8/28/2019 Download Game Simcity 3000 Pc
SimCity 3000 Unlimited 1.0 can be downloaded from our website for free. This tool was originally produced by Maxis Software Inc. / Electronic Arts. Our antivirus analysis shows that this download is malware free. SimCity 3000 Unlimited relates to Games. Create and control your urban empire with more power than ever before.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
FINANCIAL/BUDGET DEPARTMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 CITY PLANNING DEPARTMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 ENVIRONMENTAL DEPARTMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 PUBLIC SAFETY DEPARTMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND AURA DEPARTMENT (HEA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 UTILITIES DEPARTMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
OPENING MENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 THE BUILDING ARCHITECT WORKSPACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
OPENING MENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 NEW SCENARIO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 SCENARIO CREATOR COMMANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 PREPARING YOUR SCENARIO FOR LOADING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: EVEN MORE CLUES TO USING
THE SCENARIO CREATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
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HAIL TO THE MAYOR
HAIL TO THE MAYOR!
Welcome to SimCity 3000™ Unlimited! Congratulations on your entry into the elite mayoral force of this growing SimNation. Whether you’ve cut your political teeth as mayor in other SimNations, or this is your first elected office, there are a few things you need to know before you begin making executive decisions.
As Mayor, your power may seem unlimited. You can build roads, or decide to create a city where no one needs a car. You may want to try your hand at building an industrial powerhouse, or an island paradise. Perhaps you’d like to have both the Eiffel Tower and
the Empire State Building in your city. Or maybe you are one of those artistic mayors who prefers to design their own buildings. You have the power to create cities, buildings, strategies, even city goals that other mayors must try to fulfill. And your cities are not limited to your own imagination; you can share your creations and gain insights in global meetings with other mayors all over the world.
Did we say your power was unlimited? Not entirely correct. See those little beings walking about in your city? They are Sims, the inhabitants of any SimNation. Remember, you are holding an elected office. Those little beings canunelect you if they are unhappy with your mayoral decisions. There’s a lot of leeway here, as Sims come with all sorts of needs and desires. Some Sims want to live where captains of industry roam the streets and skyscrapers abound. Others harbor dreams of operating a farm on the edge of town, or of living in an
So get creative and unlock that shady Machiavellian side of yourself that rarely gets to let loose. If you read this guide, give ear to your advisors, and learn from your fellow mayors; you will be orchestrating the operations of a megalopolis sooner than you think. After that, who knows where your political aspirations might lead?
IMPORTANT: READ BEFORE YOUR INAUGURATION ! (OR HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL)
SimCity 3000 Unlimited is a game of strategy. If you follow theTutorials and read theResource Sections of this guide, you will become familiar with many of the tools and strategies needed to become a successful mayor. But there are endless ways to play
Already been a mayor? There is a good deal of new information in this manual. Look for flagged new features, and use the index to look up references to aspects of the game you would like to know more about.
Start by going through the Tutorial, especially if you are new to the world of SimCity. TheTutorial will give you
Use the Scenario Tutorials provided. These scenarios will introduce you to some more advanced building tools, and will help you become even more familiar with various aspects ofSimCity 3000 Unlimited.
Read this manual. There is a ton of information in here, both pragmatic and strategic. The Reference Guide tells you about the functions and menus on the screen. It’s a good idea to take a look at this so you don’t miss out on some neat application you may not have known existed. TheCity Departments section is full of good information on how cities in SimNation work. A good
SimLanguage got you confused? There’s a glossary of terms in the appendices of this guide.
Play. Experiment. Fail. The best way to hone your mayoring skills is to practice them. As you play SimCity 3000 Unlimited, you’ll create your own strategies to accomplish your goals.
In the middle of a game and forgot how to build a highway ramp? Use the index to help pinpoint the information you seek.
Want to know more? Use the SimCity website (www.simcity.com). There are all sorts of hints,
Share your skills. Use SimCity Exchange to expand your horizons. Talk to friends who have also been elected. There’s a whole community of politicos out there who may have developed a new twist for handling high pollution levels, or who think your architectural creations are worthy of Frank Lloyd Wright status. You’ll never know until you begin comparing notes!
Have fun! It’s a game!
TUTORIAL
TUTORIAL
This Tutorial walks you through the beginning stages of building a city and familiarizes you with some of the basic tools of SimCity 3000 Unlimited. There are many types of cities you can build withSimCity 3000 Unlimited and many ways to begin construction. Here’s one way to go about it.
STEP 1: LAUNCH AND LOAD
This tutorial calls for the use of a specific saved game.
1.The first thing you need to do is launch SimCity 3000 Unlimited. If you need any help, please see the Reference Card.
2.When the Opening Menu appears, select Load City, then open the city named
Tutorial.
Each time you start a new city or load a city, the simulation speed is set to Pause. Keep it that way for now so you can build in peace, without the demands of your incoming Sims. You’ll be ready for them soon.
STEP 2: SELECTING AN AREA TO BUILD
Simulation Speed Control
News Ticker
Well, here it is! This is where the magic happens. Over on the right, you have all of the tools you’ll need to build any kind of city you can dream of. This is called the Main Toolbar. Across the bottom of the screen, you have at a glance all the information you’ll need to make sure every gear is spinning just the way you like it. This is yourInformation Bar.
Your first step is to find a large open area to build your future
1.To scroll freely around the City View, click and hold the right mouse button then move the mouse in the direction you wish to scroll.
2.To center the view on your cursor,
3.Zoom In one level using the Zoom In button in the View Panel.
STEP 3: BUILDING ROADS
Transportation is critical to the growth of your city. Let’s build a few roads.
1.Click the Road button from within the Build Transportation button menu.
2.Move the cursor over to the City View.
You’ll notice that as you move the cursor into the City View window, the cursor will change appearance to indicate the selected tool. In this case, the cursor represents a transportation
3.Click and drag the mouse where you wish to place your first road. Create a road that is ten tiles in length.
The line you’ve drawn represents where the road you’re creating will be placed; it is called the Drop Shadow. Upon releasing the mouse button, theDrop Shadow turns into a road. If you cannot place an item, theDrop Shadow will turn red indicating you need to select a different location. If you start to place any item and change your mind about placement, you can cancel the action by making sure theShift key is pressed before you release the mouse button.
4.Build a series of straight roads along the grid to end up with a square that is 10 tiles by 10 tiles.
5.Continue drawing roads until your map looks like the following picture.
STEP 4: ZONING RCI
There are three zone types that Sims need in order to have a functioning city: Residential, Commercial and Industrial. Residential zones are where your Sims live. Commercial zones contain shops and offices. The Industrial zones contain various factories, industries and warehouses. Sims need a lot of room to live, so let’s zone the middle area you’ve created with your roads as residential.
Click on the Zone button on the Main Toolbar. A menu of icons will pop up. Click and hold the Residential button.
The Residential icon contains a submenu of options. The active item from each submenu is designated by aCheckmark. In the case of theResidential zone button, the default is forLight Residential. Once a different zone density has been selected in this submenu, it will become the new default.
Residential areas can be zoned in 3 different densities: Light, Medium, and Dense. This allows you precise control over what your Sims can build.
1.Move the cursor to highlight Medium Residential and release the mouse button.
2.Move the cursor to the City View and click on one of the corners of the 8x8 enclosed area, but do not release the mouse button.
3.Drag the zoning Drop Shadow until it covers the tiles within the 8x8 enclosed area.
4.Release the mouse button; the Drop Shadow will become a medium density residential zone. Don’t worry if you don’t fill in the square in one swipe. You can designate zoning by clicking on individual tiles if you need or wish to. For this tutorial, zone as many tiles as you need to fill in the square.
In the two remaining rectangles created by your roads, you want to provide an area where Sims will be able to work and shop.
5.Select Light Commercial from the Zone menu and fill one of the smaller enclosed rectangles.
6.Select Medium Industrial from the Zone menu and fill the remaining enclosed rectangle.
You should now have a layout that looks like the following image:
As you become more familiar with aspects of city zoning, you will find that you need plenty of residential areas to support the commercial and industrial districts of your city. Don’t be skimpy with providing your Sims with areas to live.
STEP 5: POWER
Sims need power, yet typically do not like living next to power plants. Usually, the more distance between power plants and residential zones the better. However, for the sake of this tutorial, pick a location just a short distance from your zoned area.
Ready to power your city? Click on the POWER PLANTS button located within the BUILD UTILITIES button menu on the MAIN TOOLBAR.
This brings up a window containing a selection of power plants. Because this city started in the year 1950, you have a very limited selection of power plants.
1.Select the coal plant and click the Checkmark to signal your choice and close the window. Then move the cursor to the City View over the area you have chosen to locate your power plant. Notice that the Drop Shadow for the coal plant is 4x4.
2.Place the coal plant with a
Now you need to run power lines from the power plant to the zones.
Select POWER LINES from within the BUILD UTILITIES button menu. Power lines are built just like roads; you can click and drag the DROP SHADOW in a line.
3.Draw a row of power lines that connects the coal plant to at least one point of any of your zones.
Move the speed of the simulator from PAUSE to full speed by clicking on the extreme right speed marker on the SIMULATION SPEED CONTROL located in the INFORMATION BAR. Then click the Run SIMULATION arrow to turn the simulation on.
For more information on what your Sims’ power needs are, please refer to your
Utilities Department..
STEP 6: BRINGING YOUR CITY TO LIFE
Are you ready to see your city come to life? It’s time to see the first fruits of your labor.
Let a few months tick by. Sims are starting to move into their new homes, and workplaces are being established. The types of buildings that are built reflect both the density and land value of that zone. For more information on the relationship between zones and land value, see the City Planning Department.
You can see time pass by looking at the Date next to theSimulation Speed Control. So what else is happening in your city?
1.Look at the RCI Demand Indicator in the Information Bar. This tool provides feedback regarding what zone types are in demand in your city. When the meter, or bar, for a zone type is up, that means the Sims could use more of that zone type. If the meter is down, then there is a surplus of that zone. It is possible to have the RCI Demand Indicator levels up even though you have a lot of that zone. See the City Planning Department for more information.
2.Pause the game again by clicking on the Pause Simulation button on the Simulation Speed Control arrow; it’s time for more additions to your city.
STEP 7: WATER AND GARBAGE
There are two more utilities that are absolutely essential to your Sims’ lives: Water and, yup, Garbage Disposal.
WATER
1.Click on the Meet button on the Main Toolbar. This is where you’ll go to meet with an Advisor or Petitioner.
2.Select the Utilities Advisor and select Briefings from the
3.Read through the briefing Getting Water To Your Sims.
4.When you’re done, close the Advisor Window and select Water Structures from within the Build Utilities button menu. This brings up a window containing a selection of water supplying structures.
5.Select the Pumping Station from the list of available water structures.
6.Move the cursor to a site near your zones in the City View window and place a Pumping Station by clicking the mouse button. Water pumping stations must be built near a fresh water source to operate. If the location you have selected for your water pumping station is not within two tiles of fresh water, the pump will have no pumping capacity. The easy solution is to create surface water (See the Landscape section of the Reference Section).
7.You need power to pump water to all of your Sims! Select the Power Lines button from within the Build Utilities button menu.
8.Draw a row of power lines that connects the nearest powered zone or power plant to the pumping station (Again, learn about power in your Utilities Department).
9.The pumping station holds and pumps water to the thirsty Sims, but we doubt they’ll come to the pumping station with buckets. You need to build a way for the water to travel to your Sims. You do this by connecting the water pumping station to the zones with pipes (but don’t forget that power!).
10.Select the Water Pipes button from within the Build Utilities button menu on the Main Toolbar. You’ll see this:
Whoa! Don’t worry! You are now looking at the Underground View of your city. This layer shows how your water pipes are laid out as well as all of the structures that are providing water. It also shows which tiles are watered by the pipes, and which ones are still out of reach. Notice the tiles change color from brown to blue within a few weeks of laying the water pipes. The tiles colored blue are watered. The only building you currently see is theUnderground View of your water pumping station
11.Click and drag a line of water pipes that connects the water pumping station to your developing zones. Again, this is done just as if you are building a road.
12.All tiles within seven tiles of any part of the pipe will be watered as long as there is water running in the pipes.
13.Start the simulator by clicking on the fourth tick mark (African Swallow) and then the Run Simulation arrow on the Simulation Speed Control in the Information Bar.
14.Let a little time pass and watch as water begins to radiate from the pipes to the zones. Watered areas will appear in blue in the
Underground View for pipes.
15.Now return to the above ground view by clicking on the View City Layers button at the top right of your Navigation Map.
16.Click on the Default View.
17.Now click on the Checkmark. You should be back in the land of clouds and sky.
18.Let’s pause the game again and deal with your city’s garbage.
GARBAGE
Since Sims are moving in and happily going about their daily lives, you should start seeing messages in the News Ticker (the text scrolling along in the Information Bar) letting you know what is going on in your city. The Sims may not be complaining about waste management yet, but trust
1.Click on the Meet button and then select the Environmental Advisor for a little talk.
2.Read through the Briefing on Dealing with Garbage, and then close the
Advisor window.
Pause the simulator again so you can do some more work while the Sims spend a little time in suspended animation. We’ve got to get to work on a landfill! Usually you’d want to keep a landfill as far from your city center as possible. For this tutorial, though, let’s put it relatively close in.
3. Find some land near your zoned area and then select Landfill from within the Zone button menu. Since landfills are a type of zone, you can place them in the same way you placed the residential, commercial, and industrial zones.
4. Zone a landfill that is 4x4.
You don’t need to worry about powering a landfill, but you need to be sure there’s a way for the garbage trucks to get there.
5.Build a road from the zones to the landfill.
6.Unpause the simulator again.
7.Zoom in using the Zoom button (+) in the View Panel and watch as garbage trucks start taking trash to the dump.
Over time the landfill will show signs of use. This is just one example of how SimCity 3000 Unlimited gives you visual feedback to let you know the status of your city. Always keep an eye on various aspects of your city to see how well everything is doing. The query tool and the maps view will help you watch over your SimCity and your Sims. These tools are discussed later in the manual.
STEP 8: PROTECTING YOUR CITIES
Safety is very important in your city. Without police and fire protection, how do you expect your Sims to sleep at night? You need to place a police station and a fire station to satisfy the security needs of your Sims.
1.Click on the Place Civic/Special Buildings button menu. Here you will find the Police and Fire Station buttons.
The submenu in the Police button contains thePolice Station. TheFire Station has its own button under thePlace Civic/Special Buildings button.
2.Place one of each building along the road near your landfill. If you place the buildings more than five tiles away from the zoned area (which has power), you need to run power lines to them from any powered building or zone. Not sure if they have power?
3.Click the Query button at the right side of the Information Bar. You can click on anything in your city with this tool and a window containing information about that particular item will appear on the screen.
4.Armed with your query tool, click on your newly built police and fire station. If they are not powered, you will need to run power lines to them.
Anytime you provide your Sims with a new water or power connection, make sure you are not in Pause mode when checking to see if the connection is working. Time needs to pass for the power to travel and water to flow. You might want to build in Pause mode, then run the simulation for up to a month before checking to see if buildings or zones are provided with water and power.
5.Got your information? To close the Query Window, click the Checkmark in the lower, right corner.
Keep in mind that having a single police department and a single fire station is fine as long as your city remains small. As your city grows, and your population of Sims multiplies, you will need to build more police and fire stations to keep everyone safe and sound. For more information on maintaining proper safety coverage, see the Public Safety Department section in this manual.
STEP 9: FINANCES
Did you happen to notice that as you built your roads, power lines, and water pipes a number of increasing value followed your cursor about? Did you think water pipes were free? Ha! Practically anything you build in your city comes with a pricetag. The monetary unit of SimNation is the
Simoleon.
1.Open the Budget Window by clicking
on the Budget button from within the Adjust & Review button menu. This is where you monitor and control the way you spend your money.
2.Look at the Police Budget line item.
3.You can adjust each budget by moving the Percent Sign Slider that appears to the right of each department name. Each slider has a marker. The marker represents the percentage of your annual budget the Advisor for that department wants you to allocate (and, just as in real life, your advisors are somewhat biased). Leave the Police and Fire Budgets at the spending levels recommended by your Public Safety Advisor.
4.At the bottom of the window, you’re told whether you are projected to make or lose money at the end of the year. If projections show you will lose money, you can try raising taxes to increase your income.
5.Click on the Income button at the top of the Budget Window
6.Adjust the tax rates for Residential, Commercial or Industrial categories by clicking on the Up/Down Arrow in the appropriate line to increase or decrease the tax rate.
Raising and lowering taxes can have large consequences for your city. While taxes are key to your budget, tax rates are also a means by which you can attract or discourage certain kinds of development in your city. Low residential tax rates will attract Sims to move into your town. Decrease the industrial tax rates and watch new factories (and pollution) pour in. Other factors can have an effect here, but understanding tax rates will help you immensely as you plan your city’s future. Check with your Financial Advisor for more information.
7.Look through and familiarize yourself with your city’s Income and
Expenditures.
8.Close the Budget Window by clicking the Checkmark in the lower right corner.
STEP 10: DATA MAPS, CHARTS, AND GRAPHS
You are not limited to visual feedback for information about your city’s status quo. Your advisors provide you with
1.Click on the View Data button located within the Adjust & Review button menu on the Main Toolbar. Choose from a list of subject maps on the left to see an overview of your city as it stands now.
2.Now click on the Chart and Graphs buttons to review all the kinds of information you can access and compare. You’ll get more information on these in the Maps, Charts, and Graphs section of this manual.
3.When you are finished looking at your city’s statistics, close any open windows by clicking on the X in the upper right corner.
STEP 11: DISASTER AND DESTRUCTION
Disasters happen all the time in the real world and SimCities are no exception. In fact, it seems as if more and more disasters are occurring all the time. As mayor, you may have to deal with several unforeseen disastrous events. You might also decide that you want to see what happens when an earthquake rumbles through, or a plague of locusts descends. Before you unleash anything in your city, it’s a good idea to save the game.
1.Click on the Save As button found within the Change Settings & Exit button menu; this opens the Save City Window.
2.Name the file anything other than Tutorial (otherwise you’ll save over this tutorial).
3.You can choose the location of the file in which you save your city, but let’s leave this one in the default directory.
4.Click the Checkmark to save.
Back to the game? Good. Time to destroy what you have created.
5.Press the Start Disaster button located within the Emergency button menu on the Main Toolbar and select Fire.
A fire will soon start in your city. The City View will automatically center on the location of the fire as it breaks out.
You can choose to turn off the Auto Go To Disasters feature in thePreferences Window from the Opening menu. You may also open the Preferences Window during game play under theChange Settings & Exit menu in theMain Toolbar.
During a disaster the Simulator runs at a very slow speed so you have time to deal with the effects. The Simulation Speed Control is disabled until the disaster runs its course. Once the devastating event is over, the simulation speed will return to the setting it was at prior to the disaster.
You have to hurry and get some firefighters out to the blaze before it reduces your city to rubble!
6.Click on the Dispatch Firefighters button, located within the Emergency button menu.
You have firefighters to dispatch because you built a fire station. If you had no fire coverage, your Sims would rally a volunteer group to dispatch at your command. Click on a tile near the fire.
This dispatches one of your two fire
7. Click on another tile near a fire to dispatch your second fire unit.
8.If you click on yet another tile, it will move the first of your two dispatch units to this new location.
9.Continue to dispatch your fire fighting units to surround the blaze until you manage to put it out.
Ready to move on?
10.Once you have either put out all of the fires, or your city is burnt to the ground, click on the Load City button from within the Change Settings & Exit button menu in the Main Toolbar.
11.You will be asked if you want to save your current city. Select No, and then click on your saved game when the Load City window comes up. Voila, good as new!
As you continue to explore what you can create as Mayor of a SimCity, Sims will continue to ask for more and more things (keep your eye on the News Ticker!). It’s up to you to make their dreams, as well as your own, a reality. Feel free to continue building this city, or start a brand new one. The choice is yours!
SCENARIO TUTORIALS
SCENARIO TUTORIALS
Want a little more experience before you dive in? Scenarios are cities which require you, as mayor, to perform certain tasks and achieve specific goals in an already existing city. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of help along the way. Just remember to read your News Tickers and any
If you are at the Opening menu:
1.Click on Play Scenario.
2.Select one of the Tutorial Scenarios from the browse menu.
3.You’ll see a Thumbnail of the scenario town and a description of what you’ll learn on the left.
4.Found one that sounds interesting? Click on the Checkmark and SimCity 3000 Unlimited will get the tutorial ready for you.
5.Don’t feel like doing a tutorial right now? Click the X at the top right and you’ll return to the Opening menu.
If you are playing a game:
1.Open the Change Settings & Exit menu on the Main Toolbar.
2.Click and hold the Load button, then select Scenario from the submenu.
3.You’ll see a window that asks if you want to save the current city. Make your selection.
4.After you’ve saved (or declined to save) your current city, the Load Scenario window will appear.
5.Follow the above procedures so that you can play one of the Tutorial Scenarios.
THE JOY OF MAYORING: A REFERENCE GUIDE
THE JOY OF MAYORING:
A REFERENCE GUIDE
This section gives you a breakdown of the tools, buttons, and menus you’ll see in SimCity 3000 Unlimited.
OPENING MENU
After you launch SimCity 3000 Unlimited, theOpening Menu is the first place you’ll begin making decisions. You have seven options in this menu:Start New City, Load City, Starter Town, Real City Terrain, Play Scenario, Preferences, andExit. Each option is detailed below.
START NEW CITY
NEW CITY OPTIONS WINDOW
When you click on Start New City, your first step is to determine yourNew City Options. You’ll need to fill in information or make selections in the following areas:
MAYOR NAME This is how your Sims will address you. Select any name less than 50 characters. Those seeking your attention will address you as Mayor ‘MAYOR NAME’, so take this into consideration when choosing your name.
Once you make your selections in the New City Options window, click on the Checkmark.
TERRAIN EDITOR
map edge map center
After you make your city option selections, you’ll see the Terrain Editor window. You may decide the pictured terrain is just fine, or you may choose to sculpt your city’s look from the ground up.
Click Accept This Terrain at the bottom of theTerrain Edit window to immediately start building your city using the terrain you see in the City View window.
Click
You may also create your own personalized city terrain by using the features of the Terrain Edit window as described below:
The above controls give you quite a bit of creative control over your city’s terrain, but you can get even more specific. The following features allow you to micromanage the topography of your town. You can create trees and lakes and mountains while you are playing the game too, using the Landscape button on theMain Toolbar. But if you make changes during game play, it’ll cost you. Make your adjustments here and add a forest of trees for free.
Remember to click on
LOWER TERRAIN Clicking on this button will allow you to choose where in your landscape you would like to lower elevations, perhaps creating a canyon, or a river valley. As tiles are lowered, the surrounding terrain will lower as well.
Are you delighted with your topography? Ready to build your next urban empire?
STARTER TOWN
If cities are allowed to grow by themselves, their layouts may have charm, but often lack a guiding principle of organization. Some hardy souls realized this and began to decide how cities should look before they were built. Many of the city plans which evolved from these
early (and more recent) urban designers are used to guide city growth throughout the world. These templates are available to you in the form of Starter Towns. These are
1.From the browser menu on the Load Starter Town window, highlight your selection. You will see the selected town layout in the city view box at the left of the window. Click on the Checkmark.
2.This will bring you to the New City Options window, described above.
Make your selections, decide upon your town’s ‘look’, and click on the Checkmark. Your city is
LOAD CITY
The Load City button allows you to load prepared, downloaded, and saved cities from both SimCity 3000 and SimCity 2000.
Select the city you’d like to continue playing and click the Checkmark. That’s all there is to it!
REAL CITY TERRAIN
SimCity 3000 Unlimited offers players the ability to build upon terrains based on geographic data from real cities all over the world. From Hong Kong to Detroit, you’ll find many of the world’s major cities here. How would London look if you had arrived there first?
1.Highlight the city terrain upon which you would like to build.
2.Click the Checkmark to proceed to the New City Options window described above.
LOAD SCENARIO
With SimCity 3000 Unlimited, you have the option to play the game in scenario mode. Scenarios are cities that come with certain goals or parameters for their development. Your challenge, as the newly elected mayor, is to either achieve the explained goals, or to maintain your city within the set parameters. See the section on theScenario Creator for direction on how to create your own scenarios for game play.
Want to give it a try? The Play Scenario button allows you to access prepared scenarios for game play. You may also access theLoad Scenario window while playing a game by clicking and holding theLoad button located within theChange Settings & Exit menu on the
Main Toolbar.
1.Select a scenario from the browse menu at the right of the Load Scenario window.
2.A Thumbnail image and a Scenario Description of the selected scenario town will appear at the left.
3.When you’ve found a scenario you’d like to play, click on the Checkmark.
4.SimCity 3000 Unlimited will load the selected scenario, and you’ll be ready to play!
PREFERENCES
Everyone likes to run their city a certain way. Select the choices among the options of the Preferences menu that will make you a happier Mayor. When you have made your selections, click on theCheckmark to return to theOpening menu.
PERFORMANCE
These settings allow you to fine tune your game to suit the performance of your system. When you turn any of these settings OFF, SimCity 3000 Unlimited will run at a faster rate.
OTHER ANIMATIONS This selection includes building animations and graphic effects that are not essential for game play (e.g., neon signs on buildings).
SCREEN RESOLUTION This selection will allow you to set the screen resolution of your game window. The smaller the size, the faster the game will run. Changes in screen resolution will not take place without restartingSimCity 3000 Unlimited.
GENERAL OPTIONS
SOUND
Check or uncheck the boxes for these options to turn the selection On orOff. The sliders increase or decrease the volume.
IN GAME MUSIC Control the volume or toggle ON/OFF the selection of scores that will be played in random order throughout game play.
AMBIENT SOUND The noise of your city that you hear when you zoom in and get close to your Sims.
SOUND EFFECTS The noises you hear when you do action items in the game.
ENABLE 3D SOUND This option is available only if the game has detected the necessary hardware.
MUSIC CHOICES
Highlight a music selection and preview it by clicking the Play Button below the list of selections. Check the selections you want to hear during game play. Selections that are left unchecked will not be included in the random selection of music. There are several new selections available inSimCity 3000 Unlimited. See if you want to add them to your sound loop.
EXIT
Just like it sounds, this button will exit the game.
INFORMATION BAR
The Information Bar across the bottom of your screen gives you citywide information at a glance. Keep your eye on all the information available here. It helps you to read and predict certain situations, and will guide you as you make your next policy decision.
NEWS TICKER
See the messages scrolling along at the top of the Information Bar? These are NewsTickers. News Tickers will tell you about everything going on in your city, from premonitions of disasters to what’s happening at the skating rink. If a town teen would like you to build a Haunted House, or your Financial Advisor has an issue to bring to your attention, you’ll be informed on yourNews Ticker.
News Ticker messages are coded by color.
You will now see News Tickers when you play scenarios, and can write your own when you create scenarios in theScenario Creator.
CITY NAME
Your city’s name will appear here.
POPULATION
The current population of Sims living in your city appears here. Don’t assume your population will continue growing ad infinitum. This might be the first place that lets you know that raising those residential tax rates was perhaps not such a good idea.
FUNDS
This is where you’ll see your current funds balance. The currency of the SimNation is called the Simoleon.
DATE
This is the current date of your SimCity. New inventions come along as the years pass (the date especially impacts what kinds of utilities you can build), and demands of your Sims change with the passage of time. The faster your simulation speed is set, the faster time will pass. While the simulation is paused, time stands still.
SIMULATION SPEED CONTROL
Want time to move slowly, relatively speaking? Want to see the months fly by? You can control how quickly time passes in your city using the Simulation Speed Control.
Simulation
PAUSE SIMULATION You can halt time’s effects by pressing the Pause Simulation button.
RUN SIMULATION Unpause the simulation by clicking on Run Simulation.
RCI DEMAND INDICATOR
The RCI Demand Indicator tells you at a glance whether your Sims are clamoring for more residential zoning, or if you have zoned for more industrial buildings than are currently needed. Demand is indicated above the letters, oversupply below.
QUERY TOOL
The Query Tool can be used to obtain information on any structure within your city, even trees! Want to know if a certain building or piece of land is supplied with water and power? The information that appears in theQuery Window will change depending on the structure you query. For instance, if you query a power station, you’ll see information about its maximum capacity and current usage. If you query a house, you’ll see the density of its residential zone and its land value. To use theQuery Tool, click on theQuery icon, then scroll about yourCity View and highlight the item you would like to know more about. Click on the highlighted item, and theQuery Window appears. A few more things you’ll want to know about theQuery Tool:
The Query Window includes the command that will allow you to replace individual buildings in your city with
NAVIGATION PANEL
The Navigation Panel allows you to rotate your map, zoom your view in or out, or go to a specific point in your city. Using theLayer Views button, you can also decide to view your city’s subterranean systems, or customize your above ground view.
NAVIGATION MAP
The Navigation Map gives you an aerial view of your city’s entire terrain. Click anywhere on the map to center yourCity View on that location.
Rotate Map Clockwise:Rotates your Navigation Mapand City Viewclockwise.
Rotate Map Counterclockwise:Rotates your Navigation Mapand City Viewcounterclockwise.
Zoom In: Zooms yourCity View in one level each click.
Zoom Out: Zooms yourCity View out one level each click
VIEW CITY LAYERS
This button gives you access to the View City Layers window. From here you can turn on and off the display of certain city elements and have quick access toData Views in yourCity View. Determine view options by clicking on your selections, then click onApply. Your chosenCity View, above or below ground or city layer views, will update to reflect your choices. Click on theCheckmark to close the window and have the selected view serve as yourCity View.
ABOVE GROUND
Checking or
Transportation: Toggles ON/OFF all of the transportation networks in your city.
Power Lines: Toggles ON/OFF all of the power lines in the City View.
Flora: Toggles ON/OFF all the trees in theCity View.
Zoned Buildings: Toggles ON/OFF all of the zoned residential, commercial, industrial, airport and seaport buildings in the City View.
Other Buildings: Toggles ON/OFF all
Zones: Toggles ON/OFF the zones in theCity View.
UNDERGROUND
Any good mayor knows her way around her city’s subterranean systems. The Underground view gives you a quick way to check out what’s going on in the bowels of your town. In both underground views colored areas indicate the following: brown represents open terrain; bluish brown represents where natural
water appears above ground; gray represents where roads are placed above ground; dull orange represents zoned yet undeveloped areas; and bright orange represents zoned and developed areas.
Subways: This underground view shows the city’s subway system as well as the underground portion of the subway system transit buildings.
Water Pipes: This underground view displays the underground portion of your water structures as well as the water pipe network. Once watered, an area will appear blue (opposed to bluish brown representing natural water above ground).
CITY DATA VIEWS
These radio button selections enable display of the selected Data Views in yourCity View window. You may only display one set of data at a time.
Aura – the higher the intensity of blue, the better the aura.
Crime – the higher the intensity of red, the more crime.
Density – the higher the intensity of blue, the higher the density in the area.
Electric Power – powered areas vs.
Flammability – the higher the intensity of red, the higher the fire hazard.
Land Value – the higher the intensity of blue, the higher the land value.
Pollution – the higher the intensity of red, the higher the pollution.
Traffic – the higher the intensity of red, the higher the density of traffic on that road or transit system.
APPLY
Once you have adjusted the settings, Apply will update yourCity View to reflect your choices. Toggle between view types using theAbove Ground, Underground andCity DataViews buttons.
DEFAULT VIEW
Returns all of the above to their original settings, after you click on Apply.
TERRAIN GRID
Click on this to turn ON/OFF the display of the tile grid in your City View.
CHECKMARK
Clicking on the Checkmark will apply the current view selection to yourCity View and will close theView City Layers window.
HIDE TOOLBARS
You can use the Hide Toolbars button to toggle the information and main toolbars ON/OFF. You might want these interfaces turned off to give you an unobstructed view of your city. You can still use theHotkeys (listed in theReference Card) to get things done.
MAIN TOOLBAR
CANCEL PLACEMENT You can cancel the placement of any item by holding down theShift keybefore releasing the mouse button. Be careful, if you end up building something where you don’t want it, you pay both for its construction and for the demolition crew.
Ready for a rundown of your executive powers? Here we go.
LANDSCAPE
Need a mountain? Are your Sims clamoring for water? The Landscape menu is where you shop for all of your terrain editing needs. When it comes to placing items like trees or surface water (a lake, a river, perhaps a marshy area), a single click or a click and drag of the mouse in theCity View will place those items. The terrain modifying tools alter your landscape by creating areas of lower or higher elevation, or getting rid of annoying dips and rises that are in the way of construction.
The Landscape menu tools are the same as the tools described in theTerrain Editor section ofNew City Options. We’ll list them here as well as there are a few differences in how they work in the game. Just remember, if you edit your city’s terrain before you’ve started the game, it’s free. When you build lakes, or flatten ridges during game play, it costs you precious Simoleans. And, once again, the tools are:
Plant Trees: Click on this button and then click, or click and drag, on the tiles where you would like to plant trees. The more you click, or drag, the more trees you’ll place. If you click on the same tile repeatedly, your trees will become redwoods, or giant palms (depends on the kind of Trees you chose in yourNew City Options
Create Surface Water: Click on this button and then click, or click and drag, to place ponds, lakes, rivers, or marshlands on undeveloped tiles.
Lower Terrain: Clicking on this button will allow you to choose where in your landscape you would like to lower elevations, perhaps creating a canyon, or a river valley. As tiles are lowered, the surrounding terrain will lower as well. You cannot lower terrain if buildings or other structures like bridges are affected.
Raise Terrain: Click on this button and you have the power to create mountains. Add some gently rolling hills, or create a precipitous peak. You cannot raise terrain if buildings or other structures like ponds are affected.
Level Terrain: Click on this button and you can level terrain at any elevation. Click and drag to choose the area to be leveled. The selected area will level to the height of the first tile selected. This is especially handy when you want to build your new museum into that hillside at the east edge of the city.
Demolish: Click on this button and you can take out any
ZONE
A city that works well is zoned well. This is an area where you really need to draw on your city planning skills. In the Zone menu, you’ll find all of your zoning tools. Zoning means you designate a kind of zone, and the Sims will develop the appropriate buildings within that zone. Zones are placed by clicking and holding the mouse button and then moving the mouse to draw the desired zone shape. You can place a single tile of zone with a
What actually builds in the Residential,Commercial,Industrial,Airport andSeaport zones is up to the Sims. You are merely placing restrictions on types of buildings, kinds of business, and zone densities. But remember, zoning an areaDense Residential doesn’t necessarily mean that
RESIDENTIAL
The density choices are:
Light: Zoning for primarily single family homes.
Medium: Mostly smaller apartment buildings.
Dense: This density includes large apartment buildings and
COMMERCIAL
The density choices are:
Light: You’ll see some mom and pop stores, gas stations, and other small business.
Medium: This zone includes medium size office buildings and stores.
Dense: Large office buildings, large stores, and skyscrapers.
INDUSTRIAL
The density choices are:
Light: Depending on conditions, you’ll see agricultural areas, small manufacturing plants, and office buildings.
Medium: This zone includes office parks, factories, and warehouses.
Dense:
LANDFILL
Landfills are a cheap way to deal with your garbage, but they destroy the land upon which they are built and lower the land values of surrounding areas. Each tile of landfill can hold up to a certain amount of your Sims’s trash. As the landfill reaches capacity you will notice garbage piling up. Use the Query Tool on a landfill tile to find out the disposal capacity
SEAPORT
Zoning a seaport helps industry and commercial zones to grow, and opens an effective means of removing garbage from your city. Seaports must have water access to a neighbor and be at least 2x6 tiles to develop.
AIRPORT
Available beginning in 1930, airports help your commercial districts grow by bringing travel options into the 20th century. Who knows what travel options may be available in the 21st, 31st, or 41st centuries. Keep SimCitying and you’ll find out. Airports need to be at least 3x5 tiles to develop.
As ye shall zone, so shall ye
DEMOLISH
Click on any
BUILD TRANSPORTATION
Everything you need to create a smoothly functioning transport network for your Sims is available here, from roads to subway systems, train stations to highway ramps.
Transportation networks are drawn very much like zones, except they can only be drawn in a line (straight or diagonal). The types of transit you can build are: roads, highways, rail, and subway routes. To place a line of any of these items, click and hold the mouse button while moving the mouse where you want to place the object. As long as the Drop Shadow highlight is blue, the item will be successfully built. If the terrain or presence of surrounding buildings prevents your route from being placed, theDrop Shadow will turn from blue to red. The selected transit type will not be built along the path of the redDrop Shadow. See theTransportation Department section for more information.
City engineers will jump to your assistance in building some of those trickier transportation elements:
CONNECTIONS TO To make a connection to one of your neighboring cities, simply
The Build Transportation menu offers you the following construction options:
Roads can be placed as a single tile, or clicked and dragged to be placed in straight or diagonal lines.
HIGHWAY
Available beginning in 1940, highways are elevated,
Highway: To build a highway, select a location and drag the highway tool across the terrain, release the mouse button to place the highway.
highway intersection or highway to highway intersection. Position the OnRamp Tool in the tile adjacent to any corner of the intersection and singleclick. An
BUS STOP
Available beginning in 1920, bus stops must be placed adjacent to a road tile to be effective. Remember, Sims don’t like to walk very far, so if you want a bus system to be effective, make the stops convenient for your Sims.
Sims need bus stops only to get on the city busses. They can get off anywhere they like. You might want to factor this into your bus route planning.
RAIL
Sims won’t ride your trains unless you’ve built a train station to give them access. Within this button, you have access to:
Lay Rail: Trains run on rail.
Train Station: Train stations are where Sims get on and off the rail. Train stations must be placed adjacent to rail to be effective.
SUBWAY
Selecting the Lay Subway Rail tool will automatically place you in the underground view. The colors in this view indicate what you would see above ground; brown is open terrain (the darkest brown indicates terrain you can not build subways on), gray represents above ground road or rail, dull orange is zoned yet undeveloped area, and bright orange is zoned and developed area. Placing aSubway Station will leave you in the currentCity View, but these stations are visible in both above ground and underground views. The following items are available in theSubway submenu:
Lay Subway Rail: Available beginning in 1912, subway is underground rail. Trains transport your Sims in tunnels built under your city.
Subway Station: Also available beginning in 1912, subway stations provide your Sims access to the subway routes you’ve built. Stations must be placed adjacent to the subway rail to be effective.
SUBWAY TO RAIL CONNECTION
A necessary structure for mayors who believe in mass transit, this structure allows Sims to transfer from train to subway and
DEMOLISH
Does just what it says. Clicking on any
BUILD UTILITIES
Utilities are not very glamorous, but your Sims will move on in a hurry if you haven’t provided them with power, water, and garbage disposal. As time progresses in your city, new technology becomes available for you to provide these necessities to your Sims. New technology may cost a little more up front, but, in general, is more efficient and less polluting. Each utility includes buildings or structures that serve specific functions. Utility buildings require connection to developed zones in order to function. So be sure to connect your water structures to pipes, power structures to power lines (if necessary), and garbage disposal areas to roads. Here’s the rundown of your
The Power Line tool gives you the ability to place high voltage power lines. You can lay power lines in much the same manner you do roads. Sometimes high tension power lines are necessary. See theUtilities Department for more information.
POWER PLANTS
You will have a selection of up to nine different power plants with which to grace your city. Inventions occur during the course of time. Some of these plants will only become available as they are invented. Here’s a full list of possible power plants:
Coal Power: An inexpensive power plant to build, but costly in terms of the amount of pollution it creates. This plant is good for starting out, especially in cities which are developing in the early 1900s, but you’ll probably want to replace it over time with a source of power that is less polluting. The coal power plant becomes available in 1900.
Oil Power: Oil power plants don’t produce a lot of power, and they tend to pollute a fair amount. But, hey, they’re inexpensive! The oil power plant also becomes available in 1900.
Gas Power: You don’t get much power for the cost of natural gas, but these plants pollute less than the fossil fuel plants, and less smog makes for happier Sims. The gas power plant becomes available in 1955.
Nuclear Power: Please be careful when handling a nuclear plant. Why? The possibility of an explosion and nuclear meltdown is very real if these plants are used over their capacity. Use yourQuery Tool to keep an eye on any nuclear plants you build. Nuclear power becomes available in 1965.
Wind Power: Wind power is very clean. You’ll need many wind generators to power even a small sized city. Place these structures on top of hills to be most effective. If you play it right, these little guys can provide clean, inexpensive power to smaller cities. Wind power becomes available in 1980.
Solar Power: Ah, the sun. Solar power is rather expensive to maintain, but it’s very clean and may someday save this planet when fossil fuels run out. Solar power becomes available in 1990.
Microwave Power: A satellite up in space collects solar energy 24 hours a day and then beams it down to your Sims as microwaves. Microwave power becomes available in 2020.
Fusion Power: This plant won’t be available until 2050, but once you can get it, you’ll be glad you did. Fusion power, though expensive, is clean, efficient, and powerful.
WATER PIPES
This Water Pipes tool allows you to build systems of water pipes that will carry large amounts of water to an area. Selecting this tool will automatically place you in the underground view.Water Pipes are built in the same manner as
WATER STRUCTURES
Something needs to get the water into those pipes. Water structures are necessary for a working water system. You must connect these structures via pipes to the developed areas of your city. Water Structures come in the following forms:
Pumping Station: Pumping stations hold and process the water that the Sims drink. They must be placed directly next to a source of fresh water to pump at full capacity. Remember, you can create surface water with theLandscape Tool.
Water Tower: Water towers are a smaller capacity version of a water pumping station. They draw water from underground springs so they can be placed anywhere and run at full capacity.
Water Treatment Plant: Available beginning in 1935, water treatment plants lower the amount of pollution in the water.
Desalinization Plant: Available beginning in 1960, desalinization plants convert otherwise unusable seawater into drinking water. It’s the wave of the future. These must be placed directly next to salt water in order to run at full capacity.
GARBAGE DISPOSAL
The following structures, available in the Waste Management Buildings window, allow you to manage your garbage. Remember,Landfills are zoned areas, and are designated in theZone menu.
Recycling Center: Available beginning in 1970, recycling centers help lower the amount of garbage that is taken to landfills and incinerators. Building recycling centers also pleases your
Incinerator: Available beginning in 1920, incinerators can dispose of large amounts of garbage, but create a lot of air pollution.
Waste To Energy Incinerator: Available beginning in 2000, this incinerator
provides power as it burns garbage. Your trash is treasure as it is converted to usable energy within this structure.
DEMOLISH
Familiar with this yet? Does just what it says. Clicking on any
To demolish a historical building, you must first uncheck the Make Historical box in theQuery Window.
PLACE CIVIC/SPECIAL BUILDINGS
You would like to build the mayor’s house that your grateful Sims have offered? Perhaps you would like to improve education in your city by building a college. Increase tourism and city pride with a landmark? It’s all here. Government buildings such as hospitals, police stations, and schools can be found here, as can city landmarks from around the world. Here’s a rundown of what this menu offers. Most of these buildings will show up as Government Zones.
POLICE
Police Station: The presence of police stations helps lower the crime level in your city, and provides you with police dispatch units in times of emergency. Each police station has a range of coverage which you can check out in yourView Data window. The presence of police and fire stations also helps boost land value.
Jail: Provides a place to keep your criminals, otherwise they go back out onto the streets.
For more information on combating crime, speak with your Public Safety Advisor in the manual section on thePublic Safety Department.
FIRE STATION
Use this tool to build a fire station. Fire stations also have ranges of coverage. Check out how well you’ve protected your Sims in the View Data window. For more information on flammability, consult yourPublic Safety Department.
HEALTH AND EDUCATION
Building a hospital, school, or a library will help to increase your Sims’s health and education levels. This may in turn attract more Sims to your city, as well as
Hospital: Sims are very concerned about health issues. They like to know doctors are available when illness strikes. Each hospital can handle a certain amount of patients. You’ll need to keep track of how your hospitals are doing. Having an insufficient number of hospitals can result in a shorter life span for your Sims.
School: An essential investment toward the education of your Sim population. Each school has a limited capacity. You’ll need to support your growing population with an adequate number of schools.
College: Colleges are another essential component to the education of your Sim population, especially if you want to attract
Library: Libraries help keep adult Sims sharp, and improve your city’s aura.
Museum: Museums keep adult Sims entertained and knowledgeable.
PARKS AND RECREATION
These structures add to a city’s feeling of
Small Park: Ah, a nice quiet park where your Sims can enjoy a sunny day.
Large Park: A larger open space where your Sims can relax and have picnics.
Fountain: Nice for downtown areas and entrances to
Pond: A nice place for Sims to picnic and feed the ducks.
Playground: Young Sims love a place to play. A nice addition to residential neighborhoods.
Marina: Even if you get seasick, many of your Sims love to go boating. Provide them with a place to house and launch their vessels.
Zoo: Sims of all ages love to see the wondrous beasts at the zoo. If you find the RCI indicates a plateau of the residential zone demand, try adding a zoo and watch the demand grow.
Sports Park: A place where your Sims can join together and burn some calories while having fun.
LANDMARKS
Want to place a signature building in your city? In SimCity 3000 Unlimited, you have more landmark buildings available to you than ever before! When you select this option, a browse window opens that allows you to pick a famous landmark building to add to your city’s skyline.
If you have already placed a specific landmark building, and you try to place it again, a message will appear letting you know that landmark already graces your fair city. You can only place one of each landmark in a city.
Feel free to mix and match landmark buildings from all different countries and cities!
REWARDS & OPPORTUNITIES
Occasionally you are given a special building as a gift or approached with an opportunity from a Petitioner. Whenever this happens, and we hope it happens often, come to this window to place these special buildings. Each building has a description, so you’ll know exactly what you are about to place. You can place these buildings immediately as they become available or decide to wait until you feel the moment is right.
DEMOLISH
Does just what it says. Clicking on any
EMERGENCY
New millenniums seem to bring on more opportunities for disaster. Just when we think we have our cities under control, everything running smoothly, the unexpected occurs. Or are you one of those mayors who thrive on crisis? You’ll find ample outlet for keeping yourself and your Sims on edge as you use the tools to fight or create disasters.
damage. Mayors who are just too jittery to contemplate even the possibility of a disaster can turn disasters off by using the Disasters toggle in theNew City Options window or from theCity Options button in theChange Settings & Exit menu. Okay, here’s your arsenal.
GO TO DISASTER
When a disaster is happening in your city, this button will center your City View on the location. If there is more than one disaster happening at a time, pressing this button centers yourCity View from one emergency to the next in the order in which the disasters started.
ACTIVATE WARNING SIREN
Keep your eyes on the News Ticker. When disastrous events are hinted at, you can use this button to give your Sims an early warning. Sims will respond by getting off the streets. Be careful, though. After too many false alarms, the Sims aren’t likely to heed your cries.
DISPATCH POLICE
Police will fight various crimes. Police men and women are especially handy when it comes to rioting Sims. To dispatch police units, select this button, then click on a tile in the City View window as close to the “incident” as possible. The police will rush to the scene, indicated by a blue dispatch icon. As long as you are funding the department adequately, you’ll only need to dispatch police to crises occurring outside police precincts. Check theView Data options to see precinct coverage.
DISPATCH FIREFIGHTERS
Firefighters put out fires. To dispatch firefighting units, select this button, then click on a tile in your City View as close to the fire as possible. Firemen will rush to the blaze, as indicated by a red dispatch icon. If you have adequate fire coverage due to the proper placement of precincts, you won’t need to use this tool to signal your firefighters. You only need to signal a dispatch when an emergency occurs outside of a precinct, as long as you are funding the department adequately. Check theView Data options to see how much of your city is protected.
DISPATCH CROP DUSTERS
Your defense against the locusts descending upon your fine SimCity is to dispatch Crop Dusters to poison the crops the locusts eat. Then the locusts eat the poisonous crops and their reign of destruction ends.
To dispatch the Crop Dusters click on the plane icon in the Disasters Menu. Then click on the area you want the Crop Dusters to spray. Notice the dispatch icon appears. This is just like when you dispatch police or firemen. Soon, the Crop Dusters will fly in and spray the vegetation in the general area of the dispatch icon. You may dispatch up to 3 crop dusting planes at once. Try to spray areas you think the locusts will attack, or as a last resort, aim directly at the bugs themselves!
START DISASTER
Every now and then you may get the desire to wreak havoc on your city. Here’s the place to come to scratch that evil itch. Just click on your selection, and watch the disaster begin.
Fire: Burn, baby, burn!
Tornado: Mobile home owners watch out!
Earthquake: Shake those plates!
Riot: Power to the Sims!
UFO: Little green men!
Toxic Cloud: Industry meltdown, clear the streets!
Whirlpool: The briny fights back!
Plague of Locusts: Grasshoppers on steroids!
Space Junk: Smashing satellite shards!
MEET
Want some tips on building a functioning water supply system? Has an advisor indicated the need for an audience? Is a petitioner pushing for a new city ordinance? A neighbor wants a deal? Open the Meet Advisors and Petitioners window by clicking on this button, and you’ll have instant access to all of those people who have been waiting so patiently to speak with you.
The great thing about Sims is that they believe in being active members of their community. When one of your Sims has something to say, he won’t hesitate to do so. And your advisors are always eager to share their opinions about pending policy decisions. Just remember, each one of these Sims has their own point of view. You can’t always depend on your Sims for unbiased information.
For the most part, your mayoral duties will bring you into contact with the following Sims: Advisors, Petitioners, and Neighbors.
ADVISORS
A group of seven Advisors are always available to help you with the many aspects of being Mayor. YourAdvisors represent the following departments:Finances; Transportation; City Planning; Environment; Public Safety; Health, Education & Aura (HEA); andUtilities. You’ll learn more about each advisor in theCity Departments section of this guide.
To meet with an Advisor open the Advisors andPetitioners Window from theMeet button on theMain Toolbar.
1.Select the Advisor you wish to meet by clicking on his or her picture in the top half of the Advisors and Petitioners Window. Each Advisor has a list of relevant News Topics, Briefings and Department Ordinances he or she may want to discuss.
2.Choose the type of information you wish to discuss from the selection box:
News Topics, Briefings or Ordinances.
3.The list of topics will update to reflect your choice of topic.
4.Select from the list of topics by double clicking on a message.
5.When you are done reading any specific message, click the X in the upper right corner of the message window to close it, or use the left arrow button to return to the previous screen.
Advisors keep up with all developments in your city. They’ll give you
PETITIONERS
Petitioners can be one of your friendly Sims offering a suggestion to the Mayor of a Neighboring Town. Usually,Petitioners want something, even when it sounds as if they are the ones doing the giving.Petitioners are located at the bottom of theMeet Advisors and Petitioners window, which you access from theMeet button in theMain Toolbar. Once there, click on anyPetitioner to see what they have to say. They may be offering you a deal or complaining about the way you are doing your job.
In the above example, the Mayor of one of your neighboring cities is offering you a deal. It’s always a good idea to assess the pros and cons of any petitioner deals that come your way. The first thing you may want to do is consult with one of your Advisors.
1.Consult your Advisor by clicking on the Impact Analysis button.
2.When you are done reading, click the Checkmark to take you back to the previous screen.
3.Once you know what you’re dealing with, you can either Accept or Reject the offer. If you reject the offer, the Petitioner leaves. Sometimes they never come back. If you accept the offer, it goes into immediate effect, unless you need to place a building to complete the deal.
Sometimes a Petitioner pops up just to give you some information. When there is no decision to be made, you can click on the X in the upper right corner to close the message.
If you don’t want to hear from a certain Petitioner again, click on Dismiss Petitioner. This will keep him or her out of your office for a little while.
If you need to place a building to complete the deal, select the Rewards & Opportunities button from within thePlace Civic/Special Buildings menu on theMain Toolbar. This opens theRewards & Opportunities window, from which you can select the appropriate building for construction.
NEIGHBORS
Your neighboring cities can provide critical resources or even cash flow to your city by setting up deals to trade for power, water, or garbage disposal. To enter into a deal with your neighbor you must first construct a connection at your border. See the Utilities Department andEnvironmental Department sections for more details onNeighbor Deals.
Power: To exchange power, you need a power line connecting your city to one of your neighboring cities.
Water: A water deal requires a water pipe connection to one of your neighboring cities.
Garbage Disposal: If you are looking to make a deal for garbage disposal, you will need a road, highway, rail or seaport connection.
When these connections are in place and the conditions are right (you have excess or insufficient resources or disposal means), the Mayor of the neighboring city will approach you via the Petitioners Meet window with terms for an import or export deal. Deals are updated periodically to reflect both your city’s and the neighboring city’s needs.
You can check up on your neighbors as well as any active Neighbor Deals at any time by clicking onAdjust & Review on theMain Toolbar and selectingNeighbors. TheNeighbors window shows each of your neighboring cities, their population, names and locations as well as details on all current deals.
To check greater detail on any deal, highlight the deal in question and then click the Meet With Neighbor button.
To cancel a deal, select the appropriate deal and then press the Discuss Deal button. From there you can choose to terminate the current deal. Remember, this could result in a hefty termination fee.
ADJUST & REVIEW
This menu contains tools to help you make executive level changes to the way your city functions. Or you can take some pictures for your scrapbook. Executives need scrapbooks. What better way to remember when your city was just a small suburb? Or to share your developmental pride with other mayors? Besides snapshot taking capabilities, you can also access important data via various hightech maps and charts of your city’s current or historical status. Important information, just not so fun for the scrapbook.
Here’s a rundown of these high level tools. We’ll start with the scrapbook.
TAKE SNAPSHOTS
SimCity 3000 Unlimited gives you the ability to take customized screenshots of your city. You can describe your photos, and they’ll automatically be saved in a photo album made especially for your city. Keep this pictorial record for yourself, or swap pics with other mayors. You may be especially proud of a certain bit of city planning, or perhaps you want to share before and after pictures of a transformed town. It’s up to you.
Here’s how your camera works.
1.Click on the Take Snapshots button in the Adjust and Review menu. Choose the size of your
2.Your cursor is now a Snapshots Cursor, which you can move about
your City View to frame your image. You can take a snapshot of any area, at any zoom level.
3.While trying to frame your picture, you can use the Spacebar to cycle through the available snapshot sizes.
4.Ready?
5.Once you’ve taken a snapshot, you’ll see the View Snapshots window.
Don’t like the picture? Click Delete to remove it.
It’s a keeper? You’ll see your city’s name, mayor name, date, current population, and funds listed at the right of the image. Underneath the image, you may enter a brief description of your photo.
At right, you’ll see a list of photo albums. When you take a snapshot, a photo album is created for your city and appears here.
To Save your photo and its description, click on theCheckmark.
VIEW SNAPSHOTS
When you wish to review or edit your snapshots, click on the View Snapshots button. Sit back and get all
Choose the city photo album you’d like to view from the list on the right. Albums are saved to a default folder on your hard drive.
Photos are arranged chronologically within each city’s album. Use the arrows at either side of the snapshot description to view photos taken before or after the displayed image.
You may edit the photo’s description by entering new text.
The + button will enlarge the current photo, so you can get a closer look. Use
the left arrow button to return to the smaller view.
Want to trash a snapshot? Click on Delete.
Click on the Checkmark to save your editing and return to theCity View.
BUDGET
Click on the Budget button to open theBudget window any time you want to review or manage your city’s finances. For more information on your financial affairs, see the section on yourFinancial Department in this guide.
NEIGHBORS
You can check on your neighbors as well as adjust and check on current neighbor deals in this window. For more information on neighbors and deals see the section on Neighbors under theMeet function and yourUtilities Department section in this guide.
ORDINANCES
You always wanted to enact laws, didn’t you? Will there be parking fines in your city? A clean industry incentive? Ordinances are a means for you to protect your Sims, generate (or spend) income, and direct the development of your city. Petitioners will ask you to enact certain ordinances, but be advised that almost any ordinance you put into effect will greatly please some and outrage others. You can access ordinances through the Ordinance window. Here you’ll see each ordinance and it’s yearly cost (or addition) to the city budget. TheOrdinance window can also be accessed from theBudget window. To find out information on each ordinance, check with your advisors. Each Advisor will provide information on ordinances that affect their department.
SCENARIO STATUS
This button functions only when you are playing SimCity 3000 Unlimited in scenario mode. Click here to check on the scenario status. A
VIEW DATA
From this button you have access to all of the maps, charts, and graphs that are kept up by your Advisors.
DATA MAPS
Data Maps show how specific areas of your city are functioning. Each map has a legend in the bottom right corner that explains what data you are viewing. You can also accessData Maps using theView City Layers button in the Navigation Panel.
You can use any of the data maps as your Navigation Map by clicking theUse As Map button in theData View window.
To see the information from each data map in your City View, use the
View City Layers button in the Navigation Panel.
The following maps are always available to you:
Aura Data Map: Aura shows the overall happiness in a city. This map gives you an idea of what areas are in a better mood than others.
Crime Data Map: This map shows you not only where crime is a problem, but where you’ve set up police stations and their precincts. Precincts are represented as circles surrounding a dot, which denotes the location of a police station.
Density Data Map: With this map you can see the areas where Sims are moving in. The various densities of each zone are made visible here.
Power Data Map: You are able to see areas that are powered, and those still lacking power with this map. The map shows roads, power lines, and dots that represent power plants.
Flammability Data Map: The city’s flammability as well as fire stations and their precincts are found here. When viewed as a map, you can see roads and dots with circles around them. This represents the station and its precinct.
Land Value Data Map: This map shows the varying land values throughout your city.
Pollution Data Map: The city’s pollution is segmented on this map, showing where air pollution, water pollution, and garbage are a problem. When
viewed as a map, only landfills, litter tiles, and roads will be visible. Litter tiles, our dear Mayor, are places where the garbage has gotten so out of control that it is swallowing up any available space.
Traffic and Transportation Data Map: Traffic density for both road and rail is displayed in this
Water Supply Data Map: Check out which areas are supplied with water.
Zones Data Map: This map shows the location and area of each zone type in
your city.
CHARTS
There are five different charts available to you. They are as follows:
Education: This chart shows the Education Quotient (EQ) of your Sims at their various ages. The EQ of your work force is very important. When this level gets high enough, you can see all kinds of positive changes occur in your city, not the least of which is nasty polluting industries leaving to make room for cleaner,
Health: This chart helps you keep track of your Sims’s Life Expectancies. Tony hillerman audio books download free for windows 7. The higher this level, the longer your Sims live. The longer they live, the longer they work, which means a larger work force.
Population: Here you can see what percentage of your population makes up your work force. You can also see your city’s total population.
Electricity: This chart shows you a breakdown of the different Power Plant types in your city as well as a breakdown of the percentage of the total power they are contributing. You can also find out how much electricity is produced annually.
Garbage: Here you are shown a breakdown of the different methods you are employing to get rid of garbage in your city. You can find out which method is dealing with what percentage of your garbage. You’ll also be able to see how much garbage your Sims are producing annually.
GRAPHS
The Graphs window can show you the status of a variety of items over a period of time. You can view more than one set of data at a time to check for correlations. You can view the graph in increments of 1, 10 or 100 years, depending on the scope of information you want.
Approval Rating: Global Aura vs. Time
Pollution: Combined Pollution Level vs. Time
Crime: Crime Level vs. Time
Residents: Sims living in the city vs. Time
Education: Education Level vs. Time
Health: Health Level vs. Time
Land Value: Overall City Value vs. Time
Traffic: Traffic Density vs. Time
Funds: Operating Funds vs. Time
City Size: City population (includes Residential, Commercial, and Industry populations) vs. Time
Commerce: Sims employed by Commerce vs. Time
Industry: Sims employed by Industry vs. Time
National Population: National Population vs. Time
Unemployment: Unemployment Level vs. Time
Power %: Power Usage vs. Time
Water %: Water Usage vs. Time
CHANGE SETTINGS & EXIT
Set preferences, change your city’s look, add some buildings, or go to a different city or scenario. You can do it all here. And if you are exhausted from your mayoral efforts, you may exit back to the mundane world.
PREFERENCES
This button opens the Preferences window that also is accessed in theOpening menu. You can reset your choices here during game play. These settings will be saved with each city.
See Preferences in theOpening menu section for more information.
CITY OPTIONS
Clicking here will take you to the City Options window. This window consists of the overall city design choices that you can also make in theNew City Options window accessed from theOpening menu. See theNew City Options above for more information.
Have you tired of the desert palette and palm trees you chose at the beginning of the game? Change it now, and see your city transform. Want to change the name by which your Sims address you? It’s up to you. You can also choose
City Options are not available when playing a scenario.
SAVE CITY
This allows you to save the city you are currently working on.
SAVE AS
This opens the Save window allowing you to save and
LOAD CITY
This button gives you the option of loading a Saved City, a Starter Town, a Real City Terrain, or a Scenario. You will be given the option of saving the city you are currently working on first.
NEW CITY
Selecting this button allows you to start a new city. You will be given the option of saving the city you are currently working on.
EXIT
Just like it sounds. When you’ve had your fill of complete power, you can click this button to go back to the real world. You will be prompted to save your city before exiting.
CUSTOMIZE YOUR CITY: REPLACING BUILDINGS IN SIMNATION
CUSTOMIZE YOUR CITY: REPLACING BUILDINGS IN SIMNATION
Are you especially fond of Bauhaus architecture? Or perhaps you go more for the Notre Dame kind of thing. Gargoyles are a beautiful example of form following function, don’t you think? Whether you prefer
SimCity 3000 Unlimited lets you replace buildings in your city while you are playing the game. You can choose to replace one building at a time, or many. You can even choose which custom buildings will appear in your city before the city is built! Some custom buildings are already provided, or to expand your possibilities, you can download buildings built by others from SimCity.com. And you can always create your own, you Michelangelo you.
Sound complicated? It’s not. Whether you are a
CITY CUSTOMIZATION CONTROLS
You can access the Building Replacement tools from three sites while in SimCity.
Query Tool: Use theQuery Tool during game play to replace individual buildings.
City Options: Use the City Optionsbutton from within the Change Settings & Exitmenu to replace individual or multiple buildings in your current city. This will take you to the City Optionswindow, where you can get to your Building Replacementtools through the
Start New City: When you select this button from theOpening Menu, you will open theNew City Options window. Once again, use the
Let’s start with single building replacement and move on from there.
REPLACING INDIVIDUAL BUILDINGS
Using the Query Tool is the easiest way to place custom buildings in your city. Although you mayQuery an individual building, you are not replacing only that building, but all instances of that building which occur in your city. This makes it easy to quickly give your city a customized look.
Use the Query Tool and click on the building in your city you would like to replace. In theQuery Window, you’ll see a picture of the building along with
information about the building. If the building you’ve selected is replaceable, you’ll see the Replace button in the lower left corner of the window.
If the queried building has already been replaced, its background in the Query Window will be light yellow and the architect’s name, if provided, will appear.
Click on Replace to open the Building Replacement window.
BUILDING REPLACEMENT WINDOW
Here’s the Building Replacement window. You should see the building you’ve selected for replacement at the bottom of the window, in theBuilding Queried section. You’ll see the name, architect, and tile size of the selected building to the right of its image.
Now you need to choose the building with which you’re going to replace the original structure.
BUILDING LIST
You will see an alphabetical list of buildings ready for use in SimCity 3000 Unlimited. The list will only include buildings the same tile size as the building you have queried. We’ll talk about getting more custom buildings ready for use in the game later.
When the window opens, the first building on the Building List will be highlighted, and you’ll see its image and description at the top of the screen.
Scroll through the list and select buildings by clicking on the name in the list. As each building is selected, its image and description will display.
Made a choice? Great. You are ready to customize.
You can only replace existing buildings with custom buildings that are the same size (or “tile size” as we call it at Maxis). You’ll see the tile size for each building listed in the text to the right of its image. You can replace a 4x4 building only with another 4x4 building.
REPLACE
When you’ve chosen a building from the Building List, theReplace button will become bright green, meaning it is “active.”
When the Replace button goes from gray to green, it is active.
Click on Replace. The original building will now be replaced with the chosen structure from theBuilding List. The image will look like this:
See that
Tab will reappear.
REVERT
Once you’ve hit the Replace button successfully, theRevert button will ‘light up’ and become active.
Change your mind? Want the original building back?
Click the Revert button and the original building will reappear in theBuilding Queried space, discarding the replacement building.
You can also use this process to bring back an original building long after it has been replaced. If the building you selected with the Query Tool is already a replacement, the yellow background and
COMPLETING THE PROCESS
Ready to tell the City Engineers it’s a go?
If you’ve made your choice, and you’re ready to see the effects of the demolition/construction process, click on the Checkmark to save the changes you’ve made.
Presto! Wherever the originally queried building appeared, it has now been replaced with your
If you click on Cancel orX, theBuilding Replacement window will close with no changes made.
Take a minute and look around. Neat, huh.
When you save your city, building changes will be saved in place; and all available replacement buildings will be saved as a ‘list’ linked to your city’s file.
ADDING BUILDINGS TO THE BUILDING LIST
Sharp mayors may have noticed we neglected to address the Edit List button. Well, there has to be a way to add more buildings to your replacement options, whether you’ve created them or received them from another player. Right? Clicking on the Edit List button will open the Building List Editor, which will be described later.
REPLACING MULTIPLE BUILDINGS
Now that you have a taste of the kind of control you can have over the look of your city, you might be ready to make global changes to your skyline. While using the Query Tool allows you to replace one building type at a time, using theBuilding Replacement Manager enables you to replace many building types at a time. If you feel like it, you can customize every replaceable building in your city with just one visit to theBuilding Replacement Manager. With more than 300 replaceable buildings, we’re talking quite a makeover. You can do this before your city has developed, or in
Start New City
From the Opening Menu, choose Start New City. This will open the New City Options window. Click on
City Options
In the course of a game, open the Change Settings & Exit menu and click onCity Options. This will open the City Options window. Click on
You will see the same window whether you access the Building Replacement Manager viaStart New City or theCity Options button. Many of the functions here are found in theBuilding Replacement window, explained above. Here’s a rundown of functions.
BUILDING LIST
Located at the top left. The Building List is a scrollable list of all buildings ready for placement. As buildings in the list are selected, the preview image along with the name of the building, the architect, building type, and tile size will be displayed.
REPLACE/REVERT
These functions work identically to the Replace/Revert buttons in theBuilding Replacement Window, described above. When you have found a building you want to replace, theReplace button will become active. Click onReplace to make the switch (and see the
THE BUILDING SET
Instead of just one building type slated for replacement, you have real possibilities here. Each pictured building in the Building Set represents a structure that has
been or will eventually be built in your city, if conditions are right. Replace only five building types, or two hundred! The whole town could be named after you! Here are some navigational instructions for the Building Set.
Current Building Indicator
As you scroll through the Building Set, the building that appears in theCurrent Building Indicator frame is the structure available for replacement.
When a building appears in this frame, you’ll see its tile size listed on the bottom part of the frame.
To replace all buildings of this type in your city with the custom building you’ve chosen, simply click on Replace.
Buildings that have already been replaced will appear in the Building Set with the yellow background and
To change the current building, simply use the buttons at the right to move through the images.
The single arrows move through the images one at a time. If you click and hold on an arrow, the image in the Current Building Indicator will keep on changing.
If you want to scan the Building Set more quickly, the double arrows move through the images three at a time. If you click and hold on the double arrows, the images will continue to roll through three at a time.
Filters
You just built an amazing
The Filters are buttons which toggle ON/OFF by clicking on them. There are two types of filters: building type, and building size.
The first five Filter buttons allow you to choose building types you wish displayed. These types are: Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Opportunity, and Reward buildings.
The second five Filter buttons allow you to choose building tile sizes, from 1x1 to 5x5. When you select a building tile size, it affects both the Building Set Strip and theBuilding List.
Above the Filter buttons, the number of buildings that meet your criteria will appear (e.g., 243 of 357 Buildings Selected).
As you make each filter selection, the Building Set will immediately be updated.
Clear Set
If you click on the Clear Set button, you will remove all replaced buildings from the entireBuilding Set. It’s a globalRevert button. Every building in the set will revert to the original default buildings.
Import Set
If you click on the Import Set button, you will open theImport Set window. Did you save a city in which you were particularly pleased with your building replacements? Instead of doing it all over again, do you want the sameBuilding Set to be available in your current city? Whenever you save a city in SimCity 3000 Web Edition, the building set is saved as well. TheImport Set button allows you to importBuilding Sets from saved city files.
1.Select the saved city’s name you would like to import from the list.
2.Click on the Checkmark. This will return you to your current city’s Building Replacement Manager. Any buildings replaced in the city you selected will now be replaced with the same choices in your city’s Building Set.
3.Click on the X to close out the window and cancel the import process. You will be returned to your current city’s Building Replacement Manager with the original Building Set displayed.
COMPLETING THE PROCESS
As in the Building Replacement window, click on theCheckmark to save and implement any changes you’ve made to theBuilding Set. You’ll be back in theNew City Options window.
If you’re starting a new
If you’ve made changes to the Building Set after your city has become a sizable metropolis, close theNew City Options window and admire your city’s makeover!
Don’t want to make any changes? Click Cancel orX. TheBuilding Replacement Manager will close out with no changes saved.
EDITING YOUR BUILDING LIST
Whether you are working in the Building Replacement window or theBuilding Replacement Manager, you may find you wish to make changes to yourBuilding List. TheBuilding List contains all the custom buildings ready and available for placement in your city. Are there some buildings you would like to remove from the list? Would you like to expand your choices? You can do either in theBuilding List Editor.
To open the Building List Editor, click on the Edit List button in either the Building Replacement window or the Building Replacement Manager.
The Building List Editor lets you browseSimCity 3000 Unlimited files for buildings you’d like to add to yourBuilding List.
ACTIVE LIST
When you first open the Building List Editor this list will have the same buildings that appear in theBuilding List in the left replacement window.
When you select a building from the list, the preview image of the selected building will appear in the middle of the window. The Add button will be inactive, and theRemove button will be active.
Click Remove to delete the selected building from theActive List.
LOOK IN
This list gives you access to any
Use the
If you click to select one of the buildings from your Building Architect folder, the building in yourActive List will be
A preview image of the building you have selected from Look In will appear in the middle of the window.
ADDING BUILDINGS
When you have found a building you would like to include in your Building List, click on theAdd button.
The building’s name will now appear in the Active List.
If you have chosen to add a building that already exists in your Active List, you will be asked if you want to replace the building in theActive List with the new building. Select yes or no, and you’ll return to theBuilding List Editor.
You can keep selecting and adding buildings to your Active List until you’ve expanded the list to your satisfaction.
COMPLETING THE PROCESS
Are you satisfied with all the edits you’ve made to your Active List?
1.Click on the Checkmark to save and implement your changes.
2.SimCity 3000 Unlimited will now do some fancy footwork to make the buildings you’ve added to your Active List SimCity ready. This could take a few minutes. You’ll see a
3.If you choose to proceed, you’ll be returned to the Building Replacement window or the Building Replacement Manager, with any selections you’ve already made still in place. The only difference will be all those new buildings to choose from in your Building List.
4.As always, clicking on the X will close the Building List Editor to return you to the building replacement window you were in with no changes made.
CITY DEPARTMENTS: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
CITY DEPARTMENTS: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
As Mayor, you must oversee the operation of seven city departments, and therefore you have seven different roles to play. Quite a responsibility! Luckily, each city department has its own advisor; an expert to help you solve problems and make decisions.
It’s easy to grow a happy and healthy little town. The trick is to be able to get the big picture, to see how the workings of all the departments are interconnected. As you play, you’ll find that every decision you make has widespread effects throughout your entire city.
In the pages that follow, you’ll meet your advisors and learn the ins and outs of running each department. While your advisors are experts in their areas, they are only Sims! And Sims can be a biased lot. So be aware that your advisors represent only one point of view. Their own!
At the end of this section, we’ve included some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) aboutSimCity 3000 Unlimited operations that may help you understand more about political strategies, or the
FINANCIAL/BUDGET DEPARTMENT
MEET YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISOR
Mortimer Green: Financial Advisor
Mortimer Green received his Ph.D. in
MORTIMER SPEAKS:
The purpose of the Financial Department is to control income and expenditures in the city. It may sound simple, but it’s not. The Financial Department is responsible for funding the city treasury by collecting taxes, enacting certain ordinances, and looking for
Money management is the key to a healthy economy, but holding the city purse Dialog Text is a thankless job. Know that I’ll be there to support you. If you ever want help making financial decisions, just ask for me.
BASICS OF THE FINANCIAL DEPARTMENT
SIMOLEONS
Simoleons are the currency of the SimNation, and are considered legal tender for all transactions. The primary goal of any mayor is to keep Simoleons in the treasury. Your city can carry debt up to a point, but if it gets so deep in debt there is no hope for escape, your Sims will start looking for a new mayor. Your Financial Advisor will warn you when things start looking grim.
You can always see how much cash you have available by looking at the Information Bar at the bottom of the screen. A running tab of the available cash in your treasury is displayed in the funds section.
If you run out of Simoleons, you will not be able to do any new construction or zoning. If you run out of cash in the middle of a construction project, like building a new road for example, you’ll be notified and the project will be cancelled.
Even if you are completely out of cash, certain expenses will continue being paid each month, sending the treasury further into debt. City departments will receive their budget allotments. Ordinance costs will be deducted each month. If you have deals to buy power, water, or garbage disposal services, the monthly costs will still be charged to the treasury.
BUDGETS AND TAXES
Setting Taxes
Taxes are your main source of income. City taxes are broken down into sectors based on the three zone types: Residential,Commercial, andIndustrial. Tax rates affect the demand for each type of zone, and determine the amount of income your city collects in taxes. Typically, when you lower tax rates for any sector, demand for that sector will increase. If you raise taxes, demand decreases.
Lowering taxes gives Sims an incentive to move in to your city, so demand goes up. Just remember that demand is influenced by other things too, not just tax rates. Depending on conditions in the city, lowering taxes can either raise or lower city income. If the tax cut attracts lots of new taxpayers (Sims) to your city, income may increase even though each taxpayer pays a small amount. But if the tax cut does not increase your population of resident Sims, the city might lose money.
Raising taxes gives Sims a good reason to move out of your city, so demand goes down. Sometimes raising taxes is a smart thing to do. If you have strong demand for a certain zone type, but don’t have any cash left to zone for that demand, taxes are probably too low. Raising taxes may either raise or lower city income. It just depends on the current conditions in the city.
The amount of taxes paid by any one interest is determined by the following computation. Tax Rate * Population of Sector * Average Land Value * Constant = Tax Revenue. As you can see, increasing land values or population are both ways to increase your city’s tax revenues.
Funding City Departments
The Mayor makes the final decision on how to fund six city services. The optimal funding level for each branch changes as the city changes. An
Police Budget: Pays for equipment, maintenance of police stations and jails, as well as salaries of police officers and wardens.
Fire Budget: Pays for equipment, maintenance of fire stations, and firefighter salaries.
Roads Budget: Pays for road and highway maintenance, and keeps roads
Mass Transit Budget: Pays for upkeep of train and subway tracks and stations, bus stops, and pays for salaries of train crews, subway workers, and bus drivers.
Healthcare Budget: Pays for hospital equipment, building maintenance, and salaries of doctors, nurses, and orderlies.
Education Budget: Pays for equipment, maintenance of schools and city colleges, and salaries of teachers and aides.
Understanding the Budget Window
The Budget Window is where you make all of your financial adjustments. It can be accessed by choosing theBudget button from withinAdjust & Review button menu on theMain Toolbar.
The Budget Window shows you how you are allocating your money for the year. There are two faces to theBudget Window: Expenditures andIncome. To switch between the two, click on the desired button at the top of the window.
The Expenditures window shows you where you’re spending the city’s Simoleons. You’ll see the city department budgets displayed, and can change allocations from this window. Each department has an amount of money considered optimum (indicated by the light blue marker on their slider). The amount you allocate is up to you. For details on other things you’re paying for, click onCity Ordinances, Neighbor Deals, orLoans.
The Income window shows you where the money in the treasury is coming from. You’ll see the tax rates you’ve set, and may adjust them if you like. For details on other sources of income, click onCity Ordinances, Neighbor Deals, orBusiness Deals.
The bottom line is, well, at the bottom of the window. If the end of year funds are displayed in black, you’re in good shape and should make money at the end of the year. If the end of year funds are in red, you are projected to lose money. That means you have more expenses than income for the year, and will have to use cash reserves in the treasury just to make ends meet. If you don’t have enough cash, you’ll start accumulating debt. When you’re in the red, it is best to start looking for ways to increase your income or decrease your expenditures.
DEALS
Neighbor Deals
You can make money by selling your city’s power, water, or garbage disposal services to a neighbor. You’ll receive monthly income from the neighbor that is automatically added to your treasury. Just be sure the income you receive more than covers your cost of providing the commodity.
If you contract with neighbors to buy their power, water, or garbage disposal services, you have to pay. A monthly charge will be deducted from your treasury. Try to be sure the price you pay your neighbor is less than what it would cost to provide these services at home.
Business Deals
From time to time, Petitioners will offer deals to construct certain buildings in your city.
Business deals provide the city with a monthly stipend for as long as the building stands. Sound tempting, except that these buildings bring problems to the city such as high crime or pollution. If you need cash, they may be worth the trouble.
When times get tough, or you are looking for rapid growth, you can take out a loan to raise quick cash.
Here are some facts about loans:
You may have up to ten loans outstanding at any time.
A loan can be taken for any reason, and at any time (unless you have ten loans outstanding).
Loans are available in 5000 Simoleon increments, up to 25K per loan.
Each new loan is extended for ten years, and cannot be paid off early.
The city must make annual payments on each loan for ten full years.
Annual payment amounts are based on principal and interest.
When the final payment is made in the tenth year, the loan is repaid and comes off the books.
Total payments made will equal 150% of the original loan amount.
DISASTER RELIEF
In the event of a catastrophic disaster, the powers that be in SimNation may take it upon themselves to assist you in the clean up costs. Be forewarned, a mayor that is well prepared generally receives better treatment.
STRATEGIES FOR INCREASING CASH
Cutting Expenses
Stop Construction! Zoning and building use up your cash reserves faster than you’d think. When cash reserves are low, build up your treasury before you build anything else.
Cut Budgets! A quick way to cut expenses is to lower the budgets for some or all of the city departments. Be careful though, as your departments will not run as effectively as they do with an adequate budget. This may cause problems in your city. If you cut the budget too far, you may end up with a strike on your hands.
Repeal Ordinances! Most ordinances, when enacted, will cost the treasury a certain amount each month, usually based on population. If the ordinance is repealed, the monthly charge will stop. You can see all your current ordinances by going to theOrdinance Window. Click the box to remove theCheckmark and repeal the ordinance.
Review Neighbor Deals! If you’re spending money each month to buy a commodity from a neighbor, decide if it’s best for the contract to continue. If you think it is best to cancel a contract, try to wait for an opportunity to cancel without paying the hefty penalty. Try to wait until the neighbor comes to you asking for renegotiation of the deal. At that time you can cancel the deal without penalty.
Raising Income
Raise taxes! Watch that taxes are not so high that everyone leaves town, or you’re in real trouble.
Enact
Look for
Accept a Business Deal from a Petitioner! From time to time, Petitioners may approach you with an opportunity to construct a specific facility in your city in return for cash. These generally come with Dialog Text; you make the choice.
Take Out a Loan! Even though you have to pay back the money, plus interest, loans are a quick way to build up the treasury. If you use the money wisely, paying back the loan shouldn’t be too painful.
Look for ways to Increase Land Values and Population! Both will increase your tax revenues, which can help get you out of any financial holes you’ve fallen into without jeopardizing the status quo by raising taxes.
TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT
MEET YOUR TRANSPORTATION ADVISOR
Moe Biehl: Transportation Advisor
In contrast to his folksy demeanor, Moe Biehl is a
MOE SPEAKS:
Even if you create a city with the nicest houses or cheapest office space, no one will move in if they have no way to get around. Sims need to get from one place to another, and they are willing to walk only so far. The Transportation Department is where all of that is handled. It covers everything from roads and rail lines to tunnels and bridges. When you build a city, transportation is one of the first aspects you will want to consider. If you lay out an inadequate transportation system, you can have real problems in the long run. Suppose you have a busy downtown that needs a larger road due to bad traffic. This is going to be a problem when you look at the area and see that skyscrapers line the small road.
There are mass transit systems that can help eliminate traffic, so you are rarely stuck with only one solution. Just think ahead and you should have few, if any, gridlock problems.
BASICS OF THE TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT
BUILDING YOUR TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM
A transportation system can be based on private transportation (meaning roads for cars), or public transportation (meaning trains, subways and bus routes).
In general, Sims prefer to drive their cars. If roads are plentiful, more Sims will be willing to live in your city, especially when the city is small. But if you rely exclusively on roads, you’ll find that as your population grows, traffic problems become horrendous.
Public transit gets cars off the street, and limits air pollution. It’s the right thing to do for your city. In fact, it’s difficult to build a large city without using any public transit at all. When planning your public transit routes, be sure that they are convenient, or your Sims won’t use them. Certain ordinances provide incentives for Sims to forego their cars in favor of mass transit.
Building Travel Routes
To place a transportation route, click on the Build Transportation button menu in theMain Toolbar. Select the desired type of route, e.g.Roads, Highways, Rail, orSubway Rail. Your cursor will change into an icon of the chosen route type. Click and drag a line where you want the route to be placed. TheDrop Shadow will be blue as long as you are placing the route in an area where one can be constructed. If you are attempting to build a travel route where one cannot be built, theDrop Shadow will change to red and your construction attempt will be cancelled.
If you hold down the Shift key before releasing the mouse button, construction will be cancelled.
ROADS AND HIGHWAYS
Roads are
Highways are basically elevated, high capacity roads. They allow Sims to travel more efficiently over long stretches of terrain. So if you want to connect two very distant zones, highways are a good choice.
INTERSECTIONS AND
Intersections allow your Sims to drive off of one road and onto another. They are usually
engineers will construct the
BRIDGES
You can build roads, highways and rails across water. Your city engineers will automatically be notified to build a bridge for you. The main thing to remember is this: Don’t be disheartened by the red Drop Shadow as you move the mouse over waterfljust have faith and keep dragging until you reach dry land again. When the mouse is back on land, theDrop Shadow will turn blue again. When you release the mouse button the city engineers will notify you of the cost of the proposed span. If you accept, the bridge will be built.
Causeways are built over short spans of water. Suspension bridges are built over large spans of water.
If the surrounding terrain is not stable enough to build a bridge, a text box will notify you construction could not occur. Try using the terrain tool to build up the land surrounding the beginning and ending points of the bridge. Sometimes the bridge just needs more support.
TUNNELS
When you’re building a road, highway, or rail route in mountainous terrain, your omnipresent team of city engineers may suggest you bore a tunnel if the incline is too steep. This will happen automatically if you drag the selected Drop Shadow to a point where the incline is too steep to simply cross over. Your city engineers will inform you of their ability to construct a tunnel, along with the cost. If you accept, they will bore the tunnel for you.
MASS TRANSIT
Busses
Bus Stops must be placed along the side of roads to be effective. If you place bus stops and Sims don’t seem to use them, they may be too far apart. But remember, you only need to placeBus Stops where Sims want to get on the bus. They can pull the string to signal the driver and get off whenever they want. Use theQuery Tool on anyBus Stops to get information on how many Sims are using that particular stop.
Trains
Setting up a rail system is much more expensive than roads, both in time and money, but the reduction in traffic and pollution can make it extremely worthwhile. Simply laying track will not be enough to get things working. Once the track is laid, you must place Train Stations on tiles that touch the track. This tells trains where to stop, and provides Sims a place to get off and on the train. Use theQuery Tool onTrain Stations andRail to get information on how popular trains are.
Subways
When you select the Lay Subway Rail tool from theBuild Transportation button menu, theCity View will automatically switch to underground viewing so you can build subway routes. In this view you can see where the city has roads and zoned and developed areas. You will also see the below ground portions of subway stations or subway to rail stations. Use theQuery Tool onSubway Stations andSubway Rail to get information on how popular subways are.
Subway Stations must be placed next to or directly aboveSubway Rails to be effective. This can be done in either the above ground or underground view.
Subway to Rail Connection
This station allows Sims to transfer from rail to subway, making your city’s mass transit options more versatile. These stations need to be placed directly adjacent to train tracks, and directly next to or above subway rail to be effective. Use the Query Tool to see if the connection is working.
FUNDING ROADS AND THE MASS TRANSIT SYSTEM
The road budget pays for maintenance of all roads, highways, bridges, and tunnels in the city. Roads, especially
The mass transit budget pays for the upkeep of rail and subway track, as well as the salaries of conductors and bus drivers. If the mass transit budget is low, systems will begin to deteriorate and Sims will be less likely to use the train, bus, or subway. If the budget is far below adequate, transit workers will go on strike.
CONNECTING TO NEIGHBORS
Making connections to neighboring cities helps your industrial sector by creating a way to export goods to other cities.
To create a land connection, build a road, highway, or rail line right to the city border. If you signal your city engineers that you are willing to pay for a connection, one will be built. You can have connections of all types to all neighbors.
Seaports andAirports are considered connections to all neighbors.
Seaports are a connection for industrial/commercial growth, as well as garbage exchange, but only if there is transportation from the edge of the map to the seaport.
Airports are a connection for industrial/commercial growth only.
CITY PLANNING DEPARTMENT
MEET YOUR CITY PLANNING ADVISOR
Constance Lee: City Planning Advisor
Constance Lee has an infectious energy that bolsters everyone around her. Her professors at San Bolima State College of Urban Design remember her as one of their brightest, most
CONSTANCE SPEAKS:
The function of the City Planning Department is to oversee the layout of the city. Your role is to grow the city by zoning parcels of land for different purposes. You must make sure to maintain a good balance of the various types of zones, and see that they are developing as planned.
Your Sims will continually judge your city planning decisions. When things are going well, Sims will be clamoring to live and do business in your city. On the other hand, they are quick to complain when things are not to their liking, and will leave as fast as they arrived.
Planning a city may well be the most difficult task of being a Mayor. You can rely on me to help you solve problems as they arise.
BASICS OF THE CITY PLANNING DEPARTMENT
UNDERSTANDING ZONES
Zones are areas of the city that you designate for a specific use. Every city must contain the three main types of
Sims will only build on areas of the city that are zoned. The buildings they choose to construct in a zone depend on the type of zone, the density of the zone, and the land value.
Zoning an area does not guarantee that Sims will build there. Sims will only develop zones that are in demand (see the RCI Demand Indicator for more information), and that are usable. A usable zone has power and adequate transportation to other zones. Having water helps tremendously. Light density zones can develop without a water supply, but water is a necessity to sustain medium to dense zone development.
TYPES OF ZONES
Residential Zones
This is where your Sims will live. Keep in mind that every Sim needs a place to call home, so don’t be surprised to find your city needs more Residential Zones than any other type of zone.
Residential areas can be zoned light, medium, ordense. The density of the zone influences the type of buildings that get constructed. If you want huge apartment buildings, build Dense Residential. Townhouses are built in medium density areas. And for
Commercial Zones
This is where your Sims shop, and where some of them work. Office buildings as well as stores of various shapes and sizes are located within Commercial Zones. The type of commercial buildings that get built depends on the density of the zone, as well its land value. Large stores and office buildings will come with the higher densities. You’ll need light or medium density commercial zones to let the small business Sim get a foot in the door. The demand for commercial zones typically rises as a city ages. Keep your eye on the RCI Demand Indicator to see what the trends are.
!Density sets the maximum density for a zone. Land value of the zone must be very high in order for full density to be reached.
Industrial Zones
Industrial Zones define areas where manufacturing, agriculture, and
Airport Zones
Airports help your Industrial and Commercial Districts to grow by bringing in tourists and workers, as well as making your city more accessible to the outside world. Just like RCI zones, you zone for airports and wait for Sims to develop them. Available in 1915, airports must be at least 3x5 tiles or larger in order to develop. They also require power, water, and a road nearby.
Seaport Zones
Seaports help your Industrial and Commercial sector to grow by providing a means to transport goods to the outside world. They allow you to make deals to import or export garbage to neighboring cities (though rail, road, or highway connections can provide the same service). Seaports must be zoned at least 2x6 tiles or larger in order to develop. They require power, water, and a road nearby. They must be located along a shoreline to do anything, either seacoast or river edge. Always be sure the your Seaports are connected by some sort of path to the edge of your map. Otherwise they may not develop as you had hoped.
Landfill Zones
All cities create garbage, and one option for dealing with garbage is to zone a landfill. Landfills decompose garbage at a fairly slow rate and have a maximum capacity dependent on size. Once a landfill is full, garbage will accumulate around the city unless you have other means in place for disposal. When zoning a landfill, remember to lay a road which connects it to your city so trucks have a way to carry garbage from parts of town to the landfill.
HOW TO ZONE
First you must choose a zone type. Click on the Zone button on theMain Toolbar to display buttons for the various types of zones. Click on a button to select a zone type, and your cursor will change shape, indicating that you may begin zoning.
Residential,Commercial, andIndustrial buttons have a density submenu. If you click one of these buttons without viewing the submenu, the last chosen density will be active. To view or change the density,
To begin zoning, click and drag the cursor over a section of land. (You can do single clicks if you prefer.) When the mouse button is depressed, you’ll notice the area is highlighted with a Drop Shadow. TheDrop Shadow shows you where you’re about to zone. The cost of laying the zone is displayed as well, and updates as you increase or decrease the size of the zone. When you release the mouse button, a colored zone will replace theDrop Shadow and the cost will be deducted from your operating funds.
You may cancel a zoning process in progress if you hold down theShift key before releasing the mouse button.
If you zone an area and later change your mind, you can zone over it, or you can use the
RCI DEMAND INDICATOR
The RCI Demand Indicator gives you a constant readout of the demand for Residential, Commercial, or Industrial zones. The bars rise up when there is demand for a particular type of zone, and
When demand for a certain zone is high, you should zone more land for that type of building. The RCI Demand Indicator will not tell you what density to zone; you’ll have to choose a density based on your evaluation of the city and where you plan to add the new zone.
LAND VALUE
The more pleasant a place is to live or work, the higher its land value. Land value is influenced by many factors such as pollution levels, crime rates, and the availability of convenient access, to name a few. In residential zones, land values are particularly affected by proximity to desirable buildings (like a school), or undesirable sites (who wants to live near the Toxic Waste Conversion Plant?). Extremely undesirable buildings or services are known as NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard), so watch carefully for their effects on your city.
Land values fluctuate as conditions in an area change. As land values change, the buildings in the zone will be replaced with other buildings. Rising land values allow zones to develop to higher densities, represented by bigger, taller, more exclusive buildings.
To find the land value of a particular building or piece of land, use the Query Tool on theInformation Bar and click on your selection. Land value is included among the many details provided in theQuery Window.
CITY PLANNING MAPS, GRAPHS, AND QUERIES
Certain maps and graphs can give you a broad overview of your city planning progress. Maps most helpful to a city planner are:
Land Value
Density
Zones
To see these maps, click the Adjust & Review button menu on theMain Toolbar, and selectView Data to see a list of availableMaps,Charts, andGraphs. You may also see these maps in yourCity View using theView City Layers function. And don’t forget theQuery Tool, which provides
ENVIRONMENTAL DEPARTMENT
MEET YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISOR
Karen Frawl: Environmental Advisor
Karen Frawl describes herself as an overachiever. As if to prove the point, she earned simultaneous degrees from the University Of Heckford Falls
KAREN SPEAKS:
The function of the Environmental Department is to handle the city’s garbage and keep pollution in check. When you reduce garbage and pollution, you make the city a better place to live, and a place where happy, healthy Sims are more likely to live longer.
Environmental problems may not seem a top priority at first, but I warn you not to ignore them for too long or you’ll see all sorts of problems crop up. Problems such as garbage in the streets, low health levels, and a reduced water supply can all be attributed to a neglected environment.
Starting early to keep your city clean and
BASICS OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEPARTMENT
TRASHING GARBAGE
Trash happens. You simply can’t stop Sims from generating it. Though there are ways to reduce the amount of trash Sims produce, you can’t eliminate it completely. You must find a way to dispose of trash or reduce the amount you must dispose of through Recycling Centers. Your disposal alternatives are to dump it in landfills, burn it, or ship it out of town.
If you don’t provide a means for your city to dispose of garbage, Sims will be forced to dump their trash right out their window and you’ll be able to see it pile up. It isn’t pretty.
When garbage levels get very high, health levels drop dramatically (lowering life expectancy), as will the overall happiness of the Sims. It won’t take long for everyone to find a cleaner city in which to live. What follows is a list of garbage disposal systems you can build in your city.
Landfills
If you want to bury your city’s garbage, you need to zone landfill space. Landfills slowly decompose garbage that is buried there, but they are not black holes; overused landfills will reach a point where they can’t handle any more trash. When a landfill is full, garbage will accumulate around the city unless you have other means in place to dispose of it.
Put some thought into choosing a landfill site. Landfills don’t make good neighbors. They stink up the air and cause surrounding land values to plummet, so choose a spot far from residential and commercial zones or Sims will complain. Remember to lay a road connecting the landfill to your city so dump trucks can get there. If garbage can’t get to the landfill, it may end up dumped in the streets.
If you’re having trouble with a landfill and you think bulldozing it will solve the problem, think again. You can’t bulldoze over landfills; however, you can decommission them by removing road or rail access. Over time the landfill will decompose all of its accumulated garbage, at which time you can
Incinerators
Municipal Solid Waste Incinerators get rid of garbage by burning it. Unfortunately, they are nasty metal monsters that spew out lots of air pollution and ash. Sims don’t like them, and they especially don’t like them built in their backyards.
Both incinerators become less efficient as they age. You can check on their disposal capacity by querying them. As with landfills, incinerators need to be near a road so garbage trucks can deliver garbage to them.
Recycling Centers
Recycling Centers can significantly reduce the amount of trash that Sims produce. It’s much cheaper to recycle trash than it is to dispose of it, so build a Recycling Center as soon as they become available. These centers pay for themselves quickly, and no city should be without one.
Each recycling center can only deal with a limited amount of garbage, so large cities should have them in multiple locations for maximum effectiveness. Enact the Trash Presort Ordinance and you’ll raise the efficiency of all recycling centers.
NEIGHBOR DEALS
Mayors from neighboring cities may approach you from time to time with offers to dispose of your garbage for a price, or to pay you to take their garbage and dispose of it for them.
Garbage deals are available only if you have built connections to neighboring cities. Transporting garbage in or out of your city requires a road, highway, rail, or seaport connection. When a deal of either type is in place, open the Neighbors Window from theAdjust & Review button menu to check on it.
Exporting Garbage
An easy, but sometimes expensive, way to dispose of garbage is to pay a neighbor to haul it all away. Each month, a contracted neighbor will take all your excess garbage (meaning any garbage that your city’s landfills and incinerators cannot handle). Each month, funds are deducted from your treasury based on how much garbage the neighbor toted away. Even if you don’t generate any excess garbage, you still have to pay a minimum fee. And there is a large penalty for canceling the deal.
Importing Garbage
If you have excess landfill space, you can make a deal to dispose of a neighbor’s trash. Each month, a set amount of trash will be added to your city’s garbage. Each month, you’ll receive a cash payment.
If your garbage disposal services become overloaded and you want to cancel the deal, you’ll be charged a large penalty.
AIR POLLUTION
While you can’t see air pollution, you’ll notice its effects. Air pollution lowers land value and health levels in the city. These conditions distress your Sims. Many things contribute to air pollution. The two biggest culprits are heavy traffic and smokestack industries. If you can encourage mass transit and clean industries, you are well on your way to solving your city’s air pollution problem.
The addition of trees and parks helps to clean the air a bit, as will any Clean Air Ordinances you can activate.
WATER POLLUTION
Invisible contaminants, primarily from industry, can invade your water supply. When the pollution becomes severe, any water around the pollution source becomes brown. When this happens, pumps lose efficiency, and Sims complain loudly about smelly drinking water and falling health levels.
Water Treatment Plants can mitigate minor water pollution problems, but to attack the source of pollution, you must go after polluting industries. EnactClean Water Ordinances that offer tax incentives to encourage
ENVIRONMENTAL MAPS, CHARTS, AND QUERIES
Certain maps and graphs can give you a broad overview of the state of your environment. Maps and charts most helpful are:
Pollution
Water
Garbage Chart
Global Pollution vs. Time graph
To see these maps, click the Adjust & Review button menu on theMain Toolbar, and selectView Data to see a list of available maps, charts, and graphs. Or use theView City Layers window to see data maps in yourCity View. As always, use theQuery Tool to see
PUBLIC SAFETY DEPARTMENT
MEET YOUR PUBLIC SAFETY ADVISOR
Maria Montoya: Public Safety Advisor
Maria Montoya knew she would dedicate her life to public safety at age eight when fire destroyed her family home. She graduated from the Cornwrath Police and Fire Academy with top honors. Her senior thesis, Advanced Theories of Urban Geographic Response Route Calculation, earned her high public acclaim, as well as her first job, assistant warden at Hollyview Women’s Prison. It was not long afterward that she made the move to city services, working her way up the managerial ranks. Throughout her career Maria has mixed a
MARIA SPEAKS:
The Public Safety Department is responsible for providing police and fire protection to the city. In addition to overseeing
Sims expect a certain level of safety when they move to a city. If high crime forces them to cower behind closed doors, or if no one answers their calls when a fire breaks out, Sims’ survival instincts take over and they will leave town. On the other hand, good police and fire coverage raises land values in a city, which makes Sims happy and proud to be citizens.
Your job is to see that the Sims in the city are protected. I’ll be around to remind you if they are not.
BASICS OF THE PUBLIC SAFETY DEPARTMENT
POLICE AND CRIME
Crime is a fact of life in any city, but it can and should be kept to a minimum. High crime in a neighborhood lowers land values and makes
You can deal with crime from several angles. First, provide adequate police protection in your city. Police presence alone deters crime, and when crimes do occur, officers can arrest the offending Sims. Second, don’t encourage crime with
Police stations provide protection in a radius around each station called a precinct. The size of a precinct expands as you raise the police budget. Criminals can roam free in any area that is not covered by a precinct, so try to place police stations in strategic areas around your city.
Funding not only affects a precinct’s size, but also its effectiveness. Police effectiveness is the likelihood that a criminal who commits a crime within a precinct will get caught. Effectiveness is always highest in a small radius around the police station, and starts to fade as distance from the station increases. As police funding increases, police effectiveness throughout the precinct rises.
If you fail to adequately fund your police department, you may very well find that your trusty officers tend to go on strike. If all of your police force is picketing, chances are very few criminals are being apprehended.
Police stations placed near one another may have precincts that overlap, and effectiveness in these overlapping areas is additive.
The Crime Data Map available from yourData Views menu shows the location of police stations and the effectiveness within the precincts, as well as areas of high crime in the city. Use this map to find the best spots to place new police stations. You can use theQuery Tool to get details on how any individual station is doing.
Jails
Jails are where convicted criminals are put to pay their debt to society. If you do not have enough jails in your city, the police will be forced to release any new criminals they catch. Keep enough jails around or your police effectiveness will drop.
Sims don’t like living near jails, so build them away from residential neighborhoods.
Lowering Crime
The best way to lower crime is to increase police protection (either by placing additional police stations or by raising the police budget), and by building jails when needed.
High land value goes hand in hand with low crime. The more you can do to make your city a more desirable place to live, the fewer crimes will occur.
Enacting some ordinances can reduce crime, though you should weigh the cost of the ordinance against the cost of providing additional police protection. Be aware that some ordinances, and construction of certain buildings, tend to increase crime levels.
Dispatching Police
When an emergency occurs, you may manually dispatch a police squadron to any area in the city. The number of squadrons you can send at any one time is equal to the number of police stations in the city plus one. You always have at least one unit to dispatch, even with no police stations.
When an emergency arises in an area with sufficient police coverage, you probably do not need to dispatch additional police. You still may want to though, especially for larger disasters. Police are good at quelling angry mobs, but tend to mostly stand around and watch any of the other disasters.
To dispatch a police squadron, click on the Dispatch Police button within theEmergency button menu and then click on any location in the city. The officers arrive immediately and go straight to work. A blue police dispatch pylon will mark their location.
FIRE
Fires occur at random locations, but fire coverage is systematic. By having fire stations placed strategically throughout the city, you can rest easy knowing that if a blaze does break out, you have everything set up to solve the problem without your intervention.
When a fire is so bad that it demands your personal involvement, you can dispatch firefighters to the scene. Or you can bulldoze a firebreak around the blaze to try and contain it. What you can’t do is turn off disasters when a fire is already in progress. Sorry.
Each fire station you place provides a radius of fire protection around it. The size of the coverage area expands up to a limit as you raise the fire budget. Though a fire is just as likely to break out in an area with fire protection as in one without, fires in protected areas are less likely to do any damage because firefighters respond immediately.
Funding not only affects the size of the coverage area; it also influences the effectiveness of firefighters within a covered area. Firefighter effectiveness is the likelihood that a fire that breaks out in a protected area will get put out before damage occurs. Effectiveness is always highest in a small radius around the fire station, and starts to fade as distance increases. As fire funding increases, firefighter effectiveness rises.
Fire stations placed near one another may have cover areas that overlap, and effectiveness in these overlapping areas is additive.
The Flammability Data Map available from yourData Views window shows the location of fire stations and their coverage areas. It also shows areas at high risk of fire. Use this map to find the best spots in your city to place new fire stations. Use theQuery Tool to get details on individual station effectiveness.
Dispatching Firefighters
When an emergency occurs, you may manually dispatch a unit of firefighters to any area in the city. The number of units you can send at any one time is equal to the number of fire stations in the city plus one. You always have at least one dispatch unit, even with no fire stations.
When an emergency arises in an area with sufficient fire coverage, you probably do not need to dispatch additional firefighters. If fire is rampant, though, you may feel more secure knowing that you have dispatched extra units.
To dispatch a fire fighting unit, click on the Dispatch Firefighters button within theEmergency button menu and then click on any location in the city. The unit arrives immediately and firefighters go straight to work. A red fire dispatch pylon will mark their location.
Flammability
Flammability is a measure of how easily something will burn. All buildings in your city have an inherent flammability rating, which you can see by using the Query Tool on the building. The higher the rating, the more likely that building will be consumed by fire if one occurs.
The most effective way to reduce the flammability of a building is to see that it is receiving water, meaning that it is located on a watered tile. To be watered, a tile must be located within seven tiles of a water pipe that is supplying water. Try to see that all buildings in your city sit on watered tiles. The reduction in potential fire damage is significant.
Ordinances can be enacted to reduce the global flammability level in your city.
Dispatching Crop Dusters
Your special corps of Crop Dusters will be available if swarming locusts decide to visit your town.
Clicking on the Dispatch Crop Dusters button from theEmergency menu will allow you to deploy up to three planes, as indicated by white dispatch icons. You’ll be able to see the planes if you Zoom In on yourCity View. Crop Duster planes will protect farmland in your city from oncoming locusts. Click on theCity View to indicate the area which should be dusted. If you happen to dust fields in which the locusts are currently gorging, you can destroy the swarm. Be sure to protect all your farms by continuing to dispatch your planes to undusted fields after they have finished at your last dispatch location. If you work quickly, you’ll be able to save farmland and greenery in your city.
DISASTERS
Predicting Disasters
It seems that there are more and more disasters occurring these days. Just as savvy mayors think they have prepared for all eventualities, new and improved calamities occur. Disasters occur at random, but sometimes you may see hints that they’re coming. Keep your eye on your News Ticker.
Early Warning Siren
Though you can hope for the best, it is always best to prepare for the worst, especially if that worst is a tornado or an alien attack. If you can get your Sims off the streets and inside before a disaster strikes, the damage from the disaster will be much less. Activate the Early Warning Siren from theEmergency menu and Sims will heed your warning and take cover.
You are the only one who can control this siren, and you should not abuse the privilege. If you activate the siren when no emergency is imminent, Sims will start to doubt you and may not respond when the need is real. This is all well and good until you are actually trying to help them, so tease with caution.
When Disaster Strikes
Fires, riots, and locust plagues are the only disasters where you can make a difference by dispatching police, fire, or crop duster units. It doesn’t matter how many police officers you send to an earthquake, an alien attack, a whirlpool, or other disasters. Your public safety forces won’t make any difference once these disasters hit, though the Early Warning Siren helps if activated in time.
If, for some reason, you actually want a disaster to occur, select the Start Disaster button from within theEmergency button menu and pick your means of destruction.
HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND AURA DEPARTMENT (HEA)
MEET YOUR HEA ADVISOR
Randall Shoop: HEA Advisor
Eschewing the traditional academic route, Randall Shoop received a Certificate of Completion in general studies from Gonzo Community College. He landed an internship with the Jackersville department of Social Services, learning his profession, as he likes to say, from the ground up. Ten years ago, Randall founded the Urban Paradise Movement, a group that believes cities themselves are living entities. Two years ago he renounced the movement. Probably due to his natural sensitivity to the plight of those less fortunate, Randall’s input on matters of social welfare is sought SimNationwide.
RANDALL SPEAKS:
The HEA Department focuses on the overall quality of Sim life. Thehealth aspect involves life expectancy rates as well as Sims’s relative health while they are alive. Theeducation branch makes sure the Sims are getting the schooling they need and want.Aura is the general “feel” of the city and reflects the overall happiness of the Sims.
Keeping Sims happy is a tough job, but when they’re pleased with your work, they’ll give you special buildings as gifts. I’ll do everything I can to help you. Being a Sim who lives in your city, helping you helps me, too.
BASICS OF THE HEA DEPARTMENT
IMPROVING SIM HEALTH
Good health brings long life, and that makes Sims happy. The average Sim living in the average city has an average life expectancy of
The key to raising heath levels is to build plenty of hospitals in the city. Hospitals need to be located in easily accessed areas. More importantly, your city’s hospitals need to have adequate funding.
The importance of healthcare funding cannot be overstated. Insufficient funding reduces the number of healthcare workers and, therefore, the quality of patient care suffers. Sick and injured Sims will be denied hospital stays due to lack of beds. All requests to see specialists will be flatly refused. It doesn’t take long for health levels to drop when funding is cut. If funding levels wallow in inadequacy for an extended period of time, you not only damage health levels, but risk demonstrations and strikes on the part of your healthcare workers. Strikes cause hospital efficiency to plummet, and health levels deteriorate even further.
Unfortunately, even with plenty of
And finally, enacting
HOW SIMS LEARN
Young Sim brains are like sponges, soaking up and learning everything to which they are exposed. Strangely, they learn best when sitting at small wooden desks in formal classrooms. Sadly, adult Sims must work to merely retain the education level they achieved in their youth. If they aren’t continually exposed to educational environments, their accumulated knowledge starts to decay.
RAISING EDUCATION LEVELS
Education levels determine a city’s potential.
Schools: If you want to raise education levels in your city, concentrate on educating the children. You should place enough schools and colleges in your city so that every young Sim has a place to learn. When young Sims do well in school, they pull up the educational average for the entire city.
Adequate Funding: Schools require funding to be effective. Insufficient
funding means schools can not provide students with an adequate number of teachers. Not even average education levels can be achieved under these conditions. If education funding is very low for an extended period of time, teachers will go on strike. The minimal education students receive during a strike holds them back for their entire life.
Museums and Libraries: Do not neglect the educational needs of adult Sims. Though they can’t raise the education levels in the city, they can definitely
pull it down. If you build museums and libraries, you can halt the natural decay of knowledge in adults, and keep them from pulling down city education levels.
KEEPING SIMS
The key to happiness is elusive at best. Sims (a group
Many things affect a city’s aura. High education levels, high life expectancy, a growing economy, and desirable buildings such as parks and zoos can raise aura. Pollution, crime, traffic, excessive regulations (ordinances), high tax levels, and the presence of undesirable buildings such as landfills and prisons can lower aura. A city with a high aura is home to happy Sims, and happy Sims give high approval ratings to the Mayor (and often bring gifts!).
Neighborhoods each have their own aura. Study the Aura Map available in yourData Views to see which areas of the city are happiest, and which areas could go for some special loving.
HEA MAPS, CHARTS, AND QUERIES
Certain maps and charts can give you a broad overview of the state of health, education, and aura in your city. Most helpful are:
Health Chart
Education Chart
Aura Map
To see these maps and charts, click the Adjust & Review button on theMain Toolbar, and selectView Data to see a list of available maps, charts and graphs. Another good source of information comes from using theQuery Tool. Click on your hospitals and schools to see
UTILITIES DEPARTMENT
MEET YOUR UTILITIES ADVISOR
Gus Oddman: Utilities Advisor
Gus Oddman was voted “Most Likely to be Forgotten” by his high school classmates. He earned a degree in Applied Pipes and Wires (Summa Cum Mediocre) before entering public service as a grout width inspector in the Beezeltown Office of Municipal Brickwork. Gus’s ability to understand complex systems and to sidestep most major decisions made his steady ascent up the ladder of public service inevitable. Now, as Utilities Advisor, he performs his duties with unflagging loyalty and provides information based on years of
GUS SPEAKS:
The function of the Utilities Department is to supply power and water to the city. It’s as simple as that. All you need to worry about is building an infrastructure so that all zones are hooked up to the grid. Actually, there are two utility gridsflpower and waterfland both are important.
A city without power can never attract Sims. In fact, if any building or zone loses power for too long a period of time, the Sims will move out. Sims are not very forgiving when it comes to being without power. As for water, Sims will get very cranky if they don’t have running water, but they will not react as strongly as they would to a lack of power.
Keeping the utilities flowing to your city can be tricky at times, but I’ll be around to answer questions when you need help.
BASICS OF THE UTILITY DEPARTMENT
WHO NEEDS POWER?
All zones need power in order to develop. Power plants generate power, but the electricity they produce must travel from the power plant to all zones in your city. Hmm, maybe not a landfill. You can tell at a glance if a building needs power because unpowered buildings display the following flashing symbol:
HOW POWER IS CONDUCTED
Power plants provide power, and high tension wires conduct this power to your undeveloped zones. You can, however, avoid running wires due to the superb work of the city engineers. Zones and buildings come with built in power infrastructure, handled by the omnipresent city engineers. Any building or zone placed within five tiles of an already powered building or zone automatically gets power. Connections over roads are not necessary. As long as power flows to a zoned tile or building, it will just keep going!
Thoughtful zoning makes it feasible to create a chain of power, enabling you to power an entire city with nary a power line! You only need to lay power lines if you wish to transmit power beyond five tiles.
There may be cases where laying power lines is the better option. For instance, if you place a power plant in an unzoned area on the far outskirts of the city, there may not be enough zoned tiles to relay the power to where it’s needed. In this case, power lines are needed to transmit the power to the zones. Power lines allow you to place heavy polluting, undesirable power plants far from your developing zones.
POWER PLANTS
SimCity 3000 Unlimited offers nine types of power plants, though not all of them are available all the time. (They must be invented first!)
Each power plant has a different cost, generates a different amount of power, and produces some level of pollution. You need to decide which is best for your city’s needs. If you can afford it, it’s worth spending the extra money to lower pollution, but there will be times when you have no choice but to cover your Sims in black soot.
As power plants age, they lose efficiency. Areas of your city that draw power from an aging power plant may experience blackouts as the power plant loses capacity. Keep an eye on your power plants by using the Query Tool to find out their current capacity vs. their potential capacity.
Power plants can be destroyed if they are systematically overused. Run your plants beyond full capacity for a little while, and you can expect to see blackouts. Run them beyond full capacity for months on end, and they’ll explode. Hope you built some fire stations.
BLACKOUTS
A power loss (or blackout) occurs when a building or zone that normally receives power is not receiving enough power to operate. It’s easy to spot a blackout. If a building is unpowered it displays a no power symbol to show you it needs power.
Most blackouts occur when a power station can’t generate enough power to meet the demands of the area it serves. Power will radiate as far as possible from the power station and then will just stop, leaving structures farthest from the plant without power.
Another cause for blackouts is when a “break” in the grid occurs. This can mean that a power line was destroyed, or that the established path where power radiated was disrupted through the
WATER: A BASIC NECESSITY
Sims need water. Zones that are not watered will never reach full development and are at a high risk of fire disasters. If a developed zone is cut off from water for too long, Sims will pack up and leave. It’s not easy to tell if a tile is watered just by looking at your city. Slow (or no) development is an indication, but the only
Tool, or switch to the underground view where watered tiles are easily distinguishable– they will appear blue. You can also go to yourData Views to check out watered and
TYPES OF PUMPS
Though you have natural water sources like lakes and rivers in your city, it’s your responsibility to get this water to your Sims. Water must be pumped out of a source and then carried through a network of water mains to locations where it’s needed. There are three kinds of water sources in your city and, not surprisingly, three kinds of pumps. These are described below.
All three pumps lose pumping capacity as they age. Keep an eye on your water supply in the underground view. If zones previously watered now appear unwatered, check the nearby pumps by querying them. They may require replacing.
Water pumping stations
Regular water pumping stations pump water from fresh water lakes and rivers. Power them with electricity and water pumping stations will pull up more water than any other kind of pump. They must be built very near a fresh water source, or they won’t work. Pay attention to water pollution levels, as high pollution slows down the efficiency of water pumping stations.
Water Towers
Water towers pump water from hidden underground springs. These springs exist everywhere, so water towers can be built anywhere. The problem with water towers is they don’t pump very much water. Water pollution can slow down water towers even more than it would pumping stations.
Desalinization Plants
Desalinization plants pump water from the sea and convert salt water into fresh water. They do their job amazingly well, but they do come with some potential problems. These pumps must be built on a seacoast to be of any use; they are less efficient than a water pumping station; and they lose efficiency when water pollution is present. The SimNation Council on Anachronism expressly forbids the construction of desalinization plants before they are invented.
WATER PIPES
Water mains are large pipes that carry fresh water from pumps to buildings in the city that need water. (Don’t tell the Sims this, but these same water mains also carry sewage from the buildings back to the water sources).
Water seeps out along water mains (also called pipes), watering all areas within seven tiles of any part of the pipe. Unlike power transmission, watered tiles do not act as relay stations. For a tile to be watered, it must be within seven tiles of a water pipe, not seven tiles from a watered zone.
To get water to the Sims, you must lay a water main from a water pumping station to the city, and build a network of pipes underneath the city. For full coverage, these pipes should be no more than twelve tiles apart.
When you choose the Water Pipes tool from theMain Toolbar, theCity View will automatically change to an underground view. The colors in this underground view reflect the above ground structures. Open terrain is represented in shades of brown, the darkest brown representing areas that cannot be built upon. Roads are represented in gray, zoned areas are dark orange and developed areas are light orange. As you lay pipes, the areas that are successfully provided with water will turn blue. If the pipes are not receiving water the ground underneath them will remain orange. You can also see the underground components of water facilities so you can make the connections with ease.
WATER SUPPLY PROBLEMS
A water pumping station can only pump out a certain amount of water each month. Water from a pump that is connected to a water main will flow toward the city and through the network of pipesfluntil the water supply is exhausted. You may have tiles piped for water, but unless your pumps can generate enough water to fill all the pipes, some areas won’t get the water they need. Build more pumps and connect them to the pipe network to increase the flow.
CLEANING UP DIRTY WATER
Pollution can really gum up the waterworks. Pumps lose efficiency when they’re pumping polluted water. You can add more pumps to increase the supply in the short term, but don’t forget to clean up the pollution.
Water Treatment Plants
One way to help clean up the water supply is by building water treatment plants. They must be connected by pipes to the water grid in order to be effective. Treatment plants lose efficiency as they age. Check on them regularly using the Query Tool.
Ordinances
If water pollution in your city is severe, or you don’t want it to become severe, consider enacting ordinances to reduce pollution. They cost money, but they make a real difference.
NEIGHBOR DEALS
Mayors from neighboring cities may approach you from time to time with offers to sell power or water, or offers to pay you to supply them with power or water.
These deals are only available if you have built connections to a neighboring city. Trading power requires that you build a power line connection to a neighbor; trading water requires a water main connection be built. To make the connection, run a power line or water main up to the city border. Your city engineers will help you make the final connection. You may make power and water connections to any or all
Whenever a deal is in place you can check up on it by opening the Neighbors Window from theAdjust & Review button menu in theMain Toolbar.
Buying Power and Water
If you don’t want to clutter up your city with unsightly and expensive facilities, you can purchase power or water from a neighbor. You must have the proper utilities connection in place before a deal can be made. Each month, a contracted neighbor will look at your city’s power or water needs at the connection point, and will supply any deficit.
The connection point is critical. Any area of the city that you want to supply with purchased power or water must be able to be served from the connection point. If no pipe network or power transmission path exists between the connection and an area that needs utilities, the neighbor will not recognize the deficit and will not sell you enough power to cover that deficit.
Each month, funds are deducted from your treasury based on how much power or water you needed. If you didn’t need any during the month, you still have to pay a minimum fee. Before entering into this sort of arrangement, take into account that there is a large penalty if you cancel the deal.
Selling Power or Water
If you are generating excess power or water and you have the appropriate utility connection in place, you may be approached by a neighbor looking to purchase these resources. Each month you are responsible to supply them with the contracted amount.
Each month, you’ll receive a cash payment.
The connection point is critical. If you’re generating excess power or water in areas that cannot serve the connection point, you may not be able to fulfill the contract. Make sure there is a clear transmission path (pipe, zones or wires) from the source of your excess utilities to the connection point.
If conditions change and you can no longer provide the power you promised, the deal is canceled and you’ll be charged a large penalty.
UTILITIES DEPARTMENT MAPS, GRAPHS, AND QUERIES
Certain maps and graphs can give you a broad overview of the status of your utilities coverage. Maps most helpful are:
Electric Power Coverage
Water Supply
Pollution
To see these maps, click the Adjust & Review button on theMain Toolbar, and selectView Data to see a list of available maps, charts and graphs. Or access the maps through theCity Layer Views button on theNavigation Panel. Another good source of information comes from using theQuery Tool. Click on your power plants and pumps to see
ADVISOR Q&A: CLUES ON SOME BASIC SIMCITY STRATEGIES
ADVISOR Q&A: CLUES ON SOME BASIC SIMCITY STRATEGIES
We are very fortunate to have all the Advisors of SimCity 3000 Unlimited gathered here to answer some frequently asked questions we’ve heard from mayors around SimNation. We hope this forum is helpful. Remember, the Advisors also make themselves available to answer questions at www.SimCity.com. Keep up to date with the ins and outs of burning policy issues by checking in regularly.
So, ask away. Whichever Advisor feels he or she can answer the question will jump right in.
Q:How do I make money?
Mortimer: The easy answer is: you never spend more than you make. The truth is, there is no easy answer. You need to take certain risks when expanding your city. If you never expand, there is no way to increase funds. Sure you can play the tax game, where you raise and lower taxes to bring in and then drain new Sims. That’s a dangerous game to play, though, because eventually they will catch on and perhaps not be so willing to move to your city at the drop of a hat. Playing with ordinances and cutting deals with neighbors can be a way to steadily increase cash.
Q:It seems like it’d be easiest to build a ton of roads. Why should anyone bother with mass transit?
Moe: Sims love their cars, there’s no denying that. But let’s think about something for a second. When the only way to get from place to place is via car, then that’s how everyone will travel. If every Sim in the city is driving their own car, there is going to be an unreasonable amount of traffic on the roads. Sure you can put ordinances into effect which promote carpooling, but that won’t cut it if your population gets large enough.
Also, think of it like this: Sims aren’t willing to drive as far if traffic is bad. That means that you are forced to make a tiny congested city with no real hope for expansion. When mass transit is introduced, Sims tend to get their cars off the road. Fewer cars means less traffic, and less traffic means Sims are willing to travel further. Oh yeah, and then there’s the benefit of cleaner air. If you can get a good rail system going, you can eliminate even more pollution while creating a way for Sims to travel even further. And then your city can grow.
Q:What density should I make my zones?
Constance: Stick with light and medium density zones to start with. You can’t get certain kinds of buildings until your city has achieved a certain population and your land a certain value. You will never see a building like a bristling skyscraper in a town of 2000.
When you start the game, you’ll find that only
Q:Why do I have slums?
Constance: There are many factors that contribute to the existence of slums, but they all boil down to one simple thing: Land Value. High crime and pollution will lower the land value of any area. Being too close to a landfill or other undesirable area also lowers land value. It’s not a bad thing to have low income housing, but if it is dominating your city, you may want to reevaluate.
Q:Some of my buildings look dark and empty. Why did the Sims leave?
Constance: Sims will abandon buildings in a developed zone when conditions warrant it. They are likely to leave if power, water or transportation to the zone is cut off. If you fix the problem, Sims may come back and restore life to the buildings. The only time Sims won’t return is when an area has been contaminated by radiation from a nuclear explosion. Too dangerous. Use yourQuery Tool to get information on why a particular structure has been abandoned.
Q:Can I build something in
Constance: Yes! An
Q:My RCI Indicator shows no demand, how do I continue to grow my city?
Constance: In order to lead productive, happy lives, Sims need to be able to sell the goods and services they produce and relax when they are not busy working. When growth stalls, it generally means that your city has reached a threshold for one or all of these requirements. In order to allow your city to grow further you must look for new outlets for the sale of your goods and services and more ways for your Sims to enjoy themselves in their spare time. Connections to your neighbors provide a means to get your economy moving forward again, and entertainment centers are a great way to encourage new Sims to come and play, and hopefully stay.
Q:What’s the difference between a landmark and a reward?
Constance: Landmarks are available all the time, and are based on famous
Q:How do I encourage the development of Farms?
Constance: Sims are likely to build farms on low density industrial zones that are away from roads, relatively unpolluted, and have low land value. If you zone a large area of
Q:How does pollution work in SimCity 3000 Unlimited?
Karen: Industry, power plants, cars, landfills – all generate pollution. As mayor, you will have to contend with air and water pollution, and possibly even with radiation from nuclear power plants. Pollution can have an extremely negative effect on your city’s attractiveness to current and potential Sim residents. Sims will simply refuse to live near pollution sources, so if you zone your residential areas near such sources it is unlikely that they will develop. Waste from factories and landfills will also seep into your city’s water supply and turn your lakes, rivers, and coastal waters a discomforting black. Water pollution causes your water system to lose efficiency. Soon, your Sims will begin complaining and move away if you don’t deal with the problem.
There are a number of ways in which you can cope with pollution. First, it’s a good idea to create residential and commercial zones away from pollution sources. Mass transit systems will cut down on air pollution. You can cope with water pollution by creating water treatment plants, and by finding alternatives to landfills – such as incinerators,
In the end, however, the best way to deal with pollution is through strategy and
Q:What happens when disaster hits?
Maria: It depends on the disaster. The trick is to consider what kind of disaster is going on and then decide what department is best suited to handle the problem. Let’s take a fire as an example. The first thing you want to do is get the fire department out there to start containing the fire. Police officers are very good at quelling angry rioters. Locusts respond only to Crop Dusters. If, for some reason, you haven’t prepared for anything and have neither police nor fire protection, then your city is at risk of being destroyed. Although you can try to demolish everything in the path of a fire in a desperate attempt to save at least some of your city. It’s worth a try.
Q:How many hospitals do I need in my city?
Randall: The number of hospitals needed is directly a factor of your population. Each hospital can accommodate only so many patients. Simply having plenty of hospitals is not enough. Each requires adequate funding to do its part in improving Sim health. Use theQuery Tool to check the effectiveness of your hospitals. Good grades mean good health and longer life expectancies. Bad grades may mean you need better funding or more hospitals.
Q:How do I go about increasing aura?
Randall: All you need to do is increase the overall happiness of your Sims. That can come in many forms, from building a stadium to setting an ordinance that lowers pollution. The healthier the area and the more ways a Sim can unwind after work, the happier everyone will be.
Q:Sims are complaining about blackouts. How do I restore power?
Gus: When a blackout occurs, you should investigate the cause of the problem before making a hasty conclusion. First, query the power plants to see how close to maximum capacity they have been running. You may need to place more power plants. If the plants seem fine, query tiles between the power plant and the location of the blackout to find a break in the line. Then use zoning or power lines to restore power.
Q:Why isn’t any water getting to my Sims?
Gus: If you’ve built a network of water pipes to bring water from your pumps to your zones, it’s likely that the pumps aren’t pumping enough water to meet the demand. First thing I’d do is query the pumps to see what capacity they are running at. When they are being used to their max, you will need to build more. If the capacity is not reaching its potential you might have a water pollution problem that’s reducing their efficiency, or it could indicate that you need to place them closer to a source of water.
Q:Is it my imagination or do Sims not want to live near power lines?
Gus: Good catch. You are talking about the
SIMCITY 3000 BUILDING ARCHITECT PLUS: BUILDING BASICS
SIMCITY 3000 BUILDING
ARCHITECT PLUS:
BUILDING BASICS
You are mayoring like mad. Road construction is a breeze. You’ve got parks, marinas, airports, and skyscrapers. Gus Oddman, your Utilities Advisor, is very impressed with your grasp of electrical subsystems. You have built a city. Several, in fact. But you are an ambitious mayor. You would like to leave a lasting imprint on your city. The SimCity 3000 Building Architect Plus offers you mayoral immortality. How can your Sims forget you when they live, work, and shop in buildings you have designed and built?
Do you think only those mayors with artistic or
To get a handle on SimCity 3000 Building Architect basics, go through the Tutorial. After that, those who are new to the Building Architect will probably want some constructive help, especially for some of those larger structures.
And don’t forget, when you feel a building represents your creative and design skills at their zenith, you can share your building with others on SimCity Exchange. Why shouldn’t Sims throughout SimNation share in your immortality?
SIMCITY 3000 BUILDING ARCHITECT TUTORIAL
Nothing fancy here. This should serve as an introduction to the basic tools of SimCity 3000 Building Architect. We’ll give you a leg up by starting with a preconstructed house to serve as the basis for learning your building basics.
STEP 1: LOAD TUTORIAL HOUSE
1.The first thing you need to do is launch SimCity 3000 Building Architect Plus. If you need any help, please see the Reference Card.
2.When the Opening Menu appears, select Load Building.
3.From the browse menu of the buildings folder, select Tutorial House.
4.Click the Checkmark. SimCity 3000 Building Architect will load your building.
STEP 2: SHAKE HANDS WITH THE ARCHITECT TOOLKIT
1.The Load Building menu will take you to the Architect Toolkit window. You’ll see your Tutorial House displayed in the center of the workspace.
2.See the SimCity street scene behind your house? That’s there to give you a sense for how buildings will fit into your city. This background will display only when you Zoom Out from the building.
3.At the bottom right of the window, you’ll see the Navigation Panel. Just as in SimCity, use the buttons to Zoom In or Zoom Out on your structure.
4.Use the Rotate Buttons to turn your structure around counterclockwise or clockwise. Remember, your buildings have three
dimensions. You’ll need to rotate the structure to build, paint, whatever. Otherwise you’ll end up with a house that is only partly roofed, and you wouldn’t want your Sims to catch a cold just because you forgot to provide their heads with cover. Would you?
5.Rotate the view of the Tutorial House in both directions. Then come back to the original view.
6.The buttons along the right toolbar represent the five modes of the Architect Toolkit:
Construct
Paint
Detail
Props
File Options & Exit
7.We’ll get to the Construct Mode later. Let’s start by painting your house.
STEP 3: PAINTING YOUR HOUSE
You’ll use the Paint Mode to apply textures and colors to the surfaces of your building. Imagine a city filled with skyscrapers in a rainbow of pastels. My oh my.
1.Click on Paint.
2.There are two Paint Tools available to you: Fill (the bucket) and Paintbrush (the paintbrush). For right now, click on Fill.
3.See the panel of selections above the Navigation Panel? That’s your Paint Palette. The
4.Move the Fill cursor to one of the walls of the house. A square highlight frame under the cursor indicates the plane the paint will cover. Give that mouse a click. Voila! You’ve painted an entire wall of your house. And you didn’t even have to scrape or powerwash. Now paint the other visible wall.
5.Now you’re going to need those Rotate Buttons so you can get to the other walls of your house. You are welcome to choose a different color/texture, but do go ahead and paint those walls.
You can tap your Spacebar to rotate your building 90 degrees.
6.For more finicky painting, select the Paintbrush. Use this tool to paint the chimney and porch. Stick with the Walls Palette here. Remember to paint all surfaces.
7.Now that we have the walls painted, let’s paint the roof. Select
Rooftops from the
8.Shingle? Asphalt tile? Select a roof covering you like and ‘paint’.
9.If you can paint a roof, why stop there? Let’s paint us a lawn. Select Ground from the Palette Menu, and give your house a nice lush lawn.
10.Your house should now look something like this.
STEP 4: WINDOWS, DOORS, AND CORNICES (YOU KNOW, DETAILS)
Like your house so far? Good. Does it seem to lack a bit of character, though? We thought you might feel that way. In Details Mode you can add all those little details that make a house so special. You know… windows, doors. Okay, okay. You can get a bit fancy here, too.
1.Click on Detail.
2.There is only one Detail Mode tool available to you, Apply Detail. Select this tool.
Take a look at your Details Palette. As withPaint Mode, there is a
3.Rotate the house so that the steps are showing and move the cursor to the area just above the steps. The highlight shows where the bottom
4.Go ahead and choose some windows and other details.
5.If you don’t like the way something looks, just erase it. The Erase Tool, one of the Edit Tools, can be used to remove any details you don’t like.
Holding down the
6.If you accidentally misplace a detail, you can click once on the Undo button to recover quickly and try again.
STEP 5: HOW ABOUT A FEW PROPS?
What’s a Prop? Props are things external to your building which, when placed on or around a building, give it that ‘lived in’ look. No mayor wants to build a bunch of buildings that seem empty. So place a few trees, put a pickup truck on the roof of your skyscraper. Continue to add character to your creation.
Click on the Props button to open theProps Palette. We’ve divided the props into various categories on the
1.Props are grouped in the palette in multiple rotations (just like the blocks in the Construct Palette). When selecting a prop you’ll want to be sure to select the rotation that works best for your current building rotation. Don’t forget to pay attention to the lighting angle!
2.Scroll through the Palette until you find the desired Prop. How about a tree?
3.Click on the Place Prop tool, and place your cursor in the position where you would like to see your prop.
4.As you move your cursor over your building, you’ll notice blocks lighting up. These highlights should give you a rough idea of the size of your selected prop and where it will position itself when you click to place.
5.Click to place your prop.
6.Now, rotate the model. Notice that the prop seems to rotate too!
7.Go ahead and place lots more props on your model. You may notice that sometimes one prop will “eat into” another, making it look incomplete. Props are very territorial and don’t like it when another gets too close. A little practice and you’ll learn to respect props’ personal space.
8.Use the Erase or Undo tools if you are not happy with a prop placement.
STEP 6: HARD HAT AREA (IT’S CONSTRUCTION TIME)
Widgets
Model View
Edit Planes
bottom
Constructing 3D structures on a 2D screen can be a bit
1. Click on Construct to enter Construct Mode.
As you can see, your construction area is comprised of four workspaces.
The center area is called the Model View, which shows a 3D image of the structure.
The other three areas (right, left, and below the Model View) are theEdit Planes.
You’ll be doing your actual block stacking on the Edit Planes, not in theModel View. As you build, notice your structure take shape in theModel View. Once you get the knack of how theEdit Planes andModel View work together, you are pretty much on your way to mastering theConstruct Mode. Ready to get started? It’s a good idea to keep referring to the labeled image above.
2.Now, look at the Model View of your house. See the toggle at the structure’s base?
3.That’s a Widget. Move your cursor over to the red Widget. When the cursor becomes a hand, click and hold the mouse button.
4.See the red screen thing? That’s a Highlight Plane, and it corresponds to the
5.Go ahead and move your mouse slowly so that the Highlight Plane bisects the center of the house. Release the Widget.
6.Now move your cursor over the Right Edit Plane (the red one). On the Right Edit Plane you will see all of the blocks drawn on that plane of the building, like a big slice has been taken of the building and served to you on a plate. It’s this slice that Construct mode lets you edit.
7.In the Model View and on the Right Edit Plane you will also notice a floating yellow block under your cursor. This block is a highlight block. If you were to click the left mouse button, a block would appear in that position in both
8.See your new block? Don’t get too proud yet. Click the Undo edit tool to remove the block you drew.
So, that’s the basic method for stacking a block. Let’s move this up a notch and stack blocks that will make an addition to your house.
9. Once again, Rotate the house so that the steps are out front.
10. The Construct Palette displays fourteen different building blocks available in four different rotations. Select one of the square blocks from the top row of the palette. It will become highlighted.
11. Now select the Plane Tool from the Construct Tools.
12. Select the Right Edit Plane Widget again (the red one). Move it to the second block from the right on the base of your Model View, bisecting the last plane of blocks of the house.
13.Still with us? Okay. Now go to the Right Edit Plane. Move the cursor to the block next to the
14.Move the Widget one block to the left on the Model View and draw another 4x2 plane. Now repeat the process once more. Look at that! You have now added a nice 2x3 room to the house.
15.Now for the roof. Move the Bottom Edit Plane Widget (green) to the same level as the first layer of roof tiles on the existing house.
16.Select the single Block Tool from your Construct Tools, and the
17.Return to the Bottom Edit Plane. Place a row of blocks above the wall of the addition facing you.
18.Then select the opposite block (opposite blocks are always two away on the same row in the Construct Palette), and place those above the wall facing away from you.
19.Lastly, fill in the area between with square blocks and place an additional square block to connect to the existing roof. You should now have a nice
20.You still need to connect the new addition to the existing roof. Select the
21.Place it on the corner facing you where the two roofs connect. It should now look like this:
22.Now repeat for the other side. Use this shortcut. Rather than selecting the opposite block, Rotate the view clockwise once (90 degrees). Using the same block, place it where the two roofs connect. This technique is very useful for roofs, since it is difficult to see the slants when they are not facing you.
23.Now back to Paint Mode.. Select Paint.
24.Here’s a shortcut technique to give the addition textures and details that match your work on the original house. Click on the Select Tool (eyedropper), and then click on one of the finished walls in the Model View. The Select Tool allows you to pick a texture directly from the model, instead of having to hunt through the palette to find it again.
25.Now select the Fill or Paintbrush and apply the texture to the new areas.
26.Next, switch to Detail Mode and use the same technique. Use the Select Tool to pick up an element you want to use again.
27.Click on Apply Detail, and place the element wherever you want.
28.Nice job! You’ve just built a Sim a house.
STEP 6: SAVING YOUR STRUCTURE
1.Are you happy with your house? Then let’s save it. Click on the File
Options and Exit button.
2.You may notice that the image of your building changes slightly. In File Options Mode, the shading is the same as it will be in SimCity 3000 Unlimited. To save your modified version of the Tutorial House, select Save As.
3.A thumbnail image of your house is shown in the Save Building As window. When saving a building, you also have the chance to add the name of the Architect and a Building Description. Enter the Architect name and add a quick comment about the building to the description. Then, rename the file as My House and click the Checkmark to save it.
4.Remember that you’ll be able to use SimCity Exchange to share your buildings at www.SimCity.com. Saving your building with an Architect name, Building name, and description lets others keep track of your creations.
SIMCITY 3000 BUILDING ARCHITECT REFERENCE GUIDE
SIMCITY 3000 BUILDING ARCHITECT REFERENCE GUIDE
This section gives you a breakdown of the tools, buttons, and menus you’ll see in SimCity 3000 Unlimited’sBuilding Architect Plus.
OPENING MENU
NEW BUILDING
Clicking on the New Building button in theOpening Menu will open theTile Size Dialog.
Choose the tile size of the building you want to create.
Click on the Checkmark. The program will take you to theBuilding Architect workspace. You’ll be inConstruct Mode, ready to place some blocks.
Clicking on the Load Building button in theOpening Menu will open yourSimCity 3000 Building Architect list of saved buildings.
Scroll through the Building List. If you click on a selection, a preview of the building will appear in the window to the left. The Architect and a brief description of the building, along with its tile size, will appear below the
Building List.
When you have chosen the building you would like to edit, click on the
Checkmark.
You will now be in the Building Architect, with the chosen building appearing in theModel View.
EXIT
Decided you didn’t really want to be here? Click Exit to leave.
THE BUILDING ARCHITECT WORKSPACE
The Workspace is where you will create, edit, and embellish any building you are working on. It is comprised of the five modes needed for creating Sim Buildings, these are:
Construct,Paint,Detail,Props, and, of course,File Options & Exit. In each of these modes the screen is separated into four areas: theWorkspace, theToolbar, thePalette, and the
Navigation Panel.
Each of the Building Architect modes has its own set of tools that you will find in their secondary menus. To switch from one mode to another, use the main button in the toolbar associated with each mode:
We’ll describe each mode in detail below.
CONSTRUCT
You’ll use the Construct mode to build structures from scratch, or to make structural alterations of existing buildings. Buildings which have gone through theConstruct mode (and no other) appear gray and somewhat like a blank canvas. They appear this way because that is exactly what they are, a canvas waiting for your creative touch to improve them. Go ahead and add windows, doors, textures, colors, and maybe a swimming pool shadinged by trees in the back yard. Fill this canvas with the color of your imagination.
THE CONSTRUCT WORKSPACE
This area will probably take the most getting used to. The Tutorial Section will give you some tips and suggestions on how to work with this area and will take you
You can build (stack blocks) on any of the three Edit Planes:Left,Right, or
Bottom.
Select a block from the Construct Palette.
Select one of the Construct Tools.
Move the cursor into the workspace. When you move to one of the Edit Planes, a yellow highlightedReference Block will appear on the grid. This indicates where the block(s) will be placed when you use the selected
Construct Tool.
Each Edit Plane shows only a
Use the Selection Plane (red, green, or blue) on theModel View to select a specific
Move the selection plane by using the Plane Widget controls. ThePlane Widgets are
To use the Plane Widgets, click and hold the mouse button on the widget and drag it in the direction you wish to move theEdit Plane.
When the Plane Widget is active, the
The Selection Plane in theModel View shows the
If you are using a mouse with a roller wheel, when the cursor is over one of the edit planes, you can roll up or down to move the selection plane just like using a widget.
CONSTRUCT TOOLS
Single Block
Once you have chosen a block shape from the Construct Palette, you can place a single block of that shape with this tool.
Select Block, then move to theWorkspace – the block cursor will be active.
When you move to an Edit Plane, a yellow highlight will appear where the block will be placed if you click the left mouse button. This same block will be mirrored in the
Model View on the Selection Plane.
Click and hold the left mouse button and drag to place multiple blocks. If you place the tool in a position that a block already occupies, it will replace the existing block with the currently selected block.
Line
You can place a line of the currently selected block with this tool.
Select this tool then move to the Workspace – the line cursor will be active.
When you move to an Edit Plane, select a position to place the first block of a row of blocks. Click and hold the left mouse button, then drag in the direction you wish the row of blocks to be placed. A yellow highlight appears showing where the line of blocks will be placed when you release the mouse button.
The Plane Tool allows you to place a plane of the currently selected block. This is extremely effective for building walls or other large areas.
Select the Plane Tool, then move to theWorkspace – the plane cursor will be active.
When you move to an Edit Plane, a yellow highlight will appear under the plane cursor. This indicates the position where the plane will begin when you click the left mouse button.
Hold the mouse button and drag in the direction you wish to create a plane of blocks. The yellow highlighted area will expand to indicate where the blocks will be placed. Release the mouse button and the blocks will appear.
With both the Line andPlane Tools, if you decide you do not want to complete the line or plane, hold down theShift key before you release the mouse button.
THE CONSTRUCT PALETTE
The Construct Palette displays the set of blocks available for building.
There are fourteen block types that run vertically down the palette. Each type is represented in four rotations.
To select a block, position the pointer over the block and click the left mouse button. The selected block will become highlighted to indicate that it is selected.
When you use any of the Construct Tools, the block you have selected will be used.
PAINT
Painting is the application of materials to walls, rooftops, or ground areas. The Paint Mode includes a palette of textures like brick and stucco, grass and asphalt, as well as a palette of paints to be used in any way you wish. You may find that just one building, painted in various ways, can add to the variety of yourBuilding Set without building several different buildings. Play with some of the buildings provided withSimCity 3000 Building Architect and see how texture and color can make a difference in your building’s aura (to borrow a term from Randall, our HEA Advisor).
THE WORKSPACE
In the Paint Mode Workspace, you will apply paints and textures directly to theView Model.
While in the model view, use the Navigation Panel to move to a specific point on the model.
THE PAINT TOOLS
Fill
This tool allows you to paint large areas of your building.
Select this tool and then select a texture or paint from the Paint Palette. When you move to the workspace, the fill cursor will be active.
Position the cursor over a tile – a highlight will appear on the tile that will be painted.
Click the mouse button to fill all tiles on the plane contiguous with the highlighted tile.
If you select another paint from the Paint Palette, and click the area again, it will replace all contiguous tiles of the same paint type with the new selection.
For finer details, use the Paintbrush Tool. This tool allows you to place a single tile of the selected texture or paint.
Select the Paintbrush tool and move to the workspace. Position the cursor over the tile you wish to texture or paint – a highlight will appear on the tile that will be painted.
Click the left mouse button to apply a single tile of the selected texture or paint.
Click and hold the left mouse button and drag to apply the selected texture or paint over an area of tiles.
THE PAINT PALETTE
The Paint Palette displays the available textures and paints, which have been organized into sets.
Use the
To select a texture or paint, position the pointer over the texture or paint in the palette and click the left mouse button – the selection will become highlighted.
When you use any of the paint tools, the texture or paint you have selected will be placed.
DETAIL
In this mode, you apply all of the elements that give your buildings detail. The building elements supplied in SimCity 3000 Building Architect are organized into several categories. You can select which category you’d like to use in the dropdown menu above theDetail Palette.
THE WORKSPACE
In the Detail mode workspace, you will apply building elements directly to theModel View.
You can apply these elements to a building before applying paints. Any paint you apply later will glide smoothly “under” the detail.
When you move the Apply Detail cursor about theModel View, a highlight shows you where the decal will be placed.
If you try to apply an element on an area that is smaller than the detail – for example the edge of your building – the decal will simply place only the part it can.
DETAIL TOOLS
Apply Detail
This is the single tool available in the Detail Mode.
Select this tool and the design element of your choice from the Detail Palette. Move to the workspace – the detail cursor will be active.
Position the cursor where you want to apply the element – the highlight indicates where the
If there is not enough room for the detail, as much of it will be placed as possible on the plane of placement.
THE DETAIL PALETTE
The Detail Palette displays the available design elements.
The elements (doors, windows, cornice, ledges, etc.) have been organized into several sets.
Use the
To select a specific detail, position the pointer over the detail in the palette and click the left mouse button.
When you use the Apply Decal tool, the selected detail will be placed.
PROP PLACEMENT
If you would like to add some life to your building, this is the place you need to be. Trees, a nice family station wagon, or how about a shiny blue pickup truck? Props are placed around or on your buildings to help them either stand out or fit into your city.
THE WORKSPACE
In the Prop Placement mode workspace, you will place objects directly to the
Model View.
You can place these objects at any time during construction.
Props must be placed on at least one block space, either on the building or on the ground.
When you move the Place Prop cursor about theModel View, a highlight that roughly corresponds to the size of the Prop shows you where the object will be placed.
If you try to place a Prop on an area that is smaller than the area
PROP PLACEMENT TOOLS
Place Prop
This is the single tool available in the Prop Placement mode.
Select this tool and the Prop of your choice from theProp Palette. Move to the workspace – the prop cursor will be active.
Position the cursor where you want to apply the prop – the highlight indicates the size and placement of the Prop. Remember, if there’s not enough room, the object will be cropped.
You place the Prop when you click the left mouse button.
If you want to place a prop in
THE PROP PALETTE
The Prop Palette displays the available objects you can place.
Props are available in the following categories (found on the
Architecture, Building Decoration, Plaza and Streets, Yard Objects, Flora, Vehicles, Industrial, and Rooftops.
Props appear in the palette in multiple rotations, much like blocks do in theConstruct Palette. When choosing aProp, be sure to pick the rotation that works best for your immediate needs. Also, pay attention to the lighting on the model as well as on theProp; you want it to appear that the light is coming from the same direction – left or right.
To select a specific Prop, position the pointer over the detail in the palette and click the left mouse button.
When you use the Place Prop tool, the selected object will be placed
EDIT TOOLS
These are located between the Palette Area and theNavigation Panel. TheEdit Tools function similarly in each mode of theBuilding Architect. Differences will be noted.
ERASE
Select Erase then move to the workspace. The eraser cursor will be active.
Position the cursor over the block, area of paint, detail, or prop you wish to erase and click the left mouse button. When you are erasing a Prop, there will be no highlighting until the cursor locates aProp, at which time the existingProp will take on a blue hue. Clicking will then remove the offending object.
Click and hold the left mouse button and drag to erase multiple items.
Erase is also available by pressing the right mouse button, which allows you to erase blocks in the same manner that you apply them. This is useful if you want to remove a line or plane of blocks inConstruct mode.
SELECT
The Select tool is kind of fun. Instead of hunting through variousPalettes to find that
Click on the Select tool then move to the workspace – the eyedropper cursor will be active.
Position the eyedropper over any block, paint surface, detail, or prop and click the left mouse button. When you are selecting a block, you’ll need to be in Construct mode, and so on.
In Prop Placement mode, the selectedProp will only be available when the cursor has found it and turned it that cool blue hue.
This tool does not edit your building. The element with which you have filled your eyedropper will be automatically selected in the corresponding Palette Menu.
Pick your application tool, and stack, paint, or place away!
UNDO
This tool will Undo the last tool action. If you just placed a line of blocks, clicking onUndo will remove the line. A wall of paint? It’s gone. Continue clicking on to back up action by action.
REDO
If you decide you did not want to Undo, clickRedo.
NAVIGATION PANEL
The Navigation Panel always shows a complete image of the building lit as it will appear when placed in your SimCity. The preview looks the same in all modes of theBuilding Architect. It also includes theNavigation Buttons for zooming and rotating the view.
Highlight Frame: TheHighlight Frame shows the area of the building currently visible in the workspace. Click anywhere in thePreview Area to move theHighlight Frame to a new location. This will be necessary when the building exceeds the workspace area.
Construct Mode Highlight Frame: Construct mode handles things a little differently. The highlight frame here is in a hexagon shape, and you cannot move it in thePreview Area. To pan your view of the model in this mode, you need to drag with widgets off into the direction you want to go. The hexagonal highlight frame will keep up with you as you pan this way.
Plus Sign/Minus Sign: These tools zoom the current building in and out, respectively.
Right and Left Arrows: Select to rotate the building clockwise and counterclockwise, respectively.
FILE OPTIONS & EXIT
This mode is pretty
THE WORKSPACE
The image of your building shown in the Workspace when inFile Options Mode represents what it will look like when rendered and in use in SimCity 3000. This is a quick way to
FILE TOOLS
Render to SimCity 3000 Building List
Use this button to prepare (or render) a saved building for use in the SimCity 3000 Unlimited ready collection of possible replacement buildings.
•When you click on the Render Building button, the program will first check to see: 1) the building was saved, 2)SimCity 3000 Unlimited is not open, and 3) if a building of this name was already rendered.
•If any of these issues presents a conflict, the appropriate dialog box will pop up and sweetly inform you of the fact. In other words, take care of it!
•If everything is as it should be, the rendering process will commence.
•Next you’ll see a window letting you know the render is complete. Click OK to seal the deal.
Your building will now be available in your SimCity Building Replacement List. To learn more about using this building inSimCity 3000 Unlimited, see the manual section onReplacing Buildings in SimNation.
Save Building
Click this button to save your building. If you have not saved the building previously, the Save As dialog will appear, prompting you to name your building.
Save As
This button brings up the Save As dialog. This allows you to save your building, rename an
Load
This button brings up the Load Dialog. This allows you to browse your directories and load any previously saved or downloaded buildings.
New Building
This button allows you to start a new building. The New Building Tile Size selection dialog will appear, prompting you to select a tile size for your new building.
After selecting a tile size and clicking on the Checkmark, you will proceed to theConstruct Mode of theBuilding Architect.
Exit
Are your mortaring joints sore? You have painter’s elbow? Use this button to exit SimCity 3000 Building Architect. You will be reminded to save your current work; or, if you decide you still haven’t had enough, you can cancel this action.
SIMCITY 3000 SCENARIO CREATOR
SIMCITY 3000 SCENARIO CREATOR
The Scenario Creator offers players a whole new way to playSimCity 3000 Unlimited. This tool literally puts you in the driver’s seat by giving you the control to create your own personal game plans forSimCity 3000 Unlimited. You can decide the goals for your scenario. Create a city which only uses mass transit? Increase the education levels of your Sims? It’s up to you. You can also decide when a swarm of locusts will descend, and what messages will appear when they do. You can even choose how your advisors will react in any given situation. With theScenario Creator, you can program your own greetings, messages, goals, timelines,
Who is the Scenario Creatorfor?
This might look like a feature aimed at more advanced players of SimCity. But, if you follow the Tutorial and read theReference Section, you’ll be able to create scenarios even if you are a SimCity newcomer. All players are encouraged to go through theTutorial, no matter how advanced.
Once you have read about the Scenario Creator here, there are other resources that will help you to work your way up to becoming a scenario mastermind.
SimCity 3000 Unlimited includes some sample scenario scripts for you to look at. These scripts are rated as to difficulty. We’ve even included some script templates for you to follow as you get the hang of scenario creation. You’ll see these scripts when you open theLoad Scenario dialog inScenario Creator.
Go to www.SimCity.com for tips and Frequently Asked Questions on creating scenarios. (There are also someFAQs at the end of this manual section).
Trade prepared scenarios and scenario scripts with your friends! You can find prepared scenarios at www.SimCity.com. Sharing scenario scripts with friends is one of the fastest ways to learn scripting. Look at as many scripts as you can get your hands on.
Free Download Simcity 3000 Pc Game Full Version
Take an advanced computer programming course at your nearest university (just kidding).
SCENARIO CREATOR TUTORIAL
STEP 1: GETTING STARTED
For this tutorial, we’ll start with a fairly simple scenario idea. You’ll learn how to script a “Roadless Paradise.” The goal of this scenario is to maintain a viable city without building any roads for at least two years. Note: Throughout the tutorial instructions, all text you need to enter will appear in italics.
1.Launch the SimCity 3000 Unlimited Scenario Creator.
2.Click on the New button.
STEP 2: CREATING A SCENARIO
1.You should now see New Scenario window in which you will enter the basic information about your scenario. In the Name space, enter
Roadless Paradise.
2.In the space for Presenter, you will need to choose the advisor or petitioner who will present your scenario. Make your choice from any presenter who appears on the
3.For the City entry, press the browse button next to the space … . What you see on the screen is a browse window where you can choose a city that has been prepared for your scenario. For this tutorial, Roadless Paradise.sc3 has been prepared. As you create your own scenarios, you may want to save cities you have prepared for scenario play to this location. Select Roadless Paradise from the list and click on the Checkmark to choose this city.
4.Once you have made all three entries, click on the Checkmark in the bottom right corner. The Scenario Overview window will now appear on the screen.
5.The Scenario Overview window shows you the basics of your scenario. For any scenario, there are three default scripts (Main, Add Goals, Add Ranks). We’ll talk more about scripts later. We’ll need to return to this window when it is time to save and prepare the scenario you have created. For now, double click on Main under the List of Scripts.
STEP 3: WELCOME TO THE SCRIPT EDITOR
From the Script Editor you can access the different scripts and commands you’ll need to mastermind your scenario. The lines of code you enter will determine your goals, ranks,
STEP 4: SETTING YOUR GOALS
Any scenario needs a goal, right? This is where you decide the point of your scenario. You are not limited to the assignment of only one goal to those who become ensnared in your scenario. You may assign several tasks to mayors who accept your challenge. Some of these tasks might not even show up until
1.You’ll recall that the goal of this scenario is to maintain a city with no roads. Click on Goals at the bottom of the window. This will take you to the Goal Manager pictured above.
2.Click on the New Goal button at the bottom of the screen.
3.You can name your goals whatever you like. You won’t see these names when you are playing your scenario. The names are meant to help keep track of what you have written in your scenario. To make it easier to keep track of goals and other script commands, you might want to keep the names simple (Goal 1, Goal 2, etc.). For the tutorial, enter Goal 1 in the Name space.
4.The Add At Startup box right next to the Name space should be checked. Keep this box checked if you want your scenario to automatically read your goals at the beginning of scenario play.
5.Now you need to write out a brief description of your goal in the Text box. Whatever you write here will appear during game play to inform the player of scenario goals. Enter Build Roadless Paradise with no roads. You may also use the pull down Variable menu to the right and
have the program automatically enter the city name for you. To do this, go to the Variable menu and choose City Name. Then click on Insert (the program will insert %CITYNAME%). Complete your sentence. When your scenario goal is listed, the name of the city will appear. Using the Insert function this way is useful when you are playing/creating a scenario with several scripts. (Don’t worry, there will be more on scripts later).
6.Goal 1 all entered? Great. Click on the Checkmark. This will take you back to the Script Editor window. You have just programmed a goal into your version of SimCity 3000 Unlimited. Congratulations!
STEP 5: RANKING YOUR PLAYERS
Ready to do some more programming? Let’s add your ranks. At the end of a scenario, ranks provide the player with information about how well (or how badly) they have fulfilled the goals of your scenario.
1.To go to the Rank Manager, click on the Ranks button in the Script Editor window.
2.Click on the New Rank button at the bottom of the window to add rank information.
3.For the Roadless Paradise scenario, we’ll add two ranks. Winner or loser (Remember, we’re keeping this simple). In the Name box, type Rank 1.
4.In the Text box, type Winner. This is how the player’s rank will be identified at the end of the game (e.g., first place, gold medalist, etc.).
The text you enter in the Rank Manager is the name or identifier of a player’s rank. If you want a message to appear that informs players of their rank and explains how they were ranked in that manner, you’ll need to write your message in theDialog Text Manager. You’ll then use theSet Results Dialog command to insert the message you’d like to appear with your player’s rank.
5.To add the second rank, click on New Rank.
6.In the Name box, type Rank 2.
7.In the Text box, type Loser.
8.Click on the Checkmark.
STEP 6: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF SCRIPTS
Think of scripts as plotlines in a novel or a film. As you decide how to map out your scenario, you are actually choosing how different plots and subplots will intersect. How the player negotiates these plots determines different end results of the game. The Scenario Creator automatically creates three of these plots, or scripts:Main Script,Add Goals, andAdd Ranks. You are not limited to these scripts, you can also create new ones. Let’s take a look at the scripts you’ve just written.
1.You should be back at the Script Editor. In the upper right hand corner, use the
2.Go back to the
3.Use the
Main Script once again.
STEP 7: UNDERSTANDING THE MAIN SCRIPT
The Main Script is the first script your computer will read, and it will read it only once. The first two lines in theMain Script field will always beCALL (Add Goals) andCALL (Add Ranks). This means that the Scenario Creator program automatically reads theGoals Script and theRanks Script. For other scripts you create, you will have to tell the program how often they should be read (This is why there is aRepeat Regular command). For events or commands that you want to occur only once at a specified time, you would use theMain Script.
STEP 8: CREATING OPENING SCENARIO DIALOG
When creating a scenario, it is helpful to think chronologically about what you want the player to see and experience. The first thing you want to see when you begin to play a scenario is a message that tells you what the scenario is about. For the most part, these messages are referred to as Dialogs by theScenario Creator. So, let’s write our opening dialog.
1.Most of your dialog text will be written in the Dialog Text Manager. Dialog Text refers to the text of various messages a player sees during scenario game play, except News Tickers. Click on Dialog Text at the bottom of the Script Editor window.
2.Click on New Dialog Text.
3.In the Name box, type in Scenario Description. Remember, you can use any name you like, just make it easy to remember.
4.In the Text box, write a description of your scenario. This will be the text that the player sees (usually the words of the presenter/advisor you have chosen) as the game opens. So write something about the goal of creating a viable city with no roads. The way you write the description may be influenced by the presenter you have chosen.
5.Click on the Checkmark to return to the Script Editor and the Main Script. You are now ready to enter a Command.
6.Any command you choose from the
7.Place your cursor on the next available line of script in the Main Script field.
8.Now use the
Make Dialog Text.
9.Whenever you add commands, you will need to make specifications about what you want the command to do in the Command Arguments (under the
Command Description box). For the Make Dialog Text command, there are two arguments. The first argument allows you to select the text you wrote in the Dialog Text Manager. Scenario Description should already be in the box for your first argument (1), since it is the only text you have written.
10.The second argument is available if you chose an Advisor to be your presenter. This argument allows you to choose the mood of your Advisor. Go ahead and choose a mood!
STEP 9: PROGRAMMING A
1.Once again, click on Dialog Text at the bottom of the Script Editor window.
2.Select New Dialog Text (bottom) and name this one
3.In the Text box, enter Welcome to Roadless Paradise. Since you only want this message to appear at the beginning of the scenario, we will put it in the Main Script (the Main Script is only read once, remember?).
4.Click on the Checkmark to return to the Main Script.
5.Put your cursor on the next blank line of script. Use the
6.There are four arguments or selections you must make when using the Pop Up Message command. The first argument (1) allows you to choose which text string you would like to display. Choose
7.For the second argument (2), Scenario Status button, choose Yes.
8.The third argument (3), lets you choose a presenter for this dialog. Choose one from the list.
9.The fourth argument (4) is available if you chose an Advisor as your presenter. Once again, you can choose the mood of your advisor.
10.You can choose to display this message at any specified time, it doesn’t have to appear on the first minute of the first day of your scenario. At the bottom right of the window you will see a section to enter days, hours, and minutes. Let’s have this message appear on the second day of your scenario. Go ahead and enter 2 in the field for Days.
STEP 10: GOTTA HAVE NEWS TICKERS
Players have another way to gain information about what’s happening in scenarios. Yup, reading the news which ticks along at the bottom of the city view. What would we do without News Tickers? Let’s create a message which appears this way.
1.Click on News Tickers at the bottom of the Script Editor window.
2.Click on New News Ticker.
3.In the Name box, enter News Ticker 1.
4.Under the Name field is the box labeled Color. Choose the color in which you’d like your News Ticker to appear from the
5.At the Priority box, select Critical. Critical priority means that this news ticker message will show up ahead of the regularly programmed news tickers in SimCity 3000 Unlimited.
6.One more choice here. At the Maximum Repeat field, you need to decide the maximum number of times which this news ticker message can appear in your scenario. You can enter any number you like. For this scenario, let’s enter 6. The number you enter here will reset each time the program reads that script.
7.Now you are ready to enter the text for your news ticker. In the Text box, write whatever you would like. Perhaps, Penguins mob city buses. Or maybe you would like to enter something more to the point.
8.Text entered? Click on the Checkmark to return to the Main Script.
9.Click on the next blank line of the Main Script. Now select the command
Show News Ticker.
10.There’s only one argument for this command, which is to select the news ticker you would like displayed. Choose News Ticker 1.
Voila! You have just gotten a good start on creating a Main Script. Are you ready to move on and create some new scripts? Let’s go!
STEP 11: HOW TO SAY GOODBYE:
CREATING AN END SCENARIO SCRIPT
Remember that there are three default scripts for any scenario? Do you suppose that you are limited to working within these scripts? Not with a program where you can name your
1.To create any new script, click on the Scripts button at the top right of the Script Editor window.
2.Click on New Script and enter End Scenario Script in the Name field.
3.Click on the Checkmark to return to the Main Script.
4.Before you go to this new script, you first need to tell the Main Script to read it, otherwise the program will ignore it. Put your cursor in the next free line of the Main Script, and choose the Repeat Regular command from the
5.The first argument (1) is where you tell the program how often to read the script. Choose Week so that the program will read your script weekly during scenario play.
6.In the second argument (2) you indicate which script this command refers to. Choose End Scenario Script.
7.Now you are ready to go to your script. From the
8.The overall goal of this scenario is to maintain a city with no roads. So, the player loses if she builds any roads. This means your script has to periodically check for how many roads exist. You are telling the program to do the following: If there are any roads (your variable),then end the game. To make it possible for the program to do this, you need to create a Variable.
9.Click on Variables, and click on New Variable.
10.In the Name box enter Roads.
11.Click on the Checkmark.
12.Put your cursor on the first line of your End Scenario Script, and choose the command Count Generic Structures.
13.There are two arguments for this command. The first argument is your variable. Use the
14.The second argument requires that you choose the generic structure you are commanding the program to count (pretty much anything you want counted is a variable). You want the program to look for roads, so, again, choose Roads from the
15.If any roads are detected, the game is over. Here’s our statement again: If there are any roads,then end the scenario with Rank 2 (loser). Let’s script our statement.
16.On line 2 of the End Scenario Script, select the command If from the
Command menu.
17.On line 3, select the Greater Than command. There are two arguments for this command. We want to say that the variable (Roads) is greater than the constant (0), or Argument 1 is greater than Argument 2. You’ll need to choose between variable and constant for each argument.
There is no Less Than command. If you want to script a situation where your variable is less than a constant, just switch places in your arguments. So Argument 1 will be your constant, whileArgument 2 is your variable. Get it? Variables are items or values in your scenario that you want to count or compare to other values. Constants are the numbers in your scenario that never change, and are usually used as comparison values for your variables.
18.The first argument is where you choose between using a variable or a constant. The
19.Now choose the variable Roads.
20.The second argument is where you define your constant. Make sure the
21.If our variable, Roads, is greater than 0, we want the scenario to end. But first let’s create some Results Dialog. This is the message the player sees at the end of the game.
22.Open the Dialog Text Manager.
23.Click on New Dialog Text. In the Name box, enter Loser message.
24.In the Text box, enter the message you’d like your
25.Click on the Checkmark.
26.On the next available line of your script, enter the Begin Block command.
27.Next line, enter the Set Results Dialog command. Under the arguments, choose the Dialog Text you just
28.Next line, enter the End Scenario command, assigning Rank 2 (Loser) in the arguments.
29.Okay, next line enter the End Block command. This way the program will only read the block statement if the If statement above is true, and the scenario will end.
30.Another way to end the scenario is based on time. If the player can maintain their Roadless Paradise for two years, they win. Make sure you’re in the Main Script.
31.Open your Dialog Text Manager and click on New Dialog Text.
32.Name this text Winner message. Now write the message you would like the winner to see in the Text box. Pat them on the back – they’ve done a good job. Click on the Checkmark.
33.Now enter the Set Results Dialog command to the next available line of the Main Script.
34.In the arguments, choose the text that you have just
35.Put your cursor on the next available script line and choose the command End Scenario.
36.Since you want the scenario to end at two years, enter 730 in the Days box at the bottom of the Script Editor window (365 + 365 = 2 years, right?).
37.Under arguments, choose Rank 1 (Winner).
38.Click on the Checkmark.
Congratulations! You have just created your first scenario! There’s just one more thing you need to do before you can put your scenario into the game and start playing!
STEP 12: SAVING YOUR SCENARIO
You need to save the series of scripts you have written so that you have the ability to go back and make changes in them later. You also need to save your work so that you can then prepare your scenario for use in SimCity 3000 Unlimited.
1.You should be back at the Scenario Overview window.
2.If you wish, you can write a description of your scenario here. Write it in the Description Box at the top right. This text will appear in SimCity 3000 Unlimited’s Load Scenario window when your scenario is highlighted.
3.Ready? Click on the Save Scenario As icon at the bottom of the window.
4.Name your scenario and choose a folder on your hard drive in which to save your script.
5.You can also choose to further describe your scenario by choosing a Type of Scenario and Level of Difficulty from the
6.Click on the Checkmark.
7.When your scenario has been successfully saved, return to the Scenario Overview window.
STEP 13: PREPARING YOUR SCENARIO FOR GAME PLAY
When you prepare your scenario, you are putting your scripts into a format that SimCity 3000 Unlimited can read. You need to do this so that you can access your scenario from the game. Preparing your scenario also makes it possible for you to upload your masterworks toSimCity Exchange for others to play.
1.Click on Prepare Scenario at the bottom right of the Scenario Overview window.
2.Choose where you want the file to go. It’s best to save it in the Scenario Folder within the game (/Program Files/Maxis/SimCity 3000 Unlimited/Cities/Scenarios).
3.Click on the Checkmark.
4.Ready to see your scenario come to life? Launch SimCity 3000 Unlimited.
5.Select Play Scenario and double click on Roadless Paradise. Have fun!
BECOMING A SCENARIO MASTER: A REFERENCE GUIDE TO CREATING SCENARIOS
BECOMING A SCENARIO MASTER: A REFERENCE GUIDE TO CREATING SCENARIOS
If you are one of those game players who skips tutorials in order to jump straight into the reference section, STOP! We strongly recommend that you go through the tutorial to learn about the Scenario Creator, even if you’ve played SimCity for years. It doesn’t take long. Believe us, it’s worth it. What follows is a breakdown of the different screens from theScenario Creator.
OPENING MENU
From the Opening Menu you can choose to eitherLoad orNew.
New will take you to theNew Scenario window of theScenario Creator. We’ll talk about all the functions involved in scripting a new scenario below.
Load will take you to theLoad Scenario window, where you may browse menu of scenario scripts which you have saved. Select the script you’d like to see, and it will be loaded for edit or review.
Exit will take you out of theScenario Creator back to your regular computer functions.
NEW SCENARIO
NEW SCENARIO WINDOW
You will enter the basic information about your scenario here. You’ll be able to change this information later, if you wish. All scenario scripts are editable.
SCENARIO NAME
Enter the name of your city.
PRESENTER
From the
SELECT A CITY
By pressing the browse button next to this field, you’ll access the file where cities prepared for scenario use are stored. When you create a scenario, you will want to prepare a city to go with the scenario. You’ll need to choose a city in order to be able to create a scenario.
CHECKMARK
When you have made your three entries, this button will take you to the Scenario Overview.
You can create, load, save and prepare (which means to put into a format which SimCity 3000 Unlimited can read) scenario scripts here.
NAME, PRESENTER, CITY
These fields will appear with the data you entered from the New Scenario window. You may change your entries here if you wish.
DESCRIPTION
Whatever you write here is the text that will appear in the Description window ofSimCity 3000 Unlimited’sLoad Scenario window. You might want to include your city and the current year, as well as some information about why the goals of your scenario are important to your Sims. As you can see, the window is scrollable, but space is limited. Keep your description concise.
LIST OF SCRIPTS
This is where any scripts you have created will appear. All scenarios have three default scripts: Main,Add Goals, andAdd Ranks. You can open your scripts just as you would a document. Double click on the script you want to see, and you will open that script window.
THUMBNAIL
This is the picture you will choose to represent your scenario. You can review available thumbnail pictures by clicking on the browse button. You can also create your own bitmap image files in a standard paint program, and use them as your scenario thumbnail.
New Scenario
This is the icon at the bottom of the page of the paper scroll and plume. Clicking on this icon will take you back to the New Scenario box.
Load Scenario
The icon of the folder. This will take you to the Load Scenario window. You are loading the scenario in scripted form here. To play scenarios, they need to be prepared and launched from SimCity itself. TheLoad Scenario function is especially handy if you want to use or alter previous scripts in your current scenario.
Save Scenario
The icon of the disk. Click here when you want to save your scenario at any time during your creative process.
Save Scenario As
Want to save one version of your scenario, or someone else’s, after you’ve added some interesting complications? Click on the icon of the disk with a note attached to save both versions. You will need to choose a name and the file in which you would like your scenario saved. Of course, if you are saving a scenario for the first time, the Save Scenario As window will pop up.
Prepare Scenario
Once you have saved your scenario, preparing it will put it into a form which SimCity 3000 Unlimited can read. You’ll need to do this so that you can access your scenario from the game.
Exit
Hmmm. Yup. Takes you right outta there, back to the land of your personal computer.
SCRIPT EDITOR
Think of the Script Editor as your command central while you are seeing your creations take shape. From theScript Editor you can access different scripts, choose commands, and create all the messages that will be seen by those who play your scenario. You will use commands to add lines of script to your scenario while in theScript Editor window. Here’s a rundown of what you see in this window.
SCRIPT CODE
This is what the program will read when it is figuring out how to put together your scenario. When creating new lines of code, place your cursor on the next available line and then choose the appropriate command. Use the Cut,Copy, andPaste buttons to edit lines of code that are already written.
Located at the top right. Each scenario has three default scripts: Main, Add Goals (where you tell the program what the goal(s) of your scenario), and Add Ranks (where you tell the program how to categorize the player’s efforts. Were they superb? Abysmal?). As you create new scripts, the name of the script will appear here. You will choose the script you are currently working on from this window. When each script appears in the menu window, the lines of code you have written for it will appear in the Script Code field.
Scripts
Click on this button (at the top right of the screen)to open the Script Manager in order to review existing scripts and to create new ones.
Command
This is the
Command Description
We weren’t going to leave you hanging! This window displays the function of the command that appears in the Command window. There’s a full list of commands, organized both alphabetically and by function, in this manual.
Command Arguments
Anytime you enter a command into your script, the Scenario Creator will ask you to fill in information that tells the program how to read that particular command. This information is referred to as theCommand Arguments. When you choose a command, the arguments you need to complete will automatically show up in this space (sometimes there will be only one argument, sometimes more). For instance, if you choose the command Add Goal, theCommand Arguments will be where you tell the program which goal you are adding (You may have several). Any goals you have created will show up in the
Days, Hours, Minutes
For certain commands, such as Pop Up Message orStart Earthquake, you can tell the computer how much time in the scenario should elapse before the message appears, or the disaster takes place. As you can see, you can program that earthquake down to the minute, so that it occurs on the 378th day, at 2:34 p.m.
Goals
Click here to access the Goal Manager, where you are able to create the goals for your scenario.
News Tickers
Click here to access the News Tickers Manager where you can create your news ticker messages.
Variables
Clicking on this button opens the Variable Manager window. This is where you will create and name theVariables you need for scripting. If you are asking the program to count how many roads are in a city, then you need to create aVariable named
Roads.
Ranks
Click here to access the Rank Manager, where you will choose the conditions under which your scenario players will win, lose, or did fair to middling.
Dialog Text
Takes you to the Dialog Text Manager where you will write text for
Presenters
Click here to choose which Advisor/Petitioner you wish to appear to present your scenario. All the familiar faces fromSimCity 3000 Unlimited are here, as well as some new folks who may have unique concerns (that’s up to you). It doesn’t stop there. You can even create your own bitmap images to further expand your stable of possible presenters.
Options
This takes you to Editor Options window, where you can choose to align script code, have errors checked, and use syntax coloring within your script code.
Checkmark
Clicking here will take you back to the Scenario Overview window.
MANAGING YOUR MANAGERS
Since you are now scripting your own scenarios, you have become management material. Upper level. While creating your scenario, you have to supervise what several managers are doing. Think of the Script Editor as that
GOAL MANAGER
You will be instructing your Goal Manager about the overall, er, goals you create for your scenario. For the tutorial, we only had one goal in our scenario, but it is possible to have several. Not all of your scenario goals need to be stated at the beginning. You can arrange it so some goals come into effect after other goals have been reached.
New Goal
You’ll need to click here even when you are creating your scenario’s first goal. If you are adding several goals, this button will clear the Goal Manager so that you are ready to enter an additional goal.
Name
Type in a name for your goal here. You might simply choose to number your goals (Goal 1, Goal 2, etc.), or you might want a more descriptive name here (Roads Goal, Crime Goal, etc.). Whatever you choose to name your goal(s), this is the text that will show up on pulldown menus in the Script Editor, and in your script codes.
Add At Startup
If you leave this box checked, the goal will be read at the beginning of your scenario. You can uncheck this box if you have a goal you would like to add to your scenario at any other time than the opening. Perhaps you want to create a scenario where the startup goal is to increase your city’s population to 100,000. After this goal has been reached, you might want to make things interesting by adding a new goal to decrease crime rates by a certain amount. You might not want your player to know of this goal from the outset.
Comments
You may enter your own notes about goals here, either as a reminder, or further description. This text will not carry to any other field.
Text
You’ll need to type in the information about your goal here. When someone is playing your scenario in SimCity 3000 Unlimited, they can view theScenario Status Dialog informing them about your scenario, along with the scenario’s goals. Whatever you enter here is the text the player will see in dialog (e.g. Goal 1: Increase overall education levels of Sims). Be clear, so that the players of your scenario understand what tasks you have set for them to accomplish during their stint as mayor.
Insert Variable
Using this function can save you time, especially as you begin writing more complex scenarios. Instead of writing Build Greenworld so that 80 percent of the population uses mass transit, you can putCity Name in the
Insert Variable and write,Build [Insert Variable]so that 80 percent…. The text will appear as follows: “Build%CITYNAME% so that …” The program will automatically insert the city name for your scenario. This could be especially handy if you decided you wanted to change your scenario city’s name. You would also use theInsert Variable feature if you want a message to occur in your scenario with the current data about a certain aspect of the game. Perhaps you want the player to be aware of current land values. To do so, you would create your variable in theVariables Manager, and then useInsert Variable and to put this variable into your message. See the section on theVariables Manager for more information.
Remove
Just like it sounds. This button will delete the highlighted goal.
Checkmark
Takes you back to the Script Editor, where you can now use theAdd Goals command while in theGoals script to add your goals to both theGoals andMain scripts.
NEWS TICKERS MANAGER
The News Tickers Manager window enables you to create the messages that scroll along at the bottom of your city view. In theDialog Text Manager section, we’ll talk about creating a
New News Ticker
As with the other managers, clicking here will clear all fields so that you can create new or additional News Ticker Messages.
Name, Comments, Text, Insert Variable, Delete, and Checkmark
These features all work exactly as they do in the Goals Manager.
Color Scheme
Based on the information in your News Ticker, you will want to choose the color in which it appears. Use the
Priority
Use the
Notable, and Trivial.
Maximum Repeat
Enter the maximum number of times your message can appear during the game here. You can enter any number you like, except zero.
VARIABLE MANAGER
Hmm. This window looks familiar. As a matter of fact, the Goals, Ranks, Variables, andDialog Text Manager windows all look and function pretty much the same. You’re just adding different kinds of information in each window. So refer to theGoals Manager section for a description of functions.
The term ‘variable’ tends to strike fear in the hearts of many people, but there is no need to fear. After you’ve played around with the Scenario Creator a bit, you’ll be tossing variables around like popcorn. You’ll need to create variables in order to script even the most basic scenario, and theVariable Manager is the place to do it. Again, this window has the same content as theGoals andRanks Managers, and works the same way. So review the instructions for the keys of theGoal Manager.
Now think about it. One goal for your scenario might be to build a city with a healthy agricultural sector. Farms. In order for the program to assess whether or not a player has done well, what needs to be counted? You got
will need variables whenever you want the program to count something, or to compare one value to another. You will also use the Variables Manager to create variables that you may want to use in messages you write for the player. Want to inform the player of some data about current scenario status? Create a variable to insert into your message. For more information on inserting variables, see theInsert Variable section under theScript Editor. For more information onVariables, check out theScenario Creator FAQs, especially questions 1 and 2.
RANK MANAGER
You will use the Rank Manager to create the different possible ratings you wish to assign players according to how they have fulfilled your scenario goals. You may wish to assign only two ranks (winner and loser), or perhaps your scenario is less black and white than this. You may need to recognize varying degrees of success. Create New Ranks just as you would your goals. TheText entered here will be seen by players of your scenario when they have reached the conclusion of the game (for reasons you determine). Once again, click on the Checkmark to be returned to theScript Editor. Choose the commandAdd Ranks to enter your ranks into theRank andMain scripts.
A reminder: To create the Results Dialog you will need to write the messages you have assigned to each rank category in theDialog Text Manager, and then use the SetResults Dialog command to have theResults Dialog appear.
DIALOG TEXT MANAGER
Another window which operates just like the Goals Manager. But, you ask, what isDialog Text? Good question.Dialog Text refers to the messages that you want the player to see while playing your scenario. You will write all of your messages in theDialog Text Manager, exceptNews Tickers, which get their own manager. This is where you will write the opening description of your scenario as given by your presenter. You can write
SCRIPT MANAGER
As you probably know by now, each scenario has three default scripts: Main, Add Goals, andAdd Ranks. You will dictate the events of your scenario by creating a script for when, where, and why each occurrence will happen. Even the simplest scenarios will require that you create a script for how your scenario can end, anEnd Scenario Script. TheScript Manager is where you will create other scripts you’ll need for your scenario. The possibilities are endless. Before we tell you a bit more about scripts, let’s go over the functions of this window.
New Script
Click here to clear all the fields to make way for new or additional scripts.
Script Name
Enter the name for your script here. It might be End Scenario,Check Goals, orTornado Disaster. Whatever you choose, this is the name that will appear in the
Script Author
That’s you. If you are using a script created by someone else, their name will show up here if they have chosen to sign their creation.
Comments
These amount to internal memos and aren’t seen anywhere else. So enter a note here which describes the function of your script. You’ll see that the Main Script is described as follows: This is the starting script of the scenario.
Existing Scripts
All the scripts you have created for your scenario will be listed here, along with the comments you have written to describe what the script does. You can delete a script by highlighting it and clicking on the Remove button.
Checkmark: Takes you back to theScript Editor.
Once you are back at the Script Editor, use the
IMPORTANT: TheMain Script will only read your script codes once. Other scripts you create can be thought of asSubscripts. If you want theMain Script to read your subscript one time only, use theSubroutine command when entering your subscript. So what do you
do if you want to create a subscript which can happen over and over again? For instance you might want your scenario to regularly check on crime rates. If crime rates reach a certain level, this may trigger a riot. If you enter your crime rate script right into the Main Script using the Subroutine command, it will check your crime levelsone time (that’s what theMain Script does, it’s its job). If the crime levels are not at a certain level, your beloved riot will never have a chance of occurring. To avoid this sorry state of affairs, use the commandRepeat Regular when entering your created script into theMain Script. TheRepeat Regular command tells theMain Script to read your subscript at certain intervals (you get to decide how often your subscript is read in theCommand Arguments).
SCENARIO CREATOR COMMANDS
Here’s a list of the Commands andCommand Descriptions available for your scripting use in theScenario Creator. It’s probably a good idea to go through theTutorial and read theReference Guide before you peruse these commands. That way you’ll have a pretty good idea of how eachCommand can be used, even if it isn’t specifically mentioned above. First we’ll list all the commands along with their descriptions. These are arranged alphabetically, just as they are in theScenario Creator. What follows is a list ofCommands broken down into function areas.The best way to become fluent in Commandese is to look at other scenario scripts and to keep on creating your own. That said, here’s the list. Have fun!
COMMANDS AND THEIR DESCRIPTIONS
Listed alphabetically.
Neighbor Connection Status Is Marks whether a specified Neighbor Connection is active.
COMMANDS BY FUNCTION
Now we’ll list just the Commands themselves in categories of the functions they perform.
ACTIONS
These are commands which tell the program to do something. They are:
Add Goal
Add Rank
End Scenario
Goal Status Is
Make Dialog Text
Mark Goal Status
Move And Zoom City View
Offer Reward
Play Sound
Pop Up Message
Repeat Regular
Set Results Dialog
Set Scenario Speed
Set Variable
Show a Newsticker
GET A VALUE
These commands tell the program to count something or to check on the current status of an area by checking its value. These commands are:
Count Generic Structures
Count Generic Structures Near
Count Specific Structures
Count Specific Structures Near
Count Unpowered Buildings
Count Unwatered Buildings
Get Aura
Get Crime Value
Get Current Date
Get Funds Available
Get Land Value
Get Months Elapsed
Get Pollution Value
Get Population
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Get RCI Tax Rates
Get Surplus Power
Get Surplus Water
Get Total Debt
Get Traffic Density
Ordinance Status Is
MATH
These commands tell the program what to do with the obtained numerical information, or how to assess variables. The MATH commands are:
Add
Compute Percentage
Decrement
Divide
Equal
Generate Random Number
Greater Than
Increment
Multiply
Not Equal
Subtract
DEALS
Want to make a deal? These commands are needed to create or disable deals in scenarios. They are:
Business Deal Status Is
Disable Neighbor Deal
Enable Neighbor Deal
Neighbor Connection Status Is
Neighbor Deal Status Is
Offer Business Deal
DISASTERS
A whole new level of disaster control. Disaster commands are:
Disable Disasters
Start an Earthquake
Start a Fire
Start a Locust Swarm
Start a Riot
Start Space Junk
Start a Tornado
Start a Toxic Cloud
Start UFO Attack
Start a Whirlpool
MISCELLANEOUS
There is always a misc. category. These commands are mostly punctuation commands, letting the program know where a certain routine begins, where it ends, and how certain routines are connected. These are:
All Goals Met
And
Assign
Begin Block
End And
End Block
End Or
If
If Else
Or
Subroutine
PREPARING YOUR SCENARIO FOR LOADING
You’ve completed your scenario? Wow! Hope this is the first in a long line of scripting masterworks. Perhaps you should think about screenwriting next. We suspect that now that you’ve written your scenario with the Scenario Creator, you’re going to want to see how it plays. We’ll have to go back to theScenario Overview to do this.
You’re there? Good. First you need to save your scripting. Click on the Save icon (the disk second from right). If this is the first time you have saved your work, the computer will ask you to name and choose a destination file for your scenario.
Click on the Checkmark.
When your scenario has been successfully saved, click on the Prepare button. This will format your scenario script so that it can be read bySimCity 3000 Unlimited.
When the Prepare Scenario window comes up, choose where you want the file to go. It’s best to save it in theScenario Folder within the game (/Program Files/Maxis/ SimCity 3000 Unlimited/Cities/Scenarios).
Ready to see your scenario come to life? Launch SimCity 3000 Unlimited.
Select Play Scenario and double click on your saved scenario. Have fun!
You will also use the Prepare function to get your scenarios ready forUploading to www.SimCity.com, so that your creations can awe and confound others. When your scenario has been put into this format, you are sending the playable scenario only, not the scripting that created it. For more information on uploading your prepared scenarios, see the manual section on theExchange Wizard.
A FEW NOTES ON SCENARIO GAME PLAY
There are two ways in which scenarios can be launched:
Choose the Play Scenario button on theOpening menu ofSimCity 3000 Unlimited. Double click on a scenario to see it’s description. Click on the
Checkmark to load and begin playing.
You can load a scenario while playing SimCity 3000 Unlimited. Under theChange Settings of theMain Toolbar, choose theLoad option, then chooseScenario. The program will ask you if you want to save the current game, and then will take you to theLoad Scenario window.
Once you are playing a scenario, there are a few things that are different from playing SimCity 3000 Unlimited in the
SIMULATION SPEED
The speed at which you play the game may have been set by the author of the scenario, and may not be subject to change.
SCENARIO GOALS
These will show up at the beginning of your scenario, but you can check them at any time during game play. Under the Adjust & Review button of theMain Toolbar you’ll find theScenario Goals option. This will show you the goals you are working on in case you have forgotten. You might want to check your goals periodically in case some sneaky scripter has added a goal
SCENARIO RESULTS
When you have come to the end of a scenario, this window will appear. Your rank will be highlighted with the SimCity logo next to it, and specifics of your results may or may not appear below. To leave this window, you have three options.
You may choose Replay Scenario, and start all over again.
You might decide that you want to Play Another Scenario which will take you to the
Load Scenario window.
Finally, you can return to the SimCity 3000 Unlimited.Opening menu, where you can choose another play option, or exit the program altogether.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: EVEN MORE CLUES TO USING THE SCENARIO CREATOR
Here are some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) we have come across while using theScenario Creator. Remember to visitSimCity.com to see updated questions and answers. Keeping up with FAQs is a great way to learn more strategies for the Scenario Creator andSimCity 3000 Unlimited itself.
1.Once a goal has been satisfied, how can I make sure it has not been unsatisfied later in the scenario?
Through some clever scripting, you can cover both satisfied and unsatisfied goals. Let’s say you have a goal of increasing the population to 100,000. Create a script called Check Goals and remember to use the Repeat Regular command in the Main Script to check this script weekly. Now, you need to go into the Variables Manager and create a variable to represent this goal. Call it Population Variable. Here are the series of commands you would have to script:
The program detects if the player has subsequently unsatisfied the population goal. If you didn’t use the variable, the program would not recheck the goal to let the user know the goal had been unsatisfied.
2. What are variables used for?
The use of a variable is important in the example above. If the user has called on this script every week, then that
3. What are the good and bad ranges for aura, crime and land value?
4. What is the perfect size for a presenter image?
92 x 114 is the perfect size for a presenter image. If you use a larger image, the creator will crop the image to fit the screen.
5. I prepared a subscript to make lots of disasters occur but they aren’t happening. Why not?
If you create a subscript, you must remember to tell the main script to read it. Use the Repeat Regular command in theMain Script and refer to your disaster script.
6. When I ended my scenario, I set the advisor mood to be “Worried” and wrote text for the Rank Dialog command but it’s not showing up. Why?
Once you use the End Scenario command, the game will not read anything beyond that. Always use theMake Dialog Text command, or in this caseSet Results Dialog, first then use theEnd Scenario command.
7. How can I show a news ticker with the current land value?
In the Variables Manager, create a variable called land value. In theNews Ticker Manager, write a news ticker namedLand Value NT. In the text box type,Land Value is:. To the right of the text box, select the variableland value then insert. It will now read.Land Value is: %SCN_VN <<Land Value>>%.
Create a new script or use a current script to place your commands in. On the next available line in your scripting screen, use the command, Get Land Value. In theArguments, chooseland value. On the next line, use the commandShow Newsticker. In theArguments, select theLand Value NT that you wrote earlier. When you play this scenario, you will now see the land value on your news ticker.
8. How do I insert a blank line in a script?
Use the Paste button. You may have previously copied a line and that is still in memory. You can tell by looking at the paste selection line below theCut, Copy, Paste buttons. If that line has three dots, consider that a blank line. If it has anything else there, you will need to copy a blank line and then paste it wherever you would like it.
9. How do I delete a line in a script?
Highlight the line you’d like to delete and press the Cut button in the upper left hand corner.
10. Sometimes my scripted disasters do not start up to 8 months after they are triggered! Why does this happen?
Turn off Premonitions to have disasters start right away.Premonitions are a series of messages that will appear to give warning of an impending disaster.
SHARE YOUR WARES: SIMCITY EXCHANGE
SHARE YOUR WARES:
SIMCITY EXCHANGE
What sorts of spins are other players putting on SimCity 3000 Unlimited? Where are the best scenarios being created? Has the kid down the street finished the
Cities: Any city you build can be shared with the world.
Scenarios: Prepared scenarios can be shared for game play.
Buildings: Share
And guess what? You can do all of this by pressing one button! (You will need an Internet connection and a web browser to access SimCity Exchange).
SimCity Exchange can be reached in the following ways:
In the Main Toolbar of SimCity 3000 Unlimited.
In the Building Architect Workspaceof SimCity 3000 Building Architect Plus.
By selecting the Visit SimCity Exchange shortcut installed with the game.
Here are some things you can do when you visit SimCity Exchange:
If you are not already logged onto the Internet, you will be prompted to do so.
You’ll be able to create and update your SimCity.com registration.
You can find a list of files you have uploaded to www.SimCity.com. Files will be organized under the following categories: Cities, Scenarios, andBuildings.
You will be able to Upload any cities, scenarios, or buildings you have created. This is your way of showing off your talents to the SimCity community!
Or, you can Search andDownload from the collection of files that other players have posted.
The contents of SimCity Exchange will change regularly, so be sure to check back often!
SIMLANGUAGE: A GLOSSARY FOR SIMNATION
SIMLANGUAGE:
A GLOSSARY FOR SIMNATION
INDEX
Abandoned Buildings 39, 186
Adjust & Review 63
Advisors (see also City Departments) 20, 21, 59, 60, 61, 65, 66, 86, 122, 156, 202
Airports 41, 46, 47, 97, 99, 123, 128, 203, 211 Animations 35
Aura 42, 54, 55, 60, 66, 69, 111, 113, 114, 126, 146, 187, 190, 196, 202
Auto Budget 29
Auto Go To Disasters 22, 36
Blackouts 116, 126, 202
Bridges (see Transportation)
Briefings 16, 60, 202
Budgeting
Budget Window 20, 21, 65, 89
Construction Costs 44
Expenditures 21, 87, 89, 90
Funding Departments 57, 87, 88, 96, 107, 112, 113, 126
Income 21, 65, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 123 Building Architect Plus 127
Construct Mode 133
Details Mode 131, 204
Paint Mode 130, 145
Prop Placement Mode 149
Rendering Buildings 153
Building List 141, 153
Building Replacement (see also
Building Replacement Manager 78
Using the Query Tool 74
Building Sets 79, 80, 81, 82, 202
Bus, see Transportation and Mass Transit 49, 93 Charts 21, 63, 66, 67, 68, 105, 114, 120
City Departments
(see also Individual Departments)
City Planning 97
Environmental 102
Financial 86
Health, Education, and Aura 111
Public Safety 106
Transportation 93
Utilities 114
City Options 28, 29, 70, 74, 78, 203
City Planning 97
City Views 11, 12, 41
Above Ground 41
Data Views 41, 42
Underground 41
Layering Views 41
Civic Buildings 53
Crime (see also Police Department) 42, 54, 57, 66, 69, 106, 107, 108, 187, 196
Crop Duster Planes 110
Data Maps (see Charts)
Deals 43, 61, 62, 65, 87, 89, 90, 122, 186, 191, 204 Demolish Tool 45, 50, 53, 56
Disasters
Disaster Relief 56, 91, 110
Earthquake 22, 58, 189, 192
Fire 58, 189, 192
Riots 58, 189, 192
Space Junk 58, 189, 192
Swarms of Locusts 58, 189, 192
Tornado 58, 189, 192
Toxic Cloud 58, 189, 192
UFOs 58, 189, 192
Whirlpool 58, 189, 192
Downloading 33, 73, 83, 141, 200, 204
Drop Shadows 12
Education 53, 54, 60, 68, 69, 111, 112
Emergencies (Disasters)
Farms 99, 110, 124
Fire Department
Dispatching Firefighters 22, 57
Fire Stations 19, 54
Flammability 42
Frequently Asked Questions
Scenario Creator 195
SimCity 3000 Unlimited 122
Garbage Disposal (see also Pollution) 68 Incinerators 103
Landfills 103
Recycling Centers 104
Waste To Energy 53
Glossary 202
Graphs (see Charts)
Health Issues 54, 68
Highways (see Transportation)
Historical Designation 39
Hospitals 54
Impact Analysis 61
Income (see Budgeting)
Information Bar 11, 37
Jails 54
Landfills (see under Garbage Disposal) Landmarks 56
Landscape Tools (see also Terrain) 44 Land Value 101
Libraries 55
Load
Buildings 140
Cities 71
Scenarios 156
Loans 89, 91
Main Toolbar 11
Hide Toolbar 43
Mass Transit (see Transportation)
Museums 55
Navigation Panel 40
Navigation Map 40
Neighbors 62, 63
New City Options (see City Options) News Tickers 18, 189, 190, 197, 207 News Topics 60, 207
NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) 101
Opening Menus
Building Architect Plus 140
Scenario Creator 157
SimCity 3000 Unlimited 25
Ordinances 65
Parks 55
Petitioners 61
Police Department
Dispatching Police 57
Police Stations 54
Pollution 102, 103, 104, 105, 115
Air 104
Water 105, 117
Garbage 102
Health 112
Simcity 3000 Digital Download
Ordinances 119
Neighboring Deals 119
Population 68
Power 51, 68
Blackouts (see Blackouts)
Power Lines 51
Power Plants 51, 52
Preferences 35
General Options 22, 28, 70
Music Choices 36
Performance 29, 35
Sound 36
Query Tool 18, 19, 39
RCI Demand Indicator 11, 13, 15, 38
Rail (see Trains)
Recreational Opportunities 55
Recycling Centers (see Garbage Disposal)
Rewards and Opportunities 56
Roads (see Transportation)
Save
Buildings 138
Cities 22
Scenarios 26, 168
Scenario Game Play
Scenario Goals 193
Scenario Creator
Commands 185
Dialog Text 160, 161, 162, 183
Goals 158
News Tickers 180
Preparing Scenarios 169, 193
Ranks 173
Scenario Overview 173
Scripts 175, 183
Variables 177
Scenario Tutorials 25, 26
Schools (see Education)
Script Editor 158
Seaports 47
SimCity Exchange 198
Sims 6
Simulation Speed Control 11, 15
Snapshots 63, 64, 65
Special Buildings (see Civic Buildings)
Start Dates 29
Start New City 28
Starter Towns 32
Strikes 112
Subways, see under Transportation Taxes 88
Terrain (see also Landscape)
Editing Terrain 30
Terrain Grid 43
Tile Size (also called Footprint) 75, 76, 80, 81, 140, 205, 210
Tiles 210
Trains (see Transportation)
Transportation 48
Bridges 48, 93, 95, 96
Buses 49
Intersections 49
Roads 49
Subways 50
Subway to Rail Connections 50
Trains 50
Tunnels 48
Trees 29, 31, 32, 41, 44, 45, 70, 105
Tunnels, see Transportation
Tutorials
Building Architect Plus 128
Scenario Creator 157
Scenario Tutorials for SimCity 3000 Unlimited 24
SimCity 3000 Unlimited 9
Uploading 193
Utilities (see also Power and Water) 50 Variables 166, 167, 177, 181
View City Layers (see City Views)
Water Supply
Water Structures 52
Water Pipes 52
Water Pollution 52
Water Treatment Plants 52
Zones 45, 46, 98, 99, 100
Commercial 46
Industrial 46
Residential 46
CREDITS
CREDITS
Development Director: Billy Hsu Lead Engineer:Paul Pedriana
Senior Engineer: Dr. Venkat Ajjanagadde
Engineering: Kevin O’Hare, Cort Oi, Blazej Stompel, Benjamin Thompson, John Yellott, Quarium Inc.
Art Director: David Patch
Art: Shannon Galvin, Bob King, Ocean Quigley, B.J. West, Alpha Omega Productions LLC, Iris Imaging, John Frantz
Audio Programming Lead Engineer: Paul Wilkinson Music and Sound Director:Jerry Martin
Sound Designers: Kent Jolly, Robi Kauker
Compositions: Kirk Casey, Anna Karney, Robi Kauker,Kent Jolly, Jerry Martin, Marc Russo
Musicians: Darol Anger, Sheldon Brown, John R. Burr, Charlie Chavez, Ruth Davies, Richard DeGraffenreid, Louis Fasman, Rock Hendricks, Art Hirahara, Anna Karney, Kent Jolly, Robi Kauker, David Lauser, Glenn Letsch, Gary Lillard, Jerry Martin, Eddie Ramirez, Marc Russo, Paul van Wageningen, Don Veca, Jason Wall. Drum loops courtesy of Spectrasonics Liquid Grooves, Burning Grooves and Sounds Good AB Eurotech.
Senior Producer: Christine McGavran Designer:Joseph Knight
Associate Producer: Michael Cox
Assistant Producers: Jenna Chalmers, Brooke Harris, Creighton Hurt
Product Analyst: Mike Lawson Content Manager:Gary Henderson
Scenario Creators: Scott Hermann, Waylon Wilsonoff
Guest Architects: Roman Belotserkovski, Melinda Bydalek, Joshua La Liberte, Lode Vermeulen
Administrative Support: Christi Graber
SimCity Exchange Development Director: Grantley Day
SimCity Exchange Engineering: David Oester, Michael Perry, Alex Zvenigorodsky
SimCity Exchange Producer: Darren Futa
SimCity Exchange System Administration: Mark Templin SimCity Exchange Site Development:Louis Ewens, Feng Qiu Marketing and PR Director:Patrick Buechner
Product Manager: Emily Kenner
Documentation: Dorothy Bradshaw
Documentation Layout: Big Idea Group Documentation Editor:Ede Clarke Package Art Direction:Adrienne Rogers
Package Design: SooHoo Design Lead Tester:Andy O’Brien
Assistant Lead Testers: Roy Gatchalian, Ed O’Tey
Testers: Andrew Blomquist, Matt Dominquez, Lambert Doria, Syruss Flyte, Rob Guzman, Jason Morales, Dan Roisman, Chad Schnittjer, Kinh Williams
Customer Quality Control Lead: Andrew Young
Customer Quality Control: Tony Alexander, Benjamin Crick, Darryl Jenkins, Dave Knudson, Micah PritchardCompatibility and Technology Lab: Jacob Fernandez, Mike Jung, Dave Koerner
CD Technician: Joe Bird
Localization Manager: Knut Grossmann
Localization Testers: Mateus Andrade, Bruno Bocquin, Alvaro Corral, Tomoyuki Ishige, Ralph Jung, Jerry Lee, Guilio Marchionni, Mikael Lindberg, Yun Taewon, Dirk Vojtilo
Int’l Product Development: Atsuko Matsumoto, Gabriel Gils Carbo, Emily Bromley, John Pemberton, Lafayette Taylor
General Manager: Lucy Bradshaw
Special Thanks To: Chris Agnos, Luc Barthelet, Eric Bowman, Sean Baity, Frank Barchard, Glen Bland, Scott Braccia, Adam Chalmers, Jeff Charvat, Serdar Copur, Matt Czolij, Teresa Denton, Chris DeWolf, Nancy DuBois, Jim Gasperini, Bing Gordon, Martin Griffiths, Fran Helmer, Wayne Hurley, Hitoshi Ikeda, Shintaro Kanaoya, Greg Kearney, Paul Kerchen, Christine Kong, Beverly Lam, Tim LeTourneau, Rob Martyn, New Pencil, Pam Ostroff, Kelly Parker, Rick Pierce, Tammy Sauer, Adam Steinbaugh, Matthew Thornton, Vasyl Tsvirkunov, Wren Weburg, Roger Wilner, Will Wright, Everyone At Maxis!
Extra Special Thanks to the SimCity 3000 Team!
Download Game Simcity 3000 Pc Game
WARRANTY
Need Technical Support? Please see the enclosed Reference Card for technical support information.
Need a Hint? Call EA’s HINTS & INFORMATION HOTLINE for recorded hints, tips, and passwords 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!
In the US, dial
In CANADA, dial
If you are under 18, be sure to get a parent’s permission before calling. Hotline requires a
ELECTRONIC ARTS LIMITED WARRANTY
Electronic Arts warrants to the original purchaser that this product is free from defects in materials and workmanship for a period of 90 days from the date of purchase. Electronic Arts is not liable for any losses or damages of any kind resulting from the use of this product. If the product is found to be defective within the
This warranty shall not be applicable and shall be void if the defect in the product is found to be as a result of abuse, unreasonable use, mistreatment or neglect.
LIMITATIONS
This warranty is in place of all other warranties and no other representations or claims of any nature shall be binding on or obligate Electronic Arts. Any implied warranties applicable to this product, including warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, are limited to
Some states do not allow limitation as to how long an implied warranty lasts and/or exclusions or limitations of incidental or consequential damages so the above limitations and/or exclusions of liability may not apply to you. This warranty gives you specific rights, and you may also have other rights that vary from state to state.
RETURNS WITHIN 90 DAY WARRANTY PERIOD
Please return the product along with a copy of the original sales receipt, showing the date of purchase, a brief description of the difficulty you are experiencing including your name, address, and phone number to the address below. If the
product was damaged through misuse or accident, this
We strongly recommend that you send your product using a delivery method that is traceable.
RETURNS AFTER THE
Please return the product along with a check or money order for $7.50 made payable to Electronic Arts, a brief description of the difficulty you are experiencing including your name, address, and phone number to the address below. We strongly recommend that you send your product using a delivery method that is traceable. Electronic Arts is not responsible for products not in its possession.
Electronic Arts Customer Warranty
P.O. Box 9025
Redwood City, California
If you have warranty questions, you can also contact Customer Warranty via
FAX: (650)
NOTICE
Electronic Arts reserves the right to make improvements in the product described in this manual at any time and without notice. This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
This manual and the software described in this manual are copyrighted. All rights are reserved. No part of this manual or the described software may be copied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any electronic medium or
Software and documentation © 2000 Electronic Arts Inc. All rights reserved.
SimCity 3000, SimCity, Maxis and the Maxis logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. Maxis™ is an Electronic Arts™ brand.
Environmental Autdio is a trademark and the Environmental Audio logo is a registered trademark of Creative Technologies Ltd. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
NOTES
NOTES
Printed in Singapore
Overview
It’s back, and better than ever! The latest in the SimCity series, SimCity 3000 (SC3K) is a very grown-up version of the game with tons of new features and a glossy new look. You’ll find a greater range of tools, lots of bug fixes and a whole new building tile set. One of the best new features is the huge library of actual landmarks included with the game (with more available for download.) It’s kind of cool to have a simple one-horse town with the Arc de Triomphe sitting in the middle of it.
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
The control panel has been completely revamped from the last version, with an RTS-style playing field surrounded by controls. You also now have a ticker across the bottom of your screen with news and advice from your various advisors, instead of having to monitor the newspaper as in SimCity 2000 (SC2K). Access to charts, maps and graphs is much easier, too. The game speed is easier to control, as each time you load a city you start out in pause mode, and the various speeds aren’t so hugely different from what they were before.
Download Game Simcity 3000 Pc Download
You can even load in cities from SC2K, though there are some things that have been changed that will make them rather different in this version. Otherwise, the basic gameplay is the same as always and most of the strategies you’re familiar with for building cities before will work here. There are also some strategy updates, though, as some of the ordinances, pollution and crime data are different. The biggest problems I ran into when playing, aside from being a bit confused over seaports and farms, were never having enough schools and dealing with traffic congestion (though this particular aspect is vastly improved over SC2K). I also kind of miss having hydroelectric plants, since those worked so easily before. Building bridges is also a bit of a pain at first, but once you’ve done a few, they make sense.
Graphics
There isn’t quite as much improvement in actual game graphics as I had hoped for (I was imagining something closer to what the pre-game cinematics look like), but the overall look is much cleaner, clearer and more colorful. Buildings are much more detailed now, there’s actual animation on many items, and on the closest zooms you can actually see cars and people moving around. The terrain is also smoother and easier to work with, and you can even turn off the grid lines to watch your city in action.
Audio
Authentic sounds, especially on the closer zooms, and some really good (if oddball) music. No great need for a major sound card, unless you want the surround sound immersion effect.
System Requirements
It’s a hefty one -- be sure to have a fast system, or a large city will take forever to load.
Minimum: Win 95/98, Pentium 166, 32 MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM drive, 2 MB, 16 bit Video card DirectX 6 certified, 230 MB hard drive space, DirectX 6 sound card
Recommended: 233 Pentium or faster, 8X CD-ROM drive, 4 MB video card
Documentation
One of the largest play guides I’ve ever seen comes with this game, along with a 15-page reference 'card' that’s almost a play guide in itself. Both are very useful and handy. The SC3K website is also a great resource, as it addresses a few issues people have reported with the game, and has some great downloads and updates, too.
Bottom Line
A great update. Lots of hard work went into this, and even though it took forever to finally be released, it was well worth the wait. They obviously listened very closely to what people wanted from the game and delivered very well. Many, many problems were completely resolved (such as water issues) and tons of new features were added that make the game all the more fun. There are still a few minor issues, such as difficulty with farms, seaports and bridges, but information on the website and in the play guide can help you get past those.
Overall rating: 7.5
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