Tips & Tricks - SC4 Misc (MAXIS)

Signs and Labels
Signs and Labels can be used to designate areas for future expansion. For example, if you want to leave an open strip of land for future highway expansion, place a set of labels along that strip to remind you to not plop buildings or place zones in that area.

When you place new background files in the plugins folder, your cities can take on a whole new look!
The game's C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4\Plugins folder contains 5 bitmap files; one for each zoom. These are the background textures laid in 3D against the ground plane of the city. In a paint program make your own background images. Use the 5 zoom level image sizes of the current SimCity 4 background files as your guide. Save your images over the current files (be sure to save a copy of your background files elsewhere if you’d like to go back to them). Acceptable file types are JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TGA. Load the game and let the sky be the limit to what you can do to customize your cities!

You can click on crime events in the data view and be taken to those locations in the city.