brianc1327

I don't know if there is a "minimum wage" in SimCity 4, or if even the concept of a minimum wage is meaningful in a simulation game, but it seems to me there is a "lowest wage". For instance, if the simulation decides to build a "Depessies Diner," a few R$ jobs are created (waiters, waitresses, busboys, etc), a few R$$ jobs are created (the franchise owner, the overall manager of the restaurant, perhaps one or 2 others) and for that business, there are probably no R$$$ jobs created. My understanding is that rather than a bunch of individuals being simulated, several aggregators are updated, such as the number of R$ or R$$ jobs, the total number of low (medium?) wealth businesses, etc. I looked for an articles where the "minimum wage" (or "lowest wage") might be calculated, or at least talked about, but I could find nothing. I am pretty sure that R$ are probably something like people with wages that are perhaps 1-3 times the lowest wage, R$$ are people with jobs that pay 4-10 times the minimum, and R$$$ jobs pay 11 and more times the minimum (or the appropriate counters are updated). If maxis or EA has said something "official" about that, I cannot find anything. If any one has done any calculations about this, I cannot find this either. The closest I could find were some articles trying to establish an exchange rate between USD and simoleons, but the articles I found applied to the Sims and not necessarily SimCity. One said that based on the price of gold at the time, a simoleon is worth ~$15, so apparently gold can be pucrchased in the Sims, but not in SC4 (or at least there is no way I know of), Another article said this is wrong, and compared the price of cars in the Sims with their analog in the real world, and came up with an exchange rate of closer to ~2 to 3 dollars per simoleon. Though these were from the sims, I saw another article that made the contention that simoleons had the "same value" across the SimCity games, the Sims games, and any other spinoffs. O f course, a few years ago I did a calculation that based on the cost of a real tennis court vs. the cost of a tennis court in SC4, a simuleon came out to being worth ~$500. Well anyway, back to my calculation of the "minnimum wage". I think I can take the total amount of taxes that are paid by R$ residents, mutiply it by 100/9 (11.1...) to calculate the total income of the R$ residents, then divide it by the number of R$ residents (or at least R$ wage earners) to get an average wage for R$ workers. Then I could do the same for R$$ and R$$$ wage earners (I don't think R$$$ residents are the same as R$$$ wage earners since a R$$$ resident might be a small child, and therefore not a wage earner., then play about with the ranges (for example assume that R$ workers make 1-3 times the minimum, and that R$$ workers make 4-10 times the minimum,etc.) to at least estimate the "minimum" or at least "lowest" wage. Or is that too simplistic way of doing it, and if it is too simplistic, what might be a better way. I also downloaded the CORIreports addon, and some of the numbers from those reports might be useful in making these "minimum wage" calculations, rather than trying to "guess" the numbers based on the charts/graphs given in the game. Brian Christiansen

In the vague past (I don't remember if this thread was recent or several years ago), there was a thread about the space shuttle station, and one of the replies stated that the had to be played on medium or hard mode, in addition to having the university, research center, and enough HT industry. At first, I thought, "this is incorrect, I have gotten it on easy mode." However, I recently played a city on "easy" mode and did not get offered the shuttle station, so I think I just started my city that I got the shuttle station on medium/hard mode and just misremembered that I started it on easy mode. Either that, or I got it using the "you dont deserve it" cheat code. Well, I just had some comments/thoughts about it. First, in SC4, the farthest it can be from an inhabited area is about 3km (diagonal length of a large city), in fact, I usually put it next to an air force base that I got from the ST exchange right here, and I usually have commercial zoning right next to it. I real life. such a base would be at least twice as far from any inhabited area. Second, I almost always get it in either medium or large cities. However, I checked my plugins, and one of them is an industry quadrupler, which I think means that industry (D,M, and HT) offers 4 times as many jobs as it would without it. Without it, I would not even come close to having enough HT jobs to be offered the shuttle station when playing a medium sized grid. I think this was the way the game was originally designed, it is just not possible to get enough HT jobs, even if conditions are "perfect" for HT industry. In a small city, I don't think it would even get close to having enough HT jobs even if you had a industry quadrupler, I guess you would need and industry 16-upler. Brian Christiansen

I really don't think that either of us, either me or TheMurderousCricket were "complaining" about how the game was designed, just commenting on it. I can only speak for myself, but I think it is just fine that aspects of the game are different than they are IRL. In fact, a few years back, I made a post on some things that are different between the game and "real life," such as having no inflation, or an infinite water aquifer, etc. I suppose that one more, not having a realistic buffer space around shuttle launch stations or nuclear power plants (or any kind of power plant), can now be added to the list. Brian Christiansen

For background of my question, I suppose I need to briefly describe the basic strategy I use. I have used various variations of this basic strategy, that I probably can't even remember them all. First, I make a "starter city" that is 1/4 of a medium grid or 1/16 of a large grid. The starter city gets just the basic utilities of water, power, and garbage collection (that is actually the most expensive because of the upfront cost of the incinerator or whatever I put in for garbage collection). I also put in a fire station, but that has more to do, I think, with "game mechanics" rather than "providing services" to the sims. This "starter city" costs about $300,000, so what I usually do, at least currently, is start the game on "medium" difficulty and take out a loan of ~$100,000. Since this takes me down to almost $0 in my treasury, I almost always get offered the "desperation awards," and I recommend taking the army base and the prison, but turning down the missile base and the toxic waste dump. In a previous message, I discussed why, so I won't here, but even without them the "starter city" usually starts making money before it gets to the losing condition of -50k or -100k (I can't remember which) and makes you run for senator. Once the loan is paid off, I then start putting in my parks, and since this attracts more people, and more R$$$ people, the more the city makes, then when I get to $1,000,000, I start putting in the city services such as the schools, hospitals, police stations, etc, using what I described in a previous post as "maximal/minimal funding." Even though I am now paying for the schools and hospitals, having the city services expands to city enough to be netting as much as before they were put in, well anyway, when I get back up to $1,000,000, I start developing the next quadrant in the same way, until my city is "finished." That is a very long-winded "brief" description of my basic strategy. Well, anyway, I decided to try a city on "easy mode" and max out the loan to $200,000, so that I started with 700,000 and develop 2 quadrants as my "starter city." This was plenty of money, I never got offered the "desperation awards," and don't think that I even dropped much below $100,000 before the city started making money, even though it had the very big expense of paying the loan (close to $2500, I think). I started making the parks when the city started making money. Since I had no schools yet, but the parks attracted enough R$$$ residents, I very quickly got offered the private school, and decided to place it immediately, then after I put down some more parks, I got offered the 2nd one, and again I plonked it down immediately, Very quickly I got offered the major university, even though I have schools that only about 10 percent of the residents and have not yet put in the city services(schools, hospitals, etc.) that raise the mayor rating. Well any way, right now I have a city that has basic services, 2 schools that service only about 10% of the population, and the major universty. The EQ right now is above 190, or it least appears to be from the data view. I plan to put hospitals into my city, but should I put in the "regular schools" as well. On one hand, putting them in would give the remaining 90%(the R$ and R$$) education services that they do not currently have. On the other, it would be spending an awful lot of simulated money to raise the EQ very little if any. So, I guess my ultimate question is whether I should put in the "regular" schools or not. Brian Christiansen

The following is a picture of a quadrant zoned the same way I zone and lay out roads in one of my "starter cities." The buildings (power plant, garbage incinerator, etc, are on a "side road," and not part of the "zoned area" in my starter city. The following is a breakdown of the cost for zoning a region like this, and putting in the "minimal services buildings": trash incinerator 25,000 I have used other trash collection methods, such as such as making a small plot of land and zoning it as landfill, but making this comparitively large investment relative to a $300,000 budget, has proven to be the most cost effective. power 10,000 I have used other power plants, but the coal power plant is the one I most use water 2 small pumps 2800, pipes, 3161 zoning: R, high density:61950 , C, high density: 25050 , M, medium density: 15930 when I started developing this strategy, I would start with low density and uprade to medium density, then upgrade again to high density, but it proved more cost effective to just start out with high density. highgways: 80,000 the region I am currently developing uses the Maxis elevated highways as the "interstate system". The highway estimate includes the cost of the cloverleaf that connects the 2 highways. roads: 100,000 when I started, I used streets, then upgraded them to roads, but putting in roads to start with, as with all the other expenses, just proved to be most cost effective. The cost of the roads includes the cost of the onramps to get on the "Interstate system. Small fire station: 250 as I stated in my OP (or at least think I did), I put the fire station in because of "game mechanics" rather than becaue I consider fire protection to be a basic service. Generally, the "destroy all buildings around the burning building" strategy works, but there are fires quite frequently without it, but placing a fire station prevents most of them. Grand total: 300,000. That is the total of the above numbers rounded to the nearest 100,000. The reason I rounded it is because some of the numbers that I used were estimates, and the buildings I put down are on a "side road," and not an actual part of the zoned area. Brian Christiansen

3 things: first, I use a method that might be considered "cheating," an industry quadrupler, but I think my strategy would work, perhaps with slight tweaks, without it (perhaps I should temporarily remove it and build a "test city" to see what happens); second, I get my money down to 0 or almost 0, and even lose money for a very short time, currently I do not even get close to the losing condition of -$100,000 before my "starter" city starts making money, when I first started developing this strategy I would hit that losing condition quite frequently, and third, it will probably take a day or 2, but I am working on breakdown of what one of my "starter cities" costs. Brian Christiansen

I am not certain if this is the right forum (of the many available here on simtropolis) to ask this on, but here goes. I got into the habit of "saving and exiting to region" before I exited the game entirely. I do not know how I developed that habit, whether I read on an online strategy guide, or perhaps even on this forum, that it was "better" to do that. Recently, however, I got to wondering why it is "better" to do that. I can see why it would be necessary to do that if you wished to change cities, change a "regionwide" parameter, or even just admire your region before closing the program entirely. I do not, however, see it point if you are just exiting the game. After, all, saving and exiting the game directly would involve calling the save_city() function, then the exit() function, where "saving then exiting the region" then exiting the game entirely would involve calling the save_city() function, then the display_region() function, then the exit() function. Unless you want to do 1 of the 3 things I highlighted above, what is exactly the point of calling the display_region() function. Does calling the exit() funtion somehow work better if called from the display_region() funtion than calling it directly? Is it some how a different exit() function (perhaps exit2()? Brian Christiansen

I suppose this post is a sort of "spiritual successor" to a post I made a few years ago called "education experiment." In the current region I am building, I put the major univerity in the medium and large cities, and only the city college in the small cities, with the support facilities: elementary schools, high schools, and libraries in them as well. For awhile, in the previous region, I would put both in the medium and large cities, but in the current region, I just put one or the other. I can afford to put the major university in a city before the city is "mature," (as many online strategy guides say to do) because I use what I call maximal/minimal funding (described in a previous post of mine as well), and let the funding/size of the universtiy grow with the city. In comparing the university to the college, the college gets the education level up to almost 200 just like the major university does. This may make it sound like the university is just a waste of space/money, and the college is just as "good." However, there are advantages and disadvantages to each one, and I will talk about them based on my observations from the current region and some observations from the region previous to that. City college. The advantages are that it takes up a lot less space, and costs less money both to plop and run. In fact, the space it takes up vs, how much space the university takes up is the main reason I only put only the college in the small cities. I had to make a choice as to what reward buildings to put in the small cities as there is simply not enough space for "all" of them, and the small cities only get the "small" reward buildings. The medium and large cities have plenty of room for the "all" the reward buildings, so they get all of them. At least I am pretty sure I earn all the reward buildings. The main disadvantage of the college is that although it takes the EQ to almost 200 like the university, it takes about 10 game years to do so. How long it takes to reach almost 200 is no big deal in itself, but the faster the EQ gets really high, the faster High-Tech industry develops. Also, when I put in a new neighborhood, the overall "average" education level drops sharply and takes quite a few years to recover. Major university. The advantage is that the overall EQ goes up to almost 200 very quickly, less than 1 game year, I think. It also has the advantage of unlocking the research center and the shuttle lauch place, both of which encourage high-tech development (or at least I think they do). The disavantage is, of curse the initial money it costs, and the amount of space it takes up. Brian Christiansem

In my "Fairview" region: I decided to try putting up a "farm region". I will probably blow it up and put in a HT industrial, commercial, or residential district like all the others that I have been building. I really do not much like making "farm regions," mainly because I used to have sc4 classic (I looked, and for the past 2 years-almost exactly-I have had sc4 deluxe), and in that (classic) farms could not be taxed. Also most farms had to have a water treatment plant attached to them because of the water pollution they produce, and the ones that come with the game are huge and take up much of the space of the farm in the first place. These 2 problems are solved to some extent with sc4 deluxe where farms can be taxed and mods like the MCP Water and air treatment plant which treat more water and have a much smaller footprint than the in-game treatment plant, but I still don't really like building "farm regions," and will probably blow it up and remake it as either a HT industrial, commercial, or residential like I said. The "farm district" that I made is one of the districts in the Fairview region that has the river running through it, and I would guess that about 1/4 of it is water, with the other 3/4 being zonable land. For my test "farm district" I think I made about 1/2 of it into farms, and about 1/4 of it as low density residential, and of course the other 1/4 is water (perhaps I will look into trying to get some screen shots and put them up as well in the near future). When I looked at the number of residents vs the number of farm workers, there were 1400 residents, but only 300 farm workers, and I wondered where the other 1100 people were going, but I figured that perhaps 1 or 2 from each household were going to work on the farm, and the other residents were the spouse, children, whatever of the farm worker. I also did some examining of the region using the traffic data view and the transportation query tool, and the only farm it showed people commuting to was the farm that was immediately next to the residential area. I thought perhaps the "parking lot" for the farms was on that first farm, but the transportation query tool only showed enough commuters for the immediate farm (about 20 or so, I think) and not all the farm workers (300). Brian Christiansen

I am making a region that "embraces the grid," I suppose. I am using for my residential neighborhood an improved version of the neighborhood design I described in a post called "new neighborhood design a few years back. In a 2x2 city, I get 4 residential areas, and in a 4x4k city, I get 16 residential areas. The commercial areas surround the residential areas, and the industrial area follows a ring around the entire city. The reward buildings in a 2x2 city are interspersed in the commercial areas (except the churches and private schools which go into the residential areas). The reward buildings in the 4x4 cities are in the blank 10x10 areas, which I will describe more in the next paragraph. Between my neighborhoods, there are 10squarex10square areas between the residential areas. In a 2kx2k city, I get 1 of these, which I use as a "technology center" that has the advanced university, the advanced research center, the advanced medical research center, and the spaceport. In the 4kx4k areas, I get 9 such 10x10 areas, one of which is the "technology center," 3 have the reward buildings, and the remaining 5 currently are just blank. Here is a picture I made in a 2kx2k city which might help visualize what I did: As you can see, in a 2x2 city, there is a 10/10 area in the "middle" that has my "Technology center". I am not certain if you can make out the "civic centers" that I put in the middle of my residential areas. I can't, and I know exactly what I did when I built the city, but they are near the signs that indicate where my residential areas are. In 4x4 cities, there are 9 such areas, 4 of which are filled in as described above, and the remaining 5 are just empty right now. I do not want to zone any of them because even though I have a fairly powerful computer in relation to a 20-yr old game, it still has so much zoning as to slow it down a whole bunch and I just don't want to add any more. These are a few ideas I have for the empty areas: Make an "approximation" to central park. Some of the museums around central park are in the landmarks menu, and I think I found some others in the STEX, and I can put these around the edge of the park. I also found the "Paeng's Free Waters" lake making set and some other mods that I can at least approximate what is contained in the park. Also with the NAM I can put the trails in it, thought they would have to be straight and not meandering like in the real park. I downloaded the mod for making golf courses (PEG, I think) and the Marriot hotel/stadium and could use those to make a sort of sports center. I downloaded a mod (don't remember the name) that plonks down fancier trees than the vanilla game does, and I could just fill one of the areas with trees That would take care of 3 of the areas, and leave 2 remaining. I guess I am looking for some feedback on my ideas, and perhaps some suggestions on what I can do with the remaining 2. Brian Christiansen

I looked at the dl page for the city junkyard mod, and the idea I am preliminarily developing for it is to put it in the "middle" of one of my 20x20 areas (not 10x10 as originally posted), and then plant a bunch of trees around it to separate it from my the rest of my city. I am sort of curious now as to just how much trash it can handle. At least I assume it can handle trash,and is not just for "city uglification." Brian Christiansen

Just a bit of an update to my original post: the areas are 20x20 squares. I am pretty sure that the Major Univerity (are their sports teams called "The Major Universites"), the advanced research center, the medical research center, and the spaceport would not fit into a space as small as 10x10 squares. As for what corina said, yes, my recreational centers are part of my revised new neigborhood design, though 1 of them has been replaced by the soccer field, another by the softball field, and sometimes they contain a gazebo instead of a small park. I will take this as a yes vote for attempting to reproduce Central Park from NYC. I will have to look at what museums and other structures I have, both from the vanilla game, and mods I have downloaded and sort of lay them out in a good approximation. As for the trash facilities, I have 2 incinerators going in medium cities and probably more going in the large cities. Are you suggesting that I replace them with the garbage mods. I think in the larger cities I have room to build them, and surround them with areas that are filled with just trees or parks or whatever to reduce the "NIMBY" effects of the mod. Also, in the picture, there is a railway running by the dump, do I need to build a railroad to use it? Brian Christiansen

Some years ago I made a post I called "new neighborhood design," and I have since improved it a great deal. I also fund my schools and hospitals using what I call "maximal/minimal funding." Basically, what I do is when I plop down a hospital (I use the Mattb Harbor Clinic, and not the medical center provided by the game) or school, I let the game run for 6-game-months to 1-game-year, then I pause the game and adjust the capacity of the hospitals, colleges, or high schools to between 30 and 50 percent above the current number of patients or students, and the capacity of the elementary schools to 50 to 100 percent above their current enrollment, or at least as I close as I can come with the sliders. Then when the hospital or school goes on strike, I readjust the funding as I just described. My point is not to describe my strategy in any detail, but I got to thinking about it, and in a game that has been around almost 20 years and has been played by millions, perhaps even 10's of millions of people, I cant possiby be the 1st person to come up with this strategy or one like it, but maybe I am the first to call it "maximal/minimal funding." I guess my question is whether anyone else uses this strategy, and if you gave it a "special name" like "maximal/minimal funding?" Brian Christiansen

It seems that these funding methods, my "maximal/minimal funding", Cori's "micromanaging the budeget," or TheMurderousCricket's 5S fundunding are all ways to keep the funding for schools, hospitals, and perhaps more from going out of control, and not "overfunding" those institutions,but allowing them to grow with the city being built. My purpose, at least, is to keep the "average" as either breaking even or making money,which is the only game requirement, but more important to me is to have more money for other services, such as fire, police, airport, reward buildings that cost money (such as the stadiums, etc,, which I assume have a "positive effect"). This got me to thinking, there are quite a bit of people on this forum that say that they cannot build successful cities, and I was wondering if it is at least partly because they do "overfund" the schools and hospitals, rather than managing the funding so that the schools/hospitals grow with the city rather than having a bunch of unused excess capacity? Brian Christiansen

It sounds like you want a way to play without worrying about money. This super cash park will partially solve that: I say partially because it gives you way more that enough money to not have to worry about how much money your city makes, but it does not change demand or whatever so that industrial regions or whatever develop any faster. Brian Christiansen

I thought I would just jump in on this thread. To my understanding, there already is a SimCity 5 and a SimCity6, they just are not called that. They are called "SC2013" (I think) and "Cities Skylines." Also, to my understanding, they are more than just "spiritual successors," they are actually made by Maxis or EA or whoever currently owns them. I have never played SC2013, but there appears to be an active discussion group for it here on Simtroppolis, and it by no means is a isn't a "bad game," (some people obviously enjoy it quite a bit) but I think I read that when it was released it had an online option and EA (or whoever) just had 1 server running that did not have the capacity to handle the demand, and has never really recovered. I have also never played "Cities Skylines," but it seems to be pretty popular as well. Since I have never played either game, I really do not know what changes/improvements were made over SC4. Brian Christiansen

I thought I might just jump in on this thread. I don't have any cool stories about SimCity, but a while back I had a computer that had DOS 5.0 or so, and it had a program in the autoexec.bat that gave a choice of 4 options, though I am pretty sure that other things could be added. The first was to start an office suite that was probably about the equivalent of whatever version of MS works that was out at the time. The second was to start SC2000, though if I recall correctly, the SC2000 disc had to be inserted. The third was to start windows 3.0. The last was to go to the DOS command line, though I am pretty sure that other options, such as perhaps starting Lotus 1-2-3 or any other game or productivity software that I installed could be added. More recently, I had a computer with SC3000 on it, but I lost the disc in a move, so I cannot put it on the computer I currently have, and unless I perhaps see it at the dollar store, I won't be installing it. I just took a look on ebay, and it appears the best price (CD+shipping) is about $10, and I took a quick look at GOG, and the price there is $10, both of which are $9 more than I would spend to replace that game. One time when I was bumbling around on the Ubuntu softare center, I came across a game called "Micropolis," which is apparently a port of the original SimCity for Linux. I think I played it once. I know there is a native Linux game called "Lincity" that is a city-building game that is at least similar to the SimCity series. I am not certain if I played that one. Brian Christiansen

My response was not to what was said in the video, but rather what the OP said. I do not think that how current city planners played the game influences how city planners go about their job. Rather I think that a city planners views (liberal, conservative, whatever) influences how they do both, play the game, and run a real city. Brian Christiansen

I would like to respectfully disagree. My disagreement is based on the following premises: SC4 (and the entire SimCity series) are computer games/simulations, not "real life." Since it is a computer simulation, it has to be driven by mathematical formulas, algorithms, and perhaps random number generators, not the needs/desires of real or even simulated people. Computers at the time (2003) were much less powerful than computers are today. For example, you were hot s**t in a champagne glass if you had a computer with 1G, 512meg, or even (I think) 256meg of RAM, whereas today those amounts are cold diarrhea in dixie cup . My phone has 2G on it. My "regular" computer, that I am typing this on, has 8G of memory, and even that only makes it at best mid-level as far as a gaming computer goes by today's standards, at least as I understand it. Perhaps my computer would even be considered "low-level" since I do not have a stand-alone graphics card, but use the graphics card built into my CPU. Fortunately, SC4, which was designed for the graphics capabilities/processing power of computers 20 years ago, is about the most sophisticated graphics that I run on it. To my understanding, SC4 is a statistical/aggregate simulation, there are no "real individuals," or even "simulated individuals" involved. I do not think this is true. Although the amount of money that you have is sort of the most prominently displayed statistic, and others have to be dug for a little bit more. For example, for education statistics have to be dug for in the graphs and data views, and for the overall education system grade, something like the CORI reports has to be used. The end goal is defined by the player. For example, in the region I am currently building, my goal is to get the spaceport and the hydrogen power plant, which have subgoals involving education levels, mayor rating, and population. If I changed to goal to be able to afford the hyperspace garbage dump, (10 million simoleons), I would have to build a profitable city, and just let it run until I got to 10 million simoleons (unless I simply use a money cheat such as the infinite money park or the "moolah" command to get the money). This would be true whether I am a "giant of governing gifts" that provides a plethora of city services, or a miserly mayor that provides the bare minimum of city services. What is "horrible" about it. I think providing no services is a perfectly legitimate way to play this game, though it may eventually backfire on you, and I will discuss that a bit more later on. Even if it was a real city, the citizens choose to live there. Perhaps the citizens believe that education should be provided by home-schooling or private (in the US, this unfortunately usually means religious schools) schools, fire protection should be provided by volunteer fire departments, not city fire departments, public transit should be provided by private companies, etc. Whether these views/policies are "good" or "bad" is a debate for another time and place, but I do know that there are people the hold these views. That is the nature of a computer game. The decisions are made unilaterally by the player and not decided by a simulated referendum (simferendum?), and because it is a game, I see nothing wrong with that. I don't think being grid like is an American thing at all. In cities in the western US that I have lived, or at least been to (Tucson, Albuquerque, Phoenix, and Denver, if I recall correctly), the streets were laid out in a gridlike fashion, but in cities back east, namely the Norfolk/Chesapeake/Virginia Beach metropolitan area, the streets were not gridlike, or at least I did not think they were. I have heard the same thing about Boston as well. I think the grid-like layout of SC4's streets has more to do with the limitations of computer graphics/hardware of the time As I said, there is an end goal, but is is defined by the player and not the game itself. For example, in the region I am currently working on, my "end goal" is to get the spaceport and the hydrogen power plant. At this point, the grid is generally full (at least for the 2Kx2K city), and the city is making a pretty high profit. I could at this point just let the city run, perhaps micromanaging the zones, letting the money counter run up, and putting out fires, or I could blow up the city and rebuild it, or move on the next city because it is "completed." Whether any other players goals are the same as mine, I think that most come to a point where they think "this city is 'completed,' I want to move on to the next city." I said I would talk about how being a miserly mayor that provides little to no services might backfire. If you provided no services that would make the mayor rating continually go lower and lower, and at least as I understand it, that is what causes rioting. This also at might some point cause the city to start being abandoned of people/businesses, or at least it would seem to me it would. I do not know if the city would be abandoned to the point of having no citizens/businesses, but at some point would lose money, and if not reversed, would trigger the games losing condition. The only way to reverse it, if you have enough money to do this, would be to start providing services like education and whatever. I said i would talk some more about how being a "miserly mayor" might backfire, so here is that discussion. Opening a city or region called "miserly mayor" and providing as little services as possible might be and seeing what happens might be an experiment worth doing. At first, such a city buillt this way will make money, I know this because I have used this strategy to build up enough money to start providing city services. I build a city that provides the minimal services of water, power, and trash collection, and just let it run until I have ~1,000,000 simoleons or so, then I start slowly adding schools and such. It would be an interesting experiment to see what would happen if I just let the city continue to run with these minimal sevices. Would the things I predicted start happening eventually. Would the city advisors continue to give me guff about needing schools and hospitals and whatever, but the city would continue to make money. What would happen? Perhaps someone has already done such and experiment and already knows. Brian Christiansen

I am never quite certain about what tags to add, but in my post I am going to talk about some plugins I dowloaded, "attempting" to play the "base game" without any downloads, at least not the ones I specifically talk about. Ialso discuss my goals in the current region I am developing. I have dowloaded many plugins over the years, but three of them are what I call the "magical utility facilities, and they are: The first is the cosmic neutrino power plant. I won't describe all the stuff it does since the link does that, but will say that I think, if someone is better at managing neighbor deals than I, just 2, possibly 1 plant could water/power an entire region. The business deal version also pays $50,000 per month, so that version at least could be considered a "money cheat" as well The second is the MCP Water & Air Purification Plant, and again the link describes what it does, so I won't do that, but will say that in pracitical use, putting one of these next to a coal power plant limits the air pollution from the plant to the area immediatley over the plant itself. The 3rd is the Black Hole Waste Management v2, which is much more effective than the ways in the base game of managing garbage (incinerators, landfill, recycling centers, and some city ordinances). Again, I think that if you are better at managing neighbor deals than I am, just a few (or perhaps even just 1) could manage an entire region. Currently, in the region I am developing, I am attempting to play using the base game, sorta. Technically, I suppose I should uninstall the NAM, but I am not going to do that. I also should uninstall the plugins I have downloaded, though at this point, I am not certain what I have downlaoded and what was with the base game. More specifically, I am trying to play without using the above mentioned "magical utility facilities." My goal, in this region, is to earn the hydrogen power plant and the space shuttle in the medium and large cities, and I will describe that I am doing in the small cities. The hydrogen power plant has the power consumption requirements and the HT jobs requirement for the game to offer it to you, hawever, I think there is a third requirement for wheter it is practical to buy or not, and that is that your city is making a "profit" of about $7,000 to $8,000, because the power from the hydrogen plant is much more expensive than the power from coal power plants. So far I have used the coal power pants as my "starter" power plants, and usually have 5 or so of these running in a medium city when I earn the hydrogen plant, and the cost is somewhere around $2,000 for the power, and replacing with the hydrogen plant jumps the cost to $10,000, though that can be slightly lessened by adjusting the funding for the hydro gen plant. I suppose in this region, I will experiment with the other plants as my "starter" plants. I think the numbers will at least be similar-ish with the natural gas or oil power plants. With the waste-to-energy plants, which I usually cut the funding to 0 and use as incinerators and not power generation, I am a bit concerned that these power plants might not produce electricity to their full potential if there is not enough trash to burn. When I try the "clean power," the windmills and the solar power stations, I am not certain if that will not be power that is too expensive to develop a full city without some sort of money cheat, though I have to admit that I am "cheating" a bit here because I got a mod that enhances the wind turbines, but I have no idea which one I got. The space shuttle has the HT-job requirement and the advanced research center, which in turn has the requirement of the advanced university, which in turn has population, mayor rating, and overall education-system-grade (at least 4.5 apples) requirements, and gives a measure of how "Silicon valleyish" the city is. As I said, I am doing this in the medium and large cities, but the small cities, there is not enough land to get the population, energy consumption, or HT-jop requirements for these things (or at least I dont think there is). In the small cities that I develop, which are next to the medium/large cities that I have developed so far, I have avenues running in from the right or left and top or bottom 3 tiles from the edge. I first complete the avenues so they form a "ring" around the city(albeit rectangular rather than round). On the outside of the "ring," Iplant a bunch of trees, using an enhanced tree mod so I can plant fully grown trees, to form a sort of buffer from my "Siliconvalleyish" cities, a buffer that might be sort of required in real life, but in this game it is just for looks. Inside this "ring," I put in a bunch of farms. In one of the cities, I messed with the landscaping tools to give it some hills and stuff, and another I just left flat. Since my goal in these cities is just for looks, and not to "play" them, so I don't have big blank squares in my region map, I use the moolah command to give myself a bunch of money to accomplish that. Maybe I will try a city using one of the other power plants as my "starter" plants, but as soon as I finish this message, I think I will watch a few episodes of "Fruits Basket 2019." Brian Christiansen

A few years ago, I made a post called "New neighborhood design," and since then I have refined it so it works much better than my original design, but the basic design for the residential areas remains basically the same. It has 9 "sub-neighborhoods" with the center one being the "neighborhood civic center" that contains the schools, etc. and the 8 outer ones being zoned as residential. My question though is not about my neighborhood design, but rather about the placement of reward buildings. I can fit 4 such neighborhoods in a 2km x 2km ("medium city") and 16 in a large city, however, I use one of them, usually the northeastenmost one, for my airport, power plants(in the notheastern most corner), and most of my reward buildings. I usually put in a municipal airport, even though the airstrip, with 2 or perhaps even 1 of the automatic upgrades would be plenty of airport capacity, I place the municipal airport specifically to "win" the convention center, which I place near the airport, because convention centers are generally near the airport in "real life." Then when I get the stock market, I put it near the convention center. This puts the convention center and the stock market near a business district, as I usually put business zoning next to airports. I put the reward churches and the private schools in the "neighborhood civic centers," and put the cemeteries near the power plants to act as sort of a buffer between the areas I am developing and the power plants. The placement of the other reward buildings is a combination of where they fit in my "reward building neighborhood" and whatever strikes my fancy when I get them. I guess my ultimate question is there a more "strategic" way to to place them. For example, once I found an online guide, or perhaps a thread on Simtropolis or sc devotion or wherever (I really cant remember) that said it was "bad" to place the major and minor league stadiums near a residntial zoning, and I have placed it near and far away (or as far as I can get it) from residential zoning, and neither seemed to make any difference. I have also placed them right next to each other and as far apart from each other, or at least as far apart as I can get them, with the reasoning being that when the are far apart, there would be less traffic congestion caused by sports fans driving to and from the stadiums. I know that the radio station, tv station, and the movie studio have a "positive effect" on commercial demand(or at least I think they do), but is their effect greater if they are put in or near a business district than if they are put out near the power plants, which in my cities is usually zoned as industrial. Brian Christiansen

Suppose you were to build a 6x6 "neighbourhood" surrounded by roads that led to the other areas, such as industrial and commercial and whatever, and zoned it as medium density residential. It would attract a certain amount of people, with a certain ratio of R$:R$$:R$$$. If you then put a "positive" structure (YIMBY, I believe), such as a church or parknext to it, both the number of people and the ratio of "rich people" would increase, up to a certain point, partly because there is finite space to place YIMBY structures, and it makes sense to me that there is an absolute upper limit that cannot be exceeded no matter how many YIMBY structures that you place. If you put a "negative" structure (NIMBY), the number of people, and the ratio of "rich people" would decrease, down to a certain point, after all, it cant go to less than 0. Suppose however that you place the parks inside your neighborhood. If you place just one, perhaps in the corner of your neighborhood, presumably these numbers (total number of people and ratio of "rich people") will go up. If you place a small park at each corner, that will be increased by more, or at least that is what all the online strategy guides seem to indicate. I have also done some experimentation with this type of thing and it appears to be true that putting more parks and such does increase the number of people and the ratio of "rich people" up to a certain point. Suppose you then put medium parks in each corner of the neighborhood. Presumably the capacity (both for total people and "rich people") per square will go up, but over 1/3 (14/36) of the land will be unavailable and the apartment buildings/homes that can be built will be severely limited. Now suppose you put a large park in each corner of the neighborhhood. Now there would be no land whatsoever for Sims to build houses on, so both the number of people ("rich people" or otherwise) it would attract would be 0 since all the land is taken up by the 4 parks. This indicates to me that there is some point where putting another park or other "YIMBY" structure actually reduces the number of people and ratio of rich people that an area can hold because it hits that upper limit and putting in another park or whatever just reduces the amount of land that can be built on without increasing its capacity. Some years ago, I made a post called "new neighborhood design" where I described how I make a residential neighborhood, though I have since modified it, it is still that basic design. I will try to briefly summarize it. Each of my residential neighborhoods consists of 9 "subneighborhoods," 1 that has the civic center with services such as the schools, etc., with the other 8 being zoned for residential. Six of these have what I call "sim recreation areas" (which consist of a small park, an open grass area, an open paved area, a tennis court, a basketball court, and a skateboard park), 1 has a soccer field, and the last has a softball field. I think these "recreation centers" get me very close to that upper limit of population and ratio of rich people that I was talking about earlier. The reason I think that is because of a little experiment I did. Usually I place all (or at least most depending on what size of grid I am using at the time) of the reward buildings, except for the statues. However, I did some experimentation where I did find a place to put the statues, and they did not seem to make much difference to how many people and the ratio of "rich people" that the neighborhoods attracted. I can really only think of 2 reasons this might be. The first is that I somehow got a buggy copy and the statues just do not "work," though I think this explanation is very unlikely. What is much more likely, is that my "recreation centers" bring me to (or at least close to) this upper limit, and the statues just don't make much difference. Brian Christiansen

According to what I can find, parks have a "positive effect," but you just can't put parks to maximize that positive effects. A bunch of other stuff needs to be put in as well, including stuff with "negative effects." In fact, after a certain point, putting parks is at best "eye candy" and at worst can produce "negative effects." I do not think that my "recreation centers" produce any "negative effects," but I think they are to some extent "eye candy," and to some extent are not needed for their "positive effects." I like the look of my "recreation centers" surrounded by roads for a sort-of "roundabout look" (it isn't really a roundabout since the roads around the recreation centers are not 1-way) with the roads connecting to the residential zoning in my "neighborhood units." Brian Christiansen

In the old SimCity 2000 game, when the game was loading up, there was a recording of a voice that said "reticulating splines," one of the the messages that comes up on the list of what is displayed when SC4 starts up, and I am not sure if it had any "meaning." I don't think the messages that are displayed "mean" anything other than "program loading," and are the programmers just being clever and coming up with some more sayings (the list looks like over 100) than "reticulating splines" that are "similar" and "clever" such as "gesticulating mimes" or any of the other sayings on the list. As I said, I don't think any of the phrases really mean anythin, including "implementing impeachment routines," but if it does, it refers to the president at the time, GW Bush, or some other politician of the time. When my version of SC4 loads up, those messages are just displayed and not actually spoken. It has been so long, I am not certain if that is because that is the way it is supposed to be, or because I have the sound in the game turned off. I have the sound/music (at this point I can't even remember if the music and sound effects are controlled separately or together) off because I listen either accuradio or pandora when I play SC4. Brian Christiansen

In a message that I posted some time ago, I stated that sometimes I use a money cheat like the infinite money park, and other times I do not use a cheat and have to have my city make money to prevent me from eventually getting down to -$100,000, getting voted out, and running for senator, or "loosing the game." When I use the infinite money park or another money cheat, the amount in the treasury is really kind of irrelevant. When I do not use a money cheat, generally once my cities, or at least the 2kX2k ones, are fully developed, they have in the area of 2-3 million simoleons. To get them up to 100, 50, or even just 10 million would require simply letting the city run, occasionally putting out fires, adjusting the funding of the schools and hospitals when required, and perhaps micro-managing the zoning. I don't really like playing that way and am ready to move on to another city at that point. Brian Christiansen