Simpleton Series: Cheats and scribble boards in SimCity 3000

Contributor/author(s): Simpletoin

Herewith some philosophy on 'Cheats' and how to use them positively without guilt over the 'Cultural Cringe' which seems to be associated with the practice. This article is about creative design to make a city look better, not primarily to make it work better - although this could be the path to a better city for yourself.

SimCity is more than a town planning game - it is also a creative avenue limited only by the imagination and ability of the player - the only weapon and destruction in the program is the Bulldozer!. Significantly, the host of Tips in Knowledge Neighbourhood are equally about creative design methods as they are about screwing a block for as many skyscrapers as possible.

Once you move from the central purpose of 'can I build it and make it work with what I have without going broke', but you do not like the results of the outcome - correction requires you to be highly skilled plus you need a lot of simoleons, or you use a 'cheat' while you learn.

Some sound advice for beginners (like me) or people who cannot progress, is use the 'I am weak' cheat in conjunction with a Scribble Board to acquire some basic skills and try out the many great tips in Knowledge Neighbourhood to the point you can use them effectively without wasting money when creating your own city.

Load a blank city terrain at 'large city, easy level'. Save the scenario under some suitable name. Remember you have to re-enter the cheat each time you re-enter the city then your only cost will be when you use the Bulldozer (if you are too destructive you can always take loans as the city stays permanently paused for this exercise). Use other 'Cheats' to give you access to various buildings if you need them.

Have a good browse through Knowledge Neighbourhood and download all the tips and features which appeal to you. Use your Scribble Board city to try them out until you get them to work. Get creative, experiment, try connecting one tip with another and see whole new dimensions to this program.

Another good Scribble Board will also help you. Call it a cheat - I call it being practical. Buildings in SimCity do not orientate themselves to roads naturally - you can have a Fire Station with its exit ramps straight onto a row of houses instead of the road the other side. This looks neither nice, nor logical.

Open another new city as per above and file it as 'Shop'. Use all the building access cheats and spend an hour or so loading them into the Shop - just lay them out in rows a couple of tiles apart. This gives you two benefits. You can refer back to Shop to check building orientation so you can arrange optimum placement in your working city game. Equally you can have a damn good look at buildings (particularly the Landmarks) to ensure you are going to import exactly what you want for best effect.

Finally, I do not mess around when opening a new city - any terrain will do! Because I am then going to use 'I am weak' to terraform it to the layout I want to work with. The cheat can be turned off and I have set myself my own challenge - can I make it work?