Topic: SimCity (Read 10365 times)

Inlander · « **on:** 21 Jun 2007, 07:08 »

I recently had a strange urge to install SimCity 2000 on my computer. I now have a bustling little town of 17,000 and steadily brewing away. At the end of the day, sometimes it's just nice to play a game in which you get to build stuff, and nobody dies. A game in which some guy with glasses can tell you you have too many roads, or some idiot can tell you to float a bond and then the instant you do so tell you that the unpaid bond is killing your town.

Anyone else here love SimCity? I'm a sucker for the classic 2000 model, but has anyone played any of the other versions? How do they compare? And what are your finest city-building exploits?

The best city I ever came up with (on my old computer, now lost to the ages) had a sizeable population (somewhere around three-quarters of a mil, I think - I was saving up for arcologies to give it a boost) and among other things what was, frankly, an awesome public transport system: a full rail network, highways, and - best of all - an extensive subway network covering the entire city, with somewhere in the order of 100 stations. All that and the city still turned a profit every year.

imapiratearg · « **Reply #1 on:** 21 Jun 2007, 07:37 »

I do enjoy the SimCity and other Sim games. It's a nice breather from the constant killing in shoot-em-up games and the destruction strategy games and stuff. I had the same game, but for PS One. I mostly enjoyed loading up the pre-built cities, and laying waste to them because I usually got stuck andwouldn't be able to make my city any bigger.

McTaggart · « **Reply #2 on:** 21 Jun 2007, 09:07 »

Sim city 2000 was a horrible horrible game until I figured out what was going on. Then it was this great stress relief. Every now and then I get the urge to play it again.

imapiratearg · « **Reply #3 on:** 21 Jun 2007, 11:14 »

I liked SimPark. The one where you make your own campground and stuff. It was cool.

Mikagon · « **Reply #4 on:** 21 Jun 2007, 14:42 »

I liked SimTower a lot better then SimCity. In SimCity I was always too tempted to just keep releasing all the disasters on the city.

Johnny C · « **Reply #5 on:** 21 Jun 2007, 16:44 »

SimTower was an incredibly awesome game.

I want SimCity 4000. It looks like a good update of the core gameplay.

McTaggart · « **Reply #6 on:** 21 Jun 2007, 21:45 »

I read somewhere that it was a different game entirely.

Heresiarch · « **Reply #7 on:** 22 Jun 2007, 21:39 »

Quote from: imapiratearg on 21 Jun 2007, 07:37

I do enjoy the SimCity and other Sim games. It's a nice breather from the constant killing in shoot-em-up games and the destruction strategy games and stuff.

Me too. Sim games are relaxing.

I played Sim City 4 quite a bit. I like the way bordering cities can interact. You can have your main commercial center, with a couple of neighboring cities set up as suburbs (mostly zoned residential), and a dirty industrial city with giant landfills to keep all the pollution out of your big showcase city.

I had a city with a 1.something million population, a nice beltway, and a full subway. I started having trouble maintaining the standard of living, my upper class started slipping into middle class, and the middle class became poor. I'm not sure why that was.

There's a great website called www.simtropolis.com with SC4 maniacs. They've created mods that actually patch programming holes - like how the AI commuters choose their path, and how long travel time takes. They created pedestrian malls, which make for neat little city sections. And thousands of buildings, farm lots, and nice gritty looking industrial lots. Tons of stuff that I'm forgetting. If you play SC4, you need to check out that site.

Johnny C · « **Reply #8 on:** 22 Jun 2007, 21:55 »

In retrospect SimCity 4000 doesn't exist, but wouldn't it be awesome?

CmonMiracle · « **Reply #9 on:** 22 Jun 2007, 22:32 »

I played the original Simcity...that was a lot of fun. Definitely Simcity 2000 was a good update in that you had more things to keep track of but not so much that you felt overwhelmed, which is what the later versions were like. Too much stuff! I'll admit though, I could not run a city to save my life, I had to cheat and get money a bunch of times.

SimTower I was actually good at, one thing I could never figure out properly was the elevators. Sometimes it would say that the people on floor 51 or whatever couldn't reach an elevator when it was right there!

Probably the one I was best at was SimFarm, I was killing that game with my herd and my apples and oranges. People always buy apples and oranges.

TheBoredOne · « **Reply #10 on:** 23 Jun 2007, 06:34 »

Quote from: imapiratearg on 21 Jun 2007, 11:14

I liked SimPark.

My brother and I could practically point out and name every different type of tree after we'd mastered that game.

DevilDog2488 · « **Reply #11 on:** 23 Jun 2007, 10:13 »

I never really got into the SimCity games, but I own SimTheme Park and if I get bored of the constant action of my other games (usual FPS or some other form of mass destruction) it's a nice way to relax.

rasufelle · « **Reply #12 on:** 25 Jun 2007, 09:16 »

How do you get Theme Park to run under XP? Me and my cousin keep tryin', but we can't even get any of the online patches we've found to work.

hypeserver · « **Reply #13 on:** 27 Jun 2007, 17:52 »

I don't know weather to be thrilled or begin to cry over the new Sim City game that's coming out. Seeing that Maxis was officially axed a while back they have nothing to do with the new Sim City game. I feel the new addon to the series will butcher it anyone else have thoughts on this?

imapiratearg · « **Reply #14 on:** 27 Jun 2007, 22:16 »

I don't know. Do you know who is developing it? Who knows? They might do the series justice.

hypeserver · « **Reply #15 on:** 28 Jun 2007, 06:22 »

EA Games and Tilted mill will be working on the project it was the coverpage article in the latest issue of Games for Windows magazine.

doki · « **Reply #16 on:** 28 Jun 2007, 06:26 »

sim ant, FTW

DavidGrohl · « **Reply #17 on:** 28 Jun 2007, 08:26 »

I mastered Sim City 2000 . . it became too easy. If you follow some general guidelines, your city will flourish. I ended up with over 40 archeologies and called it quits . . I had basically beat the game. What I did was the following: Build streets leaving a 4x ? grid and only lay dense zoning. Build water pipes directly underneath the roads under every road (just to be neat). Try to keep industrial away from residential and even commercial areas. Never take bonds unless you're pretty much forced to, allowing legalized gambling and enable parking ticket or other ordinances if you need extra cash. Keep the taxes between 6-12% depending on how your city thrives during each period. In some cases it can be more profitable to leave it at a higher rate even with the blackened buildings dotting your city (you can always lower the taxes to 0% for a few months if you want to get rid of any negative buildings).

Sim City 3000 is much more of a challenge, which is why I prefer it over 2000. Haven't played Sim City 4000 . . . didn't know such a game exists.

Sim Tower was probably my favorite Sim along with SimAnt.

imapiratearg · « **Reply #18 on:** 28 Jun 2007, 11:03 »

Quote from: hypeserver on 28 Jun 2007, 06:22

EA Games and Tilted mill will be working on the project it was the coverpage article in the latest issue of Games for Windows magazine.

Hmmm...EA has been known to put out some great stuff as well as some pretty bland stuff. I don't know so much about Tilted Mill though. I guess we'll see.

HPPH · « **Reply #19 on:** 28 Jun 2007, 12:38 »

My girlfriend bugged me recently to play Sim City for the snes with her(This was a game she would play when she had no friends growing up.). While it's not a competitive game, on two seperate computers via ZSNES, she quickly suggested we make the game into a competition with the fast forward key. Though it's a game she likes, she grew bored faster than I did but I have to admit, it wasn't as boring as I feared it would be. I still don't like games that require a mouse and try to use a d-pad in the console conversion.

mberan42 · « **Reply #20 on:** 28 Jun 2007, 14:14 »

The cheat to get $999,999 in the SNES version of Sim City was freakin' hard. Up-Up-Down-Down it ain't.

HPPH · « **Reply #21 on:** 28 Jun 2007, 15:06 »

The only cheat we allowed ourselves was save states. That in itself is a pretty darn handy cheat.

Mikagon · « **Reply #22 on:** 28 Jun 2007, 20:06 »

Are there even cheats for SimTower?

imapiratearg · « **Reply #23 on:** 28 Jun 2007, 20:58 »

Is there somewhere I can download this game? I kind of want to play it now. Thanks to you! *shakes fists*

Oli · « **Reply #24 on:** 29 Jun 2007, 06:33 »

I just installed sim city 3000 but I can't get it to start. I get to the bit where you click "play sim city" and then nothing.

Hmmmm.

hypeserver · « **Reply #25 on:** 29 Jun 2007, 08:29 »

Quote from: imapiratearg on 28 Jun 2007, 11:03

Quote from: hypeserver on 28 Jun 2007, 06:22
EA Games and Tilted mill will be working on the project it was the coverpage article in the latest issue of Games for Windows magazine.

Hmmm...EA has been known to put out some great stuff as well as some pretty bland stuff. I don't know so much about Tilted Mill though. I guess we'll see.

That's the problem EA worked on the other projects with Maxis then they killed off Maxis so we can't really know if it will be good. Plus last time I checked EA turned more of a sports game company.

Johnny C · « **Reply #26 on:** 29 Jun 2007, 15:32 »

EA has four divisions now.

EA Games, EA Sports, EA Casual, and (God help us) The Sims.

ImRonBurgundy? · « **Reply #27 on:** 29 Jun 2007, 20:55 »

I used to play SIMLife quite a bit as a kid. I also had SIMCity and SIMCity 2000, but was too young to really figure them out. I don't know where they are now.

coldie · « **Reply #28 on:** 29 Jun 2007, 21:49 »

I never played SimCity 3000 but I really liked SimCity 4 on PC, it really had a nice feel, quite pretty.

It's also out on DS and plays pretty well, but the minigames kind of detract from it. I really like how they've made use of the two screens when in build mode. I want to give it more play time. If I could only put down Tetris DS...

Oli · « **Reply #29 on:** 30 Jun 2007, 06:50 »

So I managed to get Sim City 3000 working again and then I remember how terrible I am at it.

It is ludicrous. My cities just go down the toilet. It also doesn't help that I can't seem to find the booklet that comes with it because the booklet has a tutorial in it.

Bunnyman · « **Reply #30 on:** 18 Jul 2007, 02:50 »

I would so be playing SimCity 2000 right now if my Win3.1 floppies hadn't corrupted and Fry's was still carrying a CD version (with Streets of SimCity, which can be safely avoided) for $5.

Inlander · « **Reply #31 on:** 18 Jul 2007, 06:38 »

Psst, Bunnyman!

Luke C · « **Reply #32 on:** 18 Jul 2007, 06:56 »

Man I love SimCity! I really wanna buy Sim City 4, this thread has really tempted me to order it now!

Kana · « **Reply #33 on:** 02 Aug 2007, 17:42 »

I know this thread is a little old, but I had to reply.

I've played the original Simcity, SimTown, Simcity 2000, Simcity 3000, and Simcity 4. I loved them all, but my favorite is torn. Favorite gameplay is 3000 and favorite look/feel is 4. If you haven't played 4 I don't want to dissuade you, but there are some real important things to note.

First off up until Simcity 4 all the games have been micro managing. Meaning that every little specific detail was left to you to manage which is what I LOVE. However, in 4 they tried something new and went to macro managing. This will make previous hardcore Simcity players have a bit of a rough time at first. You have to unlearn basically how you played the other games to a part in the managing area. Instead of minute details of each and everything you deal with those things on the larger/overall scale - this makes it damned hard to plan and build a big city right from the start AND stay in the black. It takes a much longer time to make a huge metropolis in this game and stay out of the red short of using ArtMoney if you're impatient.

However one of the things I love about Simcity is terraforming or downloading an overhead map of any part of the world or other planets and having the game build that land for you automatically from the start for your region. Then you can play however you want with that territory. One of the most fun regions I ever played was built with small island chains in great numbers where the city was circular in shape but basically like Atlantis. Little peaks of land had to be placed in form to allow bridges to go from 'town' to 'town' all over the water - was really something.

Also once you get your city well established have some fun with the building creator and build your own landmarks or houses. I've had SimCity 4 since day one, but I finally after so long got the deluxe part with Rush Hour included so one you've built your city you can even drive through it.

Anyways, all this reading about SimCity makes me want to fire the game up!

MlKE · « **Reply #34 on:** 02 Aug 2007, 18:08 »

This thread definitely makes me want to play the game, aslo.

Kana, you're talking about macro managing the game in SC4 instead of micro managing. And I think I like that better about SC4, because it puts you more in the role of a mayor, than a god. In real cities, you don't do everything yourself. And it's a bit more realistic in the way that big cities don't just spring up out of nothing, they grow out of dozens of years of development.

And while Will Wright might be a genius, I'm a sucker for Sid Meier games.

est · « **Reply #35 on:** 04 Aug 2007, 22:48 »

If you have a DS then the SimCity DS game looks like something interesting to check out. I bought a copy for Heather for her birthday and checked it out by playing the intro to see if it was lame or not. The controls are a bit different and they've cuted up the interface, but on the whole from my mucking about and the reviews I've seen it looks like it is a fun version of the game.

TrekkieTechie · « **Reply #36 on:** 07 Aug 2007, 17:06 »

Ahhh, SimCity 2000. That's where it's at. When I got tired of building my own cities from scratch, I would load up one of the pre-built ones with a purse of 2,000,000,000+, set as many fires and disasters as I could, and let it burn overnight. When I woke up, I had a level playing field and a lot of money so I could build whatever I felt like.

imapiratearg · « **Reply #37 on:** 08 Aug 2007, 09:28 »

I used to do that too. Only without the rebuilding part. I just liked seeing the giant, sprawling metropolises crumble and burn.

THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)

Author Topic: SimCity (Read 10365 times)

Heresiarch

CmonMiracle

DevilDog2488

rasufelle

hypeserver

hypeserver

doki

HPPH

HPPH

hypeserver

coldie

Bunnyman

MlKE