What difficulty do you play on?

[cartracer5 3]

I'm curious to know how different people play. I generally play on hard, and have built some very large cities, albeit somewhat helped by the NAM and CAM. I found easy and medium not challenging enough to be enjoyable.

[Metalpuritan 160]

I also play on hard, but not for difficulty sake, I do it because I do not like to be bothered by my advisors every few minutes about every little thing under the sun.  I tried to play with turning off the "no advisors except for emergencies" thing but they wouldn't even notify me when my city was on fire and because I play with the "no pause thingy" mod I would sometimes not notice there was a fire until a whole block or more had burned down to the ground.  Or my city's water pumps would get old or over capacity and I would end up with mass building abandonment all over my city before I finally saw a building with a no water zot, or my power plant would get old and/or over capacity and the brown outs would start and not notice it until it was too late.  So hard difficulty it is for me, but advisors turned on, I had to find a medium somewhere.

[Ro-Bo 183]

I'm too playing on hard because of those annoying advisors. Hard is not hard at all. Just a little slow on the city development for me. Plus some reward only given when the difficulty is hard. But of course you can get all reward with UDI mission.

[cogeo 960]

With the RH release, the game became extremely easy economically, posing no challenge at all. Even at the hard level, my cities just accumulate cash. Made a mod that set the startup funds for the "Hard" level to zero, so that I can only start with loans. But to no avail, even so the loans are paid and then it's the same.

[B.C builder 291]

I'm always playing on hard. Sure you have less money but you wont get these anoying tips from your advisors 

[Terring 6,473]

I guess I'm the only one here who play in easy mode. I want to build my cities as I want, without any economical limit. I also have , that increase the amount of money to $100M/$25M/$1M for Easy/Medium/Hard respectively. Yes I know, there is the Moolah cheat as well, where you can determine how much Simoleons you want to have anytime you want. Oh well

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Hard mode + NAM.  No CAM, I am not into pin-cushions.  As a player, I started before RH came out, and the only mode was hard.  I found the other modes too simple, and the advisors a pain in the nether regions.  If I am planning a complex installation like a port, I use the moolah command to set the treasury to 500,000 off the top.

[AcronShinra 60]

"Mayor, citizens love...." Close.

"Mayor local road is..." Close.

"Mayor, plant mo..." Close.

"Mayor, taxes..." Close.

 

Hell, no, I'm going back to Hard Mode.

Is there a option to chain environmental advisor to tree(green-activists like it anyway), while my mighty bulldozer army proceeds to destroy "re-cultivate" native, virgin, pure, full of high, healthy trees, clean rivers and cute, fluffy, small animals land for local heavy industrial pod and kilometers/miles of high-speed highways?

[infamousjbe 592]

Another Hard case here. Not for any particular reason other than I play 99% of all games on Hard difficulty in my ripe ole' age. Anything less just feels like cake walk most of the time. I do enjoy a bit of a challenge in my gaming.

 

Now I keep hearing mayors claim they set the difficulty to hard to quiet down the advisers.....don't know about you but even on hard they drive me up the wall. Couldn't even imagine what they must be like on any lower setting....OMGWTFSUA!!  

[Cyclone Boom 16,906]

Definitely hard mode for me. When Rush Hour came out, I used to play on easy for the added funding and faster city growth. At first I thought the advisor messages were kind of helpful. But soon realised they're more of a hindrance - always repetitively stating the obvious. Hard mode reduces the non-critical ones, though doesn't disable them completely. Turning off "Urgent Advice Dialogs" in the options also helps with this.

 

I agree with the moolah trick, and it does come in handy when any cash boost is needed. Of course, moolah can set your treasury up or down whenever. So can be treated like a non-functional loan.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Yeah, hard to shut the advisors up.

 

Even if I take out a ton of loans at the beginning I can make so much money with what I spend the money on that it doesn't matter.

 

 

 

Actually, how easy it is to make money has caused a different problem for me.  After accumulating millions of simoleons, I don't pay attention to the budget.  It's easy to have a huge deficit and not notice.  But you don't have to be too in the red to lose the game.  It's happened before that I've been playing as usual and then out of the blue I'm forced to run for senator. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Moolah can be considered to be the vehicle of grants in aid when things are getting dicey.  I often take them back after the city has recovered.  Moolah giveth and moolah taketh away.  An additional 400,000 when starting a large tile, can be removed when the city is nice and profitable and has enough treasury to remove this excess amount.

[BRStackola 0]

I play on easy mode and with the advisory pop-ups disabled in the menu. I have not had a single panel pop up on me since changing that in the options... The only thing I ever get is the game pausing if I've missed a spot with fire coverage and one breaks out... Are you all talking about the messages in the news board even bothering to show? I don't understand this issue...

[Omehenk 9]

never even did anything else then hard, normal sim city 4 doesn't even have the easy or medium 'difficulties'.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The original game without rush hour has only one mode.  If you are running deluxe (Sc4+RH) you get the three modes.

[Bdub01 201]

I shut the advisors up. I just have to look quickly if I have a fire or water main burst.

I played on easy for a long time and well it get too easy. Now I play on hard. It's much more enjoyable to me. Even on hard I've learned how to not go in the red. Never tried the medium setting.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Its medium boring.

[.anonyman 28]

Looking for a happy medium, I always choose... well, medium. 

 

The in-game option to shut up the advisers has worked very well. Now I don't get any pop-up messages from them but the game always pauses for fires. As for other potential disasters, I play on turtle speed and move around the city a lot. The only unforeseen problem comes from that phantom slider bug. Arrrgh!

[Jim14409 448]

Since having a choice I've always played on "easy" because of the funds. Now I can get the cash rolling in right away but never thought about changing. I stopped the pop-ups years ago as well as the no fires dat. For me the challenge is not in the economics of the game (I think they are terribly lacking) but I like the challenge of designing neighborhoods and transportation. For me bulldozing a path for a new freeway or transportation route and not only restoring population numbers, but increasing them is great fun and challenge. I enjoy getting out the bulldozer(which always makes my Sims nervous), and doing a little "urban renewal".

[Prophet42 1,501]

I have always played on the hard setting.  Anything else is way too easy.

[simcity1999 34]

I think it's good to start a poll. I play with medium settings, with the "moolah" cheat set to 1,000,000 (real cities) or 999,999,999,999 (sandbox/experiment cities). Yeah, easy mode sucks, too many corrupt advisors screaming at me with nonsense crazy words.

[jeffabes 10]

I have always played on the hard setting.  Anything else is way too easy.

 

Ditto for me.

[Haljackey 17,308]

NAM simulator on low gives me plenty of traffic issues to resolve!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I run the NAM controller on default.