Prima Games eGuides
primagames.com Browse Redeem a code Help
SimCity eGuide
Sign in My Guides

Sign in or create an account

We'll email you a link. No password needed, and if you don't have an account yet, the link makes one.

By creating an account or signing in, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Have a password?

Had an account on the old eGuides site, or a code from a printed guide? Help and troubleshooting

Sign in with a password

By signing in, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Check your email

A sign-in link is on its way. It works once and expires in 15 minutes. Open it and you're in, with an account if you didn't already have one.

Contents

  • Essentials
    • Introduction
      • Introduction
    • Getting Started
      • Getting Started
      • Getting Started Scenario: Summer Shoals
      • Building Your First City
      • A Tale of Two Cities
      • Developer Cities
    • Roads
      • Roads
      • Road Construction
      • Road Planning and Management
    • Missions
      • Missions
    • Utilities
      • Utilities
      • Power
      • Water
      • Sewage
      • Waste Disposal
      • Utility Management
    • Zoning
      • Zoning
      • RCI Management
    • Government
      • Government
      • City Management
    • City Services
      • City Services
      • Fire
      • Health
      • Police
      • Heroes & Villains Set
      • Parks
    • Education
      • Education
      • Education Management
    • City Specialization
      • City Specialization
      • Mining: The Metals Specialization
      • Drilling: The Petroleum Specialization
      • Trading
      • Electronics
    • Mass Transit
      • Mass Transit
      • Streetcars
      • Trains
      • Boats
      • Planes
      • Mass Transit Management
    • Tourism
      • Tourism
      • Gambling
      • Culture
      • Tourism Management
    • Great Works
      • Great Works
      • International Airport
      • Solar Farm
      • Space Center
      • Great Works Management

    • Disasters
      • Disasters
      • Disaster Management
    • SimCity World
      • SimCity World
      • Achievements
      • SimCity World Interface
  • Regions
    • Region 1
      • Cape Trinity
    • Region 2
      • Whitewater Valley
    • Region 3
      • Reflection Atoll
    • Region 4
      • Viridian Woods
    • Region 5
      • Sunrunner Bay
    • Region 6
      • Discovery Delta
    • Region 7
      • Horizon Archipelago
    • Region 8
      • Titan Gorge
  • Behind the Scenes
    • Behind the Scenes
      • Maxis: A Closer Look
      • SimCity Legacy: The Whole Story
    • Quick Reference
      • Buildings
      • Diagrams
      • Effects on Happiness
      • Challenges
      • Achievements
    • Developer Cities and Chats
      • Developer Cities
      • Developer Chats
  • Updates
    • Nissan Leaf
      • Nissan Leaf
    • Various Updates
      • Various Updates

SimCity Guide › Essentials › SimCity World

SimCity World Interface

From the game’s main menu, click on the SimCity World button to open a window giving you access to the leaderboards, challenges, and global market. Use the information here to guide your gameplay and interact with friends and the community in new ways.

Leaderboards

The leaderboards are a fun way to see how your cities and regions stack up against the competition.

Select the Leaderboards tab to view how your cities and regions rank. There are a total of 15 leaderboards, allowing you to compete with friends or the worldwide SimCity community. The leaderboards are broken up into two sections.

The first ten leaderboards appear under the Stats tab, giving you breakdowns of the current leaders in population, Simoleons, wealth, approval rating, education, crime, health, sickness, pollution, and green regions.

The second set of leaderboards appears under the Headquarters tab and reveals the current city specialization leaders including metals, petroleum, trade, electronics, and gambling. Use the buttons at the bottom of the screen to filter the leaderboards based on just your friends, your own top regions, or the global SimCity community—even if you can’t place on the global leaderboards, try to at least beat your friends!

Challenges

The Challenges tab shows the current challenge available to all players. But the clock is ticking—better get started!

Choose the Challenges tab to view the current community challenge. Challenges add a competitive and goal-oriented element to a game that otherwise has no defined victory conditions. Take on these challenges to earn unique achievements, not to mention bragging rights. But completing challenges often requires the cooperation of your fellow mayors in the region.

For instance, the Black Gold challenge requires your region to sell 2,000,000 barrels of crude oil. But it’s not that simple. You must complete the challenge goal in the fastest time possible. The top 10% fastest regions will win the exclusive challenge achievement. Replay the challenge in different regions throughout the challenge period to see if you can improve your time. As a result, achievements awarded from challenges are super exclusive, instantly showing off your astute mayoral skills to friends and the community.

Note

New challenges are released on a regular basis. Click to the Quick Reference chapter for a preview of the first few challenges available shortly after the game’s launch.

Global Market

Keep tabs on the fluctuating prices in the global market and look for opportunities score some extra income for your city by importing and exporting out of a Trade Depot or Trade Port.

Ready to buy low and sell high? Access the Global Market tab to view the prices of all resources in the game. You can filter the chart to view data just for the last day, the last week, or the last month—prices shown are for a single truckload of each resource.

Use the information here to determine what resources to focus on exporting and what you can expect to pay if you need to import any resources. Prices on the global market are driven by real-time supply and demand. So if players begin dumping tons of coal onto the market, the price for coal will drop.

Likewise, if a resource like plastic becomes scarce as demand increases, the market price for plastic will rise. By playing the global market you can carve out a nice profit for your city through the trade business, importing and exporting resources from a Trade Depot or Trade Port.

Note

Global market prices are updated approximately every hour, so keep checking back frequently to identify potential profit-making opportunities.

Online Resources

SimCity Official Website

www.simcity.com

Make this your first stop for all things SimCity , including all the latest news, media, and community updates. Also, don’t forget to check out the forums, frequented by developers and some of the most knowledgeable players around the world.

SimCity Blog

www.simcity.com/blog

Head over to the SimCity Blog for more information directly from the game’s designers, including plenty of gameplay tips as well as an insider look at the game’s development.

SimCityEDU

www.simcityedu.org

SimCityEDU serves as a resource for classroom teachers who have a strong interest in utilizing digital platforms as a learning tool to drive student interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects.

Simtropolis

www.simtropolis.com

Simtropolis is a SimCity fan site with a very active and passionate community. Come here to find friends by participating in the forums or learn more about SimCity by browsing through the extensive omnibus or wiki.

Chat with the Developers

Popping the Bubble: Exploring SimCity World

Meghan McDowell, Producer

Hi everyone! My name is Meghan McDowell and I’m a producer on SimCity . I’ve worked at Maxis for eight years and I’m really pleased to be part of the new SimCity . Part of my role here at the studio is to shape the SimCity World feature.

SimCity World is a collection of features that enhance a player’s game experience by connecting them with one another. Through challenges, leaderboards, and the global market, SimCity World lets mayors shape their cities’ stories in different ways, connect and engage with each other, and contribute to a global SimCity community.

We built the SimCity World features as a way to surface that interconnected world to the player and show them how their gameplay can be complemented by being a part of it.

Part of our way of doing that is through CityLog, the tool that allows players to connect, notify, and act on events in SimCity . CityLog does a lot of things. It allows you to see if your friends have founded new cities in regions that you can join. Or it tells you that your friends have passed you on a leaderboard. If there’s a challenge going on in a region, it shows you your progress.

It even messages any global market changes you may want to take advantage of. Lastly, it lets you know about any achievements your friends are earning in case you want to strive to achieve the same ones. All of the messages you see in CityLog have an action you can take. You don’t have to act, but if you are looking for new and interesting ways to play (or just want to keep tabs on what your friends are doing), CityLog can help keep you up to date.

One of the new ways to play is through our regular challenges. Challenges are competitive, where regions compete against each other and vie to win exclusive rewards. Challenges are completely optional, but are a great way to prove to the world what kind of Mayor you are. They take strategy and coordination to succeed at. You can work alone, with your region, or with the entire community to complete them.

To coincide with challenges we also have leaderboards. There are many different types of leaderboards in the game and they encourage you to compete or simply to see how you compare to the rest of the mayors in SimCity . They range from traditional leaderboards like biggest population, more deviant boards like biggest polluters, and competitive leaderboards like most profitable casino city. You can compare yourself to the global SimCity community or to your friends. Right now, I’m gunning for the top of the Crime leaderboards in the studio. I’m quite the lawless Mayor!

The global market makes up the last piece of SimCity World, and it is here where goods and resources can be bought and sold. The market fluctuates depending on how our players are playing. Players can affect the global market by how they play. So if oil prices are up, players may decide to invest in oil drilling in their city so that they can profit from it by selling the goods to other players.

Before I go, I just wanted to say I’m having a lot of fun playing SimCity and every day something fun, unexpected, and amazing goes on in the game. I’m excited for all of you to get your hands on it. See you on the leaderboard!

Keep reading with a free account

The first 3 sections of SimCity are open to everyone. An account opens the rest of it, and every other guide in the archive. It's free, and there's nothing to buy.

Bought guides on the old Prima Games site? Your account and every guide you own moved here, so there's nothing to buy again. Sign in.

Create a free account Or browse our free guides

PreviousAchievements NextCape Trinity