I wonder if many people have experimented with using SimCity 2013 to create a town and tried to keep it that way. I've created 4 or 5 cities the past week or two and I have to say I don't find them aesthetically pleasing. They all seem to balloon to mammoth size well before they should. Part of this may be a problem with the zoning advisor and the population panel which seems to constantly push you to expansion and higher density due to "worker shortages." But it leads to very silly cities. One of my cities had a population of 60,000 people and looked like Manhattan. Totally unrealistic. Would be like Palo Alto, California or Brockton, Massachusetts with 50 and 60 story buildings.
My new mission is to create a town of 5,000-8,000 souls who are happy and live in a beautiful town. I am paying less attention to "winning" the game and more on making a town look like it should. For instance, the game pushes you to place your town buildings in random places to increase land value, but I'd prefer a town where the town buildings (school, city hall, library, clinic, police station) are clustered around a town green. (Incidentally, I wish Sim City had a post office and courthouse, two other civic buildings which look very much in place in a downtown). The game also pushes you to constantly increase street density, but I'm keeping the town small by using low density roads except around the very outside of the city where I'll allow some larger density buildings to grow (not skyscrapers).
I wonder if anyone else has tried using this model with any success. Will the game's intrinsic nature to want every city to be Manhattan eventually override my efforts? For instance, will my citizens start to demand larger streets and move out if I don't give it to them? Will the game contend that my stores want more and more workers even though the businesses and factories are in synch with a town of 5,000 people?
Any comments appreciated!
