Great Works Management 

Ready to start your Great Works project? Well, hold on just a second. Great Works are long-term projects, requiring careful multi-city planning, coordination, and patience. Since you’re working together with other mayors, it’s crucial to decide on a mutually beneficial Great Works project appropriate for all participants.

You must also take into account the financial and logistical hurdles you’ll face when producing or buying the required resources for each potential project. Like all things in SimCity , a little planning and asking yourself the right questions can go a long way. So before you get started, here’s some advice to help get your grand vision off the ground.

Great Works Selection

Discuss Great Works projects with the other mayors and make sure everyone can contribute something to the construction process. Don’t try to go it alone.

Have you figured out which of the four Great Works your region will focus its efforts on? Before settling on a Great Works project, consult with all the mayors connected to the intended Great Works site.

The Great Works project only benefits and can be constructed by cities connected to the site with the highway, so there’s no need to have a meeting with every single mayor in the region—just those connected to the site and your city. Usually, each Great Works site is connected to at least three cities.

When playing in a region connected to different players, it’s important to get feedback from everyone before making a decision. After all, you’ll probably be relying on these other mayors to donate resources to the site, so it’s important everyone buys into the concept and is eager to play a role in the construction process.

While discussing the options with the other mayors, take into account the resources required to build each Great Works project and whether your region has ample resources to meet those demands. When a decision has been made, any of the mayors connected to a Great Works site can initiate the project, assuming all prerequisites have been met. It costs 1,000,000 to submit the application for the project, and this must be paid by one mayor.

However, other mayors can contribute their own money to the pot by gifting Simoleons to the mayor responsible for submitting the application—if everyone kicks in 250,000 it’s not such a steep financial commitment. Once the 1,000,000 has been paid, there is a slight delay while the application is approved. Take this time to ramp up production of resources within your cities so you’re ready to start delivering construction materials to the site.

City Specializations

Every Great Works project requires alloy. Turn to the metals business and a city site with both raw ore and coal to begin producing this universal construction material at a Smelting Factory.

Due to the enormous amount of resources required to construct each Great Works project, it’s a good idea to gear your cities toward producing only one or two types of construction materials. But such specializations should begin early on, not after submitting a Great Works application.

If you have raw ore and coal beneath your city, it’s best to pursue the metals business and begin producing metal and alloy from a Smelting Factory. If your city has large oil reservoirs, pump that crude oil out of the ground and process it into plastic and fuel at an Oil Refinery. Both the Space Center and Solar Farm require the completion of a research project at a University.

If your city already has a University, pursue the electronics business using a Processor Factory and Consumer Electronics Factory to crank out processors, computers, or TVs—the University ensures these factories have a steady supply of skilled workers, helping boost production. With each connected city specializing in one city specialization, it reduces the amount of time required to gather the necessary construction materials to build each Great Works project.

Construction

Choose which resources to donate to the Great Works site and watch as trucks deliver the required materials.

Once the application for the Great Works project has been approved, each city can begin shipping materials to the site. But first, go to the Great Works site and sign up to contribute to the project by clicking the on/off toggle button beneath the appropriate resource—only contribute if you have the ability to produce one of the three resources.

Once you’ve signed up to donate a particular resource, the Great Works site will begin drawing material from your city’s Trade Depots and Trade Ports. If you’ve been exporting these resources, open the Manage Global Market Deliveries window at each Trade Depot and Trade Port and choose Use Locally for each resource you’re donating to the Great Works site.

This ensures all produced materials stay put until they can be transported to the Great Works site. For best results, conduct all transfers from a Trade Port. These facilities are capable of storing vast quantities of materials, ideal for supplying the Great Works site.

Add more Delivery Truck Garage modules to the Trade Port to increase the flow of materials to the site—all materials are transported by truck along the regional highway. Little by little, construction resources begin trickling in at the Great Works site, as indicated by the green vertical meters in the Great Works Construction window.

Even if all cities are prepared, the gathering of resources takes a long time. Instead of watching the trucks flow into the site from the various cities, turn your attention to your city and ensure the supply chains for each business are operating at peak efficiency—don’t forget to deal with other problems in your city as well.

The Trade Port is essential to supplying the Great Works site with the required construction materials. Keep a close eye on your city’s supply chain to ensure frequent deliveries.

When all the required material has been gathered at the Great Works site, construction can begin. During this phase, each city needs to supply workers to the site—a Great Works project won’t build itself. Make sure your cities have plenty of residential neighborhoods zoned to accommodate the large number of workers required at the Great Works site.

This could be a specialization in itself, with one residential city contributing the bulk of the workers. Like gathering resources, constructing the Great Works project takes a long time. Although it can be fun watching the gradual process, don’t get too distracted. While gawking at the Great Works site your city continues functioning, and there may be problems arising you should be paying attention to. Don’t worry, the Great Works project will soon be complete, benefiting all connected cities. It’s a long and arduous task, but in the end, the effort is worth it.

Great Works: Points to Remember

Great Works can be initiated by any city once the requirements have been met.
Cities must be connected to a Great Works site to benefit from it.
Great works can provide power, jobs, tourism, and economic boosts to a city.

Great Works Achievements

Icon	Name	Criteria
	We Are Not Alone (Secret)	Ship any resource to a Space Center Great Work to gain access to the UFO Encounter disaster.

Chat with the Developers

Specializing SimCity

Stone Librande, Lead Designer

Hello again! This is Stone Librande, the Lead Designer of SimCity . One of the great things about working on this game is seeing the incredible progress the team has made. Every day I’m treated to another exciting new addition to the game: a new glass and steel skyscraper, a group of skateboarding Sims in a park, or the sight of the moon reflecting on the water as the sun goes down. It is truly inspiring to be working here with the talented team at Maxis.

One feature of the game that I have been concentrating on is the area of city specialization. SimCity allows a single player—or a group of players if you choose to play with other aspiring city builders—to connect up multiple cities in a larger region and share services and resources.

This means that you don’t need to put a power plant (or a Water Treatment Plant, or a Fire Station, or a school…) in every city in the region. Instead, you can focus on the types of buildings that make your city special and then have other cities supply the additional things you need. For example, you could make a completely suburban city with only houses and parks. Support it with a neighboring industrial city and your Sims will commute down the highway each morning on their way to work and then return back again at night.

You can also start up a city specialization (or two, or more) in your city. City specializations are new to SimCity and offer a unique way to play. In essence, they let you take on the role of a business mogul in addition to your typical role as the Mayor. There are five city specializations in the game: metals, petroleum, electronics, trade, and gambling.

Each city specialization has a corresponding leaderboard, which makes it easy to see how you compare to other players operating that same business. Your rank is determined by the total amount of profit you have made during the last twelve game months. This encourages smart play, since you need to optimize your profits each month over the year; simply grinding away for long periods of time isn’t an effective strategy to get to the top.

Three of these city specialization types revolve around manufacturing. The first two, Metals and Petroleum, rely on extracting resources from the ground and processing them into more valuable resources. If you want to get involved in these specialties, make sure to inspect the region to find where the coal, ore, and oil deposits are before you claim your city.

As you advance your metals business, you can dig up larger quantities of coal and ore. You can make even more money if you start a Smelting Factory to convert your minerals into metals and alloy. If you opt for a petroleum specialization, you can drill for oil and then use a refinery to convert it into fuel and plastics.

The third type of manufacturing, Electronics, doesn’t need to dig up its resources; it converts shipments of metal, alloys, and plastic into processors, TVs, and computers. These high tech resources have the highest profit margins, but you will need a substantial investment in education and transportation infrastructure if you want to keep your factories humming.

The Trade specialization is all about buying low and selling high. It typically means your city will have many trucks, freight trains, and cargo ships moving goods into and out of your city. The key to a successful city is to import when the global market price is low and export when the price is high. Around the office, a lot of us tend to specialize our cities around one form of manufacturing plus a little bit of trade. This helps us get our metals, petroleum, or electronics resources to the market more efficiently.

Finally, there is the Gambling city specialization. This one is my personal favorite. It is a great choice for players that want to focus on tourists instead of markets. Your goal with a gambling city is to attract as many tourists as possible, which requires building airports, docks for cruise ships, train stations, and buses. But getting tourists into your city is only half the battle. You need to keep them there by building hotels and other entertainment options. Watching a bustling neon-filled casino city come to life at night is mesmerizing.

No matter how you choose to specialize your city, it is important to remember that it is your choice. Feel free to mix and match traditional SimCity buildings (schools, parks, Police Stations, etc.) with city specializations. Decide your proportion of residential, commercial, and industrial by zoning. Make a simple town with trailer parks or maximize your density with skyscrapers.

Supply the region with power and water or buy it from someone else. There is no right way or wrong way to play. Discovering the benefits and drawbacks of the multitude of combinations is one of the hallmarks of SimCity !