A "New City" starter survey

[The Thinker 479]

So, I'm a wee bit curious about the habits of SC3kU players, particularly about how they go about founding cities.

Thusly, I have cobbled together a quick, unscientific survey on the matter.  The premise is that you're going into a game of SimCity 3000 Unlimited with no explicit predefined plans or ideas about where to take your city, and you're just randomly starting up a new map and seeing where events take you.

And please feel free to give longer, more qualtitative supplementary answers in the replies.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

Do you prefer active 3000 players only? Or can peeps who completely enjoyed the game long, long ago, but now only play SC4 answer your poll?

[The Thinker 479]

13 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Do you prefer active 3000 players only? Or can peeps who completely enjoyed the game long, long ago, but now only play SC4 answer your poll?

One need not be an active SC3k player. 

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

I've voted.

1. I seem to recall there was a random option and I often took the first one offered, but I also seem to recall you could click again and a again to see other choices. (Or am I thinking of 2000?)
2. Always large and it was never big enough.
3. I liked playing thru the years. I seem to recall better power plants weren't yet available in 1900 so then there was the fun of switching away from heavy pollution to slightly less as time progressed.
4. For this one it was only after becoming completely familiar with the game mechanics and then paying off the loan was really only a mini-challenge, but still fun to do.
5. Not much to say here. The default was the most similar to where I live.
6. Same.
7. Same.

And one of my epiphany moments came from the background sounds. When zoomed way in in a pleasant neighborhood there were happy children's laughter and such instead of angry dogs barking, gunshots, and whatnot.

[The Thinker 479]

Figured I'd put down my preferences here.

1. "Start New Map", for the most part, especially as lets me better prepare terrain for such features as landfill sites, seaports, and where I'm going to place geyser parks

2. Large, and even then I always find myself wishing for more space

3. I find a 1900 start allows one to visualise technological progress better, as well as giving one more goodies to look forward to

4. I always select the $50,000 option, though with the emergence of the Extra Cheats DLL I now have to option to accquire more seed funds without calling Cousin Vinnie

5, 6, & 7. I have something of a soft spot for the original SC3k look, especially as my first foray into the SimCity scene was with the original release version of SimCity 3000 (I accquired the Unlimited version later, or the UK Edition as it was labelled here in Blighty.  Also, I find the Default/North American building set just looks so bright and colourful, which my eyes always find pleasing.  Nevertheless, I do have an appreciation for the other building sets, and the lush terrain & tropical flora options in particular.