Simcity 4 Released?!! - Page 4

Grumbold · January 22, 2003, 11:38

Yes the best trick to learn is never, ever, ever plop a building down and ignore its personal sliders. Always go into the query tool and click on it to adjust its funding level and its radius (if different). Revisit it regularly and change it to meet current demand. unlike S3k it will change all the time. If you keep flicking back to the city ratings screen you'll soon see if the ratings are stable. Anything going << which you haven't messed with lately needs attention. Probably one of the facilities is overstretched. Don't wait for strikes or messages that your police force are ordering 9 different varieties of donut from their local delicatessen to address issues

I'm having luck with my high-cost strategy now. Here's how it works:

- pick a large flat tile (no sense in making things hard in your first game)
- switch to pause mode
- select a large police station and position it so that the effect radius is nearly touching two edges. Plop it down and immediately reduce its funding to a small level after making a note of what full funding is normally (the top of the slider is over-funding, you don't want that.)
- Make it the corner of a road intersection. Draw the roads to the 2 nearby map edges and connect to your neighbours.
- Establish a sunstantial grid of 9x9 zones around the intersection by drawing in streets. Check out how many to make by looking at the police radius when at normal funding (not maximum funding.) Leave the centre empty because its going to be commercial and public buildings. Zone the rest as medium residential with a tree filled 3x3 gap in the centre.
- In the corner where the police coverage won't reach, site your power station and leave room for all the other nasty stuff like garbage later. Dial down its power output to 25%.
- To one side of your residential grid create an industrial grid. For the time being it will need no police or fire cover. It needs to be about the size a small/fire police station can cover to provide jobs for all the residential you have zoned.
- Use a water tower and pipes to provide water to your zones.

Once the sim starts running you should have no problems with sims move in. The police radii should slowly be notched up to provide increasing safety. Some commerce can be added to your town centre. This can be followed by a large fire station once your income is positive. Pretty soon you'll need another water tower and can think about introducing an elementary school.

The only time I have problems is when water pollution gets heavy from the industrial pollution. Placing a water treatment plant will solve this but normally causes a crash in income. That has to be rectified with some or all of the deals. I've had no problems with the missile base having sited it on the far side of a 10x10 agricultural zone. A few orange trees have been singed but nothing serious.

As soon as you have filled your orriginal area and can afford to start a new police-coverage sized grid you should see your money soar. Currently I am at 32,000 population pulling in $2,500 a month at a tax rate of $9.00 and all RCI indicators strongly positive (except heavy industry who are moving out in favour of high tech due to my ordinances and education levels.) At last I'm starting to see my first true high-rises. The city is making all sorts of tempting new buildings available, many for free. I'm replacing some of the 3x3 empty spaces with parks, plazas and sports grounds. This demands an access road but thats a good excuse to demolish the ugliest building on the block

Imran Siddiqui · January 22, 2003, 12:44

Quote:

The problem really is that I've been using some SimCity3000 tactics to start up and money is a lot tighter in SimCity4. It just takes a slight change in mentality I think.

Exactly! You gotta start off REAL slow. Minimize losses and grow slowly. After a while you'll hit black and start to make some dough, then you can go on a resdential building boom

. I have about 8000 people and am making around $500 a month, with a 7.0 tax rate.

Comrade Tribune · January 22, 2003, 13:47

Quote:

Originally posted by ADG
Do not use SimCity 3000 (or earlier) tactics in SC4... it's much tougher now

This is goood.

My one complaint with 3000 was its ridiculous easyness.

Vienna has lots of parks, and, believe me, their maintenance costs something. (I walk past a sign daily that details how many millions are spent on improvement/maintenance of a particular garden in my neighbourhood.

)

Grumbold · January 22, 2003, 14:32

Yes SC3k was fun but it got a bit silly when every 9x9 residential block was surrounded by alternating fountains and parks

Comrade Tribune · January 22, 2003, 15:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Grumbold
Yes SC3k was fun but it got a bit silly when every 9x9 residential block was surrounded by alternating fountains and parks

Yeah, and it´s so realistic when you have a city with only little palaces where only rich people dwell. Where do their servants live, I always asked myself.

Sarxis · January 22, 2003, 16:29

As far as importing Sc2000/3000 is concerned: isn't there enough backwards compatible legacy software in the world?

I built a damned rocket test site, and they managed to blow up the military base I plopped down. Simulating the ineptitude of government institutions.. pfft.

Craig P. · January 22, 2003, 20:12

Importing SC2k cities into SC3k gave you seriously broken cities (when I tried it with two, I was able to save one without cheating, but not the other). I'm sure the logic this time around is that it's not really worth it.

Kc7mxo · January 22, 2003, 21:42

Quote:

I built a damned rocket test site, and they managed to blow up the military base I plopped down. Simulating the ineptitude of government institutions.. pfft.

Those missles blow up annoyingly often. And they don't seem to cause any sort of fire alarm. I've lost a number of buildings without any apparent warning due to those dang missles.

Joseph · January 22, 2003, 22:09

Quote:

Originally posted by MosesPresley
Joseph, I encountered the same problem, but I have come up with a good strategy.

You need to start small and slow. Zone some light res, light commercial, light & medium industry. Build 2 or 3 windmills, a water tower and lay some pipes. Build a clinic and lower the funding to whatever the sims are actually using. Now wait for the population to catch up to the outflow of money. Add more residential, pipes and commercial as necessary. Eventually you will start to make money. Since your city is so small, the early losses you will take will not come close to bankrupting your city and you will have time to build. To prevent fires, enact the smoke detector ordinance.

Don't build any schools, fire stations, hospitals or police stations until you absolutely need them. They are superfluous in the beginning.

Let me know what you think.

I will give it a try and I'm going to try Grumbold.

Imran Siddiqui · January 22, 2003, 22:48

Quote:

Those missles blow up annoyingly often. And they don't seem to cause any sort of fire alarm. I've lost a number of buildings without any apparent warning due to those dang missles.

Need for a PATCH!

Jonny · January 23, 2003, 01:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
Those missles blow up annoyingly often. And they don't seem to cause any sort of fire alarm. I've lost a number of buildings without any apparent warning due to those dang missles.

I've built missile sites in all of my cities so far, and I haven't had any blow up on me... yet.

monolith94 · January 23, 2003, 03:47

This sounds good? I'll have to get it eventually?

Adagio · January 23, 2003, 05:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
Those missles blow up annoyingly often. And they don't seem to cause any sort of fire alarm. I've lost a number of buildings without any apparent warning due to those dang missles.

I have those missil buildings in several of my cities, but I haven't seen any accident happen... yet (I always scroll around, so I know when somethings wrong)... but with my luck, the accidents will start happen today then

Grumbold · January 23, 2003, 08:34

I have had a few stray missiles but they've all crashed very close to the base. Since I put it on the map edge surrounded by farmland this hasn't caused a problem.

It has always created an alert and allowed me to send the fire engines. Not sure why yours wouldn't.

Adagio · January 23, 2003, 10:10

Has anyone been reading what it says, when loading a map? Sometimes it says it's "Loading nude Patch" or something like that

John-SJ · January 23, 2003, 17:05

Actually, I think it's "Pixelating Nude Patch", isn't it?

BTW, I got SC4 a couple of days ago, and I'm REALLY impressed! Maxis has finally turned SC into a real strategy game rather than a software toy as they used to call it.

Oh, and ADG? I would be interested in a PBEM game, sounds like fun!

John-SJ

Adagio · January 24, 2003, 06:09

Quote:

Originally posted by John-SJ
Actually, I think it's "Pixelating Nude Patch", isn't it?

You're right, that was "pixelating Nude Patch", but still a strange thing to have in SimCity 4

(or is there some cheat code that makes it possible to zoom into peoples houses

)

Quote:

Originally posted by John-SJ
Oh, and ADG? I would be interested in a PBEM game, sounds like fun!

on second thought I think it was Play by forum, not email... but who cares about details

(Well...in SimCity 4 we all care about those nice details...

)

Just one thing... Should we have 1 city, that changes mayor over time? Or one city per player (using the import city, for other players cities, at given times (like each 2-4 years)? Or anyone who has other ideas?

If we use the second one (using reagion MP), then there's room for a lot of players

Grumbold · January 24, 2003, 10:05

I like the silly things it says its doing and there's at least 10 of them. An offshoot from the old S2K "reticulating splines" I imagine.

Adagio · January 24, 2003, 10:08

Yeah, I think they're great too... pointless, but great

pointless things in games, makes the game better

John-SJ · January 24, 2003, 10:33

Or how about one I saw on the news ticker last night, something like, "Scientists agree, plastic would make the perfect food if it tasted better and had nutrients". And then there is SC's long standing obsession with Llamas, "Llamas petition to be on the Twelve Days of Christmas". *shakes head* Gotta hand it to Maxis!

I have to admit, I'm really not familiar with the choices of game play for multiplayer, but I would be open to pretty much anything.

John-SJ

Adagio · January 24, 2003, 14:06

Quote:

Originally posted by John-SJ
Or how about one I saw on the news ticker last night, something like, "Scientists agree, plastic would make the perfect food if it tasted better and had nutrients". And then there is SC's long standing obsession with Llamas, "Llamas petition to be on the Twelve Days of Christmas". *shakes head* Gotta hand it to Maxis!

Yeah, those Llama's are pretty famous at Maxis office

Quote:

Originally posted by John-SJ
I have to admit, I'm really not familiar with the choices of game play for multiplayer, but I would be open to pretty much anything.

Well, the only possible ways I can see is:

1) All players, plays the same city, but only from a certain time to a certain time (Could be like playing 1-2 years at a time, then post the city, for the next player to play his time)... though this would only work if there's only few player...

2) Each player get some land (There's 3 different sizes of land, but we will only use middle size, since they are all over the region) from the region map. I don't know if this would work out in MP, but it'll be worth a try...

When the set time is over (could be 2 years or so), each player uploads their region, and each player downloads each region (to use the import feature, to import the right city from each "players region"... Though this could do some errors (by importing the wrong city from the wrong players region)

I'll start a new thread about this later...

EDIT: SimCity 4 Region play thread has been created

Jonny · January 24, 2003, 22:54

Computer Gaming World has written a SimCity 4 Reivew:

http://www.gamers.com/game/1141979/reviews

Provost Harrison · January 25, 2003, 17:30

Yeah, I have seen it in the shops, came out quite early in the new year didn't it? I suppose I will have to buy it at some point, but it is having the time to sit down and play a game at the moment

Grumbold · January 28, 2003, 10:39

48k population and REAL skyscrapers are just starting to appear. Of course this is putting immense strain on my transport network and school programmes but I'm loving it

Adagio · January 28, 2003, 12:02

Haven't got that far yet, I keep starting a new game (making new regions)

yin26 · January 28, 2003, 13:43

I'm also enjoying the game a great deal. The early game, however, can be a bit counter-intuitive. For example, it makes sense, doesn't it, that your community will want water?

Nope. Early on, in fact, keeping water going to everybody puts a huge strain on the budget. Answer? Let them be thirsty for a good long time. Gee, I wouldn't think you'd buy a house with no running water, but I'm just picky that way.

Even better, I just got a message that says my water pollution levels are really low! Now only if my sims could dig deep enough to get it...

Also, you have to learn to ignore a number of messages that seem really urgent but are just people whining (this is good practice for forum posting, by the way!). For example, they'll complain about not having schools, police, fire, etc., but in the early game, putting those all in too early will wreck your budget.

Once you figure this stuff out, the game becomes much nicer to play.

FrustratedPoet · January 28, 2003, 14:52

Point 1: Yin sighting!!!!

Point 2: I'm still struggling to get a decent city up and running. It's kinda maddening, but I'll have another go tonight and see if I can crack it.

Adagio · January 28, 2003, 15:22

Hmmm... Yin is back... sensation

Because of my good nature, I always try to make sure every Sim has some water, but I still manage to get a city running (Though it took many tries, before suceeded... the first many times I had to accept the military base and missile launch thing... but it's been a while, since I last saw them...

)

So my advice is: Practice... and don't listen to the Sims (at least not in the beginning)...

FrustratedPoet · January 28, 2003, 20:51

Well I've got my first half-decent little city up and running.

Population around 8,000 and making a profit of almost $1000 per month. The only downside is that I have very little money in the bank.

Grumbold · January 29, 2003, 11:05

You can be nice to your sims immediately but it will harm your ability to expand since it definitely cripples your budget. You want lots of stupid smelly people working in nasty factories first before you teach their children to read, write and cycle to work at the laboratory.