sim compile section a v01

1

SECTION A PART 1 BASIC GAME MECHANICS

SIMCITY4 MANUAL AND WALKTHROUGH BOOK

HTML / MS Doc Versions Check out the Simtropolis site, for the HTML version with pictures. Also this guide is in MS Doc version over there. I hope to improve upon the MS Doc version overtime by making it more user friendly. www.simtropolis.com www.simcity-4.net You can also find me and a whole bunch of other people who are truly experts at the game, at the Simtropolis Site. It is the best SimCity site and also the best, most active and friendly forum around with several thousand members and still growing by the day. Version 2: Additions in this update Well, pretty much the entire guide is changed, added and improved. So to list the additions and changes here would be futile as that would mean listing the entire guide. But briefly: 2.00: Additions:

1) Expanded the Strategies to get you city into the millions and beyond.

2) Expanded Online Manual. 3) Improved the advanced tutorials to take you

step by step to obtain your first skyscrapers in 16 years.

4) Whole host of game and other information added.

5) Huge format change. 6) Added quotes at the start of each part, much

like the old SimCity manuals NOTE: For complete version history look at the conclusion, under End 2. BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS: Section A : Online Manual Section B : Strategy Guide PART 1 : General Strategies PART 2 : Layouts PART 3 : 0 - 40,000 (1st City + Dirty) PART 4 : 0 - 40,000 (2nd City + Manufacturing) PART 5 : 0 - 40,000 (Subsequent + High Tech) PART 6 : 40,000 - 100,000 PART 7 : 80,000 - Millions and beyond PART 8 : Specialised City, Multi million and Farms Section C : Advanced Tutorials (To Skyscrapers) Section D : Cheats and Loopholes Section E : Handy Reference Guides, Fun Stuff & Building Catalogue Conclusion: [Wave], Bye Bye SimCity 4: FAQ by thy451 Version: 2.00 | Last Updated: 2003-06-19 SIM CITY 4 GUIDE: VERSION 2, by thy451

SECTION A: ONLINE MANUAL If you are new to the game. I advice you to go to the strategy section and start playing your first city a bit then return here to read. It will be easier to read if you are somewhat familiar with the game. Perhaps a short glance at PART 2, General Gameplay Concept, should be done. However, there are also some very extensive and intensive discussions and debate in this area that you might not truly appreciate until you are more familiar with the game. These can mostly be found in those topics marked with the little star (*). This Online Manual (OM) was created because the one provided seems to be quite inadequate, at least in comparison with the previous SimCity series. PART 1: BASIC GAME MECHANICS There is less strategies in PART 1, so if you are clear on how the game works, you can simply proceed on to the later sections in the guide. I will be dealing with the basic game play issues at this section. They will mostly relate to options available, technical game data and generally how things operate in the game. A1.01: Basics and Technical Issues A1.01.1: Query the Hottest Keys The query option is one of the most important tools in the game. Use it to determine a whole host of information. You can also use it to click on any building and then change the name of it. Although that does not make the building historical or unalterable. It can still be destroyed by the computer when redeveloping. And if you want to follow a MySims or a car or change the traffic lights, simply do this: [Query] + [shift] + [click on object] You can check out the list of hot keys at the back of the provided manual although most of them seem quite useless and superfluous to me and seems only to appear there to fill up the back of the manual. For example there is a hot key of obliterating the city. I do not know how you play your city but this is not C&C, there is little violence and you would definitely not need a hot key for obliteration. The following are the more useful hot keys, the hottest of the hot.

1) [Home or End], Turn the building around for placement.

2) [Shift], Turns off auto roads. Simply press shift after dragging the zone but before releasing the mouse button. Make sure that you have the patch installed.

3) [Alt], Switch the layout of the zoning before laying it.

4) [Esc], Undo, sort of. Cancels zones, roads, etc,

2



only if you have not released the mouse button. 5) [G], Shows the grid. This is great for counting

and planning. 6) [/], Query. Use it with bulldoze to prevent

accidental demolition. 7) [B], Bulldoze / Demolish. 8) [Control] [F], Dispatch fire fighters. 9) [Control] [P], Dispatch police. 10) [Control] + [Shift] + [S], Takes a picture of

your city as it is appearing on the screen at this moment. This is a very useful hot key as it allows pictures which may not be possible if you went through the clicking on all picture button process.

11) [Spacebar], Centre on Cursor. 12) [Control] + [Shift] + [C], Toggle terrain

contours. 13) [Control] + [S], Save City. 14) [F12], Exit 15) [Control] + [Shift] + [Alt] + [R], This is to

record a clip of your city. 16) [Control] + [Shift] + [O], Just in case you are

wondering, this is the obliterate hotkey. A1.01.2: Multiple City Save Games and file locations

1) Save Games For those of you who complain about the lack of save games slots, you could always just copy the region to another folder. Go to: MyDocuments > SimCity 4 > Regions This is also the place to put any cities you download. You have to place the city in the region in want it to be.

2) File locations

a) Album: MyDocuments > SimCity 4 > Album

b) Bug Report: MyDocuments > SimCity 4 > Exception Reports

c) Recorded Animation: MyDocuments > SimCity 4 > Recorded Animation

d) Original Regions: C:\(or wherever you installed the game) SimCity 4 > Regions

This is for if you messed up the original regions and want the original back.

e) Music for the game / Custom Tunes: SimCity 4> Radio > Stations > Region > Music SimCity 4> Radio > Stations > Mayor > Music A1.01.3: Custom Tunes & Animation

1) Tunes You can play your own music simply by placing the music (MP3) into this folder: For Region Music: SimCity 4> Radio > Stations > Region > Music

For City Music: SimCity 4> Radio > Stations > Mayor > Music Then when you play the game open up the Audio Option and select the custom tunes.

2) Animation Simply hit [Control] + [Shift] + [O] to begin. Enter in the various information such as file name, rate, time, output and frame count. The clip will be stored in your Recorded Animation folder. A1.01.4: Technical Issues Firstly, I should state that I am NOT a technical expert or even a technical person at all. However, these problems occurred frequent enough for me to pick some things up.

1) Game Requirements: You can easily check the requirements on the box although the game really requires a lot of power such that even if you are above the recommended your cities if they are huge may encounter lag. There is a good test program to test your computer systems vis-a-vis the game requirements. It is found in the game folder itself: SimCity4 > Support > SimCity 4_EZ.exe

2) GDriverWindow--DirectX Error (1) This is one of the most common problems I see. The error you will most probably see is "The configuration file (Graphics Rules.sgr) cannot be parsed using built-in rules." There are two plugin folders. The one I am talking about is the one in your MyDocuments folder. MyDocuments > SimCity 4 > Plugins Do not place any of the downloaded things into this folder if not the game will not start. I suggest that after installation of the game and the patch you go and check this folder out to see what should remain in there. Nothing. The reason why an uninstall does not work is because the game does not delete the SimCity 4 folder under MyDocuments unless you actively specify it. Delete what ever you have placed there.

3) GDriverWindow--DirectX Error (2) However, there is another more drastic method. Since I am not well-versed in computers, I am unsure as to whether is this message a generic type for multiple problems or not. If above solution does not work then you may attempt to try this but do it at your own risk and discretion.

a) Uninstall SimCity 4 including the SimCity 4 folder in MyDocuments.

b) Reinstall: After that do the following:

3



1. Double-click on My Computer. 2. Double-click on C: drive (also labelled

local disk) 3. Double-click on Program Files. 4. Double-click on Maxis. 5. Double-click on Sim City 4. 6. Double-click on Apps.

c) Open SimCity 4.ini file 1. Right-click on the SimCity 4.ini file and a

menu will appear. Select "open" and left-click to open the file. The found is found in:

C:\(or wherever you installed the game) > Apps

2. You will now see notepad open the file up. It will look similar to this:

[Directories] Data=..\ PlugIn=..\Plugins\ [Graphics Drivers] OpenGL =SimGLRef.dll, C4554841 Software=SimGLSoft.dll, 7ACA35C6 D3D7 =SimGLDx7.dll, BADB6906 [Current Graphics Driver] ;Driver = C4554841 ;OpenGL Hardware ;Driver = 7ACA35C6 ;GRPoly Software Driver = BADB6906 ;DX7 Hardware

d) Editing You will need to make edits to the [Graphics Drivers] and [Current Graphics Driver] sections so that they appear as follows: [Directories] Data=..\ PlugIn=..\Plugins\ [Graphics Drivers] ;OpenGL =SimGLRef.dll, C4554841 Software=SimGLSoft.dll, 7ACA35C6 ;D3D7 =SimGLDx7.dll, BADB6906 [Current Graphics Driver] ;Driver = C4554841 ;OpenGL Hardware Driver = 7ACA35C6 ;GRPoly Software ;Driver = BADB6906 ;DX7 Hardware

e) Hopefully that will help you but I make no promises.

4) Graphics options

As usual there is a trade-off between speed of the game and quality of it. Patch 2 will automatically set the options rather low, at least in my opinion. So if the graphics look bad, simply change the quality and determine if you can stand the lag in the game.

5) EA Technical help If you have problem operating the game simply send them a message. It is under their technical support, Ask a question tab. You do not need actually need to know their address. This is their main support site. http://techsupport.ea.com Although it should be noted that, often your first reply will be an automated one but do not despair and persist. I did once think of sending in multiple mails just to determine the various sets of automated response and trigger words but I think that sort of would be frowned upon.

6) Permanent Green Highlight Bug If, you see your hospitals or education highlighted as green even if they are not selected, do not worry. Simply go to the data view, and select the respective health, education, etc view. Then after selected, click on the all off. They will no longer have the green glow. A1.01.5: Registration The registration process I recalled was quite complicated. If I remember itcorrectly, this is the process:

1) Register once on your computer by filling up the form after installation, which will then send a signal to the main site. Or go to the Support folder and click on SimCity 4_eReg.exe to register.

2) Then you have to register a second time also with the same key, which is at the back of your CD case at their official site.

3) Failure to do the first registration before the second will give you a error or invalid key message

4) Enter your email correctly and make sure it does not get directed to your junk folder. Click on the activation and you are done.

Again if you have problems send an message to them. They solved, my problem within hours. http://techsupport.ea.com This I must say is one of the most complicated registration process ever. However, it is a good effort against piracy. So if you see anyone or if anyone asks you for your key, do NOT give away your key. And also report all piracy regarding the game to this EA email address: [email protected] For online piracy email contact: [email protected]

4



A1.01.6: Updates

1) Check all files updated The patch update is problematic. Whether you patch automatically or do it manually, make sure you check that all the relevant files are indeed updated. The list of files can be found on the patch page. Although, I personally seem to have a problem with the 'dbghelp.dll' file as it not only did not take the 2003 stamp date but it seems to have taken a 2001 stamp date.

2) Patch Log You will have a patch log called: sc4_patchlog.txt It is found in the same folder as the patch file you downloaded if you used the automatic patch. Not too sure where it would be if it was done automatically. This lists what files were patched and whether was it successful at the patch.

3) Region Identification The second problem is for those who has problem with the automatic patch and have to do it manually. Make sure your region is correct. The problematic is the Asian edition. Just because, you live in Asia and bought the game there does not mean that the game is an Asian edition one. If it is English, there is a high chance that your edition could be the North America one. I do not think there is a way to actually determine your region by looking at the files or game itself. The things that could your is an American edition are: (i) Right hand drive and (ii) American spelling. However with regards to American spelling, I am unsure whether is it similar for all the English games. If it is not then look for words such as "harbor" v "harbour" or "color" v "colour." The spelling without the "u" is the American spelling. These words will sometimes appear as park of the message in the news ticker.

4) Failed patch Finally, if you game did not patch properly as in the files were not fully updated, the only way to resolve it is to reinstall everything. A1.01.7: Online Play: SimCityScape You can find more information at the site but this is a brief overview. This online gameplay is available at the official website: http://simcity.ea.com/scape/ http://simcity.ea.com/

1) Requirements a. Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 6 or

better. b. ActiveX c. Java d. Registered user e. Game updated with Patch 2

2) 9 Regions Available a. Amarica (Large City size: 20 Cities).

Discovered in 2003, Amarica is the new world.

b. Griffinland (Large City size: 42 Cities). In a world where water reigns, Griffinland springs to life.

c. Dan's Grove (Small City Size: 43 Cities). Farmer Dan ran a pistachio orchard on this soil, until approached by a developer. The region has been growing ever since.

d. Emlee Valley (Medium City Size: 18 Cities). Pioneered by Maxoids, additional settlers have been moving in ever since.

e. Molon Island (Small City Size: 47 Cities). Islands rise from the oceans forming this vast archipelago.

f. Sea Shaw (Medium City Size: 47 Cities). With recent development interest, Sea Shaw promises to undergo a real estate boom.

g. Lake Lucky (Medium City Size: 41 Cities). Formed by a giant asteroid 3 million years ago, Lake Lucky is now a vacation haven.

h. Big Ben Basi (Medium City Size: 47 Cities). The lands have been shifting beneath these shallow waters, making it prime realestate for developers.

i. Wee Burg (Small City Size: 45 Cities). In the wee county of Wee Burg, little cities populate the quaint countryside.

j. Cook County (Large City Size: 24 Cities). The wind sweeps across vast stretches of plains, as if whispering “develop me.”

k. Templinton (Medium City Size: 18 Cities). Civilizations have always grown from the fertile river valleys, Templinton is no exception.

l. Annarondacks (Large City Size: 15 Cities). Lakes, forests, and numerous winter sports resorts, attract many tourists, and was once the site of the 1964 Winter SimOlympics.

m. Spider Mountain (Medium City Size: 38 Cities). Once inhabited by a spider so large, no one dared move into the area.

Nowadays the spider has taken up a career in a travelling sideshow act, leaving the region spider free.

3) Game Play concept It is quite simple. You get to pick one region and you have up to 48 hours to play with it and to end your turn. You may upload it and make as many changes as you want. But after 48 hours or if you choose to end your turn early your turn is up then another person can take over. You may not play the same city consecutively although you may play a city multiple times. After certain amount of time, Maxis will reset the region and the good ones I suppose will get into their hall of fame.

5



4) Download Region You can download their "premade region configuration folder" and place it at My Documents\SimCity 4\Regions\ to extract and create your city. It is a 2k zip file. Yes, 2k I did not have a typing error. It is small. This is not required for playing the online game and download it only if you want to duplicate their region for your own play. A1.01.8: Simtropolis Patch This is not an official patch at all. It is put together by fans of the game. It is located at the Simtropolis site: Www.simtropolis.com The following is one of the official words by Maxis on it: 'Users install, run and download those "mods" from Simtropolis completely at their own risk. Maxis is NOT responsible for ANY errors, crashes, problems or any other issue that you may have if you have downloaded and applied any unofficially supported mod files to your game. Nor is Maxis required to help anyone who has altered their game with any patches/mods/downloads that are not from Maxis themself. Players should also expect that any future patches and/or expansion packs and SimCityscape "may" NOT function properly with the game if you have downloaded any unofficial mods/patches/files and applied them to your game.' A1.01.9: City Size There are three city size that you can select. And each tile is 16 by 16 metres.

a. Small: 64 by 64 tiles = 1024 metres / 1Km

b. Medium: 128 by 128 tiles = 2048 metres / 2Km

c. Large: 256 by 256 tiles = 4096 metres / 4km

A1.02: God Mode A1.02.1: Terraform

1) Automatic Reconcile: I recommend that you turn off the reconcile option. Use it only in a city that has yet to build anything, unless you wish to lose your buildings at the edge.

2) Map Creation: Personally, I prefer creating maps one by one rather than doing the entire region. Firstly, it is so much easier and you get to start playing the game faster. Gives you greater flexibility to get the terrain to suit the cities that are sprouting up. Of course even if you do the entire region you can still change the landscape of the city. But from my experience, you would be extremely reluctant to do so. And furthermore if the changes are huge it may impact

other maps. Even if that is not so, you will have wasted time altering the map twice.

3) Size and intensity of terra forming: Shift F1 - F10: Intensity from less (F1) to most (F10) Shift 1 > 2 > ... > 9 > 0: Size of brush from small (1) to large (0). The size of the circle remains the same whatever zoom you are at. So zoom in to the maximum zoom if you wish to have a smaller effect.

4) Reconcile Once in a while I hear people complain bitterly that the reconcile destroys their city. The answer is simple. If it destroys your city then just do not hit the reconcile button. Go to the options and turn it off. A1.02.2: Changing region & city size

a) Introduction to Items: Program: MS Paint I used this but believe that any graphics program can be used. File: Config.bmp Location: My Documents\SimCity4\Regions\(Any original region. Such as Berlin or Maxisland) Note: I mentioned the file so for you to get an idea about it. It does NOT mean that you use this files for your map. Please create a new bitmap.

b) Region Size: The pixels of the bitmap determine the size of the region. For Example Maxisland is 16 x 16 pixels

c) City Size Colour Coding: 1x1: Red : Small city. 2x2: Green: Medium city. 4x4: Blue : Large city. The colour's value must be 255. And in the event that you are unfamiliar with MS paint, here is a step-by-step guide.

1) Select "Colours" then "Edit Colours." 2) Press "Define Custom Colours." 3) Make sure the value of the colour is 255.

Colour Red : Red 255 / Green 0 / Blue 0

Colour Green: Red 0 / Green 255 / Blue 0

Colour Blue : Red 0 / Green 0 / Blue 255

d) Steps: 1) Create new region. (In the game, obviously

but just in case) 2) Create bitmap in MS Paint. (Out of the

game) For those who do not know:

Ctrl E / Or Under "Image", Select "Attributes..."

Set the width and height. Units are to be in Pixels. Select Colours.

Remember create a new picture do not use any of the pictures that are provided in the other regions

3) Based on the colour coding as stated above, create your desired region.

Do a maximum zoom for easier viewing. 4) Save as Config.bmp and place it in the folder

of the new region that you created in step

6



(1). 5) Congratulations, you now have your very

own map. e) Further Illustration

If you wish to make a 6 x 4 small region here is an example. Each letter, S, M, or L represents one pixel. Diagram A1.02.2 S: Small M: Medium L: Large 1234 1MMSS 2MMSS 3LLLL 4LLLL 5LLLL 6LLLL Therefore in this map you will have 1 large city, 1 medium city and 4 small cities. If for example your bit map is only 4 x 4 and you attempt this 1234 1MMSS 2MMSS 3LLLL 4LLLL Then it will result in only the medium and small city appearing. A1.02.3: Obliterate, Animals, Disasters and Trees

1) Obliterate Using obliterate auto-saves thus there is no reload.

2) Disappearing Animals They need forest cover to survive and further, it is more of a gimmick than anything. Do not be too perturbed by the mass suicides.

3) Disasters Fire disaster cannot be turned off. The rest of the disasters do not occur randomly and requires you to actively use them. The only exception is the riot disaster which occurs under certain circumstances. REFER: A1.06.3 for how to create a riot These are the list of disasters.

a) Tornado b) Earthquake c) Fire d) Lightning e) Servo the Robot Attack. From the Sims.

4) Trees type and growth Each tree costs $3. How fast the trees grow depends on whether is it suitable for the climate. Climate is determined by the height of the city. It should be noted that the trees even of the same type planted in the same location do not have the same growth rate although their growth rate in general is similar. Table A1.02.3 GR: This is the growth rate rankings based on the default ground level. The earliest two started reaching

its maximum size within 2 years while the longer ones took up to 3 over years. ------------------------- | Tree Type | GR | ------------------------- | Blue Spruce Pine | 3 | | Noble Fir Pine | 1 | | Maple | 1 | | Palm | 4 | | Oak | 2 | ------------------------- A1.02.4: * Treatise on God & Natural Trees and Pollution There is a debate as to whether is there a difference with respect to effect on pollution between natural trees, those planted after the city was founded and God mode trees, those planted before the city was founded. Let me deal with the easy part. Both type of trees do actually remove pollution. An experiment that you could try is this.

a) Simply start a new city with thickly planted God mode trees.

b) Then build a coal power plant in the midst of the trees.

c) Observe the level of pollution through the data map.

d) Start demolishing the trees and you would see the pollution expanding

Therefore one can conclude that God mode tree do also remove pollution. However, pollution can seep through if the pollution itself is very strong and that the tree cover is not thick enough. An experiment which I tried and which shows that there is no difference at least after Patch 2 is this:

a) Start a city and plant God Mode trees b) Establish the City and plant Natural trees c) Wait for the natural trees to mature d) Place a coal power plant in each of the different

forests, making sure that they line up e) Start demolishing roll by roll of trees and see in

which area the pollution first seeps through. It is my conclusion that they both seep through at around the same area. Therefore at least with Patch 2, there is no difference between God mode trees and Natural trees. And even if there is a difference it is minute and insignificant. A1.03: Zones A1.03.1: Options: Zone Types The cost is similar for the zones with the same type of density. Also agriculture is low density industry. Commerce incorporates both services and offices thus there is no way to actively just select one for construction. You can select from residential, commercial and industrial zoning.

7



Table A1.03.1: Zones and costs ---------------------- Density |Low|Med|High| ---------------------- Cost |$10|$20|$50 | ---------------------- A1.03.2: Density v Wealth Density is separate and distinct from the wealth and type of zones. In other words low density housing does not mean low wealth residence. The only exception, to a certain extent is low density industry, which should really be called agriculture. The following table gives an explanation of density and types wealth levels since this is the part that some are confused about.

A1.03.3: Zoning desirability The following table simply reflects what is required for construction of the various zones. I have not included all the factors. I have heard that the gradient of the land, location with relation to other zones also play a part but personally I find actually using them in the game to be quite difficult unless of course you have in your mind the layout of the entire city right at the start.

Table A1.03.2 L: Low density zoning M: Medium Density zoning H: HIgh density zoning The key is the abbreviation used by the games in the game charts. ----------------------------------------------- Residential / Key | Tax | Zone Density | ----------------------------------------------- Poor (R$) | $ | L / M / H | Middle Class (R$$) | $$ | L / M / H | Rich (R$$$) | $$$ | L / M / H | ----------------------------------------------- Commercial | | ----------------------------------------------- Services (Cs$/$$/$$$) |$/$$/$$$| L / M / H | Offices (Co$$/$$$) |$$/$$$ | L / M / H | ----------------------------------------------- Industrial | | ----------------------------------------------- Farms (I-Ag | No Tax | L | Dirty (I-D) | $ | M / H | Manufacturing (I-M) | $$ | M / H | High Tech (I-HT) | $$$ | M / H | -----------------------------------------------

Changing density: Even after buildings are constructed, you can zone a denser zone without destroying the buildings that are built. If you are zoning a lower density zone than the building, then a smaller density building will soon take the place of its former higher density counterpart. There should be no use of the demolition button when changing zone density. It is only when the demand is satisfied after the denser zoning that the new denser buildings will appear. Thus you may have to wait quite a bit before seeing the effects of the denser zoning.

8



Table A1.03.3 R : Residential CO : Commercial Offices CS : Commercial Services IA : Agriculture ID : Dirty Industry IM : Manufacturing IH : High-tech Industry ----------------------- H : High A : Average L : Low / Short --------------------------------------------- Factors | R | CO| CS| IA| ID| IM| IH| --------------------------------------------- Air pollution | L | L | L | L | | | L | Crime | L | L | L | L | L | L | L | Garbage | L | L | L | L | L | L | L | Land Value | | | | L | L | A | H | --------------------------------------------- Specific | | --------------------------------------------- Commute | L | | | | | | | Education | H | | | | | | | Health | H | | | | | | | Freight | | | | L | L | L | L | Traffic Noise | L | | | | | | | Customer # | | H | H | | | | | ---------------------------------------------

2) Transitional lack of connection Sometimes when the area is being redeveloped, a no road zot will appear. It should usually disappear within a few months if not you may for to de-zone and rezone those affected tiles. 3) Flood filling To flood-fill, create the roads surrounding the zones, select the desired zone then click and hold it at one tile and the zone will fill up. Best used for irregular shaped zones. But because of the problem in (1), I not really recommend flood filling an area. After all you can easily fill up an irregular shaped area by doing it over different phases. 4) Undeveloped interior Sometimes even with auto roads on the interior does not get developed. This is especially so for industry which can easily zone up to 7x7 without auto-roads appearing. The reason for it being undeveloped is that the tiles touching the road develops small-single tile buildings leaving the interior without roads. The interior will only develop later in the game when either (i) huge multi-tile buildings appear or (2) when the single-tile industry expands into the interior.

Radiation: Radiation is not tolerated by anything. While I have yet to experience a meltdown, I did try using the toxic waste dump and the area that was irradiated was quickly abandoned. Customer and Traffic Volume: #: If you view the building you will see on information called customer. This translates to traffic volume or traffic congestion. Looking at the data map, I realised that the areas of commercial with red traffic has high customers. However, customers are also created by having more Sims in your city and region and also in having rich Sims. This is simply because the richer they are the more they can purchase. A1.03.4: Road Zots and Flood Filling 1) Actual Lack of connections Each building needs to have road access. Thus make sure that the arrows (<) in the lots face the roads, if not you will get the no connection sign. If a particular lot is not facing the road then you should zone in parts rather than zoning the entire area with one click and drag, thus making sure all of the (<) also face the roads. Alternatively, you could hit the [alt] key to change the layout of the lots.

I do not really recommend huge zones especially for industries. While everything might work out in the long run, as John Maynard Keynes once said, "In the long run we are all dead." A1.03.5: Agriculture 1) Amount of jobs Even if you see that the barn stating that there is only two jobs, that is under-reflective of the amount of jobs at that farm. I believe that is per tile. This is because I got a farmers market with only two large farms. After creating a large farm, pause your game and wait until about 5pm then you will see many cars leaving the farm and going home. Therefore logically the farm must employ more than just those few persons at the barn. 2) No farming taxes Farms only bring in jobs and do not add to your taxes.By the way if you are wandering why agriculture does not produce taxes, think of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, and also countries like the US, Canada or Japan. You should be happy that the farms in your city do not demand massive subsidies from you or create inter-regional tensions by asking you to tax other farm goods to protect them. 3) Connections required Only roads and electricity is needed. Water is not needed. You should not even connect your pipes even if you wanted too unless you do not mind your Sims suffering from the indignity of drinking kiwi chocolate

9



colour looking water. 4) Agriculture and pollution. While agriculture abhors pollution air pollution, it is nonchalant with regards to water pollution since they too produces water pollution. Of course this is not realistic as there are many types of water pollution. I mean I would not want to eat vegetables coming from a farm next to a LED factory that dumps its arsenic waste into the water table. 5) Reasons for agriculture There are several reasons for although I do not find them convincing in terms of actual benefits.

a) It is more for atmosphere rather than a means to make money.

b) It generates jobs, which bring in people and the demand for agriculture unlike other sectors is usually very high. But I prefer using non-agricultural industries to generate jobs at the start.

c) However, while agriculture does pollute the water it does have less air pollution as compared to the dirty industry.

d) The best argument from a beneficial point of view is so as to be able to build the farmer's market. However, since keeping them around is not necessary after you get the farm this means that agriculture is only good at the start of the game and should not be a permanent feature of the city unless you wish to keep the 'farming look' in your city.

6) Unable to convert land back to farms. Once the city begins getting quite developed, it is very unlikely that farms will be rebuilt on previously zoned land even if there is no pollution. One reason is because of the negative demand cap. This is since the more industries you have the demand cap of the farm becomes lower. REFER: A2.02: Demand Caps A1.03.6 : Industrial Pollution 1) Industrial pollution The following table is a ROUGH guide to the length of the extension of the pollution. With the exception of the farms, which relates to water pollution the rest refers to air pollution. The figures refer to the total number of tiles the pollution extends. The level of pollution decreases as you move further. But I have included all level of pollution into the one figure. All these figures operate on the assumption that you have no trees or anything reducing pollution. Table A1.03.6 ---------------------------- Industry | Air | Water| ---------------------------- Farms | 0 | 12 | Dirty | 22 | 27 | Manufacturing | 8 | 14 | Hi-tech | 0 | 0 | ----------------------------

3) Abandoned buildings These still produce pollution and on top of that attract crime and are prone to fires. Therefore even if your entire dirty industry is abandoned and all the buildings lie vacant, the air pollution will still be as bad as ever. A1.04: Transportation A1.04.1: Options: Transport Types

1) Road Vehicle Transport: Streets, Road and Highway

This is the most basic form of transportation around. Streets have a very much smaller capacity about a tenth than roads while highway offers about four times more capacity than a road. They too have differing speeds with the streets being the lowest and the highway being the highest. Even buses add to the traffic of the roads. You can build diagonal roads but no diagonal streets. I have simply no idea why this is so. Because of the possibility of potholes you have the ability to repair it by building roads on top of it. But if you do lay a road over an existing one and even if the road is in perfect condition it will cost money. So do not waste money by laying roads over existing roads when you are happy dragging the road tool. Also if what the MySims state is correct, people do not like to live next to one of them.

2) Train Transport: Trains and Subway Both rails and subway have about the same capacity, the difference being that one operates underground and the other do not. The less obvious difference is that rails have the capacity for transporting factory goods.

3) Ports: Airport and Seaport These are primarily demand cap busters. The seaport serves the industry while the airport serves the commercial areas. It is often asked as to whether are the effects of an airport city wide or region wide. Its effect is only city wide. However, there is an indirect effect on the region. This is because after placement it will improve the demand, growth and economy of that city and as a result of that, the better city will have a stronger positive effect on neighbouring cities and such. Remember, these ports must be connected to the thing they serve, commercial areas for airports and industry for ports. And with relation to the airport, they can be upgraded. When your usage is close to the maximum, an offer of an upgrade will be made. An upgraded airport still takes up the small amount of space. REFER: A2.02: Demand Caps

10



4) Cost and Capacity Table A1.04.2: Transport $C: Cost to build / In the case of medium and large airports, this figure represents the upgrade cost. $M: Monthly maintenance cost CA: Capacity P: Passenger G: Goods in tons %: Treat this as a percentage when contrasted with the rest in that category -------------------------------------- Structure | $C | $M | CA | -------------------------------------- Cars | | -------------------------------------- Roads | 10 | 0.10|100% | Streets | 5 | 0.05|1000% | Bus Stops | 150 | 5 |1000P | High way | 600 | 1 |4000% | Cloverleaf | 3000| 26 |4000% | -------------------------------------- Trains | | -------------------------------------- Railway track | 8 | 0.03|3000% | Passenger Sta. | 100 | 10 |2000P | Freight Sta. | 100 | 10 |2000G | Subway | 156 | 0.30|3000% | Subway Sta. | 500 | 20 |2000P | -------------------------------------- Airports | | -------------------------------------- Small Strip |20000| 700 |10200P| Med. Strip | 5700| 900 |13100P| Large Strip | 5700| 1100|16000P| -------------------------------------- Small Municipal |35000| 900 |28800P| Med. Municipal | 6400| 1450|34100P| Large Municipal | 7200| 1700|40000P| -------------------------------------- Small Int. |50000| 1225|70000P| Med. Int. | 6400| 1450|80000P| Large Int. | 7200| 1700|90000P| -------------------------------------- Seaports | | -------------------------------------- Ports |10000| 500 |4000G | -------------------------------------- A1.04.2: Highway, Cloverleaf and On ramps There are two methods of creating a cloverleaf. The first is when you drag the highway across another highway. The other is by placing a cloverleaf on an ALREADY EXISTING highway crossing. While diagonal highways are possible diagonal highways cannot create cloverleaf or even cross each other. The following is a diagram of a cloverleaf and on ramp. Please note the minimum length required for its placements

Cloverleaf Requirements: a) Excluding the middle intersection there must

at least be 6 tiles. Therefore the total length of each side must at least be 14 tiles.

b) When using the cloverleaf option instead of the auto cloverleaf, there must already be an existing highway that satisfies requirement (A).

Onramp Requirements a) Length of the on ramp is 6 tiles. Thus the

highway must have 6 free tiles. b) If there is a intersection whether do you have

a cloverleaf built there or not, you need to have at least a minimum distance of 6 tiles.

c) The on ramp cannot be placed at the last tile of a highway. There must be at least one tile of highway free at the end of the highway that will not be used when you place the on ramp.

Diagram A1.04.2 C: Cloverleaf M: Middle of the cloverleaf O: On ramp H: Normal highway 1 2 12345678901234567890123 1 HH 2 CC 3 CC 4 CC 5 CC 6 CC 7 CC 8HCCCCCCMMCCCCCCHOOOOOOH 9HCCCCCCMMCCCCCCHOOOOOOH 10 CC 1 CC 2 CC 3 CC 4 CC 5 CC 6 HH A1.04.3: Tunnels and Underwater tunnels

1) Tunnels To create a tunnel simply drag the transport tool, be it a road, highway or rail across the hill. If it is possible the tunnel option will appear. Often for smaller size hills, it is the gradient that determines whether a tunnel option will appear. The steeper it is at the point of entry and exit the higher the chance of getting the tunnel option.

2) Underwater tunnels This seems to be a bug of sorts. The cost of building an underwater tunnel far outweighs any actual benefit if any. The steps are:

a) Take a piece of land without water. b) Build a tunnel across. If the land to too flat,

either raise all the land or just lower the

11



entrance and exit. c) Now lower the land in between the entrance

and the exit. d) Hey presto, the tunnel is still there yet there is

nothing in between. A physical matter teleportation device?

This also means that you can have a tunnel functioning even if the hill is removed and there is only land that is lower in between. A1.04.4: Bridges: Roads, Highways and Rails

1) Construction Just simply select the road or highway option and drag it across the water or if you have a steep chasm a bridge is also possible. Just drag until the bridge appears. If a bridge still does not appear try to move the starting point a bit further back away from the gap. If it still does not appear, then you may have to do some terrain adjustment at either the start or end point. It is impossible to build a bridge where the start and end points are very steep.

2) Golden Gate This appears if you use the highway as the basis of the bridge. A1.04.5: Trains, Turnings and Freight

1) Rail Turnings The tracks cannot turn 90 degrees and must be turned gradually over three tiles. The following diagram illustrates a 4 way crossing. You cannot place a road through any gradual railway turns. Diagram A1.04.5i R: Railway tracks. No road placement C: Railway tracks. Only at these areas can you build a road across like a rail crossing. 1234567 1 C 2 R 3 RRR 4CRRRRRC 5 RRR 6 R 7 C

2) Freight Stations Freight trains serve one purpose, that is to send industrial goods out of the city. Since they only send industrial goods, there is no need to connect rails that have only freight stations and are not transporting passengers to either a residential area or a commercial area. Secondly you need to connect the train tracks to a connection. Think of freight as a different kind of Sim. Instead of going from residential to his work, freight goes from industrial to a neighbour connection. Freight

stations are somewhat like a transfer or transit point like a Sim walking to a subway and then taking the subway to work. There are two methods of sending goods out on track:

a) Direct: If your train track runs through an industrial zone, it will automatically pick up goods even if there is no station

b) Indirect: Freight station is used where goods are send by road to the station who then take it away.

Therefore if all your industry already has a short freight trip there is no need to construct a freight station. Other than being superfluous the trucks going to your freight station will add to the road traffic.

3) No trains: Low passenger usage Personally I prefer using rails for inter rather than intra city travel. But that is just my preference and that rails can perfectly well be used for intra city travel. If you are unable to see the train it means that either you have a bad rail line which is not properly linked up. Or that since the trains like the cars are a mere representation of the usage of the transport, the usage could be so low that trains do not even appear. If you see a train, just follow it and if the usage is not too high it will disappear somewhere along the line. You can see trains appearing out of nowhere like a ghost train. Like a road, just because you do not see cars there does not mean that the road is faulty. Furthermore, this reflects the usage on the tracks not the station. It measures track congestion and usage.

4) Rail-Station placement It has been suggested that you should place the track at the back of the train station. However, I do have success in placing the tracks at the side of the train station. Make sure that there a road linking to it also. Diagram A1.04.5ii >: Train Station and direction of the arrow. Thus it is point away to the back of the station. =: Rail -: Road === --- =>>>- >>> >>> ->>>= =>>>- >>> >>> ->>>= --- === (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) I have had success with all of the above formations. As long as the road also touches the station it is perfectly fine to put it on any side.

12



A1.04.6: Junctions, Roundabouts, Diagonal and Subway bug

1) Junctions and traffic Traffic increases at each junction not simply because more people arrive there but also because the amount of cars it can take is much less than normal roads. So try not to build too much junctions

2) Streets are not Solution A street is not a solution to heavy traffic. Using a street to resolve traffic jams is somewhat like a person stating that the way to reduce traffic is to narrow the road. And then stating it is a success because there are less cars on that road now. Of course there are less cars, since one had reduce the capacity of the road. But that does not mean that the traffic situation had improved. One may claim that as a result of it the junction is question is now green thus stating that it is a success. But the reason it is green is because all the traffic is stuck behind the street. The street acts as a filter allowing some to pass but all needs to pass. Hence a green junction does not necessarily mean that your experiment with streets is working. Therefore do not build a street on the tile leading up to a junction so that the traffic lights will not appear. Traffic lights are not prima facie bad. Also if your roundabout is based on this street design it will not work to ease traffic.

3) Roundabouts One may not create a proper roundabout without any traffic unless one goes through a whole host of building and demolishing or using a street. The effect is that a proper roundabout cannot be created. Thus they are merely eye candy and do not really serve to ease your traffic. Note that my definition of a roundabout is a road junctions type that has no traffic lights.

4) Diagonal Roads and highway As stated earlier, there is no diagonal streets. For the most part diagonal construction just add to the variety of your city. It however does have several detriments:

a) Diagonal highways cannot have cloverleaf b) It waste space. c) It constricts the buildings around it.

5) Subway infinite loop bug Patch 2 resolved this problem. But for those without the patch for some reason or other. this here is the problem. Setting up a subway network as in the diagram simply loops the passengers through each station without actually sending them anywhere. Therefore while it may be profitable the subway system is not working. Diagram A1.04.6 -: Subway Tracks S: Subway Station

- - - - ---S----S----S---S- - - - - - - - - ---S----S----S---S- - - - - - - - - ---S----S----S---S- - - - - Therefore do not create junctions under your subway stations. A1.04.7: Maintenance, Income and Distress

1) Potholes You have reduced your funding for the roads, which you should not have done. You have to replace the roads rather than raising funding and waiting for repairs which will not be done automatically. Make sure you do not build roads on roads that are in good condition as that will cost you money too.

2) Income You can make money from your mass transit. The best case scenario would be for it not just to fund itself but also provide you with an income. You can check your income under the budget.

3) Ports under distress Often I hear of people complaining that their ports seem to be distressed even if they had a full maintenance. This I believe was resolved in Patch 2. It is stated in the fix list that they have "Addressed issue for airports and seaports initially showing up distressed." A1.04.8: * Coverage and Travelling Time

1) Station "Coverage" It was stated in an official Sim City 4 article, 'Tips & Tricks - Transportation' that "your Sims are USUALLY only willing to walk about 6 to 8 tiles to and from bus stops." I have added to capitalization by myself. Therefore what many people as the “range” or “coverage” of a station commonly actually refers to the distance that people can walk and travel before the time runs out. Before interpreting that sentence it is best to clearly define and explain some basic concepts and terms

1. Trip, The basis of calculation. The time one takes to go from one's residence to one's place of work.

2. Walking Time, This refers to the time one takes to walk to and from the mass transit.

3. Mass Travel Time, This refers to the time taken to move by mass transit from one place to another.

4. Transfer Time, The time taken to change modes of transport

REFER: A1.04.9: Transit Mode

13



5. Total Trip Time = Walking + Mass + Transfer 6. Maximum Trip Time > Total Trip Time,

Themaximum trip time I believe is 150 minutes. This is the time one must reach one's work place.

7. Actual maximum trip time It is my opinion that while 150 minutes is the cut off, not all class of residence will have 150 minutes. As commute time is a huge part of determining desirability, it means that for the richer Sims they do not like a high commute. Thus they may move out of their house even before reaching 150 minutes. The effect is thus that the house will be downgraded. Thus 150 minutes is the time limit for poor ($) Sims but not the richer Sims.

a) Restrictive Interpretation This interpretation operates restrictively downwards such that 8 tiles is the maximum range one would walk. It means that Sims will only use the mass transit if it is in within an 8 tile radius. The basis of this is that walking, as compared to other modes of transport takes a lot of time. Therefore people who walked 8 tiles to the station will have less time left in his total trip time hence they will not be able to walk another 8 tiles to their workplace. Therefore the result of this interpretation means that you should not space out your stations too much if you want an effective mass transit system. In fact the proponents of this interpretation believe that 6 tiles is the optimum range.

b) Liberal Interpretation This interpretation operates liberally upwards such that 6 to 8 is just the mean range. And as such you can travel more than 8 tiles to and from a station and there is no cap on the distance one is from a station. All that matters is that the total trip time is less than the maximum trip time. The basis of this is based on the later part of the sentence "... 8 tiles to and from bus stops." That suggests that people can walk further than 8 tiles but that generally they only walk 8 tiles to a station. In other words like the restrictive interpretation it focuses on the total trip time but gives a more liberal interpretation such that one could perhaps walk 12 tiles to the station and then walk another 1 tile after alighting to reach the office. Therefore the result of this interpretation means that you can space your stations further apart although placing more closer together would still always be a boost.

c) Combined Interpretation This interpretation takes into account the fact that walking do indeed take a large part of the travelling time but it also acknowledges that there is no cap on the number of tiles one would walk. Therefore the result of this interpretation is that while you can space the stations further apart as your city expands and there is more strain on traffic, the mass

transit time will become longer thereby reducing the amount of time remaining for the walking time. In other words while the liberal approach is right theoretically, practically one must adopt the closer station placement supported by the restrictive approach.

2) Single maximum trip time theory Central to the discussion relating to station coverage is the assumption that people can indeed walk more than 8 tiles and that all that matters is that the total trip time does not exceed the maximum trip time.There are multiple experiments you can do to test this out. One of them is:

a) Start a new city. b) Build a Residential and an Industrial zone

separated from each other without any road connections between them.

c) Build a subway station in each of the zones and connect them up but make no road connections.

d) Make the distance from your residential area to the subway more than 8 tiles and make the subway directly in the midst of the industrial zone.

e) The length of the subway should be short, one tile.

f) As long as ANY one of the people reaches work it will show that people can walk more than 8 tiles in general and in using a mass transit

I stated ANY because even if only one building has work it is proof that people can transfer. Because if it is impossible all will have no work. The rest of the people without work can thus be attributed to this particular bad transport network and not the impossibility of Sims being able to transfer to stations side by side. The conclusion is that people can indeed walk more than 8 tiles.

3) Travelling Time and the Heuristic coefficient Somebody called "the7trumpets" at Simtropolis found out and determined how travel time is actually specifically calculated taking into account traffic and other things. But it is really complicated and extremely mathematical with the use of the Heuristic coefficient. Suffice to say I am not posting it here as this is a SimCity 4 FAQ not a mathematical text. If you are interested simply go to the site and search for it. A1.04.9: Transit Mode People can change their mode of transportation such as from walking to bus. But not all types of transportation are mutually compatible with another.

14



Table A1.04.9 W : Walking. This is only on roads and streets. No walking allowed on highway and tunnels. B : Bus. This building has negative residential effect. T : Trains / Railway S : Subway Y/N: Yes / No WA : This means that connection to this mode of transport is possible but it is done indirectly through the use of walking again. Thus for example a bus passenger connects to a train by walking out of the bus station and into the train station. ------------------------- Type of |Connects To: | Movement |W |C |B |T |S | ------------------------- Walking |--|N |Y |Y |Y | Car |N |--|N |Y |N | Bus |Y |N |--|WA|WA| Trains |Y |Y |WA|--|WA| Subway |Y |N |WA|WA|--| ------------------------- For indirect walking connection, simply place both the stations side by side. Take note that walking takes up the longest time so try not to have that many connections. A1.04.10: * Transit Station The big debate in this is whether does one need to leave a tile in between two stations for the Sims to switch transport mode. Thus it means having a bus stop beside a train station. This is because in the Prima Guide it is stated that "To change transportation modes, there must be at least one tile of road between the stations." However, if you look at the official Sim City site under the 'About > Inside Scope' you will see an article call "Building a better Transit System" by Alex Peck, Software Engineer. Look at the second page of the article: http://simcity.ea.com/about/inside_ scoop/transit2.php Figure 4 shows a Train station connected to a Bus station. This thus means that there is a conflicting reports from two official sources. It is my opinion that the latter argument at the website is the correct one. It should be noted that the Prima Guide was done months before the release of the game and there are multiple errors in it that have been confirmed. But I will prove it to you with an experiment.

1) Experiment This experiment is done in a similar fashion to the Single maximum trip time theory experiment in (A1.04.8).

a) Simply create a residential and a work place in a new city that is only connected by rail or subway.

b) Stop the rail or subway before the work zone and place another station such as the bus stop right next to the rail/subway. See if they manage to get to work.

c) Make sure that you place a tunnel between the station and the work place because Sims cannot walk into a tunnel. This is to prevent people from walking to work. Thus their only option is to take the bus.

d) As long as ANY one of the people reaches work it will show that people can transfer even if the stations are beside each other.

I stated ANY because even if only one building has work it is proof that people can transfer. Because if it is impossible all will have no work. The rest of the people without work can thus be attributed to this particular bad transport network and not the impossibility of Sims being able to transfer to stations side by side.

1) Graphics and Tunnel Central to this argument is the one that Sims cannot walk through a tunnel. It was stated by the makers that the graphics are mere representation of the simulation and are not exactly accurate. If you look closely at the tunnel you may see people walking into or out of the tunnel. However, it is my opinion that this is just a graphic. It does not actually represent people moving in and out of the tunnel. Think of the situation where we put in one reward type building in a city with 0 population (Industrial cities) yet there are people cheering it. Alternatively you can see people walking about in a large plaza and yet there is no people in the city. If you are not convinced, you could perhaps lengthen the distance between the bus station and the industrial zone.

2) Combination Argument It is possible that both arguments are correct. Let us at the prima guide statement again. "To change transportation modes, there must be at least one tile of road BETWEEN the stations." (My emphasis) To interpret this, we have to give a liberal reading to the word 'between.' Between does not simply mean sandwiched and in the middle. The prima guide could simply be stating that there must be a road leading from one station to the other. The idea they are trying to convey is that while the stations may be built side by side, unlike actual transit hubs they are not linked internally and thus the people have to exit it and walk on the roads and then re-enter the other station.

3) Directional explanations Since Sims travel in the direction to their destination and would not deviate too much to take advantage of a mass transit or a less congested road the reason for the seeming failure of these transit stations, if you do have a failure, can be attributed to them. This is because, If the Sim exit the station and his

15



work place is to the south but the bus station is to the north, then he will not use the bus station as moving there means moving further away from his destination.

4) Entrance / Exit explanations Prior to placement you can see the (<) of the station. Make sure that it faces the road and also the road that the other station faces. If they are pointing in opposite directions, it may account for the failure of these transit stations, if you do have a failure. A1.04.11: Choice of Transportation While everyone in your city has the ability to take all the types of transportation, whether do they actually take it is dependant on how rich they are. Classified broadly there are three means people get around the city. They are, public, private or flexible. Flexible means that the people will have no qualms about using either public mass transit or private cars to get around as long as they reach their destination in the shortest possible time. Table A1.04.11 LW : Low wealth residents MW : Medium wealth residents HW : High wealth residents PR : Private PU : Public FS : Flexible short approach * : Least desire ** : Moderate desire ***: Greatest desire --------------------- Type | PR | FS | PU | --------------------- HW |*** |* |* | MW |* |*** |** | LW |** |* |*** | --------------------- What this means is that even if you have the best mass transit system any mayor can offer if the rich populate your city then very few people will use the mass transit. This is even if taking their cars to work will be longer or even to the extent that they cannot reach their work place. Therefore the only means to deal with them is to do build your road network such that it forces them to use the type of transport you want them to use. This is especially so when building a highway since Sims always use the "shortest" possible route to work even if that route is completely congested. REFER: B7.08.3: Paternalistic Approach to traffic A1.04.12: Overcapacity

1) Theory The effect of overcapacity is simple. It reduces speed. Overcapacity does not only apply to roads but also to subway tracks and train tracks. This is different from

station efficiency and capacity when you query the station. -- I will quote an email Chris McFadyen sent me for it explains the capacity of tracks excellently. I have changed edited some of the wording and the illustration but the words are still his: Traffic at stations are cumulative. Say we have 5 stations: A >>>>> B >>>>> C >>>>> D >>>>> E If we have a 1000 people each at A, B, C and D that want to get to E. Train leaves Station 'A' with 1000 passengers, gets to 'B' and picks up another 1000, gets to 'C', etc... When they get to E they would be dropping off 4000 passengers. Adding more subway stops between, such as: A >>>>> B >>>>> C >> F >> D >>>>> E Station 'F' would not increase the capacity of the tracks if nobody got off at 'F'. Therefore all 'F' does is to add to the capacity if nobody or if less people got off then those who got on. End Quote. Thanks to Chris McFadyen. -- You should note that just because when you place station 'F' the usage of C and D falls, it does not mean that this does not hold true. Usage at the station is different from usage at the tracks. An analogy may help you to better understand. Let us say there is a huge train station which can handle hundreds of trains at any given time. But if there is only one single track leading out of that station, it means that all hundred of trains will have to use that one single line. Therefore the solution is not to build bigger train stations but to build more lines.

1) Effect The effect of overcapacity is simple. You will have a jam and the speed will slow down. You can slow down up to 70% of the optimum travelling speed in the tiles that are overcapacity.

2) Distinguishing Track and Station overcapacity As stated above these track and station have different overcapacity levels. However the method to determine track overcapacity is useful only for rails. Track Overcapacity: Look at the rail line. The longer or the more number of train the more congested the line. Station Overcapacity: Query the station, to see its usage. A1.05: Utilities A1.05.1: Options: Utilities Type

1) Electricity They obviously produce electricity for your city, without which the city will not grow and Yogi bear and Keiko the whale from Free willy will roam the area in peace.

16



a) Wind Power: Very clean but very pathetic. The most inefficient of all power.

b) Natural Gas: It does pollute but it is quite little and you can easily use this for your clean city.

c) Coal: The most efficient of the lot but generates the most pollution.

d) Oil: In between a natural gas and a coal plant.

e) Solar: Clean and expensive. f) Nuclear: Clean with the possibility of a

catastrophic disaster. g) Hydrogen: Generates the most power but is

actually quite inefficient. 2) Water

Very important but your city can still grow without it but not much. It is just that they will be very dirty and flammable. But do not worry their collective body odour will not contribute to air pollution. A water pump is so much more efficient than a water tower.

3) Waste disposals Unless you like living in your filth, this becomes very necessary. Landfill requires there to be at least some population for it to be effective. Waste to energy is your best bet but it generates copious amount of pollution.

Table A1.05.1: Utilities

$C: Cost to build

$M: Monthly maintenance cost

E : Efficiency rate. The amount of power $1 generates

MW: Power capacity in MWh per month

LS: Life span of the plant

P : Pollution description

AP: Air pollution extent in tiles. The number in (bracket) represents the extent of

the strongest pollution.

WP: Water pollution extent in tiles. The number in (bracket) represents the extent

of the strongest pollution.

P : Population. If not further clarified it means city size

HW: High wealth residence

IH: Hi tech industrial population

ED: Energy demands including deals. It is in the 1000s (K)

CU: Water capacity in Cu m in one month

The figures for pollution assume that there are no surrounding trees or anything

that can help reduce pollution.

Power

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Structure | $C | $M | E | MWH |LS | P | AP | WP | P |MR| ED|

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Power Line | 2 | 0.10| | | | | 0 | 0 | | | |

Wind | 500 | 50 | 4 | 200 |100| Clean | 0 | 0 | | | |

Nat. Gas | 9000 | 400 | 7.5| 3000 | 60|Moderate| 0 | 0 | | | |

Coal | 10000| 250 |24 | 6000 | 75|Heaviest|22(13)|18(6) | | | |

Oil | 17000| 600 |11.6| 7000 | 75| Heavy |16(6) |8 Min.| | | |

Solar | 30000| 1000| 5 | 5000 |100| Clean | 0 | 0 |3000HW|55| |

Nuclear | 40000| 3000| 5.3|16000 | 60|Meltdown| 0 | 0 |85000 | |25K|

Hydrogen |100000|10000| 5 |50000 | 50| Clean | 0 | 0 |4000IH| |30K|

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Waste | 25000| 1000| 5 | 5000 | 80| Heavy |29(19)|25(15)| | | |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

17



Note: For oil power plant while there is water pollution it is quite little. Unlike the rest of the polluters it does not have any dark yellow pollution

Water

---------------------------------------

Structure | $C | $M | CU |

---------------------------------------

Pipes | 11 | 0.10| |

Water Tower | 150 | 50 | 2400 |

Water Pump | 1400 | 250 | 20000 |

Treat. Plt. | 15000| 350 | 2400 Treats|

---------------------------------------

Waste

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Structure | $C | $M | Notes |

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Landfill | 50 | 10 | Min zone is 4 tiles |

Recycling | 5000 | 350 | 1) Reduce garbage 20% 2) Serve 20000 pop |

Waste power | 25000| 1000| 1) 5000MHz 2) Heavy Pollution |

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: For waste to power plant look at the table on power structured for more a detailed information. A1.05.2: Optimum Coverage Both water and electricity can extend past their pipes and poles respectively. The water coverage extends 6 tiles. So you should have 12 tiles between pipes and 6 to the edge of the map. Electrical coverage extends to 4 tiles. A1.05.3: Maintenance, Decay and Overcapacity If your pipes are leaking, your poles are sparking then your funding is too low. Raise them and replace the broken pipes.

1) Life span Even if you fully fund your utilities, after a certain amount of years they will be moribund. Also as your utility reaches its end life, its capacity falls drastically such that it is more cost efficient to replace the utility in question.

2) Rate of decay The rate of decay or deterioration increases both when you are operating close to capacity. Therefore keep it at 70% capacity for the power plants. But leave the water funding alone as lowering it does not save that much and it will cause even greater problems with burst pipes and damaged property. However I recommend reduce power as you can save quite a bit of money and can avoid sparking poles which increase the probability of fire. The rate of decay also increase when you lower funding from the 100%. And it increase greatly if funding is below 50%.

3) Sparking Poles Changing the individual power station funding affects the global funding. Therefore it might be impossible to prevent sparking lines short of keeping funding full, which I do not recommend. Furthermore if too much power is channelled through one line, it too will spark. Hence try to arrange you city such that you do not need that much electricity lines. Since electricity can be transferred four tiles, you can zone one tile every four tiles to prevent the use of poles. Sometimes for some odd reason, the electricity does not travel 4 tiles in one area. To search for the break in the chain, simply place the query button over the tiles to see which one has power or not. Just place another zone in between the area of the break. Diagram: A1.05.3 P: Power Plant Z: Zones. It can be residential, commercial or industrial .: Empty tiles P....Z....Z....Z Because deterioration occurs much faster when global funding is below 50%, I recommend that you should not build a new power plant until the present one is close to full capacity. A1.05.4: Negative Environmental Degradation (NED) Yes, I do know I am using a double negative in this title. But NED sounds good to me.

1) Water Pollution This has the effect if it is high enough to cause a shut down of your water pumping system. To reduce that probability simply build the pumps and towers away from polluted water areas. And also to refrain from

18



making connections to landfills or agricultural areas. probability simply build the pumps and towers away from polluted water areas. And also to refrain from making connections to landfills or agricultural areas.

2) Water treatment By right you should not need to use this building. This is required if the water pollution is so bad that your water pumps cannot work. Place at the source of the water although there is an argument out there that one should place it at the source of the pollution. As long as your water pump does not stop for reason of pollution, I do not think this is needed even if your "city is full of filth" and that your Sims are drinking chocolate kiwi coloured water.

3) Landfill Connection Bug All landfill requires connection even if you new landfill is connected to your old landfill that has road connections. There is a bug that has yet to be completely resolved by Patch 2. It is stated in the patch that they: "Addressed landfills to combine easier if drawn adjacent to each other. Still problematical if drawn between two landfills, so try adding them one at a time." Remember that the roads must not only just touch one point of the landfill but must at least cover the entire one side of a landfill.

4) Recycling Centre The 20% is not cumulative. This due to its costs can only have a limited impact on garbage disposal. A1.05.5: * Bio degradable landfills Landfills decompose over time in this game. Of course this does not make much sense unless everything in SimWorld is bio degradable.

1) Decommission Only if you actually removed road access can it be possible to determine whether is a landfill actually decommissioned. A landfill not connected would display a no road zot sign. Also if you look at the garbage chart you will see a drop in the total garbage capacity.

2) Rate of decay The formula for the rate of decay is simple. Trash degrades at 7% a month, however, the upper limit is set at 15 tons. Thus even if 7% of your total trash is more than 15 tons, only 15 tons will decay that month. There are thus two time frame of decay. the (1) being the time when 15 tons are being degraded each month. The (2) is when less than 15 tons are degraded each month. In my opinion the turning point occurs when you have about 215 tons of trash left. It is because after that, the 7% rate would only yield less than 15 tons. Therefore to calculate the rate of decay of the first phase, all you have to do is this:

A) Base - 215 Time 1 = __________ 15 Base: Current amount of waste in the landfill B) log (Y / Base) Time 2 = ______________ log 0.93 Y: Amount waste must decompose to for all to disappear Base: Current amount of waste left in the landfill (215) log 0.93: Rate of decay at 7% C) Amount of time to decompose in months = Time 1 + Time 2 The landfill total is simply calculated by counting the number of tiles in that landfill and multiplying it with the capacity of each tile, which is 300 tons. Alternatively, you could cut off road access and then check the garbage chart to see how much total capacity has fallen. That amount would thus be that landfill's capacity. Obviously this operates on the assumption that the landfill is filled to capacity. Generally a 4x3 landfill will take 10 years 11 months to decay. A 2x2 landfill will take 14 years 4 months.

3) Rate of decay cannot be increased Until I did the experiment on landfills, I was operating under the notion that a waste to power plant, exporting or trees help increase the rate of decomposition. There is a belief that if you have a road connected from your landfill to your waste to power plant, the garbage will be transferred to the waste to power plant. Therefore increasing the rate of decay. A similar argument is also made when you have a neighbour deal. Also there is a belief albeit held less widely that planting trees around a landfill will increase the rate of decay. Let me show that after an experiment, all the above hypothesis no longer holds true. This is the experiment:

a) Build three landfills of equal sizes apart from each other.

b) Wait for all of them to fill up. Check your garbage chart to make sure that total garbage exceeds total garbage capacity such that the Sims are wallowing in there own filth.

c) Pause the game. d) Build a waste to power plant beside one

landfill. e) Demolish the roads leading to the other two

landfills. f) Select one landfill without the road

connections and surround it completely and utterly with trees.

g) Make sure that the waste to power plant can sufficiently handle all the trash in your city.

h) Take note of the date, unpause and wait for the landfill to be cleared.

19



i) Take note of the date, unpause and wait for the landfill to be cleared.

The conclusion is that both those landfills without road connections was cleared at the same time. Hence trees have no effect. Secondly, the landfill that was connected took a bit longer, about a month. Therefore a waste to power plant does help increase the rate of decay. You can try the same experiment with an export deal. However, because the difference between the decommissioned landfill and the one that is still linked up to the road, I believe that there really is no need to demolish the road leading up to it. By the way if you are interested it took 14 years 4 months to clear a 4 tile landfill. A1.06: Public Service Commission A1.06.1: Options: Public Service Types

1) Police Without any superheroes, you need them to reduce crime and suppress the Sims as you rig the elections to become Mayor for life. There is also a city jail if the cells in your police station is overwhelmed. But hold off on it until you at least witness a jail break. It is quite a sight.

2) Fire Not everything is as indestructible as garbage. Build these to prevent and stop fires.

3) Education Unless you want your Sims to be flipping burgers for life, build some education facilities. A high school is not a larger version of an elementary school thus it is not a counterpart to the smaller-larger police and fire stations. The library and museum ensures that your Sims do not loss too much education as they grow older.

4) Health Good wealth is good health. Build them to raise life expectancy from third world average of 40.

5) PSC list

Table A1.06.1: Civil Buildings

$C : Cost to build

$MT : Monthly total maintenance cost.

MTM : Monthly max funding total maintenance cost

$MC : Monthly coverage cost (bus / ambulance cost)

MCM : Monthly max funding coverage

$MF : Monthly service cost

MFM : Monthly max funding service cost (excluding bus / ambulance cost)

CV : Default Coverage in tiles

CV0 : Zero funding coverage

CVM : Max funding coverage

CA : Default capacity

CAM : Max funding capacity

20



------------------------------------------------------------------------

Structure | $C | $MT|MTM |$MC|MCM| $MF| MFM|CV|CVO|CVM| CA | CAM |

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Police | |

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Small Police | 250| 125| 150| | | | |23| 0 | 26| 2 Cars |

Large Police | 800| 250| 300| | | | |34| 0 | 38| 4 Cars |

City Jail |2500| 450| | | | | | | | |1000 Inmate|

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fire | |

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Small Fire | 250| 125| 150| | | | |24| 0 | 26| 1 Engine |

Large Fire | 800| 450| 300| | | | |35| 0 | 38| 2 Engines|

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Education | |

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Elementary | 300| 400| 480|100|120| 300| 360|23| 10| 25| 500 | 550 |

Library |1000| 250| 300| | | | |30| | |30000|33000|

High School |1050| 750| 900|100|120| 650| 780|30| 14| 33| 750 | 825 |

City Museum |1500| 450| 540| | | | | | | | 30 | 33 |

City college |3000|1000|1200| | | | | | | | 7000| 7700|

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health | |

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Small clinic | 400| 400| 480|100|120| 300| 360|23| 11| 23| 500 | 550 |

Large Medical |1100|1200|1440|200|240|1000|1200|34| 17| 34| 3000| 3300|

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A1.06.2: Dispatch: Police and Fire Simply click on the disaster button and send them to the location. There is no automatic dispatch.

1) Redeploy To redeploy when the vehicles are already out, simply click on the circle sign to pick it up and replace it in the new location.

2) Fire fighters standing around If upon arriving at the site, the fire fighters are not deploying even if you are certain that it has full funding, you may have to redeploy. Perhaps a bit further down the road or on the opposite side of the road. Sometimes it gets a little irritating as they refuse to get into action.

3) Pause for return I suggest that upon the successful containment of the fire, you pause the game and allow the fire trucks to return. If your city has a very high incidence of fire, another fire could breakout while your fire truck is on the way back. You can always redeploy but it may be that your fire station is placed at a central location and that the current fire truck position is very far away from the fire. Thus delaying arrival.

4) Crime You can deploy police if you see a crime being committed. But it is more of a graphics than anything. You will see the criminal being taken away. However there is minute benefit as you will see your safety rating move up for a while. The effect is not permanent.

A1.06.3: Crime, Riots and Fire

1) List of Crimes The following is a list of crimes that can be committed in your city. They are listed in according to the seriousness of the crime with the most serious being bank robbery.

a) Tping b) Graffiti c) Pie Throwing d) Flashing e) Solicitation f) Purse Snatching g) Fighting h) Car Theft i) Drugs j) Stick Up k) Assault l) Arson m) Bank Robbery

2) Crime near police station No explanation except perhaps, corruption of the cops or really dumb criminals committing crime the moment they leave the station? Furthermore since crime does not disappear the moment you have coverage, perhaps it is just a statistical luck of the draw thing that there is crime over there.

3) Riots You need to cut them off with police blocking all the routes. Try pushing them into a dead-end.

4) How to start a riot This oddly enough appears on the forum quite a bit.

21



Most probably because the person have not seen a riot. To get one simply trash the city. First cut off the water supply, then reducing power funding so that you have rolling blackouts. Then create a few disasters. You will note that the Sims are on edge at this point. Then set a few fire in the neighbourhood and pretty soon the whole block will go crazy. I do not need to tell you not to save over this city unless.

5) Sources of Crime These generally are caused by:

a) Unemployment I believe unemployment in this sense refers not to that no job zot. Because if it is unemployment would not contribute much as the criminals would have left town within a few months. I believe it refers to a smaller percentage of people that cannot find a job and not enough to actually cause a building to display that no job zot.

b) Low education The lower the education the higher the probability of committing a crime.

c) Wealth Level The lower the wealth level, the high the probability one would be a criminal.

d) External Factors These relates to sources that can be easily removed such as legalised gambling and some other business deals buildings.

6) Crime generators v Attractors It is in my opinion that there are two types of building that seemingly is a den of crime. The first is one that actually generates crime such as the state fair or the army base. The second are those that attract criminals to the area but does not actually create crime such as the country club. It does not make sense that getting together and playing golf would turn one into a criminal. What makes more sense is that as this is a place where the rich congregates, it makes sense for the criminals to travel here and commit economic crime. Notice the crime relates a lot to car theft?

7) City, city burning bright Fire occurs based on a probability. It is recalculated each month. And are not affected by the previous month's calculation. Therefore even if you have a very low fire incidence rate, you may get a few consecutive fires in a roll due to bad rolls of the dice. These are the following reasons that increase the rate of fire.

a) No fire-coverage. (Fire Station) b) No smoke alarm ordinance. (Actually this

reduces probability of fire occurring rather than increase the probability of fire.)

c) No water. d) Abandon buildings. e) Industrial areas are more prone to fire.

Especially dirty and manufacturing industries.

f) No Patch 2 installed. They reduce the rate of fire.

A1.06.4: Maintenance: Striking Incompetence The effect of lowering maintenance below usage level means that you will have strikes and incompetence.

1) Clearing strikes and effects Upon the occurrence of a strike, rise funding to about 90% or even to its maximum. It should take a month for the strike to break-up. However, after that there are still the after effects of a strike that will last for another month. In the recovery period you may reduce funding to the normal level. Normal being the level where capacity exceeds demand slightly not the previous strike level funding. Also do not question why police only clears rioters not strikers. There are laws against breaking a strike in most countries. However, I feel that there should be an option to pass legislation to prevent strikes by key sectors of the civil service much like in the real world. Well at least on the bright side, your fire-crew would not ask for a 40% pay rise. Alternatively, do something that is illegal in most countries but the Sims are fine with it. Sack the bunch by demolishing that building. Of course this is not a very good solution.

2) Incompetence Reducing funding for police and fire fighters mean that when you dispatch them they may not handle the riot or put out the fire. A1.06.5: Overlap and Optimal Coverage

1) City wide coverage The museum and the college operates on a city wide basis. Therefore you can place them anywhere.

2) Rule against multiple coverage This rule simply provides that overlapping the coverage in an area will not increase the effectiveness of that service in that area. This relates to all services, fire, police, education and health. Although overlapping coverage for education and health will allow the students or patients in that overlap area to spread between the two schools or two health buildings. However, health facilities may be the exception to this rule. Although it is in my opinion that there is an additional condition when calculating this coverage that makes it look like an exception when it is not. REFER: A1.06.6: Hospital, Clinics and low health for this exception

3) Optimum coverage Therefore as a result of the rule against multiple coverage, for the other buildings which are not restraint by numeric demand, its coverage is best optimised by reducing as much overlap as possible. This is to save as much money as possible. To be extremely effective you should blanket the entire city with police coverage in a systematic method.

22



A1.06.6: * Hospital, Clinics and low health

1) Points of Confusion There is a common complaint that health levels are bad at the edge of the hospital coverage even though the area in question is within the coverage circle of the hospital. Obviously, for ease in this discussion, we are assuming that the hospital is not suffering from over capacity and that capacity is greater than usage. This complaint is often coupled with the belief that you need both clinics and hospitals to improve health. Clinics and hospitals serve the same purpose. In other words a hospital is merely a larger version of a clinic much like a small-large fire or police station rather than like an elementary-High school. As stated by doctorvu, one of the SimCity 4 designers at one of those chat events, "Clinics and hospitals serve the same purpose.

2) Raising ambulance funding argument If you notice when you raise the ambulance funding from its default $200 the coverage does not increase. But when you reduce funding, it falls. Therefore the question is whether increasing funding past the default is a waste of money. This is obviously assuming that this is not a bug. Taking the fact that there is low health at the edge of the hospital despite being within coverage and couple it with the coverage not increasing after you increase the default ambulance funding, several hypothesis can be formulated:

a) An increase in funding must have an effect. The increase cannot simply be a case of superfluous funding.

b) An increase in funding should have the effect of increasing efficiency or effectiveness.

c) The only thing that is currently lacking in effectiveness is the coverage of the people living.

d) Therefore the conclusion is that coverage at the edge is linked to ambulance funding.

The logic behind this is that speed is of the essence for medical treatments and if one is sent late to a hospital then your chances of recovery is less. And the further you are from a medical facility the longer it will take to get to the hospital from treatment. Therefore, the increase in funding simply improves the transportation speed of the ambulance from the edge of the coverage to the hospital. And as such improves health at the edge.

3) Health facilities overlap coverage There is an argument by some that often when people place a clinic within the hospital coverage, the health at the edge improves. It is my opinion that you could be dealing with an exception to the rule that overlap do not improve services provided. REFER: A1.06.5: Overlap and Optimal Coverage The amount of patients in a hospital will drop when you place a clinic within the hospital's coverage. If the

hospital and a clinic both serve different purposes, then logic will dictate that placing a clinic will have no effect on the usage of the hospital. For example, placing an elementary school will not affect the usage of the high school. But placing another elementary school in the coverage of the first school will result in a fall of usage in the first elementary school. Therefore in comparison, it suggests that both clinics and hospitals serve the same purposes. The improvement that you see is due to placing two medical facilities in that same area. You can get the same effect even if you place two hospitals rather than one hospital and a clinic. Therefore if this is true, it means that the improvement is due to overlap rather than clinics being a necessary component of the health system. If the reason is due to overlap, then does this not bring the rule against multiple coverage into question vis-a-vis the other services? My opinion is that this is confined only to health facilities because of the Dual Coverage effect.

4) Dual coverage effect Hospitals as compared to other services have a special characteristics where there are different health effects in one single coverage. It is submitted that for practical purposes, there are two coverage for a hospital. I will call them the inner circle and the outer circle. However, the game only shows you the wider coverage. If you look at your health data map you can almost make out the inner circle. It is thus further submitted that good coverage occurs only when there is an overlap of two circles of coverage. And that the rule against multiple coverage is still applicable, simply because having three or more circles of coverage will not further increase the effectiveness of the coverage. Therefore to get good coverage you can either make sure that the edge of the coverage overlaps or that you could reduce ambulance funding such that the coverage is not that wide. I believe that reducing coverage will affect the radius of the outer circle more so than the inner circle. Finally, because of the above explanation, I am compelled to discard the possible suggestion that I had in my previous edition where clinics serve the poor while hospitals the rich. A1.06.7: HQ and LE: Health Quotient and Life

1) HQ: Health Quotient This is a component to aid in the determination of LE, life expectancy and it indirectly also affects EQ, education quotient. Simply put, the higher the number you have for this the better it is. A HQ as such is merely part of the calculation of LE, hence by itself it has no direct effect on your city unlike LE which will

23



obviously determine the Sims life spans. It is calculated by taking into account several factors. Let me give you the formula first: HQ = Base + Genetics + Health care + Sports - Aging - Pollution

a) Base: This depends on the wealth level, ($) that one is. The poor will have the lowest base, the rich the highest and the middle class the an average base.

b) Genetics: Sims get 80% of their parents' final HQ. Therefore if you end up with a positive HQ, your city will overtime become more and more healthy as they pass on their good health to the next generation.

c) Health care: This refers to the effects of medical facilities, including the disease research lab reward. And because health care also means healthy eating, it also includes the small benefit from the farmer's market reward.

d) Sports: It is submitted although it has not really been adequately proved that certain recreational facilities improve health. These are the sports based one such as the soccer field. If this sports effect is true, then I wonder whether does adding a country club also improves health as the rich play golf.

e) Aging: The effect of aging applies to all uniformly regardless of age or wealth level. Thus every month your Sims will lose part of their HQ.

f) Pollution: This refers to actually living in the midst of the smog and chocolate kiwi coloured polluted water. And obviously, the more the pollution, the greater loss there is to your HQ. I stated being in the midst because if parts of your city is very polluted but your Sims do not stay there then they will not be affected by that pollution. I do believe that pollution only matters in the residential areas and not the workplace. Therefore working in a dirty industry would not affect your health. Although logically that does not seem to be the case.

2) LE: Life Expectancy This refers to the life span of your Sims and unless you have the second Patch installed there is a very high probability that your life span will fall drastically over time. This shows what is the current effect of your health system as a result of past policies. Contrasted to this the HQ shows the possible future trends of your Life Expectancy. A1.06.8: EQ: Educational (Emotional) Quotient The refers to one's education level. Again the higher it is the better it is for your city. That is unless you want a city of dirty and farming industries and in that case it means that having a high EQ will most probably destroy the dirty and farming industries. I wonder why they call it EQ, perhaps some of the developers really

like the book "Emotional Intelligence"by Daniel Goldman. Obviously EQ does not mean IQ because of the ease to get to 200 points.

1) Calculation It is calculated by taking into account several factors. Let me give you the formula first: EQ = Base + Genetics + Education -

a) Base: This depends on the wealth level, ($) that one is. The poor will have the lowest base, the rich the highest and the middle class the an average base.

b) Genetics: Sims get 80% of their parents' final EQ. Therefore if you end up with a positive EQ, your city will overtime become more and more educated as they pass on their good education to the next generation.

c) Education: This refers to the effects of educational facilities. It also includes the educational rewards such as main city library, major art museum, university and opera house although their effect differs according to age.

d) Declining Brain Capacity: The effect of aging applies to all uniformly regardless of age or wealth level. Thus every month as some of your Sims brain cells expire perhaps because just like us, Sims levels of GABA, a neurotransmitter, decreases with aging. The result is that they will lose part of their EQ.

2) Education Effects All educational buildings are effective only for a certain Sims of a certain age. Also within the range there are differences in the effects of that educational facility on the Sims. The age is quite obvious with the lower education spectrum the elementary school having the greatest effect. Also for those art and culture type buildings like museums or opera houses, they affect the older age Sims. The building that has the widest effects would I suppose be the library. Hence it may be possible to have full EQ reached over time with only a library. REFER: B6.06.1: Education: Public, Private or Libraries

3) Road access There is short debate as to whether is road access necessary for education. It seems that even if you cut off access to that education facility, the surrounding residential area still states that the education level is high and that there is no fall in desirability. Furthermore the schools are still being used. However, it is in my opinion that you let them have road access. There are several reasons for it:

a) Facilities provide jobs for your Sims. If you have no roads they cannot take up the job offer. The amount offered however is small.

b) Fire Prevention. If the facility caught fire, how would your fire fighters have access to the building without roads.

c) The benefits of saving on one measly tile does not come close to the disadvantages of having no road connections.

24



A1.07: Landmarks, Rewards and Recreation A1.07.1: Options: Landmark Types These are famous buildings from around the globe. They only have a effect on commercial and not on residential development. Remember to save before each placement in case you made a mistake in the placement. Thus you can reload and would not have wasted a huge amount of money. Also like all many buildings in the game, these too produce pollution but obviously not on the scale of your dirty industries or polluting power plants. I would not really worry too much about it. It should be noted that Alcatraz (the prison) is the only landmark that generates a negative mayor rating when placed. The rest are all positive. However, the Alcatraz still performs like every other landmark, that of being an aid to commerce. The only negative is the mayor rating, nothing else. On every Tuesday, the SimCity 4 official site might release a new landmark.

A1.07.2: Options: Reward and Business Deal Types

1) Rewards These are given after you fulfil a certain requirement. Mostly their effects are good but there are some with a negative effect. Take note of those that have a negative impact on residential areas. Some of these buildings have a negative impact on mayor rating. Mayor rating and residential and commercial impact are different matters. One can have a positive mayor rating and yet still have a negative residential impact. Once placed these rewards can still be moved. However you have to pay for the demolition and reconstruction which costs quite a bit. There is only one downloaded reward here. It is the one that came with the transportation bonus. I believe this is the same one as those who pre-ordered. You can get this transportation download at the official Simcity 4 site.

Table A1.07.1: Landmarks $C: Cost to build. The figure is in '000s. $M: Monthly Cost CE: Commercial Effect CR: Commercial Radius ------------------------------------------- Structure | $C | $M | CE | CR | ------------------------------------------- Alamo | 65 | 130| 40 | 20 | Alcatraz | 50 | 100| 10 | 24 | Amalienborg | 70 | 120| 30 | 18 | Bank of America | 110| 210| 80 | 28 | Bank of China Tower | 180| 300| 10 | 48 | Big Ben | 75 | 150| 40 | 20 | California Plaza | 50 | 100| 30 | 18 | Chrysler Building | 170| 330| 100| 48 | CN Tower | 225| 440| 80 | 28 | Coit Tower | 55 | 110| 30 | 18 | Empire State Building | 240| 470| 100| 48 | Faneuil Hall | 50 | 100| 20 | 16 | Fernsehturn | 85 | 170| 50 | 22 | Gateway Arch | 90 | 180| 50 | 22 | Great Pyramid | 160| 310| 70 | 26 | Guggenheim Museum | 95 | 180| 70 | 26 | Hagia Sofia | 80 | 160| 40 | 20 | Hollywood Sign | 30 | 60 | 20 | 16 | Independence Hall | 60 | 120| 30 | 18 | Jefferson Memorial | 80 | 160| 50 | 22 | John Hancock Centre | 165| 320| 90 | 30 | Lincoln Memorial | 85 | 170| 50 | 22 | Living Mall | 55 | 110| 80 | 20 | Palace of Fine Arts | 90 | 180| 30 | 18 | Palacio Real | 65 | 130| 30 | 18 | Rotes Rathaus | 65 | 130| 30 | 18 | Smith Tower | 55 | 110| 40 | 20 | Sphinx | 50 | 100| 20 | 16 | St. Basil's | 90 | 180| 60 | 24 | Statue of Liberty | 85 | 170| 60 | 24 |

Table A1.07.2i: Rewards and Business Deals E : Effects R / r: Structure has residential effects B / b: Structure has commercial or business effects $C : Cost to build $M : Monthly Cost or in the case of budget deficit rewards, monthly income Pop : Population requirement. Unless stated otherwise it refers to city size RP : This refers to regional population as opposed to city population IH : High Tech industrial population HW : High wealth residential population MHW : Medium and High wealth residential population Cm : Commercial population F : Farm population Re : Residential population Rg : Regional population MR : Mayor rating If I use a lower case letter (r/b) with a capital letter then it means that the effect represented by the capital letter has a stronger effect. Also for those structure with detrimental effect I will place an (!) in front. Thus if there is detriment to residence but positive effect on commercial it will be (!R B). Look at the handy guide at the back for a more detailed effect listing.

25



Taj Mahal | 105| 200| 60 | 24 | Tokyo Tower | 55 | 90 | 80 | 28 | Tower of London | 175| 340| 30 | 18 | U.S. Capitol Building | 135| 260| 80 | 28 | Washington Monument | 70 | 140| 40 | 20 | White House | 70 | 140| 40 | 20 | ------------------------------------------- Downloaded Landmarks | | --------------------------------- Brandenburg Gate | 60 | 120| Capital Records | 50 | 100| Arc de Triomphe | 55 | 110| Grand Central | 110| 220| Sungre-mun | 65 | 130| Seoul City Hall | 65 | 130| Globe Arena | 70 | 140| ---------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Structure | E | $C |$M | Pop |MR| Other |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Advance R. Cent. |!R B| 0 | 0 |2000 IH |54|University |

Bureau of B. |!R B|46000| 320|39000 |30|Well funded Health + Edu. |

Cemeteries (1) | R | 0 | 0 |2000 |42| |

Cemeteries (2) | R | 0 | 0 |15000 |46| |

Cemeteries (3) | R | 0 | 0 |60000 |50| |

City Hall | B|40000| 280|12500 |20| |

City Zoo | r B|37000| 260| |68|25 Parks |

Colo. M. Statue | R B|57000| 400|120000 |60| |

Convention C. |!R B|32000| 220|25000 Cm |40|Major Airport |

Country Club | R | 0 | 0 |2000 HW |55| |

Courthouse | B|44000| 310|40000 |33|City Hall |

Disease R. Lab | B|26000| 180|56000 |45|3 Hospital |

Farmer's Market | R b| 4900| 30|3000/600 F|34| |

H. of Worship (1)| R | 0 | 0 |1000 |40| |

H. of Worship (2)| R | 0 | 0 |5000 |44| |

H. of Worship (3)| R | 0 | 0 |30000 |48| |

H. of Worship (4)| R | 0 | 0 |120000 |52| |

Impr. M. Statue | R B| 6400| 40|30000 |60| |

Magn. M. Statue | R B|22000| 150|60000 |60| |

Main Library | R B|19000| 130|34000 |37|5 Good Library |

Major Art Museum | r B|13000| 90|12000 MHW |45|4 Good Museums |

Major Leag. Sta. |!R B|48000| 340|85000 |30|Minor League Sta. |

Mayor's House | R B| 1800| 10|500 |20| |

Mayor's Statue | R B| 3700| 30|5000 |60| |

Minor Leag. Sta. |!R B|17000| 120|22500 |20|16 Recreation facilities |

Movie Studio | B| 0 | 0 |110000 |52|Television Studio |

Opera House | B|28000| 200|48000 MHW |52|Major Art Museum |

Private Sch. (1) | R | 0 | 0 |750 HW | |Education less than 85 |



Radio Station | B| 0 | 0 |18000 |30| |

Resort Hotel | B| 0 | 0 |RP50000MHW|52|4 Cities + Low Pollution |

State Fair |!R B| 0 | 0 |3500/1200F|48| |

Stock Exchange | B| 0 | 0 |25000 Cm |45| |

Tel. Studio |!R B| 0 | 0 |65000 |50|Radio Station |

Tourist Trap |!R B|10000| 210|RP 40000 | |4 Connected neighbours + |

| | | | | |6 Connected Cities in region |

University | R B|12000|1500|15000 Re |42| |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Downloaded | |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Air Force Base | | 0 | 0 |15000 | |EQ > 60 |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

26



2) Business Deals These appear only when you are losing money and have a small amount of cash in your bank. To get rid of them, you need to pay quite a lot for the demolition. Whether or not you link the toxic waste dump to your city, there still will be radiation. The unreasonably negligent drivers of these toxic dump that you see is more of a graphic showing the area of the radiation rather than actually causing the radiation. This is my theory since the only time I got a toxic plant was when I purposely busted the bank to see all the business deals / budget deficit rewards. All of them negatively impacts on the mayor ratings.

Table A1.07.2ii: Rewards and Business Deals

E : Effects

R / r: Structure has residential effects

B / b: Structure has commercial or business effects

$C : Cost to build

$M : Monthly Cost or in the case of budget deficit rewards, monthly income

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Business Deals | E | $C |$M | Notes |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Army Base |!R B| 0 | 350| Requires a certain population |

Casino |!R B| 0 | 300| Increase Crime |

Federal Prison |!R!B| 0 | 250| |

Missile Range |!R!B| 0 | 450| IA! IA! Possibility of accidental misfire |

Toxic Waste Dump |!R!B| 0 | 400| 9 tiles of radiation / Water pollution |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A1.07.3: Options: Recreation Types These structure serves two purposes. To increase the desirability of the surrounding area and also acts as a demand buster. Just like all other buildings in the game, if you lower maintenance for it, its effectiveness will fall. You can take a look at the number of recreational facilities under the budget tab.

a) Gardens, Parks and open areas These refer to the (1) Community Garden (2) Flower Gardens of all sizes (3) Park Green of all sizes and (4) Open grass or paved areas. These mostly are for residential usage although they do have commercial effects. For raising residential desirability, I prefer to use the flower gardens as they have the greatest effects. Furthermore, they are the best residential demand busters around.

b) Sports These include the (1) Basketball Court (2) Playground of all sizes (3) Skateboard Park (4) Soccer Field (5) Softball Field and (6) Tennis Court. I believe despite them seeming to cater for different age groups, their effect is the same for all age groups. They also mostly affect residential desirability but are not as effective. They are good intermediaries when you something better than a small park but not as expensive as a large park. The best of the lot for

desirability in my opinion is the playground. They also offer demand cap busting. I like to use the tennis courts because combined they offer more power in busting than a large flower garden and at a cheaper price.

c) Natural These are the (1) Beach (2) Gazebo and (3) Ranger Station. The best is obviously the beach as it offers great residential and also good commercial desirability boost. However, as it can only be built at the water edge, it is limited in its applicability. Furthermore it takes a bit of practise before you can get the correct lay out for the coast to lay it. It should be noted that to build a beach the coast must be straight. Part of the beach must be on land while the other in water. Move the cursor around. The little white dot on the beach is the point where water meets land. L: Land / W: Water. LLLLL LLLLL LLLLL LLLLL WWWWW WWWWW WWWWW WWWWW

27



d) Plazas These refer to the three sizes of plazas. They offer the best desirability boost to commercial areas. Although they also have some residential boost. The large plaza the most powerful demand cap buster for non-reward recreational facilities.

Table A1.07.3: Recreation E: Effects R / r: Structure has residential effects B / b: Structure has commercial or business effects $C: Cost to build $M: Monthly Cost If I use a lower case letter (r/b) with a capital letter then it means that the effect represented by the capital letter has a stronger effect. Also for those structure with detrimental effect I will place an (!) in front. Thus if there is detriment to residence but positive effect on commercial it will be (!R B). -------------------------------------- Structure | E | $C | $M | -------------------------------------- Basketball Court | R | 90 | 10 | Beach | R b| 70 | 5 | Community Garden | R | 70 | 5 | Gazebo | R b| 90 | 10 | Large Flower Garden | R b| 310 | 35 | Large Park Green | R b| 320 | 25 | Large Plaza | r B| 400 | 35 | Medium Flower Garden | R b| 170 | 20 | Medium Park Green | R b| 160 | 15 | Medium Playground | R | 210 | 25 | Medium Plaza | r B| 210 | 25 | Open Grass Area | R b| 40 | 5 | Open Paved Area | r B| 40 | 5 | Playground | R | 90 | 10 | Ranger Station | R | 90 | 10 | Skateboard Park | R | 210 | 25 | Small Flower Garden | R b| 80 | 5 | Small Park Green | R b| 40 | 5 | Small Plaza | r B| 90 | 10 | Soccer Field | R b| 340 | 35 | Softball Field | R b| 400 | 35 | Tennis Court | R | 130 | 15 | -------------------------------------- A1.07.4: Recreational Sports It has been suggested that some of these recreational facilities can help improve the health of your Sims. The logic is certainly good unless if you happen to be one of those who believes in that since everything wears out eventually, your heart is only good for so many beats and thus you should not waste them on exercise. That is because you believe that speeding up your heart will not make you live longer for that is like saying that you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster.

Anyway, the question is whether do all recreational facilities improve your health quotient or do only those that has a direct reference to a sport can be considered. A second question is that since the effect of any particular education structure is dependant on the age of the Sim, then do the age of the Sim matters, if there is such thing a healthy sports. Therefore is a skateboard park more effective for young people? In my opinion it does not seem so. A1.07.5: Disappearing Rewards Often a person would have sworn to have be given a reward or a business deal but did not build it at that point of time. Subsequently when they wish to build it, it is no longer available. There are two possible explanations to this. The one many people immediately jump onto is that this is a bug. However, it is my opinion that the better explanation is that you no longer statisfy the requirements of that reward. This occurred with respect to a business deal where after becoming profitable, the deal disappeared. A second important point to note is that this disappearance does not occur immediately after you no longer satisfy the requirements. It only occurs when the following TRINITY of events occur. Firstly, the reward is not built, secondly, you no longer fulfil the requirement and thirdly it only occurs when you saved and exit and then RELOADED the city. When the city is RELOADED, the computer will scan the MATRIX to look for the TRINITY of events and if it is found that reward option will be purged. As much as you hate it, there is no REVOLUTIONS or things that you can do except for fulfilling the requirements again to get the NEO-rewards. Until then as the mayor it is up to you to select whether you wish the take to blue or the red pill. A1.08: City Information A1.08.1: Data View These provide quite a number of good information. However, I find myself usually focusing only on a few good ones. I will put a (+) beside the ones that I feel are quite useful. You can expand the menu for "radar viewing". Especially important when you are seeking out the type of crimes being committed. Click on the (^) to expand to radar view. The (1-6) or (1-5) represents the data view with a map based on intensity. Thus it will show you the

28



areas which are the least affected and those that are the most.

1) Fire hazard (1-6), Simply use this to determine where to place your fire stations.

2) Crime (+), To see the type of crime committed. Use to search for the flasher to see him to his deed. Quite funny.

3) Education (1-6), I personally prefer giving every Sims an equal opportunity for education so this view is not very important to me. It shows the level of education. You can however use it to go to your education facilities if you cannot remember where they are.

4) Desirability (1-6) (+), Desirability of areas with relation to all the various zones such as poor Sims, high tech and etc.

5) Water 6) Power, To determine which part of your city is

not powered up. This is quite useless for if there is anything that is not powered up you can see a no power zot over it.

7) Traffic (1-5) (+), To see which are your congested areas and also to help determine areas of high customer volume.

8) Zones (+), To see just the type of zones minus the buildings. Very useful when you are searching for zones to increase the density.

9) Land value (1-6), The higher it is the more tax you get.

10) Mayor Rating (1-6), To determine which part of the city loves you and which wants to impeach you.

11) Resident Average Age (1-6), To see where the young like to stay and which part of your town is a retirement community. You can if you so wish use this to plan your education placement for the elementary and high school.

12) Health (1-6), To see which part of your city needs better medical facilities and more HMOs.

13) Air Pollution (1-6) (+), To know how far apart to build your zones. Or to find out which roads are producing allot of pollution. Plant some trees there.

14) Water pollution (1-6), Try to steer your pipes away from it.

15) Garbage (1-6), This is very useless, since you should not be operating a city where the garbage system has failed and that trash is place onto the ground. Also, how likely is it that you will forget where your landfill is.

16) Radiation, Again not very useful. It is not everyday that you suffer a nuclear strike on your nuclear facilities or that you will forget the placement of the one toxic plant in your city if you did place it.

A1.08.2: Chart View Again, these provide quite a number of good information. However, I find myself usually focusing only on a few good ones. I will put a (+) beside the

ones that I feel are quite useful. The most useful being the RCI chart and the jobs and population chart. You can change the time scale of this chart.

1) Crime, To see the amount of crime committed and the number of arrest.

2) Commute (+), To see your commute time. You have to realise that this is the average commute time of your city. Therefore even though it may show that the commute time is reasonable, some parts of your city might have a very high commute time. So do not mix up actual specific commute time with this average city commute time.

3) Power (+), Power supply and demand. So you do not have to hunt for it through the station. Tells you when to increase power. If you see the capacity falling even if you did not reduce funding it suggests that your power plants are deteriorating.

4) Water (+), Again to determine supply and demand. Similarly it aids you in informing you when to raise power. If you see the capacity falling even if you did not reduce funding it suggests that your water facilities are deteriorating.

5) Air pollution, To see the effects of your anti pollution drive or the result of your economic success. The mark of a great city is how much pollution it can produce that is not linked to industries or power plants.

6) Job & population (+)(+)(+)(+)(+), This most important chart of all. It helps you determine the residents by wealth or amount of people working in a particular industry. It is very helpful when seeking out to determine how much more you need to meet a reward requirement.

Once you have Patch 2 installed, you can pick and choose which graph to display by clicking on the checkbox rather than having a headache due to seeing everything appear together. If you have patch 2 installed but the option to select individual graphs is not available, it means your patch was not properly installed.

1) Water pollution, To determine water pollution. Not too useful since you can split your water system such that the pollution would not affect you residential pumps. So this is not very useful to determine when a treatment plant is absolutely necessary.

2) Garbage (+), On top of supply and demand this is very important especially when you are not using a landfill. If you are not using a landfill, waste figures should hold steady. If it starts going up either in need to export more or build a new waste to power plant. Remember if you are not using a landfill once the waste starts going up, it will increase very quickly.Also when you decommission a land fill or create a new one, the total capacity should change to reflect

29



it. 3) Education, Determines how educated and how

ready they are for high tech. Or you can use it to determine whether you fulfil the requirements for certain rewards.

4) Education by age, This breaks down the education level according to their ages. There are nine distinct age spans. Each last ten years. It starts from 1-10 years and ends with 81-90 years. It is good to determine the success of your education policy vis-a-vis the age group or whether is the next generation of workers going to lead the digital revolution in your city and bring in the high tech, the big offices and the money.

5) Population by age, To see whether is this a city filled with youngsters or is it a retirement community. See which age group was that baby boomer group. And see if whether did you have a baby boom as a result of your last blackout.

6) Life Expectancy, To show how long does your citizens live.

7) Residents Average Income, This is calculated in a unit of 1000. Of course this does not make sense vis-a-vis your tax income and the cost of your power plants and such. It seems that a poor Sim can easily make as much money as the city makes. Generally, use this to determine whether your city growth is qualitative or merely quantitative.

8) City Income Expense, To see the history of your income and expense. Not too useful, unless perhaps using it to see whether is your profit generally increasing, decreasing or stagnating under your wise and benevolent dictatorship.

9) Funds, Again to see the history of the funds you have in the bank. Not very useful. Perhaps the game should base the amount of loan and the interest rates on your credit history.

10) RCI Demand (+)(+)(+)(+)(+), This shows the individual demand of each of the different zones rather than all just being lumped into one residential, commercial or industrial bar. Take note that after Patch 2 the maximum no longer is 1000 but it goes up to 6000. Therefore, do not fret if it seems that demand is lower after Patch 2. It is merely an illusion.

11) Mayor Rating (+), For more specific information on your rating rather than just little green bars. Again for use of determining rewards.

A1.09: Budget A1.09.1: Options: Tax Rates Nothing much to say about this. To increase it either click on the arrow or click on the number itself to type in the tax rates.

1) Demand Impact Changing tax rates have an impact on your demand. And obviously raising it will have a negative impact

and lowering it a positive demand. However the way they calculate tax rate and their effects on demand makes it impossible to raise taxes to get a lot of money then quickly lower it again so that demand is not that affected. The reason is that the game takes the most negative or highest tax rate that your city has over the past three months to calculate the impact on demand.

1) Mayor Rating Impact And also obviously the taxes have an impact on your mayor ratings. The larger the tax change as a percentage with respect to its CURRENT tax levels the greater the impact on mayor ratings. A1.09.2: Options: Ordinance Types Not much of an introduction since everything seems quite self-explanatory. The only thing worth mentioning is that city ordinance appears only after a few days of starting the city. By starting I mean actually putting down one thing in the city such as a street. You may have to wait a bit after the placement but it will appear in a few days. You should note that just because an ordinance seem to be one that benefits the city, the Sims or the business community may not see it that way.

1) Community CPR Training Program, It increase the health quotient.

2) Water Conservation Program, It cut down on water consumption but also negatively impacts on industrial demand.

3) Paper waste Reduction Program, It decrease waste output but also causes commercial demand to fall.

4) Free Clinic Program, It increase the health quotient

5) Smoke Detector Program, It decrease the possibility of fire.

6) Tourism Promotion Program, It increase demand for commercial services.

7) Power Conservation Act, It reduces power consumption and industrial demand. Although it may help pro-long the life of your power plants.

8) Carpool Incentive Program (+), It reduces traffic volume greatly. This is one of the better programs available.

9) Commuter Shuttle Service, It persuades Sims to use public transport and reduces air pollution. You should enact this if you have any mass transit.

10) Clean Air Act, It reduces air pollution but also have a negative impact on dirty industry.

11) Youth Curfew Act, It reduces crime. The interesting question is that if you enact this, should you still be able to see kids on the roads at night?

12) Auto-Mobile Emission Reduction Act, It reduces air pollution.

13) Tire Recycling Program, It cuts down waste production.

30



14) Nuclear Free Zone, You may not build any nuclear plants and all existing ones will be shut down. Any violation will see your city being accused of harbouring Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). And if you too have disease research plant, then you will be accused of constructing chemical and biological weapons. And we all know what that means. Pretty soon the statues build in your honour will be torn down.

15) Pro-Reading Campaign, It increases your education quotient

16) Neighbourhood Watch Program, It reduces crime. It requires at least one police facility because without it this would be called the vigilante mob program.

17) Junior Sports Program, It reduces crime but yet oddly does not increase the health quotient. Perhaps because committing crime also requires exercise such as running away. You require at least one recreational facility for this to be available.

18) Landfill Gas Recovery Program, You require a landfill and a natural gas plant. It increases the capacity of the natural gas plant and reduces air pollution around the landfill.

19) Trash Pre-sort Requirement Program, You require a recycling plant. It reduces waste and increase effectiveness of the recycling plant.

Legalize Gambling, It causes crime to increase. But you need it to get the casino. Thus if you make it illegal again, then the casino will be gone.

Table A1.09.2: Cost and requirements

F$: Fixed component of the monthly cost or income

V$: Variable component of the monthly cost

MR: Mayor Rating

- : Negative mayor rating

+ : Positive Mayor rating

Pop: Population

---------------------------------------------------

Ordinance | F$ | V$ | MR |

---------------------------------------------------

Legalize Gambling | 100 | NA | |

---------------------------------------------------

Comm. CPR Training P. | 50 |$1/200 Pop | |

Water Conservation P. | 50 | NA | |

Paper waste Reduc. P. | 20 |$1/200 Pop | |

Free Clinic P. | 50 | | |

Smoke Detector P. | 0 |$1/1000 Pop | |

Tourism Promotion P. | 50 | NA | |

Power Conservation Act | 0 |$1/100 Pop | - |

Carpool Incentive P. | 50 |$1/100 Pop | |

Commuter Shuttle Serv. | 20 | NA | |

Clean Air Act | 20 | NA | |

Youth Curfew Act | 40 |$1/500 Pop | - |

A. Emission Reduc. Act | 20 | NA | - |

31



Tire Recylcing P. | 20 |$1/1000 Pop | |

Nuclear Free Zone | 50 |$1/500 Pop | + |

Pro-Reading Campaign | 50 |$1/Library | |

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Ordinance | F$ | V$ | | Requirements |

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Neighbourhood Watch P. | 10 |$1/1000 Pop | |Police Station |

Junior Sports P. | 100 | | |Recreation Amenity|

Landfill Gas Recovery P. | 20 |$30/Landfill | |Gas PP + Landfill |

Trash Presort Require. | 20 |$1/R. Centre | |Recycling Centre |

----------------------------------------------------------------------

A1.09.3: Options: Neighbour Deals You can initiate a deal for water, electricity or garbage with your neighbouring city so that you can either import water or electricity or export garbage.

1) Requirements The following are the requirements for a deal to be available.

a) Necessary connections That is power line for power, pipes for water and roads for garbage. Just drag whatever is needed to the edge of the map and reply in the affirmative when asked to make a connection. You should know that building or zoning on a power line would destroy the connection.

b) Nemo dat quod non habet This little Latin phrase simply means no one can give what she does not have. So applying that (in a manner totally out of the phrase's context), before you wish to buy or sell, you have to make sure that the relevant neighbour has the supply and you the money and demand. You must at least have a year's supply of money before a deal is possible.

c) Time You should not need to wait long. A few days of game time should suffice, before a deal is offered. It will appear in your little message box. A little trick I do if I do not want the deal but want to preserve such an offer is not to clear that particular message offering the deal.

2) Initiating the deal There are two ways in which one might initiate a deal.

a) News Ticker Message Sometimes a message will appear asking you to make a deal. While the message may seem to suggest only one deal is on offer such as trash, power or water, in reality once you click on the underlined words, all possible deals appear. After accepting one deal you can control your deals through the budget screen.

b) Budget Screen I do not know whether did this occur only after Patch 1 but it seems that all I have to do now is to press the neighbour deals button in the budget and immediately a deal is available if you fulfil all the requirements.

3) Cancelling and altering the deal You can cancel the deal any time by going to the budget screen. Patch 2 will give you a warning that you are out of money before cancelling the deal

automatically if that is not resolved. Without the patch, the deal cancels automatically. It has been argued that if the deal was cancelled because of lack of payment you may not initiate another deal with the city for a short while.

4) Supply The cost for each deal is not fixed. It is determined by the supply of the neighbouring city. Therefore if they have plentiful of empty landfill for example, the cost of exports will be lower. A1.09.4: Options: Business Deals REFER: A1.07.2: Rewards and Business Deals A1.09.5: Options: Loan

1) Municipal bonds of 10-year maturity When times are tough or when you want emulate President Bush tax policy to cut taxes even if you are losing money, you need to take out a loan. Or take out a bond issue. This is your typical 10-year local municipal bond. The time frame is fixed. And given that the current rate in real life for single-A to AAA local municipal bonds of 10-year maturity is around 3 to 4%, there can only be one conclusion relating to the rate of 8.5% a year for the bond issued by your city. It is a high yield bond or more precisely a junk bond. Either that or your city has the most pathetic credit rating ever. You have to make monthly payments. Do not worry if the initial loan seems small for the amount you can loan increases over time.

2) "Westdeutsche" Loan Bug I have heard of people encountering the situation where they keep having to pay each month even after the 10-year period. It is a debt that never ends. I have no solutions to this unless you take out another loan and follow the example of Islington London Borough Council who also had a ten year deal except that they refused to make any payment to the lender Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale. But of course if you withhold payments your Courthouse will be called upon to rule against you even though you are paying them. You may end up paying compound interest rather than just simple interest. So I am afraid this avenue of self help remedy is not

32



possible. The only thing I advice is that you should not take a loan. A1.10: My Sims A1.10.1: Hi there, [wave], join me in my hot-tub? You can place up to five Sims in each city. The game comes with its own Sims but you can place the ones you created if you had "The Sims" game. There will be an graphic when you Sim dies of a natural death or when the Sim has stayed in your city for a number of generations. Personally, I do not really like this because of the amount of spam that the Sim sends your way. Who gave out the Mayor's contact info? It is as if the Sims was trying to improve their "Social needs" bar.

1) Dolly the Sim clone Its the attack of the clones, but at least they would not be faced with the emotional scarring of having to hear "... I am your father. Nooo!!!!" In the world of the Sims therapeutic cloning or stem cell cloning not a only is not a controversial topic but that they have absolutely no problem with cloning themselves. After the first Sim die, it will be replaced by the same Sim with the numbers (2, 3, and so on) depending on its generation.

2) Insertion and Eviction To place a Sim, simply click on the Sim you desire then select any residential buildings and click on it. To evict them, simply click on the evict button. Actually, a better term would be exile or maybe even worse. Use if you are bored with it or that you are sick of the Sim complaining about the city. So to preserve your position you will need to silence the opposition in a dirty war.

3) Follow the Sim To follow the Sim, simply switch to query mode and press shift and click on the Sim.

4) Pre-Patch: Conflict with transportation add-on You should take note that unless you have at least patch 1 installed, this feature is buggy if you also installed the transportation add on. A1.10.2: Special Agent: Mr Smith I mainly use My Sim as an investigative tool. Think of them as the secret agents of the office of the mayor. Or more precisely think of them as Mr Smith, the never dying bad guy in the Matrix. Also the Sims like the bad people in the show, also clones themselves after 'death' and is sent by a higher power who controls their world on a computer. If you are wondering why a certain residential area is distressed, then place him or her in that building and you will soon receive a field report relating to the problem.

Also it will give you an idea of how the Sims travel about in your city. Understanding the game mechanics of movement can help you create a better city at least with relation to the issue of transportation.

33


SECTION A PART 2 GENERAL GAMEPLAY CONCEPTS

SECTION A: ONLINE MANUAL PART 2: GENERAL GAMEPLAY CONCEPTS

These refer to the general key concepts that affect the game. If you have read the entire PART 1 and have yet to play the game, I really must commend you for being so patient. These concepts are more complicated than those in PART I. In fact it was only after I played my first and second good cities and reached over 30,000 in each of these cities that I started to pick up on these ideas. But if you want to start out with the perfect city, then this is a must read. It is also helpful to take a quite glance at this before starting the game. A2.01: Desirability A2.01.1: Concept of Desire 1) Theory Each section of Sim society have their own demands on desirability. Simply put what may statisfy a poor Sim may not satisfy a rich Sim or what may satisfy a dirty industry may be off putting to high tech. The Residential, Commercial and Industrial as a whole each have their own specific ladder of desirability. The higher the wealth level the higher the desirability is required. The effect of desirability is that if the area falls below the desirability of the building that is over there, then the occupants of the building will leave it. The initial effect would be that the building is distressed such that when you query it, you can see that one or two of the ($) sign is faded out. That means lower wealth occupants have now taken up residence. For residential buildings, such an event will lead to higher occupancy of the building. But population numbers are not everything, because for each fall in level results in a great fall in taxes from the building. Thus even if there are more people in the city, you will be making less money on taxes. If desirability continues to fall, eventually the building will become abandoned and vacant. 2) Factors The desirability is calculated by taking into account of general factors such as those referred to above in A1.03.3. To avoid repetition, let me state that for all areas, radiation is not desired. Before showing you how desirability is calculated, let me explain some of the terms that I will be using. SWN - Similar Wealth Neighbourhood: If the surrounding houses are of the same wealth type then this value increases. But since Sims do not like to live in a neighbourhood that is poorer than them it will have a negative effect if the building is surrounded by poorer Sims. COMMUTE: This is one of the most important factors especially for

the richer Sims. A total failure in this will lead to abandonment of the building as residents cannot get to work. As stated by doctorvu, SimCity 4 game designer in one of those chat events, "...bad commute time can totally stop development." Modifier (R) or (C): This refers to the effect of structures such as parks and such. It is often called YIMBY (Yes in my back yard) for positive modifier and NIMBY (Not in my back yard) for negative modifier such as a Toxic waste dump. The (R) refers to it being residential modifier. (C) refers to commercial modifiers. REFER: A1.07: Landmarks, Rewards and Recreation Flat Ground: The simply refers to the gradient of the land.

a) Residential Desirability Residential = COMMUTE + Education + Health + Modifier (R) + Land Value + SWN - Pollution - Crime - Waste - Traffic Noise

b) Commercial Desirability Commercial = Customers + Land Value + Modifier (C) + SWN - Pollution - Crime – Garbage

c) Agriculture Desirability Agriculture = Freight Trip + Low Land Value + Low Traffic + Flat Ground - Air Pollution - Crime – Garbage

d) Dirty Desirability Dirty = Freight Trip + Low Land Value + Flat Ground - Crime – Garbage

e) Manufacturing Desirability Manufacturing = Freight Trip + Mid Land Value + Flat Ground - Crime - Garbage- Excessive Pollution

f) High Tech Desirability High Tech = Freight Trip + High Land Value + Flat Ground + Modifier (R) - Air Pollution – Crime A2.01.2: Desire v Demand/Land Value/Mayor Rating Demand, Land value and mayor ratings are all separate and distinct from desirability. However, they do have a relationship with each other. 1) Desirability v Demand There is no direct relationship between them in the sense that their calculations of their values are not affected by each other. However there is a indirect relationship between them. That is if your city or the area is not sufficiently desirable enough then even if your demand is sky high, there will be no construction of the demanded residential, commercial or industrial buildings there. In other words, desirability acts as a filter for demand fulfilment. An analogy would be that of you refusing to place a reward. Thus because the demand is sufficient, that particular building is available for construction but if desirability is not sufficient, then it acts as an automatic rejection of the construction. Therefore, just like you refusing the reward, the building or demand is still available and will not be spent until it is no longer rejected by the desirability

34



filter. 2) Desirability v Land Value Land value is a component for calculating desirability. It is affected only by two things, water and height. If the land is near water, its value increases. If it is on a nice hill, the value increases but if it is on a K7 type of mountain the value falls. Therefore as the land rises, its value increases but past a certain point, the value starts falling again. 3) Desirability v Mayor Rating Desirability to a certain extent help determine mayor rating. The more desirable the area, the happier the Sims are in that area and hence the higher the mayor rating. The relationship is however tenuous since there are different factors in the calculation of each. A2.02: Demand Caps A2.02.1: Demand Caps and Busters concept There is a capacity limit for residential, commercial and industry, which prevents growth above certain levels. The only way to get past these limits is to bust them, hence the term demand busters. The demand busters are mainly structures and connections. 1) Calculation The mechanics behind this from what I gather is that upon reaching the capacity, the growth will fall to zero and this will be represented in the RCI chart. If capacity has been reached halfway then, the maximum growth can only be half. However, as Patch 2 has raised the RCI chart maximum to 6000 demand units (Du), it is unlikely at least in the beginning to reach the maximum. Here is a simple formulation of the factors involved in demand: RCI Demand = or < Current Demand Cap > or = Maximum Actual Potential Demand RCI Demand: The demand that you see in the RCI charts. The demand that actually impacts on your city. Current Demand Cap: The total demand cap after adding up all busters and initial capacity. In other words this is what demand might have been if your maximum actual potential demand is high enough. Maximum Actual Potential Demand: The demand that would have been, if there had not been any demand caps. 2) Patch 2 RCI increase Also, because of the increase in maximum (Du), it may seem to you that demand is low less than a sixth of the maximum, but in reality that demand is quite good. For those who did not play the game prior to Patch 2, you have to realise that the maximum used to be 1000. So having 500 (Du) was quite high the last time. If you are wondering, this increase in demand is not merely cosmetic. The increase is in real terms and not just a reworking of the then 1000 (Du) into an

alternative proportion. The reason for this increase is I believe in response to the complained of low rate of appearance of some skyscrapers. It was only by increasing the demand that these higher wealth skyscrapers can be constructed in your lovely city. If you wish to see the effects of demand caps, there is a simple experiment that can be done. Simply start a new city and carry on building without constructing any demand busters. As you reach 20,000, you will see that the demand for poor ($) Sims residence will taper off until it hit 0. At that point start placing in some demand busters and you will see it increase demand rise again. Alternatively, you could work backwards and demolish demand cap buildings and see your population drop. 3) Determining Current demand cap To determine what your cap is, simply add up the inherent capacity to all the demand busters. To determine the number of busters you have for residential area simply go to the budget, which will show the number of buster buildings you have in the city. A2.02.2: Inherent capacity Each city starts off with a similar initial base limit. These here are the starting capacity. Commercial Services: There are no demand caps for commercial services. Farming: Demand for agriculture unlike others are calculated by taking into account all the other industrial jobs. Therefore the more dirty, manufacturing or high tech industries there are the less one can build agriculture. Thus if you have 20,000 non-agriculture industrial jobs, only 10,000 agiculture jobs are available. Basically as your city develops farming demand will fall. This accounts for why some people claim that if the land had been previously constructed upon, farms would not take root there. It actually is mostly because of demand and also perhaps desirability. Table A2.02.2: Starting Capacity LW : Low wealth residential MW : Medium wealth residential HW : High wealth residential F : Agriculture ID : Dirty Industry IM : Manufacturing industry IH : High Tech industrial population COM : Medium wealth offices COH : High wealth offices CS : Low / Medium / High wealth commercial services

35



----------------------- Zone | Start Capacity | ----------------------- LW | 20,000 | MW | 2000 | HW | 1000 | F | 30,000 | ID | 14000 | IM | 7000 | IH | 4000 | COM | 3000 | COH | 2000 | CS | 0 | ----------------------- A2.02.3: Residential Busters Removing residential capacity is a simple matter of placing the buildings in the city. You can try the experiment I suggested above to test for the effects of these buildings. REFER: A2.02.1: Demand Caps and Busters concept Table A2.02.3: Residential Busters LW : Low wealth residential MW : Medium wealth residential HW : High wealth residential $C : Construction cost $M : Monthly cost to maintain ------------------------------------------------------ Structure | $C | $M | LW | MW | HW | ------------------------------------------------------ Recreation | | ------------------------------------------------------ Basketball Court | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Beach | 70 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Community Garden | 70 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Gazebo | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Large Flower Garden | 310 | 35 | 7000| 7000| 7000| Large Park Green | 320 | 25 | 2500| 2500| 2500| Large Plaza | 400 | 35 | 9000| 9000| 9000| Medium Flower Garden | 170 | 20 | 3000| 3000| 3000| Medium Park Green | 160 | 15 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Medium Playground | 210 | 25 | 3000| 3000| 3000| Medium Plaza | 210 | 25 | 4000| 4000| 4000| Open Grass Area | 40 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Open Paved Area | 40 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Playground | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Ranger Station | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Skateboard Park | 210 | 25 | 4000| 4000| 4000| Small Flower Garden | 80 | 5 | 750| 750| 750| Small Park Green | 40 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Small Plaza | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Soccer Field | 340 | 35 | 5000| 5000| 5000| Softball Field | 400 | 35 | 6000| 6000| 6000| Tennis Court | 130 | 15 | 4000| 4000| 4000| ------------------------------------------------------ Reward | | ------------------------------------------------------ Country Club | 0 | 0 | 0| 0| 8000| Disease R. Lab |26000| 180| 0| 10000| 10000| Farmer's Market | 4900| 30| 20000|150000| 0| Major Art Museum |13000| 90| 0| 6000| 6000| Major Leag. Sta. |48000| 340|300000|300000| 0| Minor Leag. Sta. |17000| 120|200000|200000| 0| Opera House |28000| 200| 0| 0| 5000| Private Sch. | 0 | 0 | 0| 0| 6000|

as a connection to one neighbour if there are no cities there and all are represented as Sim Nation. Looking at the table A2.02.4, you will soon realise that you can easily get more demand from connections than an airport, hence my aversion to airports. Ports: Airports generally serve commercial demand relief, and seaports industrial relief. However, airports do provide some industrial relief. Airports must thus be connected to commercial areas and that the commercial zones can reach the airport. Only then does it offer relief based on its usage, The relief of the seaports are not fixed but operates on a percentage of the industrial activity at the port. Thus having more activity means greater demand relief.

36



Radio Station | 0 | 0 | 0| 9000| 0| Resort Hotel | 0 | 0 | 0| 5000| 5000| Stock Exchange | 0 | 0 | 0| 0|125000| Tel. Studio | 0 | 0 | 0| 3000| 0| Tourist Trap |10000| 210|100000| 0| 0| University |12000|1500| 0| 15000| 15000| ------------------------------------------------------ A2.02.4: Commercial Office Busters Commercial busters are mainly fulfilled with connections, be it land or air. There are also buildings that seemingly seem to boost my demand. For land-based connections, there is a diminishing rate of returns for each similar connection, such as 5 roads, to the same neighbour. While a connection to "Sim Nation" is considered as a connection, multiple connections even on all four sides will still be viewed

Table A2.02.4: Commercial Office Busters CO : Medium and High Wealth offices COM : Medium wealth offices COH : High wealth offices $C : Construction cost $M : Monthly cost to maintain ----------------------------------- Buster | $C | $M | CO | ----------------------------------- Land | | ----------------------------------- Road (1) | 0 | 0 | 10000|/\ Road (2) | 0 | 0 | 5850||| Rail (1) | 0 | 0 | 10000||| Rail (2) | 0 | 0 | 5850||\\\ Look at: Highway (1) | 0 | 0 |100000||/// Note 1 below Highway (2) | 0 | 0 | 58496||| Subway (1) | 0 | 0 | 20000||| Subway (2) | 0 | 0 | 11699|\/ ----------------------------------- Airports | | ----------------------------------- Small Strip |20000| 700 |10200| Med. Strip | 5700| 900 |13100| Large Strip | 5700| 1100|16000| ----------------------------------- Small Municipal |35000| 1225|28800| Med. Municipal | 6400| 1450|34100| Large Municipal | 7200| 1700|40000| ----------------------------------- Small Int. |50000| 1750|70000| Med. Int. | | |80000| Large In | | |90000| ------------------------------------------- Structure | $C | $M | COM | COH | ------------------------------------------- Convention C. |32000| 220 |100000|100000| Tel. Studio | 0 | 0 | 10000| 0| University |12000|1500 | 15000| 0| -------------------------------------------

Ports: Similarly as stated above, seaports cater to industry demand but airports play a small part as well. Ports are merely another form of connection. Therefore if you wonder why is it not being used, a reason could simply be because the freight finds a better way to send their goods to a connection. It is thus only useful if the industry is in the middle of the city and there is no way freight can get to a road connection at the edge. Airports give you demand busting based on a percentage of its commercial usage. A2.02.5: Industrial Busters Connections: Industrial demand depends on successful freight transfer to a connection. Think of freight as a different kind of Sim. Instead of wanting to go from residence to work place, freight goes from industrial area to a connection. Thus like the Sim it too is affected by traffic. An experiment is that when I placed the industrial zone in the centre of town or in a city without connections, growth is minimal. But when placed at the edge growth starts to increase. There are some buildings that have demand busting capability. Therefore it is ESSENTIAL to have connections.

Note 1: The numbers beside the land connection represents the number of connections to the same neighbour. While I only provide for two, it does NOT mean that any connection after is ineffective.

37



Table A2.02.5: Industrial Busters $C : Construction cost $M : Monthly cost to maintain or income for Army Base IM : Manufacturing IH : High tech industry ------------------------------------------- Structure | $C | $M | IM | IH | ------------------------------------------- Adv. Research C. | 0 | 0 | 0|150000| Radio Station | 0 | 0 | 9000| 0| University |12000|1500| 0|100000| ------------------------------------------- Army Base | 0 | 350|100000| 0| -------------------------------------------

skyscrapers can be constructed in your lovely city. If you wish to see the effects of demand caps, there is a simple experiment that can be done. Simply start a new city and carry on building without constructing any demand busters. As you reach 20,000, you will see that the demand for poor ($) Sims residence will taper off until it hit 0. At that point start placing in some demand busters and you will see it increase demand rise again. Alternatively, you could work backwards and demolish demand cap buildings and see your population drop.

A2.02: Demand Caps A2.02.1: Demand Caps and Busters concept There is a capacity limit for residential, commercial and industry, which prevents growth above certain levels. The only way to get past these limits is to bust them, hence the term demand busters. The demand busters are mainly structures and connections.

1) Calculation The mechanics behind this from what I gather is that upon reaching the capacity, the growth will fall to zero and this will be represented in the RCI chart. If capacity has been reached halfway then, the maximum growth can only be half. However, as Patch 2 has raised the RCI chart maximum to 6000 demand units (Du), it is unlikely at least in the beginning to reach the maximum. Here is a simple formulation of the factors involved in demand: RCI Demand = or < Current Demand Cap > or = Maximum Actual Potential Demand RCI Demand: The demand that you see in the RCI charts. The demand that actually impacts on your city. Current Demand Cap: The total demand cap after adding up all busters and initial capacity. In other words this is what demand might have been if your maximum actual potential demand is high enough. Maximum Actual Potential Demand: The demand that would have been, if there had not been any demand caps.

2) Patch 2 RCI increase Also, because of the increase in maximum (Du), it may seem to you that demand is low less than a sixth of the maximum, but in reality that demand is quite good. For those who did not play the game prior to Patch 2, you have to realise that the maximum used to be 1000. So having 500 (Du) was quite high the last time. If you are wondering, this increase in demand is not merely cosmetic. The increase is in real terms and not just a reworking of the then 1000 (Du) into an alternative proportion. The reason for this increase is I believe in response to the complained of low rate of appearance of some skyscrapers. It was only by increasing the demand that these higher wealth

Determining Current demand cap To determine what your cap is, simply add up the inherent capacity to all the demand busters. To determine the number of busters you have for residential area simply go to the budget, which will show the number of buster buildings you have in the city. A1.02.2: Inherent capacity Each city starts off with a similar initial base limit. These here are the starting capacity. Commercial Services: There are no demand caps for commercial services. Farming: Demand for agriculture unlike others are calculated by taking into account all the other industrial jobs. Therefore the more dirty, manufacturing or high tech industries there are the less one can build agriculture. Thus if you have 20,000 non-agriculture industrial jobs, only 10,000 agiculture jobs are available. Basically as your city develops farming demand will fall. This accounts for why some people claim that if the land had been previously constructed upon, farms would not take root there. It actually is mostly because of demand and also perhaps desirability. Table A2.02.2: Starting Capacity LW : Low wealth residential MW : Medium wealth residential HW : High wealth residential F : Agriculture ID : Dirty Industry IM : Manufacturing industry IH : High Tech industrial population COM : Medium wealth offices COH : High wealth offices CS : Low / Medium / High wealth commercial services

38



----------------------- Zone | Start Capacity | ----------------------- LW | 20,000 | MW | 2000 | HW | 1000 | F | 30,000 | ID | 14000 | IM | 7000 | IH | 4000 | COM | 3000 | COH | 2000 | CS | 0 | ----------------------- A2.02.3: Residential Busters Removing residential capacity is a simple matter of placing the buildings in the city. You can try the experiment I suggested above to test for the effects of these buildings. REFER: A2.02.1: Demand Caps and Busters concept

A2.02.4: Commercial Office Busters Commercial busters are mainly fulfilled with connections, be it land or air. There are also buildings that seemingly seem to boost my demand. For land-based connections, there is a diminishing rate of returns for each similar connection, such as 5 roads, to the same neighbour. While a connection to "Sim Nation" is considered as a connection, multiple connections even on all four sides will still be viewed as a connection to one neighbour if there are no cities there and all are represented as Sim Nation.Looking at the table A2.02.4, you will soon realise that you can easily get more demand from connections than an airport, hence my aversion to airports. Ports: Airports generally serve commercial demand relief, and seaports industrial relief. However, airports do provide some industrial relief. Airports must thus be connected to commercial areas and that the commercial zones can reach the airport. Only then

Table A2.02.3: Residential Busters LW : Low wealth residential MW : Medium wealth residential HW : High wealth residential $C : Construction cost $M : Monthly cost to maintain ------------------------------------------------------ Structure | $C | $M | LW | MW | HW | ------------------------------------------------------ Recreation | | ------------------------------------------------------ Basketball Court | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Beach | 70 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Community Garden | 70 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Gazebo | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Large Flower Garden | 310 | 35 | 7000| 7000| 7000| Large Park Green | 320 | 25 | 2500| 2500| 2500| Large Plaza | 400 | 35 | 9000| 9000| 9000| Medium Flower Garden | 170 | 20 | 3000| 3000| 3000| Medium Park Green | 160 | 15 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Medium Playground | 210 | 25 | 3000| 3000| 3000| Medium Plaza | 210 | 25 | 4000| 4000| 4000| Open Grass Area | 40 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Open Paved Area | 40 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Playground | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Ranger Station | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Skateboard Park | 210 | 25 | 4000| 4000| 4000| Small Flower Garden | 80 | 5 | 750| 750| 750| Small Park Green | 40 | 5 | 250| 250| 250| Small Plaza | 90 | 10 | 1000| 1000| 1000| Soccer Field | 340 | 35 | 5000| 5000| 5000| Softball Field | 400 | 35 | 6000| 6000| 6000| Tennis Court | 130 | 15 | 4000| 4000| 4000| ------------------------------------------------------ Reward | | ------------------------------------------------------ Country Club | 0 | 0 | 0| 0| 8000| Disease R. Lab |26000| 180| 0| 10000| 10000| Farmer's Market | 4900| 30| 20000|150000| 0| Major Art Museum |13000| 90| 0| 6000| 6000| Major Leag. Sta. |48000| 340|300000|300000| 0| Minor Leag. Sta. |17000| 120|200000|200000| 0| Opera House |28000| 200| 0| 0| 5000| Private Sch. | 0 | 0 | 0| 0| 6000|

does it offer relief based on its usage,The relief of the seaports are not fixed but operates on a percentage of the industrial activity at the port. Thus having more activity means greater demand relief.

39



Radio Station | 0 | 0 | 0| 9000| 0| Resort Hotel | 0 | 0 | 0| 5000| 5000| Stock Exchange | 0 | 0 | 0| 0|125000| Tel. Studio | 0 | 0 | 0| 3000| 0| Tourist Trap |10000| 210|100000| 0| 0| University |12000|1500| 0| 15000| 15000| ------------------------------------------------------ Table A2.02.4: Commercial Office Busters CO : Medium and High Wealth offices COM : Medium wealth offices COH : High wealth offices $C : Construction cost $M : Monthly cost to maintain ----------------------------------- Buster | $C | $M | CO | ----------------------------------- Land | | ----------------------------------- Road (1) | 0 | 0 | 10000|/\ Road (2) | 0 | 0 | 5850||| Rail (1) | 0 | 0 | 10000||| Rail (2) | 0 | 0 | 5850||\\\ Look at: Highway (1) | 0 | 0 |100000||/// Note 1 below Highway (2) | 0 | 0 | 58496||| Subway (1) | 0 | 0 | 20000||| Subway (2) | 0 | 0 | 11699|\/ ----------------------------------- Airports | | ----------------------------------- Small Strip |20000| 700 |10200| Med. Strip | 5700| 900 |13100| Large Strip | 5700| 1100|16000| ----------------------------------- Small Municipal |35000| 1225|28800| Med. Municipal | 6400| 1450|34100| Large Municipal | 7200| 1700|40000| ----------------------------------- Small Int. |50000| 1750|70000| Med. Int. | | |80000| Large In | | |90000| ------------------------------------------- Structure | $C | $M | COM | COH | ------------------------------------------- Convention C. |32000| 220 |100000|100000| Tel. Studio | 0 | 0 | 10000| 0| University |12000|1500 | 15000| 0| -------------------------------------------

connection. Thus like the Sim it too is affected by traffic. An experiment is that when I placed the industrial zone in the centre of town or in a city without connections, growth is minimal. But when placed at the edge growth starts to increase. There are some buildings that have demand busting capability. Therefore it is ESSENTIAL to have connections. Ports: Similarly as stated above, seaports cater to industry demand but airports play a small part as well. Ports are merely another form of connection. Therefore if you wonder why is it not being used, a reason could simply be because the freight finds a better way to send their goods to a connection. It is thus only useful if the industry is in the middle of the city and there is no way freight can get to a road connection at the edge. Airports give you demand busting based on a percentage of its commercial usage.

Note 1: The numbers beside the land connection represents the number of connections to the same neighbour. While I only provide for two, it does NOT mean that any connection after is ineffective. A2.02.5: Industrial Busters Connections: Industrial demand depends on successful freight transfer to a connection. Think of freight as a different kind of Sim. Instead of wanting to go from residence to work place, freight goes from industrial area to a

40



Table A2.02.5: Industrial Busters $C : Construction cost $M : Monthly cost to maintain or income for Army Base IM : Manufacturing IH : High tech industry ------------------------------------------- Structure | $C | $M | IM | IH | ------------------------------------------- Adv. Research C. | 0 | 0 | 0|150000| Radio Station | 0 | 0 | 9000| 0| University |12000|1500| 0|100000| ------------------------------------------- Army Base | 0 | 350|100000| 0| -------------------------------------------

categories are further sub-divided to reflect the different intensity of each level. There are eight stages for residential and commercial buildings are three for industrial. Therefore whenever someone refers to a "stage 8" building it simply refer to the pinnacle, or the crème de le crème, or apex, or is the personification of skyscrapers. I hope that was clear enough. Send me a mail if you want more, I could go on all day with words such as epitome, embodiment or

A2.03: Here comes the Skyscraper A2.03.1: Proportionality Concept There have been confusion as to why skyscrapers do not appear and for some there is confusion over whether is a building a skyscraper. I have decided to give a more detailed explanation due to the amount of discussion this topic has raised in the forums.However, the following are just some of the mechanics behind skyscrapers. It does not really matter if you do not understand them since even knowing them will not aid you in getting a skyscraper.

1) Theory of proportionality and regions There are several points to note about how skyscrapers appear. Central to this is the idea that buildings in a city must correspond to one popular European civil law concept. Any guesses? Read on or just look at the title of this topic, if for some reason you cannot guess the name of the concept.

a) The most obvious is that it is dependent on population but less obvious is that it is the regional rather than the individual city population that really matters.

b) Skyscrapers will not suddenly spring up across the entire city and on every tile the moment you reach a sufficient population, which allows the first skyscraper to appear.

c) An corollary of (B) is that only a proportion or percentage of buildings in the city will be skyscrapers and this percentage is dependant on the population of the region as stated in (A).

d) Since the appearance of skyscrapers means that population of the city will increase, there is a need that growth limits have not been reached. You thus have to focus on the detailed RCI chart rather than the general RCI chart on the menu.

REFER: A2.02.1: Demand Caps and Busters concept 2) Stage Levels

Proportionality must be based on different categories. That is unless you can make a mathematical breakthrough and teach the world how can one compare the proportion of an item with it oneself.

a) Buildings do not just fall into three levels, low, medium or high. Each of these

quintessence. Just to be clear it does not mean that all "Stage 8" buildings are high wealth ($$$). They are just the best of its own wealth type. So there are also ($) and ($$) "stage 8" buildings. However, for ease, I will just focus on the main categories since it is quite difficult to discern amongst the sub-categories as to which building belongs to which category.

b) The significance of the sub-categories, is simply that when you achieve a higher standard, the percentage of higher density buildings will increase significantly. For those who know a bit on economics, this is somewhat like the issue of NAIRU and the shifting of the Phillips curve. For those who do not, you could go do a bit of research for the basic concepts of this theory are quite simple. If you do so, at least you can claim that games are "educational."

3) Bugs There are two reported bugs that you should take note of.

a) There might be a skyscraper bug, which makes it such that skyscrapers may not appear. This seems to have been fixed with Patch 2, most probably with the increase in the RCI demand.

b) There may be a bug whereby skyscrapers appear on mid-density zones, especially for residential zones. But I have yet to encounter this.

A2.03.2: Residential and Commercial skyscrapers There are some points to take note about the chart.

a) As stated above, I will be focusing only on the main categories.

b) The population level in the graph does not represent the total population. It represents the various types and wealth level individually. Therefore having 5000 middle wealth residents and 5000 rich residents means that you should be looking at the 5000-population level rather than the 10,000.

c) Table A2.03.2 does not represent a

41



combination of residence and commercial population. It is just that their growth proportions are similar so I placed the two charts together to save space.

d) Finally the following is just a very rough estimate. The main idea is just to give you an inclination of when might you expect to see a higher density building.

A placement at 0% simply means that it is less than 5%. Table A2.03.2: Residential and Commercial |\| : High density buildings |=| : Medium density buildings |-| : Low density buildings % : This represent the percentage of buildings. ------------------------------- |Region Res Pop. or Comm. Jobs| ----------------------------------- % |0|1|2|3|7|1|1|2|2|3|4|5|7|9|1| | |1|4|1|0|1|5|0|6|3|4|7|4|6|2| | |0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|5| | |0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0| | | | | | |0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |0| ----------------------------------- 100 |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| 95 |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| 90 |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| 85 |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=| 80 |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=| 75 |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 70 |-|-|-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 65 |-|-|-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 60 |-|-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 55 |-|-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 50 |-|-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\| 45 |-|-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\| 40 |-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\| 35 |-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\| 30 |-|-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\| 25 |-|-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\| 20 |-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\| 15 |-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\| 10 |-|-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\| 5 |-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\| 0 |-|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| ----------------------------------- A2.03.3: Industrial Mega Factory Since low density industrial is agriculture, there are only medium and high level density buildings.

42



Table A2.03.3: Industrial |\| : High density buildings |=| : Medium density buildings % : This represent the percentage of buildings. ------------------------------------- |Regional Industrial Job Population | ----------------------------------------- % |0|2|4|7|9|1|1|2|2|3|4|5|7|9|1| | |4|1|0|0|1|5|0|6|3|4|7|4|6|2| | |0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|5| | |0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0| | | | | |0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |0| ----------------------------------- 100 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 95 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 90 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 85 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 80 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 75 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=| 70 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\| 65 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\| 60 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\| 55 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\| 50 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\| 45 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\| 40 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\| 35 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| 30 |=|=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| 25 |=|=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| 20 |=|=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| 15 |=|=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| 10 |=|=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| 5 |=|=|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| 0 |=|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| -----------------------------------

2) Self-Contained biosphere One of the odd things about pollution is that it is contained within each city and does not spill over. It is as if each city has its own energy shield containing the pollution within the city that pollutes. Something that I am sure Canadians would like to install on US. So take advantage of this and build your dirty stuff at the edge of the city. However, within city, the pollution can be affected by the weather or even the height of the ground. Zoom out to see the direction of the clouds and air pollution will be slightly extended in that direction. You use the mountains if you so have in the city to contain the pollution.

3) Sources of Pollution Almost every structure produces pollution but I will just state those that are the more pernicious of the lot.

a) Some Power plants These include in the order of how big a polluter they are: (1) Waste to power (2) Coal power (3) Oil power (4) Natural gas.

b) Toxic waste dump The most versatile of the lot, it contributes to air, water and even radiation pollution.

c) Heavy Traffic (Air + Noise) As your city increases in size, this is one area which you find hard pressed to fight against unlike the other types of pollution. With relation to traffic noise, remember congestion is not the cause of traffic noise. It is the huge amounts of traffic that created the congestion that is responsible for the noise. But you might ask whether is this just the flip side of the same

A2.04: Pollution A2.04.1: Concept of Pollution Unless you have been living in Laa-Laa land and spending time with Po, Tinky-Winky or Dipsy you should know about the idea of pollution. And just have the events surrounding the Kyoto Protocols shows, it is only with the help of the government or the Mayor in this case, can pollution be combated.

1) Spread of Air and Water pollution There are two types of pollution, air and water. Water pollution often can be easily dealt with and its effect are not as bad as air pollution. Often the key focus would be on air pollution. The pollution effect weakens as one moves away from the source. Pollution is also "stackable." This means that if building "X" produces "P" amount of pollution and if building "Y", which also produces "P" amount of pollution is near "X", the total pollution in that area would be "2 x P." There is another form of pollution although it is not stated so in the game. That is traffic pollution or traffic noise. It only affects residential housing.

coin. Actually no so because it is possible to have high traffic without congestion and low traffic with congestion. For example a congested street will not generate as much noise as a more heavily used road but which is a road that is not congested.

d) Dirty and Manufacturing Dirty being more polluting than manufacturing.

e) Farms (Water) They only generate water pollution but they do it in the bucket loads. They produce no air pollution, obviously since they cannot stand air pollution.

4) Tree huggers Only densely packed trees have any power in combating heavy pollution. The rest such as a country club, large gardens and parks or cemeteries simply will be overwhelmed.

5) Radiation The radiation from the toxic waste dump disappears over time. But the radiation you get if your nuclear power plant decides to do a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, last for a very long time. Long enough for you to contemplate using the time-machine and sending the city back to its founding days.

43



A2.04.2: Effects of Pollution Pollution pretty much affects the game the way it affects our real lives.

a) Desirability It reduces the desirability value for certain zonings. REFER: A2.01.1: Concept of Desire

b) Health It reduces health quotient and thus life expectancy. REFER: A1.06.7: HQ and LE: Health Quotient and Life

c) Mayor Rating Reduces mayor ratings.

d) Water shut down If the water pollution around your pumps or towers is too high, it will shut down and Erin Brockovich will go after you until you have reduce the pollution.

e) Death I have heard that pollution may result in the death of MySim. Therefore, the simple overall effect of pollution is that it affects your profitability. A2.05: Theories of Growth A2.05.1: * Globalization and Trade There is a debate about the true direct effects of neighbours. But it is generally agreed that they do indeed help the economy or demand in the city. What is not too clear is how is this benefit sent over. What is certain is that connections become more effective thus being a greater demand buster. However, the more questionable issue is whether demand can be transferred across the borders to another city. It is in my opinion that it is possible.

1) RCI Main Bars The main RCI bar the one you see along with your Mayor bar rather than the detailed chart that appears when you click on it represents regional demand. This regional demand can in time be very different from the detailed city demand chart.

2) Unfulfilled Potential Growth Before we proceed, bear with me as I further clarify the concept of demand. ECI demand that you see does not reflect the growth of the city. You can have high RCI demand and yet the economy of the city is stagnating and also vice versa, you can have low demand but the city is growing and booming. Think of this demand as a form of cash which is spent when buildings are constructed. Thus demand simply means unfulfilled potential growth.

3) RCI has cross boundary effects So the question is what is the effect of this RCI demand or unfulfilled potential growth? Let me show you its effect with an experiment:

a) Select two cities "X" and "Y" that are neighbours with each other and that there is no one else in the region. Also make sure that BOTH have fairly substantial positive RCI demand.

b) Fiddle with the taxes of City "X" until its RCI demand is stagnant. Wait for a while to

make sure the city has truly stagnated. c) Go City "Y" and also stagnate the RCI. d) Return to City "X" and let the city run for a

while. The RCI should have changed. Hence suggesting that something must have occurred, but since it was fine before you left for a very long time, the only conclusion is that it was caused by the neighbour. If it did not I have a good explanation, which I will tell you below under" (3) Optimistic estimation." But first to show you that RCI is affected by neighbouring RCI.

e) Remain at City "X" and raise taxes to ridiculous levels and wait for the massive fall in RCI. Save and leave it.

f) Return to City "Y" and see you formerly fixed demand go into a free fall.

4) Optimistic estimation The reason for the lack of change is that the game adds demand to the RCI demand of the other city when doing the calculation for the demand of its city. As seen from the experiment above, the higher the RCI demand the greater the RCI demand is in the other city. But at low or even zero RCI demand, there seems to be a positive effect on the other city. Hence suggesting that the city gives a higher estimation. The result is thus that not only do RCI demand affects neighbouring cities but that because of the optimistic estimation, there is even greater benefit to regional play.

5) Driving out of Town Now it seems that the experiment might not always turn out right especially if the fall in demand is triggered by taxes. It seems there are times where a tax induced fall in demand may result in an increase in demand for that particular type of zoning in the neighbours. A2.05.2: Perfect Mobility of Labour This should be obvious to anybody right now. Unlike in the real world, the Sims have no qualms about leaving the city. Without the basic facilities, jobs, water, electricity, people will leave within 3 to 6 months. Jobs here also include the inability to commute to work and also if they cannot find a job that matches their education and wealth status. The more problematic issue relates to distressed buildings. You need to resolve their problems before they leave. Simply send in your special agents to discover the problem. They should be able to file a field report to you very soon about the problem. In case you have not figured it out the mayor's special agents is the My Sims. If you do not want to play them nor do you want to evict them because it seems wrong, you can always send them in, discover the problem then reload.

44



A2.05.3: Job Matching and Hierarchy

1) Job matching Just because job A is on offer and citizen B is jobless does NOT mean that citizen B will definitely take the job on offer. That is one of the reasons why buildings especially industrial ones get abandoned over the years even if you did not raise dirty or industrial taxes. It simply might be vacant because of a lack of supply of labour. While it is not only education per se that determines the type of job one takes, it is quite an important determination, the other being wealth level.

2) Education and Wealth level However, education pushes people out of the lower wealth type of employment much faster than wealth level does. For example, a highly educated person will not desire to work in dirty industries. And they will after a certain level of education NEVER work in dirty industries. However even a high wealth person with low education will still work in dirty industries although he may not really desire it that much. The education pushing out effect is more pronounced in industries than in commercial jobs. A slightly educated person will not even work in agriculture at all.

3) Hierarchy While a workplace may state that it is a high wealth ($$$), that does not preclude it from hiring lower wealth people. This is quite logical for while the company produces high end services, not everybody is paid as much as the CEO or executives. There are also the office boys and cleaners working there. Conversely a low wealth workplace is not precluded from hiring a $$$ resident for the same reason that she might be the manager of that dirty factory. The table below shows the type of jobs and their corresponding wealth level demands. I have arranged it in a rough manner such that you will know what to expect as your city gets richer. Of course education also plays a part too.

A2.05.4: Demand and Supply

1) Demand = Supply There is a basic rule of zoning. That is demand for jobs must match the supply for jobs. That is the amount of residence should correspond to the amount of commercial and industry. Make sure you also take into account the issue of age of the residents in the city. An expansion on the idea of unemployment and oversupply is that, do not be over zealous when you zone. The city may start constructing on all the lots but upon their completion, your supply shoots up so greatly that demand becomes negative. Then your buildings will soon be abandoned within a few months of its construction.

2) Further Illustration I have created a graph to further illustrate the situation. I hope it is clear, if not, just focus on the demand and supply concept above.

a) Factors Affecting Demand: Factors affecting demand such as taxes, education, wealth levels, health, population, demand caps and neighbouring aid.

b) RCI This refers to the demand that you see on the chart as opposed to the demand for zones.

c) Supply of zones: Supply is almost fixed, since only you can decide when to zone more or denser. But the rise there reflects the fact that as (F) the factors affecting demand is raised, there is a greater possibility that more denser buildings will be built. However, the levelling off shows that once all the zones are fully built up for their level of density, supply is again fixed.

d) Demand for Zones: There are 3 demand curves. the (1) curve occurs when there is still place to expand denser. The (2) curve occurs when the expansion into denser buildings is taking place. The (3) third occurs when the city is maxed out at current density levels.

Table: A2.05.3 Services and Offices are both created by Commercial zones L: Poor Sims M: Middle Class Sims H: Rich Sims ---------------------------------------------- Percentage |10|20|30|40|50|60|70|80|90|100| ---------------------------------------------- Farm |LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL| Dirty |LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL| $ Services |LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL| $$ Services |LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLMMMMMMMMMMMMMH| Manufacturing |LLLLLLLLLLLLLLMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMH| $$$ Services |LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLMMMMMMMMMMMMMHH| $$ Office |LLLLLLLLLLLMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMHHH| $$$ Office |LLLLLMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMHHHHH| High Tech |LLMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMHHH| ----------------------------------------------

^ 1 2 3 RCI| \ >>> \ >>> \ | \ \ \ | \ \ --\---- Supply of Zones | \ \ / \ | \ \/ \ |------\----/\ \ | \ >>> \ >>> \ Demand for Zones |______________________> 0 Factors Affectting Demand

sim compile section a v01

Entertainment & Humor