Simcity 4 Released?!! - Page 3

Imran Siddiqui · January 17, 2003, 17:06

Sometimes, sometimes not. I think in SC4 a good tutorial would be better.

Adagio · January 18, 2003, 05:10

I haven't tried the SC4 totural yet, but the part I hate most about toturals is, if they only exists as one totural to choose from. The beginning of all toturals are annoying, since they use tons of time to explain how to move around the map... but if the totural is done properly, then there's no need for a manual... and this goes for all types of games...

Btw, back to SC4: Has anyone noticed the zombies and ghosts (I think it's ghosts, but hard to tell) on the cemetary? Zombies are around most of the time, but the ghosts don't come that often...

Az · January 18, 2003, 22:36

wow. amazing grphx from that screenshot. Now, all I need is a new computer and 50 bucks.

VJ · January 19, 2003, 03:44

Looks really promising.

When I'll get a new PC, I'll check out the big-W,
and may even purchase the game at full price

FrustratedPoet · January 19, 2003, 07:46

I will probably be getting SimCity 4 today. Looking forward to it very much.

Is there anything I should know? Something that you were confused by when you were playing that would help me?

Is there a patch out yet?

alva · January 19, 2003, 07:55

Quote:

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
I will probably be getting SimCity 4 today. Looking forward to it very much.

Is there anything I should know? Something that you were confused by when you were playing that would help me?

Is there a patch out yet?

That's PTW you're thinking of

MosesPresley · January 20, 2003, 00:48

Are you able to use your old cities in this version?

Sarxis · January 20, 2003, 01:34

I highly doubt it. There was nothing in the manual about it, plus the saves are in .sc4 format.

Adagio · January 20, 2003, 06:38

If you mean old saves from SC3k (or earlier) I really doubt it, since there's so many changes in the game...

Az · January 20, 2003, 10:37

so, what are the recommended requirements for SC4?

Grumbold · January 20, 2003, 14:02

Time. Lots of time. And then more time.

I got the game over the weekend and it has absorbed me ever since. Its definitely more micromanagement than ever before. It actually seems to track who lives where. Zone a new residential area and predominantly young families will move in and start having kids. The demand for elementary schooling will skyrocket. Later they'll all want to go to high school and demand for the elementary school will stabilize. All this can mean darting round your city checking the school attendance at every institution individually in order to prune back or increase the budget as appropriate. You can't just toggle a global setting and have the schools adjust appropriately (at least tweaking the global settings doesn't seem to balance the local settings according to their local needs.)

Other than that, trying to get a city to grow is challenging this time around. You can't just plop down some amenities and strips of zoned land and expect skyscrapers overnight. First you'll get individual houses and low-rise apartments. Only when the town begins to boom will there be sufficient pressure for high rises to start to appear in the choicest spots.

I made a complete hash of London but my attempts at growing Berlin have proven more fruitful. There's a definite hurdle around the 6-10k population mark. The sims are demanding everything but their taxes can't cover the cost. Options like prisons, army bases and missile ranges can help but bring their own problems. Once you break out and can afford to zone a second tranche of housing suddenly economies of scale kick in because you can fit them both in the cachement area of a single high school, demand for density starts seeing tower blocks appear etc. I leapt from a budget of 3,800 including all bonus income buildings provinding a mere 100/month surplus to 7,800 with a surplus in excess of 1,000.

Some simmers are sugesting devious strategies to overcome this hurdle, like selling power and water at lucrative rates to a neighbour you create who you never go back to play. Personally I intend to stick to iron man mode, but its going to be a long hard struggle to the metropolis of the future at this rate

Joseph · January 20, 2003, 18:03

This game is very hard and I'm not having any fun playing it. It's getting to the point where I wished I did not buy it.

Grumbold · January 20, 2003, 19:37

What sort of problems are you having Joseph?

MosesPresley · January 20, 2003, 19:58

I just purchased sc4 and I am having a love/hate relationship with it. I absolutely hate the regions implementation and the fact that I can't import my sc2k and sc3k ciites. I just don't have the time or inclination to run over 100 cities. otoh: I love the myriad details.

Does anyone know where you can download some regions? So far I haven't been able to find any.

Comrade Tribune · January 20, 2003, 20:01

Quote:

Originally posted by Grumbold
Some simmers are sugesting devious strategies to overcome this hurdle, like selling power and water at lucrative rates to a neighbour you create who you never go back to play. Personally I intend to stick to iron man mode, but its going to be a long hard struggle to the metropolis of the future at this rate

I think I´ll really love this game.

(Now all I need do is buy a new computer.

)

Even without having the game, I think I have a solution to many difficulties, that is not cheesy:

-Develop 3-5 connected 'Specialist Cities' at the same time. At least one of those is your 'Cash Cow'. Cash Cow gets nothing but dirty industries, power stations, high security prison, military base, toxic waste processing etc...

Cash Cow will deliver cheap energy to your other cities, AND buy expensive water

from them. It will also absorb all of everybody´s waste for free, and still produce a surplus.

Free energy and waste disposal and some extra money from Cash Cow should considerably help to get 2-3 neighbouring cities on their way... try this and tell me if I am right or if I am right.

MosesPresley · January 20, 2003, 20:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune

I think I´ll really love this game.

(Now all I need do is buy a new computer.

)

Even without having the game, I think I have a solution to many difficulties, that is not cheesy:

-Develop 3-5 connected 'Specialist Cities' at the same time. At least one of those is your 'Cash Cow'. Cash Cow gets nothing but dirty industries, power stations, high security prison, military base, toxic waste processing etc...

Cash Cow will deliver cheap energy to your other cities, AND buy expensive water

from them. It will also absorb all of everybody´s waste for free, and still produce a surplus.

Free energy and waste disposal and some extra money from Cash Cow should considerably help to get 2-3 neighbouring cities on their way... try this and tell me if I am right or if I am right.

Great tip!

ZargonX · January 21, 2003, 03:22

Yeah, I think the "specialist city" concept is sort of the way they intended the game to be played. It may seem kind of cheap at first, but they even suggest it themselves at the simcity4 webpage. It's quite usefull for getting your city off the ground and running a profit, and then making the city self-sustaining.

Grumbold · January 21, 2003, 06:27

I'm still low down on the learning curve but I don't think its that easy to build a cash cow immediately. All sims require a certain basic minimum standard of amenities in order to want to live and work somewhere. Its getting the economies of scale working in your favour that is the tough part. Whether you do this by having your dirty industry in one corner and the residential in another of the same map or split them over two maps seems incidental (although you'd get a second 100,000 to build the second city, giving you a much better initial fund.)

The residential will want police, fire, water, power, education, entertainment and amenities just the same. Your industry will settle for power, water, police, fire cover and good freight links. The downside is you'll have to start planning and paying for a comprehensive rail and bus network immediately or nobody will commute.

I've no doubt the strategy could work and there are definite advantages to keeping the dirty stuff on one map. If the simulation is robust you should still see pollution leakage to adjacent regions and the health of sims who work in smogville suffering badly even if they live in cleantown. Life would have been a lot easier for me had I created an adjacent region that was willing to buy my surplus power, for instance, since the coal plant was running at well under capacity for over thirty years. The problem becomes one of focus. I really don't want to start the game by hopping madly to and fro between several miniscule hamlets and setting up a deal to buy power for no reason goes against my gaming habits.

Adagio · January 21, 2003, 08:16

Quote:

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
Even without having the game, I think I have a solution to many difficulties, that is not cheesy:

That is about that, what they intended to do with the game... though there's one little thing you should know: You don't set the price of the export/import (to/from other cities), so you can't have one city that produces tons of electricity, and sells it for 10§ per month...

Grumbold · January 21, 2003, 11:43

On the sim website someone is advocating a different strategy and one that seems very suited to the game - start poor.

Hike the taxes to 9% or even 10%. Don't start by laying the foundations of a city (although keep those in mind.) Just start out with slumville. Long streets with minimal intersections zoned as low density housing and a little low commercial. Chequerboard patterns of medium industrial and trees to soak the pollution (agricultural doesn't pay.) About the only thing these residents will insist upon is power. Even water is a luxury they can afford to do without.

Once you've got a good tax base of these underprivileged people, begin your climb to urban utopia on their backs.

Kc7mxo · January 21, 2003, 12:32

ahhh capiralism at its finest. . .

Comrade Tribune · January 21, 2003, 13:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Grumbold
I'm still low down on the learning curve but I don't think its that easy to build a cash cow immediately. All sims require a certain basic minimum standard of amenities in order to want to live and work somewhere.

Ahh, but my idea is to get the cash from the Military Bases, High Sec Prisons, Toxic Waste Facilities,...

No one actually needs to LIVE there...

(except for a few slums that are attracted by zero taxes).

And, as you mention, you get the starting money. So 5 x 5.ooo pop cities will still be way easier than 1 x 25.ooo.

Comrade Tribune · January 21, 2003, 13:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
ahhh capiralism at its finest. . .

Whereas my method is planned economy at its best...

Comrade Tribune · January 21, 2003, 13:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
ahhh capiralism at its finest. . .

Btw, did you want to say 'Capiratism'?

FrustratedPoet · January 21, 2003, 14:13

Hopefully I'll be installing this game in an hour - took me a couple of days longer than I expected to get it.

It had better be good .....

Kc7mxo · January 21, 2003, 16:23

Quote:

Btw, did you want to say 'Capiratism'?

Ohh! The woes of typing with one hand while putting one's shoes on before heading off to an evil morning class! Woe is me! I did, of course, intend to say capitalism.

Joseph · January 21, 2003, 23:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Grumbold
What sort of problems are you having Joseph?

The entire game is hard coded. You cannot make changes.
There are no option, such as easy, medium, or hard. You cannot turn off disaster.
The taxes are so little you almost cannot build Hospital. Schools, etc. The cost of a School to build is not that much, but the rent is $400.00 a month per school. A fire station is 150.00 a month, police is 150.00 and Hospital. 125 or 150 a month.
As soon as you build a power house, you are 125 a month in the hole. And it takes until you have a pop of 1,000 or so before you break even on the budget. However somewhere around a thousand, you will have to build a firehouse or your city may just burn down. Every single tile in the game has a price.
Remember small parks in SC3, they were free after building, now they cost 5.00 a month per park. So if your city had 20 parks that will cost you 5 X 20 = 100 a month for parks. Road tile in SC3 had a monthly fee overall, now a monthly fee for every tile. Bus stops now 5.00 a month. And you can put it down in the middle of a housing square and still get no riders to off set the 5.00 a month fee per bus station. If you don't put each and every building just so, the city will not grow.
In one city, I had about 7,000 pop. with three police and fire, one hospital, and two schools and was only making 20.00 a month on the budget.
BTW, the police, fire, school and hospital building that I'm talking about are sub station and not full size station that cost a lot more.
That is enough for now.

MosesPresley · January 22, 2003, 02:41

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.

FrustratedPoet · January 22, 2003, 05:38

I've been having a similar problems to Joseph. 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. Looking forward to trying again today.

Adagio · January 22, 2003, 06:29

Always keep an eye on how many people visits the hospital/school/etc, and set the price at it (By changing the monthly cost, you can see that the max number of patients/etc changes...

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

Btw, sometime ago, someone around here started a SimCity 3000 PBEM game... anyone interested in playing a such game in SimCity 4?