLLL   it.  It'll work.

                                  LLLLLLL LLLLLLLL



** City Building Hints



The following tips on city building come from long experience on my Amiga. Each

city has taught me a great deal and playing the scenarios has helped test new

theories. I wish someone had told me some of this stuff when I was getting

started.



In general, there are no lies in the User's Guide and the basic guidelines

mentioned so briefly form the framework of the Sim City legal system. I

subscribe to the victory criteria for a good city as stated in the user

documentation and have firmed that up as follows:



  My victory criteria for a good city:



   Happy people, 10% or less on all complaints.



   Low taxes, 6-7% taxes, (adds challenge, but speeds growth) but still a

   positive cash flow (even if I started with a gigabuck).



   Visually pleasing (Tends to limit population to 250-300,000. Going for max

   population is a challenge but the resulting city is uninteresting.



   Complete police and fire protection



To build a good city, one needs the right mind set. "Sims are not people, they

are tax payers". You're running a business here with a need to meet customer

wants (Quality service) at the minimum overhead. Their demands are guidelines

on how well the city is developing but if they get out of line, they meet

Godzilla.



Defs:  (I=industrial, R=residential, C=commercial, PD=cops, FD=fire)



City layout: in general, go for a center of solid C zones, surrounded by R

zones, with I on the outer edges. Modify according to tips below. Like zones

tend to be mutually supporting. Plan on that basis and build in "wedges". Place

a couple C's at what will eventually be the city center, then some R's, I's on

the outside. Factories will grow and provide jobs anywhere but the good high

tax paying R's and C's only appear toward the middle. In general, make the

rails be the most direct route to the city center. Make roads the round-about

alternative.



Roads and rails: Roads are cheap but traffic is a pain. Where does traffic come

from and who complains? Residents! (as in residential) You can run roads all

through the I and C zones and you will not have appreciable traffic, plus you

will save a fortune in construction costs and 3 fortunes in maintenance. I have

cities that can be traversed from end-to-end by road with no traffic pollution

except in the industrial areas where it doesn't matter. As soon as houses get

access, traffic mushrooms. Use I, C, and municipal zones as the recipients of

road access and only a few widely scattered R zones, and you'll save 1-2% alone

on the tax rate while still having positive cash flow.



Road and rail: Somebody pays for each section of road or track. A tax paying

zone on each side of a section makes for efficient tax coverage. Avoid long

sections of track with Sims only on one side. Definitely avoid stretches of

side-by-side road and rail. Double roads (boulevards) mean you have too many R

zones with road access and they'll complain about the smog as they drive to

work. Avoid transport along shore lines and on the outer edge of the city. Put

zones on the shoreline to maximize land value modifiers and have the transport

sandwiched between two rows of tax paying Sims.



Bridges and tunnels: these are stretches with no adjacent tax payers. Keep these

short, especially tunnel. Plan crossing points in advance to reduce their

length. Got a cute little island in the river big enough for one or two zones?

Ask yourself if those zones are going to generate enough taxes to pay for the

transport to the island before giving them a bridge (forget tunnel). If an

island is a handy stepping stone to connect two sides of town together, that's

different. C zones do well on islands and don't generate much traffic.



Police stations: You need them or crime will drive tax payers away. PD's will

be in a checkerboard pattern. PD and FD zones are like transport. You minimize

their cost by ensuring there is someone in as much of their coverage area as

possible, being protected, and paying for it. Avoid placing PD's on shorelines

and the edge of the map where much of the coverage is wasted. Use them as

buffers between I and non-I zones or on roads.



Pollution: I zones, sea ports, and airports all produce a pollution dead space

3 tiles wide around them. R and C zones do not develop well if any part of the

zone touches this dead space. Worse, Sims living in R and C zones trying to

develop in this space are the sniveling weenies complaining to city hall about

the pollution. Busy roads passing through R and C zones leave a pollution pall

and produce the same effect on the evaluation and composite score. Use PD and FD

zones as buffers. Otherwise, leave a 3 tile wide green strip with maybe a rail

through it. As mentioned, keep roads out of residential areas. Busy roadbridges

are fine as the pollution is over water and fish don't vote.



Crime: Some level of crime can be tolerated in the industrial zones (like

pollution) where most of the crime is generated, but R and C zones start wining

as population density increases. Cops are needed. Crime drives out taxpayers.

Crime can also be reduced by increasing land value. In practical terms, avoid

any zone that does not have any tree or park tiles next to it. Tight banks of

zones with transport down each side, touching no green tiles, will foster crime.

Some city examples have roads all the way around most blocks. Wrong! Blocks

only need a single tile frontage for transport so leave gaps between them.

Every open tile adjacent to any zone must have trees or a park. This does help

supplement the fuzz while making the map more attractive.



Airports and Seaports: These generate pollution (noise) as for I zones. Place

these zones in I areas or out on an island (with road access). There is no

benefit to multiple seaports or airports.



Airports and crashes: (on the Amiga) Expect plane crashes. You can't turn them

off. Always (he said ALWAYS) place a FD adjacent to an airport (notice he didn't

say 1 or more tiles away). If a fire isn't quickly extinguished, the airport

explodes, dies, and you're out 10K bucks. Worse, very quickly, the C zones in

a mature city back paddle and mess up the tax base. Crashes most frequently

occur when the airplane hits that loud mouth DJ chopper jock and they both

plow into one of your prize highrises, burying countless Sims under burning

rubble. "Sky watch One" picks its favorite stretch of road and hovers around

it until the airplane eventually flies into it. That's why most crashes happen

in the same area. Put FD's along what semi-congested roads you have. Make sure

the city is covered. For overnight fund building in a younger city, "unplug"

the airport (disconnect power. The aircraft stop flying after a short while if

the a airport is unpowered) In a mature city, this may cause significant

regression of C zones.



Healing: all municipal zones (PD, FD, power house, airport, seaport, stadiums)

will heal themselves if they still have power and the rubble tile is bulldozed.

If they don't, they are too far damaged to regenerate. Replace them. The other

zones are sometimes left with those annoying notches after a crash or

earthquake. There are still lots of taxpayers in the rest of the building so

don't dump the developed zone too quickly. One remedy is to maintain power to

the building but bulldoze the rubble and ALL transport access. The building will

immediately drop one notch of density, but the new icon will fill the WHOLE

zone. Immediately replace the transport access and soon the now undamaged zone

will be at full density again (note: queries shortly after doing this show

"declining". Don't sweat it). Again, this works to a limited point of damage

and the center must be intact. If the bulldozed transport will cost more than

rezoning the building, make a choice.



Terrain editor: Use the terrain editor to add trees, tighten shorelines, place

a real waterfront on harbors. Careful on smoothing. If you smooth the trees on

an existing city, the trees trapped between buildings will be smoothed away and

you have to paint them back in. Paint in a few reflecting pools too for added

land value. When creating a new land plot from scratch, start with a city that

has money, erase it redraw the ground and save under a new name (carefully).

There is zero benefit to going with Medium or Hard game levels. They just

reduce starting money and slow tax growth. Never change the game level in the

Terrain Editor. It will reset the starting cash to the default for that game

level. Reset the year. Nobody needs to know how much time you spent on this

thing.



Summary: this is not a trivial game. The designer has done some interesting

work that has some of the meanest and rottenest victory criteria of any game

(your own standards). I'm still learning and like to see other cities and hear

tips and conjecture. (Why won't Maxis just send me the bloody source code?)



NOTE:  The City Building Hints were written by Roy Mengot.


ADDITIONAL ACTION REPLAY POKES (Source: AR Codelist):
V1.1: Search for CONSOLE.DEVICE - money is in the 2nd byte after it (put 77 FF FF FF for 2013 million)
V1.2 Turbo: Search for GIMME VERSION - money is in the 3rd byte after it (put 77 FF FF FF for 2013 million)
Note: Money address moves on every load but stays relative to the search string.