Every
SimCity
player approaches the game with his or her own goals and gameplay style. If you’re looking for new ideas, it’s often helpful to see what other players are doing. Through the Region View, you can visit other cities in your region to see what your fellow mayors are up to. Who knows, they may have developed some cool ideas for their road network.
Or maybe they’ve overcome the supply chain challenges associated with city specializations. Feel free to take a look and learn from your neighbors’ successes and mistakes. Want to know how the developers play? Here’s a few cities created by members of the
SimCity
development team, giving you an idea of what’s possible in the new
SimCity
.
High Wealth-High Tech:
Where Self-Reliance is King (or Queen)
by Chris Schmidt, Tuning Designer
I wanted to develop a city that had high wealth joined with high tech industry. A place where you could go to the local coffee shop and meet the woman who invented a way to de-salinate ocean water based on the biology of penguins. That’s my city.
I wanted to maximize the space in my city, because I knew I’d be building a University. I started with a standard grid layout for my roads , with a beltway loop that connected everything and could serve as the main artery for public transit. I filled the in-between spaces with smaller residential neighborhoods.
To speed up the increase in land values, I placed the City Hall at the center of the city, and built schools at the edges of town. This way, I knew I was increasing land value and happiness for my entire city, and was ensuring that everyone was getting an education .
I checked the terrain for wind direction and resources, and zoned for industrial business in the optimum areas. I started small with industry, enough to generate some income, but not too much that my Sims were getting sick from pollution. I planned to zone for more industrial development once I had an educated workforce, so the industry could be green and high tech.
I grew the city by zoning for residential development, and increased my land value with strategically placed parks and needed services. And when I say needed, I mean it. I really kept the services to a minimum: one fire station, one clinic. By starting out small, and with low industry, I didn’t have much need for a lot of services.
The schools and parks also kept the crime rate low. I also kept things at a low density at first, to keep the demands low. I took out bonds, and began to slowly accrue money, and then invested in building a University, along with the departments that allowed me to develop more high tech industry. I started with solar power , then, as the demand grew, had a more polluting power source. Once I had educated my Sims and built up some income, I built a Nuclear Power Plant.
I started this city as a self-sustaining metropolis, and for a long time it was. I had plenty of jobs, and my Sims were pretty happy. As the population grew, however, the challenges started growing too. At about 130,000 Sims, there were big problems with garbage, sewage , and water . I had run out of space. I was going to have to demolish a section of my city to deal with these issues.
I did put in a garbage incinerator, but that was a pollution nightmare. I realized I had not placed my water plant in an ideal spot, and could have avoided some of the problems with better placement when I first began development.
I’m still playing this city, two and a half years in (about 10 hours of play). The challenges keep changing. As soon as I solve one problem, another develops. I am building another city in the region, and have decided it is okay to rely on others for some things. A little.
Healthy, Pretty,
Circle City
by Kyle Brown, Level Designer
I wanted to build a city that made my Sims happy. There would be huge tracts of green open space, lots of opportunities for intellectual and cultural advancement, good health care, and no belching smokestacks. Oh, and no grids. Everything in this city would be aesthetically pleasing, right down to the gentle curves of its transportation networks. And so Park It Up was born.
Of course, I had to build a big, dirty, industrial city up in those ore-filled hills first.
This is not as awful as it sounds. As I have played this version of
SimCity
, I think about resources and services on a regional, rather than city level. I knew where Park It Up would be sited, but spent some time first developing the Ore Town. I made sure I had a City Hall, a Department of Utilities that served the region, and exportable resources and services (power , water , sewage ) before I started development of my healthy, pretty city.
The terrain of Park It Up already had an intrinsically high land value. I laid the city out in a circle with radiating spokes, and placed the Town Hall and some parks at the center of the city, so that they would radiate out to increase land values.
To get Park it Up started right, Ore City gifted 200,000 Simoleons, out of the goodness of their grimy hearts. This allowed me to zone mostly residential and commercial, and to build roads . I never over-build my roads , because they cost so much money. I start out with cheap roads , then upgrade as needed. With the spoke and wheel layout, traffic congestion has been low. The various connecting points give my Sims many alternate routes to avoid traffic jams.
I decided that tourism would be the major income source for Park It Up, so I added a Department of Transportation wing to my City Hall. I developed cultural attractions close to the train station and ferry dock, to minimize congestion in town. With placement of parks , educational buildings , and services, my land values stayed high, and my Sims stayed happy. I am able to keep my tax rates at about 10% across the board. Once the tax rates get to 11%, Sims start to fuss.
To develop high tech industry and jobs, I built a High School, because it can educate more students. A University is expensive, but if you want to go green, it unlocks the technology needed for clean power . I skipped building a Community College, because there are fewer benefits, and it also competes with the University for students.
At first, I didn’t need many services, and what I did need was supplied by Ore City. As my population hit about 50,000, though, Park It Up needed to pony up. I didn’t have enough water or power , and the garbage was not being picked up quickly enough by the Ore City volunteers. Park It Up citizens were getting a mite testy.
I solved the water /sewage problem by placing my Water Pumping Station right next to my Sewage Treatment Plant. This may sound a bit risky, but if you make sure there is no disruption of service, you end up with an endless loop of clean water supply.
The power situation was harder to address. I had started with a Solar Power Plant, but it wasn’t long before it could not meet the needs of the city. I ended up building a Coal Power Plant, because I did not have room for a Nuclear Power Plant. I have added a School of Science to the University, and students are researching the Concentrated Solar Array. This will add lots more power , using much less space than lower tech solar power collectors (25 MW vs. 8 MW). When space is at a premium, these things matter a lot.
Park It Up is doing well. I need to upgrade the Fire Department, but my Sims are so healthy that I don’t need a big Hospital. Sims are just like people. They will complain a lot about things you can’t fix, so sometimes you just have to ignore them. The Sims in Park It Up never complain about being sick, though, and that makes me happy.
Stadium City: GuiVille
by Guillaume Pierre, Lead Gameplay Scripter
I wanted to turn my sleepy little town of GuiVille into a tourist mecca by building a Pro Stadium in town. Since this was an experiment, I was working in Sandbox mode and using money cheats.
Here’s my little town of GuiVille, just as the sun rises over the hills beyond the river. The Pro Stadium takes up a pretty big piece of real estate, so I had to make space for it early in the development of my city. Even though the river offered a means of getting tourists to my city, I focused on getting as many tourists as possible to town by road, since the highway connection was so far from the water .
I wanted to see if I could start right off with an event that would make money and not cause gridlock in GuiVille. This was a gamble. Events at the Pro Stadium are expensive to put on, but the potential profits make up for it, and can become a sustainable source of income for a city. One thing I like about Sandbox mode is that I can set up challenges like this, learn from them, and then bring what I’ve learned into conventional play.
For this challenge, I knew I needed a good bus system that could bring in tourists from the region and from the region and beyond. In the foreground, you can see a fully upgraded Bus Terminal, with all the Municipal Bus Garage modules built.
In the background, there’s my Pro Stadium, a large sporting complex with soccer fields and basketball courts, and you can also see a little bit of my Expo Center. These buildings sure were expensive to build, but I think they’ll be worth it after a few successful events.
The other thing I needed to do was situate the Pro Stadium in my city so that the roads could handle a sudden influx of traffic. I built an avenue that provided direct access from the highway to the Pro Stadium, and built the Bus Terminal between the highway and the Pro Stadium.
I wasn’t thinking much about GuiVille’s neighboring cities at this point, so I didn’t check to make sure that these cities had Bus Stops. I just scheduled my first event and hoped for the best!
Just as I feared, the flood of Sims from GuiVille and my neighboring city are clogging up the main avenue leading to the Pro Stadium. At least the tourists are able to take a different route to the Bus Terminal and aren’t affected as much. But the traffic didn’t keep people away.
The event was a success! I turned a small profit and learned a lot about how to improve my city in the process. Next time, I’ll make sure that my friend in the neighboring city has enough public transit options so her Sims can come into my city more easily, and I think I’ll build a dock on the river so that cruise ships can bring in wealthy tourists as well.
It is also a challenge to build roads that limit how often cars have to stop, since traffic tends to get snarled up at stoplights. Here is another idea for how I would increase the flow of traffic, by flanking boulevards with local access roads . You can keep things looking nice and green with parks and trees.
Meltdown!
by Christian Stratton, User Interface Director
This is a sad story, sadder than it should be. One accidental nuclear meltdown is understandable. “Oh, he’s a new Mayor. Cut him some slack. It’ll be okay.” But, two? Well, no one is around anymore to say anything.
My city was beautiful. It was one of the first cities I got really excited about playing. It had a grand boulevard, a glittering downtown complete with the Empire State Building, a great bridge, and a burgeoning, happy populace of 130,000 souls with lots of tourists. I wish you could have seen it.
As the tourists and high wealth skyscrapers came in, the city started having brown-outs. Wind power was not generating enough energy for all of the TVs, the computers, the nightlife. I wanted to keep the city as unpolluted as possible, but there was no room for solar power . I eyed the bluff. It looked about right for a Nuclear Power Plant. Perfect.
Nuclear power is great! I immediately had gobs of good, clean power . Then came the warning: I did not have enough educated workers. My plant was at risk. I was not going to take any chances with this city. I got right into the education business and built a University. I had the money. This was a really good city. You could tell my Sims were hungry for learning. The University ramped right up, and thousands of students enrolled.
I was so busy building Dormitories, I guess I assumed my graduates were going to work at the nuclear plant, but apparently the damage had already been done. Radiation was leaking. I started receiving health alerts. Not just any health alerts—1,400 Sims were getting sick every day! This was unprecedented!
I needed to cure my populace. I shut down the nuclear facility, and built an Oil Power Plant for a temporary power supply. The Hospital, complete with Diagnostic Lab, Wellness Center, and all the extra modules went in. At this point, my population had dipped down to about 90,000, but I knew we could recover. I was tackling an enormous health disaster, and was successfully treating 800 Sims a day. Phew! This in itself was an exhilarating crusade
My population recovered, and, although people were still getting sick (it takes a while for radiation pollution to diminish), my health care system had things under control.
A little more time went by. Hey, I thought, I still want to realize that nuclear dream! That bluff just begged for another plant. I built it. I was sure I had all the elements in place for success. This time the meltdown wiped out the city.
I’m not sure what happened, but the whole city, except for a little sliver in the farthest corner, is so polluted with radiation that nothing will grow.
All the RCI buildings were abandoned and turned to rubble. Everything is still zoned, but no one is moving in. The buildings remained. Services quickly drained what was left of the city’s riches. I have since turned all the buildings off. What services it gets now come from the goodness of the neighbor cities. It has a trickle of revenue, and, for now, I am just letting it be—a gruesome, husk of a city in my region. I don’t know, maybe I can salvage it. What’s the half-life of uranium?
I am not a Square: Playing with Non-Traditional Layouts
by John Scott Clarke, Senior Javascript Engineer
I’m a big
SimCity
fan. I’ve been building cities since the first
SimCity
was released in the 1980s. Like most die-hard players, I was always looking for the most efficient way to lay out my city. Maximization was the name of the game—higher populations, higher profits, best use of resources. With this new game, however, I find myself taking a new approach. It’s those curvy roads .
What could I do with those curves? Why not make a city that looks like a face? Yeah! Here are two of the face layout cities I built and played, viewed from above.
With these cities, I drew the faces with higher density roads , and then linked these with dirt or low density roads to connect the series of circles. I figured I could upgrade those roads later, and this was a good, cheap way to get going.
I found out that there are some real advantages to these unconventional, curvy layouts, besides the fact that they are really fun (watch those cars go around that guy’s eyeball…). The flow of these cities, at lower populations, was very good. The circular structure of the city’s roads worked like traffic circles. There were fewer stop lights and choke points to cause traffic jams.
I successfully played both of these cities, although with the lower density roads , population was limited to about 5,000 Sims. If I had made the low density connector roads long enough, I could have upgraded them and increased the city’s density, but then I also ran the risk of traffic problems. With the higher density roads , there would be traffic lights at intersections instead of one-way stop signs.
With one-way stop signs on a circle with two roads connected to it on opposite sides, you can start to see an example of a single queueing node from queueing theory in action. Cars will enter the circle in a consistent rate, find where they need to go, and get out of the circle without getting held up by other traffic.
The one-way stop sign ensures that the circle itself doesn’t get backed by cross traffic like what would occur with a grid layout. If the circle does start to get backed up, that extra traffic will “queue” in the connecting roads instead of clogging up the circle.
Also, by using a stop sign instead of a stop light, as soon as the circle has more capacity, cars will continue to enter it without having to wait for the light to change. Cars exiting the circle don’t get held up either, provided there are at least two connecting roads on the circle.
With just one road, traffic doubles back on itself and ends up constantly backed up. You can see this same theory in action at those big warehouse stores where they have one or two lines that feed into dozens of registers at checkout. Turns out to be much more efficient then having one line per cash register.
Traffic doubling back on itself on inside circles plus too short of a connecting road between the larger circles caused a lot of unnecessary backup that could be resolved with better placement of the connecting roads , but that wouldn’t have looked as nice.
But the fun did not stop there.
There’s another factor, besides those curvy roads , that has impacted my gameplay. I have a six-year old daughter, and we play together. This experience has radically changed my approach to city planning. I decided to build a test city that would be a place where I would like my daughter to live. Someday.
My goal was to make a working city that was high wealth and sustainable with almost no industry. Also no casinos, even though my daughter thinks the casinos are magic. Casinos also bring crime, and I want this place to be safe. I would keep my city sustainable with tourism and education . I was not in Sandbox mode for this city, so my eventual goals, once I had the money, were to build an Expo Center and some landmarks to cement it as a tourist center.
I found a city with boundaries that spanned several islands in an archipelago. After I checked out the placement of resources, I built some long, curving roads that linked the islands with really cool bridges. I built main branch roads off the curving road for city development. This created a really interesting aesthetic.
To make this city work, I developed two other cities in the region that provided services and jobs. One city was heavy industry, with bus, rail, and ferry connections to my archipelago. Another city had a lot of low wealth residential and commercial zoning , with industry and services. These cities provided employment, workers, and certain services for my utopia of tourism and education .
I invested in developing the educational system in the city to increase land values. I did zone a small industrial area at the beginning, to get some Simoleons in the city coffers. Once the city had other sources of income, I increased the tax rates on my industrial zones, and pretty soon the buildings were abandoned. I got rid of the rubble, and rezoned the area for residential and commercial use.
I also used parks and other city services to increase my Sims’ happiness levels and land values. When I could afford it, I placed landmarks that also generated income. The Edifício Copan is also an apartment building that housed 150 Sims. The Globe Theatre puts on events that bring in Simoleons, so I planned to build that when I had the money.
This city has been successful. I had to think about region play to make it work right from the beginning, and develop cities that work together. I left room for some of the landmarks I knew I wanted to place. Don’t ever use up all your real estate until late in the game, unless you want to do a lot of destruction. And if you have a six-year-old child around, I recommend using them as advisors in your city planning process.
My Own Specialization City: Trash Town
by Jason Haber, Producer
Trash Town exists in the world for one purpose and one purpose only. We want your trash. And your sewage . We’ll take anything smelly.
My goal in developing Trash Town was to create a support structure for the other cities in the region: in this case, one city for all the bad stuff. This goal created its own interesting challenges in developing my city. Actually, running a garbage city is fun!
I knew right from the start that Trash Town would be accepting all the garbage and sewage from other cities in the region, so I wanted all these services to be close to the regional highway connection. To avoid congestion and traffic jams, I built a bunch of medium density loop roads off the main artery, and built my garbage dumps and sewage treatment facilities on these loops. This created a good traffic flow for all garbage-laden trucks and other regional traffic.
I had built up the other cities in the region first, so I gifted Trash Town some Simoleons at the outset to afford the needed facilities. My purpose here was not to make a city that made money hand over fist, but I did want it to be as sustainable as possible. I added Recycling Centers with all the modules, and built a Trade Depot.
Trash Town’s only source of income is, well, trash. Other cities in the region pay for each trip by a garbage/recycling truck and each piece of sewage that is sent to Trash Town. Recycled materials are traded on the global market, with a little bit of local industry on the side. There is no commercial sector. The other cities in the region still have to send funds (essentially, they are paying for the waste services), and I have to keep an eye on things to make sure Trash Town is not going down the toilet.
I freely admit that Trash Town does not think highly of my mayoral skills, but I don’t care. If you live in Trash Town, you’re on your own. There are no services. Other cities have to provide everything: water , power , police and fire protection, and health care. We can’t use our own water because it is so polluted. Trash Town is home to about 6,000 low wealth Sims. There is a rail connection, so Sims can come to Trash Town for work, or the locals can look for work elsewhere.
It’s a totally different experience to play a town like this—more strategic. I’ve started playing regions where one city will supply all of one certain resource to the region. It’s fun to see the trade map of the region with Trash Town.
The point here is that you don’t have to be limited to developing cities with the specializations that are in the game. You can make your own specialization. You don’t have to follow our rules. You can make up your own.
Build it Up: Starting a City
Chris Schmidt, Tuning Designer
When planning out how you want to begin building, you should first have a look at the resources available to you in the city by browsing through the data maps.
Once you’ve done that, all you need to do is figure out what kind of city you want to make. Various natural resources are available to exploit for additional Simoleons, and by taking a quick glance at the Land Value data map, you can get a sense of where the middle and high wealth Sims would prefer to live, provided you spruce up the place with parks .
Additionally, it’s important to make note of which way the wind is blowing, as setting up dirty industrial buildings upwind of the rest of your city will make your Sims sick from the air pollution. Instead, you should try and put them downwind so you can blow away all that nasty smog.
Fortunately, zoning and dezoning in
SimCity
is now free, in large part because the infrastructure cost that zoning used to represent is accounted for by tying zones to roads . But it’s important to keep an eye on your Simoleons as you make new roads and to start small, particularly in your first city.
Power , water , and sewage treatment will still need to be handled once your Sims have broken ground on their new homes. It’s a good idea to start thinking about where you are going to put your dirtier services like garbage and sewage , as well as any city specializations you want to pursue.
Specialization buildings (like the University, Gambling HQ, Trade HQ, etc.) also provide boosts and penalties to the area around them, and may have several buildings or modules that you’ll need to accommodate, so make sure you leave room in your plan for where they can do the most good and the least harm. Once you have an idea of what you want to do, you’ll want to start laying down your roads .
No city starts in a vacuum, so every new city begins by connecting a road to the highway (after all your people have to come from somewhere). Even though any road can be used, I generally like to start by building out a Medium Density Avenue as a main street coming into the city.
This street lets you get up to medium density buildings , and has the flexibility to be upgraded to add an additional lane, and even add streetcar rails along the center. These roads are pretty expensive, so to save costs and keep my grid tight, I then like to use two-lane roads or dirt roads to start building out the side streets to maximize my space and keep my usable area compact.
Depending on what specialization I am going for, I can use an avenue to make a direct thoroughfare to my resources, or I can start building out a beltway around my city to better manage the flow of people within the city. Once I have a few blocks laid out, I will start putting down my zones, so my Sims can get building and generating tax revenue for me.
Now that the city is underway, low wealth Sims will move in, but while they are eager to get a new start in your city, if you fail to get your basic services covered, they won’t stay for long. If I was a little overzealous in my initial layout, I can also take out loans to make up for the cost of these services. These are a great way to get a little bit ahead when used wisely. Loan payments can take a real toll on your city as it’s starting out, however, so make sure you keep an eye on your budget!
As my city grows, I will need to start thinking about density and traffic flow, so I will likely remove some of those two-lane roads to make larger blocks, and upgrade others to accommodate some of the larger high density buildings we have.
Keep in mind that any high density road will get high density buildings , not just the avenues, so when you upgrade your roads you had better be prepared for it with mass transit options and plenty of services, or the city’s demands will really start piling up! I hope this helped you get an idea on how to plan out your cities in
SimCity
. With a little exploration of your options and pre-planning I think you should have no trouble setting up a city from scratch.
PowerWaterTestville
by Dan Moskowitz, Lead Gameplay Engineer
I didn’t plan on caring about these poor Sims. I didn’t set out to build a dream city, or any city at all really. I just needed a way to test a certain power and water delivery issue to fix a bug. But while I played the city with the sole purpose of fixing the bug, it happened. The game made me care. I cared about my terrible city—my terrible city full of traffic congestion, pollution, crime, fires, and sickness.
The bug I was fixing had to do with delivery of water and power over long distances, so I created PowerWater-
Testville to help me do the job. I built a giant grid city and immediately zoned everything with RCI. I needed to make sure all the buildings were getting water and power when they were supposed to.
I did borrow a little money at the beginning of the game to build all those roads , but have not used any cheats or shortcuts since. As I was fixing the bug (and, yes, don’t worry, it’s all fixed), my city started to grow and I began playing the game.
It was fascinating to see what I had created. My poor Sims were miserable. I had dug a deep hole for this city, but I found I really wanted to make things better for my citizens. But that hole was really deep. I had taken a pristine coastline of glittering sands and turned it into an industrial wasteland. That’s what happens when you build your sewage outflow pipes right on the beach.
I had become emotionally engaged with this city, but not just because my Sims needed me. A lot of people play
SimCity
with a goal of maximizing efficiency and minimizing mistakes. I am more interested in the creative aspects of the game. I’m not trying to “win”, or see my name in lights on the leaderboards.
I realized that in three years of working on this game, some of the stuff I was seeing in PowerWaterTestville was a first. One thing I love about this game, you don’t have to fix all the problems if you don’t want to. I got fascinated watching the city grow, seeing how the citizens and systems managed with the hand that was dealt them. It was not a very good hand, but they kept on going, and I wanted to help them.
PowerWaterTestville has tons of money—over 8 million Simoleons at last count, mostly from its tax base. While money was no issue, it was also not the answer to everything. The problems in my city were not going to go away immediately. I had to address the root problems to start heading in another direction.
I started by upgrading some roads from medium density to high density, to change stop signs to stop lights. I had gotten fascinated in watching the traffic flows in town. There is no mass transit ; I like watching everyone get around by car, but it did cause gridlock at times.
As part of the debugging process, I had built a Pro Stadium at the end of a long access road, with only one way in and out. Just for fun, I scheduled a rock concert, and watched the entire city line up at the choke point of the stop sign at the access road entry. I’m sorry, but it was hilarious. The event was poorly attended, due to traffic problems, but I still netted
The two big problems I worked on right away were fires and health . I had no services, and the fires were getting out of control, putting the entire city at risk. I built one small Fire Station, but that hardly made a dent. Once I added all the garages for more fire trucks, the fire situation started to calm down.
I also became very handy with the Bulldozing tool, since I had so many abandoned buildings and rubble. Sims were leaving town because of the poor health conditions. I built a Clinic, and then I got lost watching my two ambulances navigate the city to pick up sick and injured Sims.
You can zoom way out and still see the ambulances with the flashing lights. These poor guys were driving all the time! It would take forever to get to their destination, pick up the sick Sim, and get back to the Clinic, but they kept right at it. You can’t keep a good Sim down.
The next big problem is the water . I have a slight ground pollution problem, so my water is compromised.
I barely upgraded my City Hall, and hadn’t added any modules, so I couldn’t build upgraded service facilities. When one water source became polluted, I would just build a new Water Tower in another spot. Once you have polluted ground and water , it is like a scar on your city. It is really hard to clean up, and takes a long time to dissipate. Besides that, I was going to run out of clean water ! It was clear that I needed to get help from neighboring cities.
I have started building a city next door that is all about education , and I am setting up systems for my Sims to use to commute. This will take time, but it will hopefully bring some high tech, less polluting industry into town. I need a Department of Utilities in the region so that I can get a Sewage Treatment Plant and a better Water Pumping Station.
PowerWaterTestville is an impoverished rust belt of a city with decaying infrastructure and few services. Part of me has watched this city limp along, and I have wondered what it would take to have everyone leave. How much sickness? How much rubble? How many buildings would have to go up in flames?
My city doesn’t need an alien invasion or giant lizard to come along and wreak destruction. It is quietly struggling along; a sad city, and I love it. It has taught me all over again that there is no right or wrong way to play this game.
