Using the Displays and Graphs in the Game`

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Greetings Fellow Members.

In order to help us all get the most out of this program, I felt it was high time we all got together for a discussion of the use of the displays and graphs supplied by the game. With new players, the reason for some of these is mysterious and vague, but they are all there for a purpose. Let's take a walk though some of them.

Everyone feel free to add more information, as I don't claim this is a comprehensive note.

Let's start with the dashboard, which is the display of horizontal bars you get when you first enter a city. This is also called the city opinion polls. This display also contains the demand summary graph and the GUI control area showing your population, funds and the running Sim date.

These red and green bars give you a 'how are you doing?' at a glance. If you are lacking in key areas, this will show you very quickly with descending bars (red arrows) or solid red bars that tell you where you have a serious lack. It is the quickest way to assess the problems in your city.

Environment tells you what your city environment is doing, and is sensitive to presence of garbage and pollution.

Health tells you about the coverage of hospitals in your city and whether they are adequate.

Safety covers both fire coverage and police coverage.

Traffic indicates the state of congestion and other problems with your traffic network

Education shows the extent of the coverage of your education system.

and finally Land Value shows the effectiveness of you as a city manager and how you are doing in enhancing your city.

Ideally, all of these should be solid green and if not then with green arrows going to the right. If not, corrections are needed.

The critical bars are: Safety, Education and Health. You won't get very good results in a growing city without these tending to be green. When they have red arrows going to the left that is generally trouble in some area. To find out where these problems may be occurring, the program provides displays that can help you decide just what you want to do about the indicated troubles. Being a god, you can ignore this if you like.

The best place to start is with the Data Views panel which is activated by clicking on the chequered patch in the upper right of the selection panel. This changes the dashboard to a selection with titled radio buttons. If you select one of these the associated display becomes available.

If you have an indicator of a safety problem, start your analysis by clicking on the Fire Hazard button. This changes the main city display to show in varying shades of yellow to red the areas in your city where a fire may break out. Coverage by fire stations are also shown in red circles.

For close inspection you can expand a mini display by clicking on the upwards arrow in the upper right hand corner of the dashboard. This opens a panel showing your entire tile in miniature with the legend showing the meaning of the colored areas. If you click your mouse in this area, your main display will move to that point, and you can magnify the area as needed. The overall picture will show by the red circles where the coverage is and is not. It is up to you to decide if this coverage is sufficient.

If your fire coverage is satisfactory, or you have fixed it to be so, you could check back on the city poll or go on to police coverage. Let's just go on to police coverage as it takes the city poll some time to notice changes.

When you go to the police display, your main screen shows areas of crime in yellow. The mini display shows this in detail with a legend for the whole tile. It is up to you to consider whether you can resolve this with a police station or by other means.

Safety is affected by two city ordinances. If you enable the Smoke Detector Ordinance it will increase the effectiveness of your fire stations and reduce chance of a damaging fire. The Neighborhood Watch Ordinance reduces the need for active policing. You can actually skip having police stations for quite a while.

Ordinances are activated by switching the dashboard to the accounting display. Press on the simoleon sign in the selector panel, then expand the accounting summary by using the up arrow. On the budget display click on the eye sign in either of the city ordinance lines. City ordinances are controlled by check boxes. Click in the box to change the state.

That was a major diversion, but necessary. Let us return to the city poll dashboard.

If your Sims are to progress past farm workers, burger flippers, or production line workers they need to go to school. The education bar on your dashboard tells you how your school coverage is working.

Switch to the data display panel and choose Education to see how this is doing. In this display, you get a picture of the areas covered by your schools and the Education Quotient (EQ) of your Sims. The full display gives the legend for this. Red is bad, green is excellent, and there are degrees in between. Education in the program is not instantaneous. It takes the same number of Sim-years to achieve any progress as it does in the real world. Theoretically elementary education should do the trick, but as you add higher institutions things get better and better. To get to R$$$ you need the best EQ you can afford. This will progress throughout the game, but maintaining coverage or not is up to you and depends on your goals.

The next most important city poll is the health bar. You can view the effectiveness of your health program by viewing the data display for health. With this turned on, your main display shows the radii of your health institutions, if any, and the color of the residential area shows the state of health. the mini display gives you access to the whole tile and the legend. For a more detailed picture of your health state you can switch to the graphs panel by clicking on the graphic in the center right of the display choices. Choose Life Expectancy. This will give you a line graph showing the effectiveness of your health program in the time you can expect your Sims to live. You can also choose other graphs that also give you various states of your Sims.

If you choose Population by Age you will get a feel for how your population is distributed. For a well balanced population this should be a nice bell curve, high in the middle. If the higher bars are more to the right you need to encourage more young Sims to join your city before the older ones retire and die. Yes, Sims are just like people and have a life cycle.

Education by Age will give you a picture of the effectiveness of your education policy. And the Education graph shows your general EQ.

The other important graph here is the Jobs and Population graph. This shows counts of both jobs and Sims by class. You can isolate any line or group of lines by clicking off the check box for those you have no current interest in. This allows you to get an approximate count of any class you like in the simulation. Generally you want two Sims for every job.

I hope this is a sufficient introduction. I've tried to cover some of the high points, but I am sure other members will want to add to this.