Broken water deals bug: fix in SimCity 3000

Contributor/author(s): Paul Adams, Jason Russo, Patrick Kelliher

After making a deal to sell your water to another city, and insuring that you have adequate water and a complete pipeline to the city, you may encounter a problem. If you try to expand your water system while a deal to sell water is active, the deal is always broken and you will be penalized for "breaking" the deal. More specifically, building additional water pumps and connecting them to the main water grid results in the deal being broken, even though you may have enough water to supply the receiving city and a completed pipeline to transport the water there.

To get around this rather annoying bug, simply pause the game while making additions or changes to your water system. The game will not pick up on the fact that you have expanded the water grid, and consequently will not break the deal with the neighbor city.

Another fix was suggested by Jason Russo:

I've noticed the problem that many have with water deals being broken when trying to expand upon your city's water system. It seems to me that when I would place a water tower or pump, and then later connect it to the rest of my water system that is connected to my neighbor, the simulator would usually catch this if I haven't connected that device by then end of the month and charge me with a broken water deal. However, I've noticed that if I draw a pipeline to the location of my soon-to-be-placed water pump or tower, and then build my pump/tower so that it's connected as soon as I build it, I don't get the broken deal. You might check this yourself to see if it works for you as well.

Yet another fix proposed by Patrick Kelliher:

Build your neighbor their own specific water supply. I had found this out with my first game as I had built too much water pumps to supply my city. I had already bought them and would have probably not been much help to destroy them. I then destroyed two pumps to divide the network line, installed power lines and had independent water lines running to my neighbors and let the profits roll in without any harm from the bug. Now, I've adapted this system to my new cities. I know place extra water pipes on the polar opposite end of the coastline (on the river obviously) send pumps to all three neighbors and spend small money on solar or wind power to power them. In the meantime I am running up early profits (with the help of my neighbors) and can then destroy the deal later when my Utilities Manager has an aneurysm about the water situation.