Creating a farm country in SimCity 3000

Contributor/author(s): Michael N.

The goals of creating a farm country are quite different than building a city. A mayor must aim for rustic and natural, as opposed to most efficient and practical. Follow these basic guidelines.

1. When choosing your terrain, you want an extra-large, semi-flat block with no large rivers or coastlines (small streams and lakes are okay). The reason is that large bodies of water raise land values and are a tempting site for high-density development.
2. Build two roads that stretch from city limit to city limit and that cross each other somewhere in the middle. You can add other roads later.
3. Build a coal power plant on the edge of the map. It produces a lot of pollution, but with the low-density development you'll be doing, it won't make much of an impact.
4. Start developing with low-density zones at the intersection of those two roads. This is your county seat. Avoid development too far away from the main roads. Development should stretch no farther than 10 tiles away from the intersection.
5. Zone low-density industrial plots for farms anywhere along the roads. I like to use 14 x 9 plots. Make sure they are hooked up to power.
6. Build light residential at random locations along the road. Try not to let any zoned squares touch each other. It looks more rustic this way.
7. Gradually add more end-to-end roads. At the intersections you can add clumps of zones to create a village. Don't worry too much about placing residential zones next to non-agricultural industrial zones.
8. You can use government buildings (police, fire, school, library), certain landmarks (Quincy Market, Independence Hall, North Church), or rewards to act as village halls.
9. Water is not necessary at all, especially on the farms. If you want to build a water tower to satisfy the needs of the villages, that's fine. But they'll live without it.
10. Much later in the game, you may want to introduce suburban sprawl. Build pockets of high-valued residential zones as housing developments. Continue with middle-density commercial. Your county seat may eventually become your historic downtown.

You'll create an interesting city history of progress that does not happen when you build metropolises right away.

See also
Building a garden city
Creating a wine country
Build a realistic-looking campus
Creating a national park
Create a nice-looking school
How to build a nice golf course
How to build a nice vineyard or fruit farm
Build a hillbillie hangout