Lomnoir

Think of the date as more of a birthdate. Its really not useful other than at certain city "ages" certain special gifts and such may be unlocked. But it has no impact on other cities in the region.quote> That I understand. I also understand that the date in each city has no bearing on what rewards are offered. Unlike in Sim City 2000 or Sim City 3000 (where certain services became available once you passed a certain date), the services that the game unlocks comes only when each city in the region meets certain criteria. If I have a city that has a sizable population with plenty of high tech industries, then that city will have the hydrogen power plant available. If a smaller, more rural town in the same region is on the same timeline as the large, high tech city (within two weeks of each other for example), the smaller city will not have the hydrogen plant available as a power source because it has not met the population and technology prerequisites. Because the date has no bearing on the rewards and services available to each city, why isn't the time constant across the entire region? Time plays less of a factor in what is available in Sim City 4 than in previous versions.

While I enjoy SimCity 4, there is one thing that I find disconcerting. Since the player controls how each individual city is built and managed in the entire region, why does each individual city have its own date stamp? For example, no matter when you start a particular city, the time always starts on 01/01/2000. This is true even if the first city you started has progressed to, say, 08/19/2046. Is there a patch available that will synchronize the time regionwide?

That did the trick. Thanks for the advice.

I had to reinstall SimCity 4 recently because my hard drive failed. Before it failed, SimCity 4 ran nicely, but now I have a new hard drive installed, it won't even start (I receive a message saying that the application unexpectedly quit). Any suggestions why it would do that?