First Thoughts on Sim City 4.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-07-29 03:45pm

So I decided to treat myself to a game since I have not bought one since last December. I picked up Sim City 4.

Overall, Im happy with the game. It is a better product than Sim City 3 was. Sim City 3 lasted on my hard drive for a day or two. Ive had Sim City 4 for 3 days now, and will play for some time to come.

Graphics: Best so far, which is a bit unfair considering improvements in computers. But the artwork is great. Some of the middle and upper wealth residential bldgs are really nice too look at.

Sounds: Sounds are on par with what I would expect. I like the music from Sim City 2000 best.

Interface: Could be improved, but overall it is not bad.

Gameplay: So far I think this is the hardest of all the series. Im on my third or fourth town in the Region and I have not been able to grow a town above a few thousand residents. I end up getting more demands for services than I can provide. So far Ive tried to stick to an agricultural village with some industry. My best town right now is only making 7 dollars a month profit, but I dont have any police or clinics and Im sorta stuck. Cool thing though is on the street with my Mayor's House there are 3-4 high value residentials. Just those 3 houses pull in a lot of taxes.

Overall I think SimCity 2000 is the best product, but Im happy with my purchase. I think they could have done a better job documenting how things work. ie) My water treatment plant didnt seem to do much and its way expensive to have.

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Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2003-07-29 04:41pm

Yea, SC4 is definitely a different beast from the previous games. You can't expand quickly and provide all services from the get-go; the high monthly costs for maintaining service buildings (not including additional costs, like patrol cars, police, firefighters, or school buses) make them a massive money sinkhole. I basically had to raise all my taxes to about 20% and accept all the moneymaking ventures (legalized gambling, a federal prison) I could. You're even more a slave to the RCI graph in this one.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-07-29 04:46pm

Be sure to have lots of roads going off the map to other sections, and make sure the industrial is nowhere near the residential...they seriously hate it.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-07-29 04:57pm

Rye wrote:Be sure to have lots of roads going off the map to other sections, and make sure the industrial is nowhere near the residential...they seriously hate it.

I tried running streets between two small villages to form a connection and nothing happened. Does the game prompt you to form a connection? Does it need to be a highway or road and not a street?

Im pretty good about keeping industrial away from residential. I put a couple of the "stock" sims into my city after I found out the game came with a few. I can see that sims will travel quite a long ways to their job. One of my sims is the manager of a Burner unit. She lives in a $$$ residential unit. She drives I would say at least a 100 tiles to work.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-07-29 05:18pm

Roads exist as demand cap relief and to move population to and from work and home.

I somehow managed to get a population of over 100K in one of the small-grid squares. Traffic is a bitch.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-07-29 05:18pm

Shadowhawk wrote:Yea, SC4 is definitely a different beast from the previous games. You can't expand quickly and provide all services from the get-go; the high monthly costs for maintaining service buildings (not including additional costs, like patrol cars, police, firefighters, or school buses) make them a massive money sinkhole. I basically had to raise all my taxes to about 20% and accept all the moneymaking ventures (legalized gambling, a federal prison) I could. You're even more a slave to the RCI graph in this one.

I managed to stay in the green at about a 9-10% tax rate by careful micromangement.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-07-29 08:36pm

I accepted a missile base and a toxic dump, now my city has good fire coverage, a school, and a clinic. Of course Im back to making like 50 bucks a month, but hey its better than a deficit.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-07-29 10:00pm

Consider finding ways to get rid of those moneymaking deals. Your city cannot grow effectively with those buildings there - at best you'll probably get low-income residents, dirty industry and low-value shops.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-07-30 03:57am

You MUST make a damn slum town. That's the best way to get enough money to actually improve the living standards. Forget about services unless they're crying for them or they simply can't grow anymore - and first step is raise industrial and residential taxes at least to 8% or 9% or so.

After that start giving services to a few select blocks, specially schools - then the economy will start polluting less. If you want to totally get rid of polluting industry, tax the cheapest of them to hell (one $ simoleon symbol) and they'll stop coming, after that start demolishing, but don't do this unless you're completely sure.

Cleaning plant is good if you already have enough people to be served by it. And place all the industries and polluting plants in the boundaries of the map, that way half of the pollution goes "outside" and disappears (not into the neighboring city).

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-07-30 04:01am

By the way, my towns always net me several thousands a year, and usually grow up to half a million or so

takes some time to get the hang of the game but once you do it's very easy.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2003-07-30 09:06am

I liked it, but it got boring after a few days or so.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-07-30 09:59am

Once you build up your first city things become easy, especially when you do region play. The cities start building off each other, netting insane growth.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-07-30 12:02pm

phongn wrote:Once you build up your first city things become easy, especially when you do region play. The cities start building off each other, netting insane growth.

In fact it is often a good idea to build a couple crap cities (like one that's 99% covered in agro) around your intended real city... sometimes you can create a city just as a service provider (a city mostly with landfill and power generation, for example).

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-07-30 03:21pm

So far Ive themed my first Region to be mainly an agricultural center.
One of the cities will be mainly industrial, but the others are going to be sleepy farm towns.

So far one of the farm towns around 3,000 people with a farmers market. Its a nice place, all the others have...ahem...problems.

My next region is gonna focus on paving the earth and destroying nature for towering banks and office centers.

I think the Cemetary is a nice touch, that was unexpected.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-07-30 07:13pm

On Halloween, if you have your graphcs settings turned up, you can see ghosts in the cemetary at night

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2003-07-31 02:01am

I've had it for a few months, and I'm still enjoying it. In my opinion, it's more enjoyable once you download stuff for it.

Once you get into cities with over half a million people, traffic becomes a problem for the resedential areas. I was thinking of solving this by moving resedential out into neighboring cities, but then commute time becomes a problem. Speaking of that, I find the commute times to be unrealistic. If I only had to drive a few miles to work, I'd consider it short, while your Sims consider a commute halfway across town "long".

Onto the topic, I have lots of areas in my biggest city that would be suitable for Commercial development, but I can't get my commercial demand up. I was thinking of building another airport and waiting.

LT.Hit-Man · Post by **LT.Hit-Man** » 2003-07-31 02:08am

What's the tech specs for SC4 and do you have some realy cool disaters like a nuke plant melt down and mutant kids being born because of toxi waste?

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-07-31 02:40am

LT.Hit-Man wrote:What's the tech specs for SC4 and do you have some realy cool disaters like a nuke plant melt down and mutant kids being born because of toxi waste?

Im playing it on machine with an AMD Duron 800, 256 MB , and 64 MB GeForce 3. So far the limiting factor seems to be my chip, otherwise its fine. I have most of the details up high, but the redraw rate is a bit laggy.

If you allow a missile testing range in your city there is a chance the rocket will crash on your town.

LT.Hit-Man · Post by **LT.Hit-Man** » 2003-07-31 02:44am

TrailerParkJawa wrote:
LT.Hit-Man wrote:What's the tech specs for SC4 and do you have some realy cool disaters like a nuke plant melt down and mutant kids being born because of toxi waste?
Im playing it on machine with an AMD Duron 800, 256 MB , and 64 MB GeForce 3. So far the limiting factor seems to be my chip, otherwise its fine. I have most of the details up high, but the redraw rate is a bit laggy.

If you allow a missile testing range in your city there is a chance the rocket will crash on your town.

Heh heh nuclear or non nuclear missile?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-07-31 11:00am

Looks like an ABM or something, so no nuclear warhead. OTOH, you can get a meltdown that acts like a low-yield detonation. If you have an ATI video card (other than the high-end ones) there may be some redraw issues, however.

Specialist · Post by **Specialist** » 2003-07-31 06:28pm

I uninstall this game after a few days of playing. It requires too much time

How do you guys build, start with a mini town then expand from there? Burrow 1 millon dollars and build everything then wait a few centries for the dust to settle?

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-07-31 06:48pm

Specialist wrote:I uninstall this game after a few days of playing. It requires too much time

How do you guys build, start with a mini town then expand from there? Burrow 1 millon dollars and build everything then wait a few centries for the dust to settle?

Well so far its been starting with mini towns. However, the terrain Im playing on doesnt allow for really big cities.

I have to do some terraforming to get a nice open area for the first city I want to grow above a few thousand.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-08-01 12:25am

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi wrote:Once you get into cities with over half a million people, traffic becomes a problem for the resedential areas. I was thinking of solving this by moving resedential out into neighboring cities, but then commute time becomes a problem. Speaking of that, I find the commute times to be unrealistic. If I only had to drive a few miles to work, I'd consider it short, while your Sims consider a commute halfway across town "long".

It's only unrealistic if you live in a country where the 2/3rds of the gas prices are subsidized by the government.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-08-01 01:10am

Specialist wrote:I uninstall this game after a few days of playing. It requires too much time

How do you guys build, start with a mini town then expand from there? Burrow 1 millon dollars and build everything then wait a few centries for the dust to settle?

Slums. Don't spend a cent in services. Raise taxes (not too much) for industy and residences - the starting taxes are WAY too low (by 1 or 2%), just fill as much as you can with areas. Reserve some space for future upgrades (hospitals, etc) - forget about clinics, when you need health just build hospitals and lower spending to barely cover the "patients" number. Same for schools - in this case you still want all types of schools tho.

Don't make so many commercial areas. I've found this is a good layout:

Code: Select all

power                            |I  |I  |I  |I  |I  |I  |   |
plant                            |4x514x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|   |...etc
                                 -------------------------   -
recycling                        |I  |I  |I  |I  |I  |I  |   |
etc                              |4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|   |
                                 -----------------------------
                                 |                       |   |
                                 |                       |   |
                                 |                       |   |
                                 -----------------------------
                                 |I  |I  |I  |I  |I  |I  |   |
                                 |4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|   |
                                 -------------------------   -
                                 |I  |I  |I  |I  |I  |I  |   |
                                 |4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|4x5|   |
                                 -----------------------------
                                 |                       |   |
                                 |                       |   |
                                 |                       |   |
--------------------------------------------------------------
I  |I  | buffer |I  |I  | buffer |c  |c  |c  |c  |c  |c  |   |
5x4|5x4| <-8?-> |5x4|5x4|        |4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|   |
--------------------------------------------------------------
I  |I  |        |I  |I  |        |c  |R  |R  |R  |R  |R  |   |
5x4|5x4|        |5x4|5x4|        |4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|   |
----------------------------------------------------------   -
I  |I  |        |I  |I  |        |c  |R  |R  |R  |R  |R  |   |
5x4|5x4|        |5x4|5x4|        |4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|   |
----------------------------------------------------------   -
I  |I  |        |I  |I  |        |c  |R  |R  |R  |R  |R  |   |
5x4|5x4|        |5x4|5x4|        |4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|   |
--------------------------------------------------------------
I  |I  |        |I  |I  |        |c  |R  |R  |R  |
5x4|5x4|        |5x4|5x4|        |4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|
--------------------------------------------------
I  |I  |        |I  |I  |        |c  |R  |R  |R  |
5x4|5x4|        |5x4|5x4|        |4x4|4x4|4x4|4x4|
--------------------------------------------------
       |        |       |        |   |           |
       |        |       |        |   |           |
--------------------------------------------------
...etc

The idea is that you end with something like this.

Code: Select all

P       IIIIII  IIIIII       
        IIIIII  IIIIII       

        IIIIII  IIIIII       
        IIIIII  IIIIII       

II  II  CCCCCC  CCCCCC
II  II  CRRRRR  RRRRRC
II  II  CRRRRR  RRRRRC
II  II  CRRRRR  RRRRRC
II  II  CRRR      RRRC
II  II  CRRR      RRRC

II  II  CRRR      RRRC
II  II  CRRR      RRRC
II  II  CRRRRR  RRRRRC
II  II  CRRRRR  RRRRRC
II  II  CRRRRR  RRRRRC
II  II  CCCCCC  CCCCCC

the space in the middle of the residential area is for hospitals, schools, etc as needed. some buffers can be used in the future to build highways or whatever, but mostly to keep the pollution away from the houses.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-08-01 01:20am

LT.Hit-Man wrote:What's the tech specs for SC4 and do you have some realy cool disaters like a nuke plant melt down and mutant kids being born because of toxi waste?

On maximum detail, even my P4 1.6 it does slowdown a bit sometimes, mostly because loading (loads kinda like gifs in a website, first you get blurry thingies that slowly clear up).

I think I managed to play it just fine at normal detail on a Celeron 500.