SimCity 3000 Question: How to have a commercial city?

[StarshipTitanic]

Is it possible? I always end up having to put tons of industry but little commercial zoning. I really hate industry, it's so dirty.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Real simple...

Start with one large city connected to about 6 or 7 smaller towns.

Fill towns with farms, Industry and the like.

Interconnect all small towns to big city.

Build Huge population in big city.

Slowly build big commerical.

All people will commuite to other Industrial jobs outside city, leaving the city itself to grow and prosper.

[AniThyng]

I think that only applies to SC4, crossroads...

In SC3000, you really don't have much of a choice but to zone mostly industrial until the city reaches a certain size...say about 2/3rd of the map, then you can reverse the ratio, then as it maxes out in size and begins to become a dense manhattan-ish city you can begin demolishing old industrial and replacing it with commerce.

[Utsanomiko]

I think that only applies to SC4, crossroads...

You are correct, Fluke Starbucker Inc is incorrect; SC3k's neighboring cities can't be omdified or visited, and the only interraction is setting up utilities/garbage deals.

[Crossroads Inc.]

EH.. yea, sorry about that, been playing SC4 so long, forget the questions was for Sim 3000, my bad

<_<
>_>
Fluke Starbucker Inc?

[Psycho Smiley]

Initially, the game requires 80% of your jobs to be industrial. It shifts to 50% at 233k population, and levels off at 20% around 1.6m. So just grow your cities bigger.

Edit: And of course, industry cleans up with education and time. Maximum clean industry increases linearly from 0% to 100% between 1900 and 2200. Keep your EQ up, and you'll stay close to the maximum at any given time.

[StarshipTitanic]

Initially, the game requires 80% of your jobs to be industrial. It shifts to 50% at 233k population, and levels off at 20% around 1.6m. So just grow your cities bigger.

Bah, I like tiny island cities! I wish I could have a tourist island setup.

[RThurmont]

Ah Sim City 3000, what a great game. Sim City 4 was almost excessively detailed, and the result is a much more accurate simulation that is also much less fun in many respects.

In response to the thread, first, I'd urge you not to fall for all of the "Industry is dirty, smelly and evil" BS that Maxis has inserted into the game with such subtleties as deliberately grimey factories and massive pollution. The reality is, dirty industry DID look like that at the turn of the last century, but today, most dirty industries try to keep their buildings as clean and innocuous looking as possible, planting trees along the outside, et cetera. Also, the supposedly "clean" industries included in the game, like semi-conductors, are in reality extremely dirty: semi-conductor plants use massive amounts of highly toxic chemicals in the chip manufacturing process.

I used to fall for the whole "Industry is bad" obsession, and I've realized that in retrospect, it really damaged my enjoyment of the game, and made many of my cities much less vibrant than they could have been. Instead of having a balanced mix of bustling industrial and commercial zones, I had massive, sprawling commercial areas that were mostly devoid of inhabitants. So forget the anti-industry bias, and if you think the industrial buildings look dirty, use Building Architect+ to redesign them.

[StarshipTitanic]

I know industry is very useful for my city, but I wanted to see if it was actually possible to have a commercial-based economy on a small scale.

[RogueIce]

Initially, the game requires 80% of your jobs to be industrial. It shifts to 50% at 233k population, and levels off at 20% around 1.6m. So just grow your cities bigger.

Bah, I like tiny island cities! I wish I could have a tourist island setup.

So do I. I even tried it out, but it does get frustrating after a bit. They demand more sectors and I simply don't have anywhere to put them, and I fast run out of space to put things such as school, colleges, hospitals, etc (eventually I cheat by sticking a few windmills on an island somewhere and place the schools and hospitals on them, but even then I run out of space). The end result is that it stops growing, and my zones don't even get full to capacity. It's frustrating.

[Oberleutnant]

Bah, I like tiny island cities! I wish I could have a tourist island setup.

The best thing you can really do in this case is to get SC4.