Games PC SIMCITY 4-DELUXE EDITION User Manual

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ................................................................ 3

GETTING STARTED: TIPS FOR NEW MAYORS..................... 5

NEW IN TOW N? .....................................................................5

WHERE C AN YOU LE ARN M ORE? ...........................................7

REFERENCE GUIDE

REGIONS .......................................................................... 8

REGION B ASIC S.......................................................................8

REGION V IEW OPTIO NS PANEL ..............................................9

CONNECT TO SIMCIT Y.COM.................................................. 11

QUIT ..................................................................................... 11

CIT Y PANEL ........................................................................... 11

PLAYING A CITY ............................................................. 14

UNIV ERSA L CONTRO L PANEL ............................................... 14

PRE - INCORPO RATED CIT Y TOOLS .........................................20

INCORPOR ATING A CIT Y .......................................................28

POST INCORPOR ATED CIT Y TOOL S .......................................29

MAYOR MODE ................................................................ 31

L ANDSC A PE TOOLS ..............................................................31

ZONE TOOLS ........................................................................34

TR ANSPORTATION TOOL S..................................................... 37

UTIL ITIES TOOLS ................................................................... 45

CONNECTING CITIES ............................................................48

CIVIC TOOLS .........................................................................49

MAYOR PANEL ...................................................................... 53

SIMCIT Y 4 DELUXE EDITION

............... 8

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MY SIM MODE................................................................. 76

MICROPHONE TOOL............................................................. 76

U - DRI VE - IT ........................................................................... 76

MISSION CHART .................................................................... 80

MY SIMS ................................................................................83

OPTIONS ........................................................................ 87

CA MER A MOD E .................................................................... 87

PHOTO ALB UM ..................................................................... 87

GRAPHIC OPTI ONS ...............................................................88

AUDIO OP TIONS................................................................... 90

PL AY OPTIONS ......................................................................90

ADDI TION AL CI TY V IE W OPTIONS ........................................ 91

INDEX............................................................................. 92

NOTE TO BUYERS OF SIMCITY 4 RUSH HOUR EXPANSION PACK

Already own SimCity 4? When you install the SimCity 4 Rush Hour Expansion Pack, the process will automatically recongure and update your version of SimCity 4 so that it offers the same gameplay as SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition. For those of you who are mathematically minded...

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition = SimCity 4 + SimCity 4 Rush Hour Expansion Pack

So don’t rush out and buy Rush Hour if you have SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, and if you’ve already bought SimCity4 Rush Hour, don’t buy the Deluxe Edition—you already have it! This manual is included with BOTH products. Features new to SimCity4 Rush Hour are designated in the manual. Have fun!

INTRODUCTION

Is it time—to be Mayor? Do you have the empire-building skills to develop a metropolis of soaring skyscrapers or the

aesthetic sensibilities to create a city that delights the eye? Do you enjoy tinkering with an entire world—widening a river bed there, increasing a tax rate here—to see the effects on the inhabitants under your sway? Or do you want to get down and dirty with The Sims in your streets, taking on missions that have you hurtling down highways in a tank? Whether you tend to the godlike or mortal, SimCity™4 Deluxe Edition offers innite opportunities for you to create (or destroy) the metropolis of your dreams!

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition gives you power that extends from the god-like creation of mountainscapes to the adjustment of funding levels at a local elementary school. You’d like a certain Sim to commute to work on a pogo stick? Thy will be done. You may create a mountain aerie of high-tech industry, or a bustling urban manufacturing center. With SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, you can even interconnect the two cities to trade jobs, goods, and services. Whether you use your creativity to develop independent cities, or prefer to offer your Sims a larger view on life through interdependent communities, you must make your world a prosperous and desirable place for your citizens to live. It can be quite a challenge, but don’t worry. If you get too frustrated with events, you can always unleash meteor showers upon your land.

How will you know if you are succeeding as Mayor? You have a myriad of information at your ngertips. Your city statisticians work tirelessly to provide you with data, graphs, and reports that keep your nger on your city’s pulse. You know in which corner of your city crime is at its worst, where the best-educated Sims live, and which roads are most congested. But that’s not all. With SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, your Sims can contact you directly with their thoughts and feelings about your administration. If you are a really outgoing Mayor, you can interview passing Sims on the streets to get their views. Not content with just passersby? Want even more impact on your Sims’ lives? Import your favorite Sims from The Sims™ to live in your city! If you haven’t created your own Sims, we’ve provided some individuals for you to direct and follow as they go about their lives. Choose what they drive, which routes they use to get to work, and where they live. Your Sims complain if you raise taxes. If they live near a source of unchecked pollution, they get sick. If they can’t get a job, they move out of the city altogether! In the ideal city, your Sims work hard, die peacefully at a ripe old age, and pass the torch to the next generation.

Ah, so you want even more direct contact with the lifeblood of your city? You are hard to please, Mayor, but the answer is here. You now have the ability to build increasingly complex and varied transportation networks—providing your city with arteries of commerce and productivity. Allow congestion to get out of hand, and watch the car wrecks pile up! And, Mayor, you may be causing some of those crashes. With SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition’s all new missions for the betterment of your citizens, or cause mayhem in your city as you drive the streets, ply the waters, or y through the clouds in vehicles you pilot. Will you get Jenny to the hospital in time for her heart transplant, or are you aiding the evil Dr. Vu in his plot to spill toxic green ooze in

U-Drive-It

feature, you can accept

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the middle of downtown? Complete your mission successfully, Mayor, and you will be rewarded. Be a hardworking saint of a Mayor, a corrupt Mayor, or a Mayor who inicts all the evils of the

world on your poor, unsuspecting Sims. Regardless of your priorities, every decision you make has lasting implications for the society you create. Learn the intricacies of Mayoring through new tutorials provided in the game, and select from among three levels of play difculty. In no time at all, you will master the art of city building. From there, the only limit is your imagination. You’ve been elected, Mayor! Get to it!

GETTING STARTED: TIPS FOR NEW MAYORS

NEW IN TOWN?

This section provides you with a quick introduction to the art of Mayoring. If you’re new to the city’s top post, this information can help you get on your mayoral feet. If you’re an incumbent, review this information for a refresher course on leading your incipient city into a prosperous future.

WHAT SHOULD YOU KNOW FROM THE GET-GO?

These detailed steps will help you get your city up and running.

SELECT AN AREA FOR YOUR CITY.

Double click on an undeveloped square in the region that strikes your fancy.

INCORPORATE YOUR CITY.

Raise mountains and call forth the waters by terraforming your landscape, or just dive into your city. Click the Mayor Mode button when you’re ready to incorporate your city. Enter your City and Mayor names and choose the EASY difculty level. Then, click ESTABLISH CITY.

PLUG IN.

Select the Coal Power Plant from the Build Power Systems menu. Place it near the edge of your city so less pollution blows into town. The Coal Plant is a cost-effective but polluting power source.

ADD INDUSTRY.

Select Medium Density Industrial from the Zone Industrial menu. Drag out an industrial zone so it touches the power plant. Industrial buildings provide your Sims with jobs.

BE A HOMEMAKER.

Select Low Density Residential from the Zone Residential menu. Low density is less expensive than medium or high density, and higher density structures don’t develop until your population can support them anyway. Drag out a residential zone a short distance away from the power plant and the industrial zone. It’s smart to position houses away from the power plant and industries to minimize the effects of pollution.

PUT YOUR SIMS ON THE ROAD.

Select Roads from the Build Roads menu and drag a road from your R zone to your I zone so Sims have a way to get to and from work. Roads have a higher capacity and speed limit than the streets that are created automatically when you zone.

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ADD COMMERCE.

Select Low Density Commercial from the Commercial Zone menu. Drag out a C zone between the I and R zones so that all the zones are connected. Power ows through zones, so all of your zones should now have power. Always remember to only zone what you need. Monitor your RCI Demand to gauge when it’s time to zone more C.

WATCH YOUR BUDGET.

Your main source of revenue is taxes. You need to increase your city’s population and start making more Simoleons than you’re spending within a few years of your city’s “birth.” You can play with tax rates, but raise them too much and you’ll lower demand as folks are scared off by your moneygouging ways.

MONITOR RCI DEMAND.

The Residential, Commercial, and Industrial (RCI) meters indicate which type of zones to add to continue to grow your city. Click on the meters for more details about demand in your city.

REVIEW THE DESIRABILITY DATA VIEW.

This view helps you gure out which zones to place where. If you create a zone in an undesirable location, don’t expect to see any structures spring up there.

IMPROVE COMMUTE TIMES.

EDUCATE AND VACCINATE.

Add an Elementary School and Health Clinic in or near your residential zones, and make sure they’re funded appropriately for the population they serve.

FIGHT FIRE WITH...

Quickly add a Fire Station when your rst re breaks out.

MAKE A CLEAN SWEEP.

Placing a landll (away from your R and C zones, of course) keeps your city streets tidy and your neatnik Sims smiling.

POLICE YOUR STREETS.

Add a Police Station when your Public Safety Advisor complains about crime.

NETWORK WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS.

Make neighbor connections by dragging roads from your Industrial zones to the edge of the map. This stimulates industrial growth.

REACH FOR THE SKIES.

When you have a nice positive cash ow and a sizeable population (denitely more than 1,000), add higher density zones (R, C, and I) and a water system (pipes and pumps) to encourage the construction of larger, wealthier structures.

WHERE CAN YOU LEARN MORE?

This should get you started. You’ll also nd strategy hints scattered throughout this manual. Remember though, every Mayor has his or her own style. As you become more familiar with building cities, you will develop your own strategies. The possibilities for experimentation are endless.

As you rene your Mayoral skills, use these resources for further assistance:

City Advisors

Tutorials

SimCity.com

These devoted minions give you plenty of feedback as you build your

city. Heed their advice, but be careful! Advisors often have their own needs in mind and may fail to see the big picture.

Try the Getting Started, Terraforming, Making Money, Big City, and

Rush Hour Tutorials to familiarize yourself with the basics and beyond of SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition.

Always just a click away. Find helpful hints and tips and share your

conundrums and discoveries with other Mayors.

If you’re seeing car crashes, your Trafc Advisor is harping on gridlock, or your My Sims are griping about their miserable commutes, it’s time to think about upgrading your trafc systems. Upgrade your streets to roads, roads to avenues, and avenues to highways. You might also want to consider building some mass transit options such as buses, subways, ferries, or rail.

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REFERENCE GUIDE

SIMCITY 4 DELUXE EDITION

Some of you newly-elected Mayors may want to jump right in and grab the reins of your administration cold. Others might appreciate an introduction to the staff and resources that will support your tenure as Mayor. Read on for a complete rundown of the powers at your ngertips. Experienced Mayors may want to check out new features, or refresh themselves about certain aspects of the position.

REGIONS

SAVING GAMES

Before you begin to build a city, you need to decide upon a region for your new metropolis, as well as its location within that city, you save its latest incarnation. If you play a city but choose not to save it, it reverts to the last saved version. Remember, since your cities can be interconnected, the location of a city relative to its neighbors is very important. You can move your city to a new location by using the

Tool

, but this can have a dramatic effect on the city’s development—for better or worse.

region

. Once you’ve made this decision, whenever you save your

Import

REGION VIEW OPTIONS PANEL

The

Region View Options Panel

change the way a region appears.

allows you to load, create, and delete regions. You may also

REGION BASICS

Region

is a collection of cities that can be interconnected and interdependent. Your Sims can live in one city and work in another provided the two cities are adjacent and connected by road, rail, or highway. Also, cities can buy or sell as long as you have built the appropriate connections.

Region

can be comprised of both incorporated and unincorporated cities. Incorporated cities are those that have been developed and saved. Unincorporated city tiles are waiting for you to bring them to life. You can choose to play a isolated communities.

Take over as Mayor in one of the existing cities, or begin building the community of your dreams from the ground up. Do you aim for a mountain eco-city that is a center of high-tech industry, or are you thinking more manufacturing megalopolis? Will your Sims be archipelagoans or citizens of the land-bound plains? Ah...decisions, decisions. What you do now will affect how your city can develop in the future.

resources

from one another (power, water, or landll space)

Region

as a conglomerate of interconnected cities, or as

Create New Region

Load Region

Delete Region

Show City Names Show City Boundaries

This function turns the display of City Names OFF and ON.

Click here to create a new Region from scratch. You can

choose to begin with an ocean or land terrain.

Click here to access any of the pre-built (and sometimes

familiar) Regions supplied with SimCity 4 Deluxe. The regions you create and save are also stored here.

This option deletes the entire Region, along with every

city in it. Bye-bye greater Bay Area.

Click to display or hide the grid showing the Boundaries

of your cities.

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Satellite View

Transportation Map

Satellite View gives you a bird’s eye view of your entire

This new feature makes it easy. Select the Transportation

region, with both incorporated and unincorporated cities. The Satellite View is your default view. In previous versions of the game, this was your only region view. You can now toggle between the Satellite View and Transportation Map to survey your domain.

Any savvy Mayor needs to know where ALL roads lead.

Map view of your transportation infrastructure that connects your cities. A map legend is provided.

region

, and you see the entire

CONNECT TO SIMCITY.COM

Did you think Mayors work in a vacuum? Not for a minute. For all the latest information, updates, news, downloads, and customization tools related to SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition visit SimCity.com. Click this button, and you are there. You don’t even need to close out of your city! Communicate with SimCity experts and other Mayors by posting and reading messages on our bulletin board service, or download free additions to SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition such as landmarks, wallpapers, and, yes, customization tools. Never fear, the latest news and information related to SimCity is always only a click away.

QUIT

Click here to quit SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition and return to your desktop.

CITY PANEL

Want to explore the cities in your appears. This panel looks different depending on whether a city is incorporated (named and saved) or unincorporated (a blank slate).

UNINCORPORATED CITY PANEL VIEW

Region

? When you click on one of the city tiles, the

City Panel

NOTE :

The transportation map only works for

and

SimCity 4 Deluxe

them to view them with the new map.

cities. For older cities, load and save

SimCity 4 Rush Hour

Your region includes some

Mayor

, a

Name

zero. When you click on an unincorporated city, this

Unincorporated Cities

, or any

Residents

Businesses

. This means that the city does not yet have a

. In other words, you are starting from ground

City Panel View

appears.

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INCORPORATED CITY PANEL VIEW

IMPORT CITY

If you want to replace an existing city tile with an already created and saved city from this or another region, or from the downloads folder, click the

Import City Dialog

This lists all of the regions currently available, as well as any city that can be imported to your chosen location. Cities come in three sizes—small, medium, and large. You can only replace cities with other cities of equal size. As much as you’d like to try it, you can’t see what happens when you try to plop Los Angeles into an area the size of Pecanville, Arkansas (population 78). Sorry.

Click

DOWNLOADED CITIES

So you’ve downloaded a bunch of cities from the automatically placed in a special folder called You must rst

to expand the

to contract the folder and hide the

Import

Region

folder to check out its available cities for

a downloaded city into a

Import City

Region’s

contents.

SimCity.com

Downloads

Region

—any region—before it can be played.

button. This brings up the

web site? Clever Mayor. These are

found in the

Region Import Dialog

Import

. Click

DELETE CITY

Click here to delete a city le. Deleted cities are permanently removed, so use caution.

City Name

Difficulty Level

Mayor Rating

Funds

Ah, now you have something to work with. Mayor’s eye, they’ve become living, breathing entities—created and saved by you or someone else. The

Incorporated City Panel View

name to the number of jobs in Industry it supports. The

Difficulty Level

Name

. One star represents a beginner city, two stars indicates intermediate play, and a city with

three stars is for Mayors who enjoy living lives full of complexity.

of the city is indicated by the number of stars displayed below the

Incorporated Cities

displays valuable information about your city, from its

Mayor Name

Residential Population

Commercial Jobs

Industrial Jobs

are no longer just a glint in some

Mayor

REGION INFO

The

Region Info Panel

name and the combined population of ALL the cities in the region.

can be found at the bottom of the

Region View

. It displays the region’s

PLAY THIS CITY

You’re ready to break ground on your new city? Click on the adventure begin.

Play City

button and let the

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PLAYING A CITY

OVERHEAD MAP

Ready to don your Mayor duds and even take on god-like powers? How will you juggle the often conicting needs of your developing city? Will your Sims think you are doing a super job, or is everyone packing up for parts unknown? This is it—where the Mayoring really begins. This section gives you a breakdown of all the tools you can use as you build and demolish your dream cities when playing.

UNIVERSAL CONTROL PANEL

The

Universal Control Panel (UCP)

Date, Query Tool, Route Query Tool, Simulation Speed Controls,

so you know where you are). You also have the away from control panel clutter.

includes the ever-useful

Hide Toolbars

Overhead Map, Camera Controls,

and your

City Name

(just

button here, if you want to get

Navigation is a snap with your center your

City View

Overhead Map

on that location.

. Click anywhere on this aerial view of your city to

DATE

This displays the current date experienced by the Sims in your city. Each city starts in the year “00” (it was a mighty good year), but regions can be comprised of cities from many different eras. Cities may have begun years ago, and may develop far into the future. The faster the is set, the faster time passes. If you’d like to take a breather while you assess a certain situation, or ponder a weighty decision, just pause the simulation. Time stands still while you ruminate.

By holding your cursor over the date, you can check what time it is for your Sims.

The time of day is independent from rises and sets in accordance with the 24 hour clock, and morning and evening rush hours really do happen at rush hour.

Simulation Speed

and always runs at the same rate. The sun

QUERY TOOL

This unassuming little tool can be one of the best ways for a Mayor to gather needed information about conditions around town. The within your city. There are two types of query:

Query Tool

can be used to obtain information on any structure

Hover Query

and

Dialog Query

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HOVER QUERY

Click on the important information appears about each structure the cursor touches.

For of occupant, and the top three conditions that currently have the most dramatic impact on the desirability of the area.

Query Tool

Residential, Commercial

and move your cursor over the structures in your city. As you scroll along,

, and

Industrial

buildings you see the building name, the type

DIALOG QUERY

If you seek more detailed information on a certain building, the Select the

Query Tool

gives you customized information according to the type of building queried.

HINT:

The

Dialog Query

people living there, whether it is hooked up to your power and water systems, as well as details on the desirability factors of its neighborhood. What else would a Mayor need to know?

, then click on the building that interests you. The

If you don’t want to see a certain building fall prey to new development, click the Make Historical selection. If conditions warrant, the building may be abandoned and become distressed, but it won’t be lost in redevelopment. This designation works only for zoned RCI buildings, not for civic structures.

for a house gives you information about its current occupancy, the wealth of the

Query Tool

Dialog Query

is up to the task.

window

When you query other types of buildings, you see the name of the structure along with information about its functional capacity. The ve icons that are displayed in these whether the building is under-funded or over-capacity (in a word, is it efcient?). If you have fewer than ve full icons, then you may want to revisit your mayoral strategy. If conditions really deteriorate (your teachers are being asked to re-constitute chalk dust as a money-saving measure), you may be facing a strike.

Whenever you wonder “What is that?” do a quick city can be queried.

Hover Query

. Even the smallest items in your

Hover Queries

indicate

Query a power station and you receive information about its maximum capacity and current usage. The

Dialog Query

Levels

. If you nd the power plant is over-funded given current capacity, save a few bucks and ratchet the funding level down. for schools, hospitals, police, and re stations.

HINT:

When you build schools and hospitals make sure to adjust

the funding to match the number of attendees. In the query window for each school and hospital, lower the local funding until the capacity is slightly higher than the number of people using the facility. If the workers strike, don’t worry. Just increase the local funding until they stop striking.

includes another extremely useful function-adjustment of

Local Funding Levels

can also be set in the

Dialog Query

Local Funding

window

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ROUTE QUERY

The

Route Query

the

Query

buildings and roads.

 Hold the cursor over a building—see the number of trips to and from that building, as well as

the way Sims are getting there.

 Click on the building—see the routes taken to and from the building.  Hold the cursor over a transportation network—see the number of Sims that are passing

through that network and their means of transport. You also see the routes for all of The Sims passing through that network.

 Click on a transportation network to see the routes for all of the Sims passing through that

network.

This powerful tool can help you diagnose your transportation issues. If no one is using a bus stop, you can another bus stop near their destination you can encourage them to use mass transit. Cool.

Because there are so many ways for your Sims to get around, a legend for the route lines is provided when you select the

tool provides information about your Sims’ commute and freight trips. As with

tool, choose the

Route Query

tool, then hold the cursor over buildings and click on

the houses in the area to see how they are getting to work. By placing

Route Query

CAMERA CONTROLS

Want a change of scenery? Use these controls to change your

Rotate Camera Clockwise

Rotates your camera clockwise.

Rotate Camera Counterclockwise

Ummm.

Zoom In

Zooms your

Zoom Out

Zooms your

City View

click. There are six levels. Get a closer look at what your Sims are up to. You might be surprised.

click. You need the big picture to get a real sense of your city’s progress.

SIMULATION SPEED CONTROLS

Control how quickly time passes in your city using the

Click on the single arrow to

play at turtle speed.

Click the pause button to

stop time in its tracks. Click it

a second time to restart the simulation at the previously

set speed.

Simulation Speed Controls

CITY NAME

City View

Click the double arrow to play at rhino speed.

You want cheetah speed? Click on (yikes!) the triple arrow.

in one level each

out one level each

This is how you know whether you are dealing with Parisians or Grand Rapidians. Which might have an impact on your approach to mayoring.

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HIDE TOOLBARS

If you’d like an unobstructed view of your city, you can use the

Universal Control Panel

reference, see the back cover).

ON/OFF. You can still use the

Hide Toolbars

Hotkeys

to get things done (for Hotkey

button to toggle the

PLAY MODE

The buttons that encircle the interact with your city. Each mode is described in detail below.

God Mode

Mayor Mode

My Sim Mode

Universal Control Panel

Terraform, destroy, play with day and night cycles, and

more. In an unincorporated city, available play mode.

Administration central. You need to be in

to incorporate your city, build your city’s infrastructure, adjust budgets, and make policy decisions.

Import Sims from The Sims, or create characters on

the spot. You also access the

My Sim Mode Missions

mode to make decisions that have a more personal effect on some of your citizens.

are your portals to different ways you can

God Mode

is the only

Mayor Mode

U-Drive-It

function from

, where you can drive special Mayoral

and meet your Sims on the streets. Use this

PRE-INCORPORATED CITY TOOLS

You want to work with a pristine landscape? The artist in you calls for a blank slate? Then come. Enter the world of the unincorporated city—virgin territory. When you start from scratch in your city-building endeavors, the tools at your disposal are different than those available for an incorporated city. You can spend all the time you like making mountains or softening beaches— molding the land that will serve as the foundation for the great metropolis to come. Best of all, it’s free. Take advantage of your god-like powers to shape terrain now, because once your city is incorporated, being god-like costs a LOT of money.

GOD MODE

In the beginning, there are no roads, Mayors, solar energy plants, or populous Sims. Hear that wind blowing? It’s just you and the land. Until you have incorporated your city, only mode you’ve got. This is not a bad thing. The pre-incorporated it. A listing of your powers follows.

God Mode

TERRAFORM TOOLS

Your rst charge in the creation of a new city is to shape its terrain. This is called terraforming.

God Mode

provides you with all the tools you need to become an accomplished landscape artist. Some Mayors may nd themselves spending more time terraforming than building roads. Although each terraforming tool is unique, there are some universal functions.

Zoom Level

Use zoom levels to adjust size and strength of

The further out the zoom, the larger the area affected and the stronger the tool. Working at a closer zoom gives the terraformist increased precision to make subtle adjustments in the landscape.

Another way to boost the size and strength of a

effects is to hold the q key while using the tool. When you release the q

key, the effects return to normal.

Hold the Ç key while using a tool to reduce the size and strength of

its effects. Release the Ç key, and the effects return to normal.

+ 1 — 0 The scope of each Terraforming Tool can be adjusted by using the

key in combination with the number keys (1 through 0).

Select a Terraforming Tool, press q-1 to make the tool’s scope very small, or q-0 to make its scope very large. The q key pressed with any number in between allows you to adjust the scope of the tool to a variety of areas. Click on the Terraforming Tool again to return it to normal.

+ ¡ — º The strength of each Terraforming Tool can be adjusted by using the

Shift key in combination with the F keys (¡ through º). Select a Terraforming Tool, and press q-¡ to make the tool very weak, or press q-º to make the tool very strong. Press the q key with any F key in between to choose a variety of strengths. Click on the tool again to return it to normal.

God Mode

is the

has a lot going for

Terraforming Tools

Terraforming Tool’s

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MAKE MOUNTAINS

Select the

Make Mountains

everything from Andean peaks to what are referred to as hills in southern Illinois.

menu for the set of

Mountain

Raise huge peaks.

Hill

Raise soft rolling hills.

Mesa

Create at-topped mesas. Hold the mouse button in one

Steep Hill

Create hills with a steep slope.

Cliffs

Create cliffs with sharp ridges.

Terraforming Tools

location for best results.

that allow you to raise

GOUGE VALLEYS

This set of

Terraforming Tools

on the outskirts of town? If you want to see rivers, or create lakes, just use these tools to lower the terrain to below sea level. You can then shape bodies of water as you see t.

allows you to lower terrain. Would you like to have Bryce Canyon

LEVEL TERRAIN

This menu of

Terraforming Tools

Crater

Create craters. Click and hold the crater tool in one

location for best results.

Shallow Canyon

Erosion

Plains

Quick Level

Brush

Soften

Plateau

Create shallow canyons with sloped edges.

allows you to level terrain for different effects.

Click and drag over an area to create craggy mountains,

coastlines, or plains.

Gently level and smooth the terrain.

Use this tool for a fast acting leveling effect. This tool

levels all the terrain within the cursor radius to the elevation of the cursor point location.

Smooth and soften the terrain for nice soft beaches or

gentle rises.

Create level plateaus and smooth the terrain.

Valley

Create large valleys.

Steep Valley

Canyon

Shallow Valley

Create a valley with steep sides.

Create canyons lined with cliffs.

Create shallow valleys with gentle slopes.

SEED FORESTS

Be Johnny Appleseed. Click and drag this tool over to seed it with trees and watch forests grow!

CREATE FAUNA

Now how many Mayors do you know who can, with the ick of the wrist, cause rhinos to appear? After you have seeded those forests, decide what sort of creatures you’d like your Sims to encounter while they hike the hills. Select an animal type and drag your cursor over your chosen habitat. Herds of your chosen fauna begin to gambol about. Drag your cursor over a wide area to get lots of critters. If you hold the cursor in place, you spawn few or no animals.

Horses

Create herds of wild horses.

Page 14

Woodland

Animals

Wild Animals

A doe, a deer, a female deer. And males. Create

ungulates, mostly deer and moose.

Create herds and ocks of wild animals. You want rhinos,

you’ll get rhinos.

TERRAIN EFFECTS

Create wind-blown plains or make an adjustment to sea level. If you’re in the market for a set of one-click global effects that change your entire city’s terrain, we’ve got ‘em.

Click to set the winds of time loose across your entire

Erode

terrain. Click again until you reach the result you want.

Each click applies a smoothing effect across the entire

Smooth

landscape. Click until you reach the desired result.

Raise Terrain

Level

Lower Terrain

Level

Each click uniformly raises the terrain elevation across

the entire landscape.

Each click uniformly lowers the terrain elevation across

the entire landscape.

RECONCILE EDGES

When you edit the terrain of a city, you may have forgotten to make your borders a perfect match with neighboring city landforms. Oops. Not to worry. The elevation of the edges of the active city so that you can deal with that sudden three thousand foot elevation gain. Might make that connecting highway a bit of an engineering problem. When you click on the

Any development under the red highlight will be destroyed, so do be careful when using this tool in an incorporated, populated city. If you decide that the reconciliation process is just too painful, click

Reconcile Edges

in the conrmation dialog. If matching your neighbors’ terrains is worth it, click the

Cancel

button.

button, the areas that are affected are highlighted in red.

Reconcile Edges

tool adjusts the

CREATE DISASTERS

Had a bad day? You might do some yoga, or, heck...how about causing meteors to hail down upon your hapless Sims? There now. Feel better? This is denitely where your Mayoral powers might

both in unincorporated and incorporated

go a little to your head. You are able to cause cities. Perhaps you’d like a city built around ancient meteor scars and extinct volcanoes. Or maybe your day isn’t really complete until you’ve had a little fun watching a giant robot stroll through town, wreaking havoc and smashing buildings. To add to the fun, you can direct your chosen devastation to any area in your city you desire. Joe Bob Sim been a little whiny lately? Aim a lightning bolt at his garage. Who said civic leaders had to be polite?

Autosaurus Wrecks

anthropomorphized collection of vehicles into your city.

UFO

Click on the location in the

Volcano

Like to play with matches? Choose

Fire

Like your re to pack a little whollop? Try a meteor

Meteor

Click on a location in the City View to send a monstrous

Since SimCity 4, Mayors have made some otherworldly

Disasters

Autosaurus Wrecks

Once direction by clicking and dragging your mouse in the direction you want it to go. You’ll never look at monster trucks the same way again.

connections. Your destructive urges now have space aliens to do their bidding. Select the

City View

in the ship. Once mama arrives, it spawns smaller UFOs. The aliens will even let you drive. Click-drag the mouse to the desired location and the spawned UFOs will follow. UFOs are kind of complex machines, though, so earthlings sometimes have some trouble steering. Even Mayors.

your volcano to form. Release the mouse button and let the lava ow.

of destruction, and your cursor becomes a torch. Add a little heat to your city with a click, hold, and drag. The longer you hold down your mouse button, the larger the conagration becomes.

shower! You can control the direction of the meteor in ight by click-dragging the mouse in the direction you want the meteor to go. Once the meteor has achieved impact, you can load up another. Whee!

appears, you can control its

disaster and click

UFO

to select a destination for the mother

where you want

City View

as your mode

Fire

Page 15

Robot Attack

Tornado

Lightning

Earthquake

REMEMBER!!!

ready to bear the consequences before you toss a few meteors into that burgeoning commercial district, even if its crime rate is high.

HINT:

Disasters are hard on city budgets. Rebuilding doesn’t come cheap. Be sure you are

Want the satisfaction of creating a disaster without the

repercussions? It’s easy. Save your city before you launch your desired form of mayhem. Watch as catastrophe occurs. Now exit the game without resaving your city. When you next visit this particular metropolis, it appears the disaster never even occurred. Guilt-free disasters! Who’d a thought it?

Click on a location in the

metal monster on a devastating stroll through your city. This darling guy jet-packs into town. Once he lands, you can control his robotic direction by clicking and dragging your mouse in the direction you want him to go.

Click on a spot in the

Once released you can control the direction of the tornado by click-dragging the mouse in the direction you desire. Tornados dissipate quickly over water, so click on land for maximum devastation.

Let the sparks y. Click anywhere in your city to let loose

an electrifying jolt.

Check out whether or not your buildings are up to code.

Shake things up with an earthquake. Click and release anywhere in the you click is the epicenter of the quake. If you click and hold the mouse button down, you increase the strength of the earthquake upon release.

City View

to unleash a tornado.

City View

for a tremor. The point where

to send a ten-story

CONTROL DAY AND NIGHT

If you leave this alone, the sun sets and the moon rises according to the hours of the day. But you’re the Mayor. You can use these tools to make sure the sun never shines, if you’re a night owl.

Day Only

Want to try living in the land of eternal sun? Choose this

option, and it’s all sun, all the time. The 24 hour clock continues to run, but the sun shines even at midnight.

Night Only

Day and Night Cycle

You are a vampire Mayor, and permanent night makes

ruling the city that much easier on your undead self. Daytime functions can be so pesky when you run the risk of being burned to cinders by a shaft of sunlight. The 24 hour clock continues to run, but the sun never shines.

You just can’t get up without a sunrise? Clicking this

button allows day and night to occur right on schedule.

Page 16

INCORPORATING A CITY

Once you’ve sculpted your city’s terrain so it’s just the way you want it, you are ready to move on to the incorporation process. This is where things get serious.

Click on the

Mayor Mode

button , and you enter the

Establish City

dialog.

POST INCORPORATED CITY TOOLS

Once you establish a city, your god-like powers to shape the land are gone forever (or at least until you obliterate the place). But hey! Now you can begin to design the layout and watch your city develop from an idea into reality. The following tools can help.

GOD MODE

Obliterate City

Reconcile Edges

Create Disasters

Commitment time! Enter the name of your city, the Mayor’s name (your name, of course!), and choose the difculty level for play.

DIFFICULTY SETTING

Mayors couldn’t do this before. Now you can choose from three difculty settings for city development.

Easy

You start with a ton of cash, see faster development, and will nd that

making money (tax revenue builds up fast!) is much less challenging than in other settings. You’ll also receive frequent messages from your advisors warning you when you’ve taken a “wrong” turn, along with what you can do to remedy the situation.

Medium

Not quite as much money to start with, but still plenty. Development

is a little more challenging, and keeping your budget balanced takes some mayoral maneuvering. Your advisors are still there to assist you, but might not be quite so helpful.

Hard

You need to be careful with your spending because your initial funds

are pretty sparse. If you want a challenge, you’ve got it. Try to keep development going and your tax base growing. If you are successful, you know you have reached the highest levels of Mayordom.

Be sure about the difculty setting you’ve chosen before you establish the city. Once you accept it, there’s no going back. (ohhhhhh nooooooo!)

Control Day and Night

After a city has been incorporated, many of the Terraforming Tools previously available in your

God Mode

toolbox are just no longer within your grasp. You can, however, still reconcile the edges of the city to its neighboring cities, affect the day/night cycling, and unleash disasters on your unsuspecting Sims. If you really miss your former power, you can obliterate your city and start all over again.

OBLITERATE CITY

If you’ve managed to run your city into the ground and want to start over, this is the button for you.

Obliterate City

underlying terrain. When obliteration is complete, the City and Mayor names are removed, and the city is returned to its unincorporated state. It’s as if it never happened. All of your god-like

Terraforming Tools

When using this tool, your city is automatically saved. So be careful, true to its name, obliteration cannot be reversed.

removes all vestiges of the city and its inhabitants, but maintains the

are available again, so you can once again terraform to your heart’s content.

RECONCILE EDGES

Reconcile Edges

Because an incorporated city is likely to have buildings and other structures that can be demolished when terrain modications are made, be careful when using this tool. Remember that anything located under the red highlight will be destroyed. Zap.

works the same for an incorporated city as it does for one that’s unincorporated.

Page 17

CREATE DISASTERS

All of the disasters available to you in the unincorporated in the incorporated information on these tools, see the Pre-Incorporated City Tools section.

God Mode

, but they are way more fun when Sims are involved. For more

God Mode

are also available to you

CONTROL DAY AND NIGHT

Day and night control is available in incorporated cities. This tool works the same way it does when the city is unincorporated. For more information see the Pre-Incorporated City Tools section.

MAYOR MODE

Whether you’ve chosen to take the easy route or the barrier-strewn path, you are sure to nd challenges galore as you inaugurate your administration. Your god-like terraforming powers may have dwindled, but the position of Mayor comes with plenty of muscle. Mayor mode affords you ample scope to exercise your megalomania, be it for good or evil.

Build roads! Add cloverleafs to your highway system! Plop the Taj Mahal in your city center! Zone! Beautify! Spend! Destroy! This is where the action is. The real challenge of SimCity 4 Deluxe is to be a Mayor who keeps loyal citizens happy, healthy and prosperous. If you put your Sims rst, budget wisely, and keep your ears and eyes open to all kinds of information about your city, you will be on your way to achieving hero status in your city. If you sought out the position of Mayor mostly to line your own pockets—how long can you keep the city on the brink of disaster while you milk it dry?

As you build your city’s infrastructure, you have a wealth of information available to keep tabs on your city—from your current Mayor rating to trend data on education levels. Never forget to seek out the Sim’s-eye view of what’s going on. You might stop a crime wave in its tracks if you listen to the man, woman, or child on the streets.

This section takes you through the basic tools available to you as Mayor. Good luck!

LANDSCAPE TOOLS

Now that you’ve established your city, you can still grow mountains—at a cost. Gods can sculpt terra rma for free, but this sort of landscaping comes with a price tag for Mayors, which may limit your ambitions. The mortal world also greatly reduces the scale and effect of these tools, compared to their powers in

God Mode Terraforming Tools

through 0, etc.). You may plan to make your upscale neighborhood even more upscale with a nice ridge formation, but beware! If you landscape too close to development, you destroy buildings and other structures. The following tools allow you to modify your city’s terrain:

God mode

. But hey! All of the special universal functions available to you in the

are available here (e.g., Ç and q keys, the q-1

Page 18

Raise Terrain

Gouge Valleys

Level Terrain

Plant Flora

Sign & Label Tools

signposts throughout your city, or place labels on

Create landscaped hills in your city.

Create modest valleys.

Level terrain within the coverage circle.

Select from several species to place saplings throughout

your city. Once you have planted the young trees, watch your canopy grow!

For the map-minded Mayor, a new feature—create

transportation networks, hills, valleys, and bodies of water. (For more details on Signs and Labels, see below.)

SIGNS AND LABELS

SIGN TOOL

Click anywhere using your on your newly created sign (The Mayor Slept Here). You can change what a sign says by choosing this tool and clicking on the sign’s text to edit. Want to move a sign to a more visible location? Choose the

Sign Tool

LABEL TOOL

Click on a location in the the desired text for your label (e.g., Sea of Anxiety, Valley of the Valley Girls).

Sign Tool

within your

and click-drag the sign to its new locale.

City View

with the

City View

Label Tool

. The

and type in the text you’d like to see

Label Tool

dialog appears. Type in

PLACING LABELS

When you drag a label onto a transportation network (road, avenue, rail, etc.), the label automatically aligns to the network and changes colors. Cool, eh? Immortalize yourself by naming mountains and lakes in your honor. When dragging the label into place, you can adjust its orientation by using the on your keyboard. As you rotate the viewing angle, labels always orient to be right-side up, which means a few positions won’t work. To edit a label, choose the change text or remove it entirely.

BULLDOZE SIGNS & LABELS

Went a little crazy naming stuff after yourself? A teensy bit embarrassed? This very special bulldozer removes signs and labels, but no other structures. Phew. Problem solved.

(rotate clockwise) and u (rotate counterclockwise) keys

Label Tool

, and click on the label to

SIGNS & LABELS ON/OFF

You like your signs and labels, but at times you want to view the city sans signage? The power is at your ngertips. Click on this button once. Poof, they are gone. Click again, they reappear. You are god-like and magic.

Like what you’ve written? Click on can drag it to a new location, if you so desire.

to place the label. Once your label has been placed, you

Page 19

ZONE TOOLS

A city that is zoned well works well.

zoning decisions dictate how they grow. So, Mayor, put on your city planner hat, and see how your strategies pan out. When you zone an area, you designate what kind of development can occur. Your Sims develop the appropriate buildings according to how you have zoned the land. Zone an area for residential structures and only Sim dwellings will be built there. Zone an area medium- or high-density industrial and watch the smelters move in.

Density

represents how many people you can pack into a building. By zoning lower density, you limit the size of the buildings that develop in your city. Zoning high density allows for skyscrapers, but is very expensive. Higher density buildings don’t develop until you reach the following population thresholds:

DENSITY POPULATION

Low 0 Medium 1,100 High 26,000

HINT:

Don’t zone high density residential or commercial early

in the game. It is costly and you won’t get high density development until your population exceeds 26,000. In other words, build out before you try to build up. Zoning density has no impact on the wealth of the residents or businesses that move into your city (If you build it, they will not necessarily come).

Hey, you say, this is easy! Hold on, Mayor. You thought you were ALL powerful? Not exactly. What actually develops in your are merely placing restrictions on types of buildings, kinds of businesses, and zone densities. If you zone an area for High Density Residential development, don’t be surprised if the high-rises don’t immediately appear. Zones don’t develop to their peak capacity until you have created the conditions that spur demand for those zones. Use your

Desirability Maps

of your Sims.

HINT:

Your population is booming, and you’ve zoned for high

density areas, but STILL no high rises? Check out your water supply situation. Water is an unnecessary money drain as your city is newly developing, but once you hit the big time, your Sims demand a nice, clean supply of H2O.

Residential, Commercial

to let you know if your zoning decisions are in line with the needs and desires

Not only does zoning give your Sims room to grow, your

, and

Industrial

zones is up to your Sims. You

RCI Demand Indicator

and your

PLACING ZONES

Choose your desired zone designation. Click and hold the mouse button down as you drag the mouse across tiles until you cover the area you wish to zone. You can zone a single tile with one click of the mouse button. Click and hold the mouse to ll areas between pre-existing roads with a zoned area. If there are no bounding roads, click and hold the mouse as you drag to create a zone of maximum size. Each lot created displays a little arrow indicating the front of the lot. Lot fronts must face a street or road to be connected to your transportation network. You can affect the orientation of the lots when you zone by pressing the a key while you zone. Streets are automatically built within zones to make sure your Sims have access in and out of neighborhoods to major routes. If pre-built streets interfere with your sense of control, you can send the autostreet function packing by holding the q key down while zoning and build your own streets. Eek! Have you zoned an area you were saving for landll? Just press s before you let up on the mouse button. This cancels your zoning operation. Phew!

HINT:

Try to zone in highly desirable locations. Use the Desirability

Data View to determine what location is desirable to which

group of Sims. Since this data is broken out by occupant type (see p. 55 for complete list of all occupant types), you can pick the ideal location for each group you wish to take up residence in your city.

A nal note—never confuse is not the same thing as capacity limits, the difference between single family dwellings and huge apartment buildings. Wealth species standard of living for the residents. Low density zoning can allow for low, medium, and high wealth residential development. Got that? So here’s the rundown of zone types:

RESIDENTIAL

Density choices are:

Low Density

Medium Density

High Density

HINT:

Zone for low density development when your city is in the

early stages of growth. It’s much easier on your pocketbook, and you won’t see taller, bigger buildings until your city increases in size and population anyway.

zone

type with

occupant

type.

Low density residential

low wealth residential

You see mostly single family homes being built.

This zone allows for smaller apartment buildings and

We’re talking huge tenements to massive luxury high-

(R§) (occupant type). Density species building

condominiums.

rises.

(zone type)

Page 20

COMMERCIAL

And the density choices are:

Low Density

Medium Density

High Density

HINT:

One word: rezone. Commercial kingpins showing an interest

in the commercial district where Joe’s Gas-n-Shave is the biggest concern going? You can rezone higher density zones of the same type over existing areas without destroying what’s already there. When conditions are right, higher density buildings will develop alongside and over current structures.

Watch mom and pop stores, gas stations, and other small

businesses grow.

This zone includes medium-sized ofce buildings and

stores.

Large ofce buildings, mega-stores, and skyscrapers.

INDUSTRIAL

The envelope please...Yes, and the density choices are:

HINT:

Agricultural Zone

Medium Density

High Density

Zone your industrial areas near the edges of your city map and make a road or rail neighbor connection to reduce the length of freight trips. Industrial barons need to get their products around town and exported beyond city boundaries or their companies won’t grow. Access to efcient transportation makes a zone more desirable for these ambitious souls.

Farms and only farms. No planned communities, no

encroaching subdivisions. Just tractors, barns, and crops. Moo.

This zone includes medium sized factories, warehouses,

manufacturing plants, and high-tech industry.

Mega-industry. Large factories, incinerators, or, if you’ve

planned well, gleaming high-tech industrial complexes.

DEZONE

The

Dezone Tool

and developed a certain area, but rethought your strategies? Use this tool to remove the zoned area, as well as the streets created when the original zoning went in.

is available in any zoning type, after your density choices. Have you zoned

TRANSPORTATION TOOLS

If your Sims can’t get there, they won’t go. If your Sims can’t go, your city won’t grow. No city can function without an adequate transportation infrastructure. Sims must be able to get to their jobs in a reasonable amount of time, and businesses need to export their wares to other parts of Sim Nation. As Mayor, it is your responsibility to create an efcient, owing, interconnected web of roads, avenues, streets, highways, railways, subways, bus routes, bridges, and tunnels. Sounds easy, huh. It is a challenge, but you have some of the most skilled construction engineers in the world at your command. If you have the will, and the budget, you can build almost any kind of thoroughfare. Here are the tools you can use to build the transportation network that helps your city ow...or be slow.

PLACING ROUTES

To place a road or any other transportation route, click on an origination point and drag to form a line. When you release the mouse, your road appears. Transportation networks can follow straight or diagonal paths. To build an irregular or overall diagonal route, hold the q key down with your selected transportation network tool. This will build a length of connected straight and diagonal route sections so that you can follow the desired overall path for your network.

If you don’t provide street, road, or avenue access to the lots in your zones, then the

Car Zot

is displayed. Eek!

If your Sims’ commute takes so much time they never get to work, then you see the

Work Zot

. Ack!

HINT:

If your Sims don’t immediately begin to trundle along on

your newly built route, don’t despair! It takes Sims about a month to discover new ways to get around.

BUILD ROADS

The bulk of your transportation needs are fullled with roads of one avor or another. SimCity 4 Deluxe provides several options depending on your city’s ever-changing requirements.

Roads

More expensive than Streets (some of which are built for

Avenues

Avenues are quite a bit more expensive than either Roads

you when you zone an area), Roads have the benet of higher capacity and speed limit. If you notice crowding and gridlock on your Streets, you can upgrade them by building Roads right on top.

or Streets, and take up twice as much space, but they more than make up for it with even higher capacity and a higher speed limit. You may need to demolish some buildings to t them in, but Avenues are a great replacement for Roads that are jammed with trafc.

Page 21

HINT:

Trafc accidents are a symptom of congestion. You may

enjoy rubbernecking for a while, but if your city stays congested (ah-choo!), development stagnates, and your Sims may begin to look for greener pastures.

One Way Roads One Way Roads

Streets

These are cheap, comparatively, but

roads but only in one direction. They also increase the efciency of intersections, which can ease the burden of heavy trafc. Just make sure that you provide a way for your Sims to get both to and from work, or they won’t go to work at all. Any excuse, that’s all it takes.

lowest capacity and speed limits of all your road options. When zoning, so that Sims can drive out of their parking lots and driveways.

have twice the capacity of regular

Streets

are automatically built in zones

HINT:

BUILD HIGHWAYS & RAMPS

Highways

are very expensive compared to a lot of space, but their capacity is HUGE, and their speed limits are high. important part of your planning as the population of your city inches towards the megalopolis category.

Ground Level Highways Ground Level Highways

Elevated Highways

Just build ‘em on top!

Streets, Roads

than

Elevated Highways

overpasses for roads that cross the highway can jack up the price fast in downtown areas. On the other hand,

Ground Level Highways

your citizens from their homes in the Burbs to the city center.

expensive than money you spend can be recouped as you can build the less expensive roads and streets underneath to bolster the efciency of your network. If you have a lot of roads running perpendicular to your highway, such as in a downtown commercial district with a grid-like road network,

, and

Avenues

might seem more cost effective at rst, but building

are a great choice for getting

Elevated Highways

Ground Level Highways

Elevated Highways

, and tend to take up

Highways

are often the way to go.

have the

can be an

are more

, but the

Ground Highway and

HINT:

Elevated Highway Cloverleafs

Know where you need to site a cloverleaf, T-intersection,

overpass onramp, or side onramp, but haven’t had the time or funds to build the highway yet? You can now place these structures before you build a highway. If you have selected one of these structures, but aren’t sure that this is the best option for your network, use the Home and End keys to cycle through your options.

Ground Highway and Elevated Highway T-Intersections

Ground Highway and Elevated Highway Overpass Onramps

Ground Highway and Elevated Highway Side Onramps

engineers don’t prompt you on this one,

When two highways cross, do you want your Sims to be

able to go from one highway to the other? That’s where

the handy dandy Cloverleaf comes in. When you build

intersecting highways, you are prompted to put in a Cloverleaf. If you balk at the price, you can always go back to the Transportation Tools menu and add one later. These structures take up lots of space, so make sure there’s nothing underneath when you build.

T-Intersections

up by your engineers and construction crews, Mayor.

These are three-way intersections where one

transitions into another

to the rst. ground-ground, elevated-elevated, and elevated-ground. Every Mayor can choose the for them!

You’ve built highways, but the only thing blowing by is

wind? Before Sims can drive onto a highway, they need a

way to get from the road to this transportation artery.

For roads that run perpendicular to the highway, build an

Overpass Onramp

when you build the highway, you are prompted to place an

Onramp

go to the For Ground Level highways you have to manually place an overpass.

Need access from a road that runs parallel to the

highway? Build a

are only placed manually. You knew you had to do something to earn that big, fat salary, didn’t you? It is easier to build the the road. If the road is already in place, make sure that it’s two tiles away from the highway and straight to get a working connection.

are nifty little engineering feats cooked

Highway

that runs perpendicular

T-Intersections

. Don’t want or need one right now? You can

Transportation Tools

come in several avors:

T-Intersection

for access. If the road already exists

menu to build one later.

Side Onramp

. Your construction

rst, and then connect

Highway

that’s right

Side Onramps

Page 22

BUILD RAILS & DEPOTS

MISCELLANEOUS TRANSPORTATION

When it comes to maintenance, getting hordes of people from one place to another. Industrial areas tend to thrive when there is access to railways for transporting freight out of town (with the added benet of keeping pesky freight trucks off the roads). When it comes to building railways that get used, placement is everything. Be wise, and do not squander the iron.

Rail

Pound that

Passenger Train Station

Freight Train Station

Grand Railroad Station

Monorail

Rail

is cheaper than roads, and is signicantly more efcient at

Rail! Rail

lines can be used for both commuter trafc and freight trips. For your Sims to use all these wonderful tracks, they need access. Don’t forget to build if you want to see your network utilized. Build your

Stations

commuters and freight users. Sims hate to travel far to use mass transit.

Passenger Train Stations

Sims. Make sure to place stations in the center of your residential areas and in central locations of your business districts. Otherwise they won’t get much use.

For industry to be successful, manufactured goods need

to have a way to get out of town. If you rely on roads to satisfy this demand, freight trucks tend to compete with commuters for lane space—and nobody wins. Try this, place your industrial development and run station to the edge of the map. As with

Stations

unless there is a just might encourage your industries to use main means of transport, which frees up the you and your Sims.

Ah, ain’t life grand. If you have really invested in

building up your off with a times the passenger capacity of small

Stations

for commercial ofce development.

Monorail

panache to your town. space as surface rail, but doesn’t interfere with trafc because it passes right over the top of roads. This stylish transportation option is costly to install and maintain, but provides super high-speed travel. Whee!

Passenger

and

Freight Train Stations

near origination and destination points for both

are for your commuting

Freight Train Stations

, manufacturers won’t use your rail network

Freight Train Station

Rail

system, you might want to cap it

Grand Station

, and on top of that, they increase desirability

and

. These stations have several

Monorail Stations

Monorail

in the center of

Rail lines

Passenger Rail

for access. You

Passenger Rail

can add some

takes up as much

from the

Rail

Roads

as their

for

Roads and rail won’t necessarily be the only answer to your transportation needs. All large cities need to utilize mass transit options in one form or another.

Bus Stop

Build

HINT:

Use the Route Query tool to help you place bus, subway,

and elevated rail stations. These stations don’t come with parking, so your Sims have to walk to use them unless you place a Public Parking Garage nearby. Sims willingly walk only so far, and you need to be sure to place the stations within walking distance (usually about 10 tiles, depending on how lengthy their commute). The Route Query tool shows you the major commute routes in your city. Click on different roads with the tool to locate clusters of Sims that live near each other and also work in close proximity. These locations are where you want mass transit stations, Mayor.

Elevated Rail and

HINT:

Elevated Rail Station

If you invest in an Elevated Rail-Subway system, you want

to be sure that it is used to capacity. Sims walk to Elevated and Subway Stations, but putting a Bus Stop next door will encourage more distant Sims to use the system. If you build a Public Parking Garage next door to the station in a residential area, you might entice a lot of Sims to “park-andride.” Now that’s thinking, Mayor!

your Subway network. Think of your connected

Bus Stops

to get your Sims out of their cars and into the mode of mass transit, and add value to your Roads and Avenues. Be sure to strategically place your stations in both the heart of your residential neighborhoods and work districts (both commercial and industrial) to make your Sims’ feel the walk to the stop is worth their while.

Elevated Rail

Rail-Subway

Rapid Transit runs trains much more frequently, and is much more efcient at moving lots of Sims quickly over short distances than surface rail systems. This makes it a good choice for mass transit in and around your city.

Elevated Rail Subways

Monorail, rail, but allows road trafc to pass uninterrupted below.

is actually an above-ground extension of

Elevated

system as a single

is cheaper to build and maintain than

, but more expensive than surface rail. Like

Elevated Rail

Rapid Transit

takes up the space of surface

system.

Page 23

Subway-Elevated Rail Subway

the earth’s surface, they take almost no space away from

HINT:

You knew it couldn’t be that good, didn’t you Mayor?

Transfer

Subway and Subway Station

get to and from work, and since they are built below

Public Parking Garage on trafc and pollution in your fair city. If you want your

Go tubing!

Mass Transit is a great alternative to driving, cutting down

Be sure to build your Public Parking Garages in residential

areas, the place where your Sims will use their cars to get to and from the station. Building a Public Parking Garage in work districts is a waste of money. You still need to build plenty of stations in work districts, as this is where your Sims will be on foot. They parked and rode, remember!

Toll Booth

Got lots of trafc but not much money? Hey, here’s

and

Elevated Rail

schedules, but when building your system you may nd locations where it is best for your emerge from the depths or your underground. Perhaps the terrain is too steep for the elevated rail and it’s better to burrow below. That’s where the

Subway-Elevated Rail Transfer

of these babies to smoothly link your

Elevated

line. Get really skillful with this kind of stuff, and you may well be on your way to earning an award from the Sim Society of Engineers. You never know.

Subways

development. Again, the placement of is critical.

Subways

city to rival Tokyo or Mexico City, you’ll probably need to go below for best ow.

Sims to take greatest advantage of your beautiful mass transit system, though, you need to take into account that Sims just don’t like to walk that far. Eureka!

Parking Garages Garage

next to a suburban mass transit station and serve a much larger area—and many more Sims—by letting them “park-and-ride.”

an idea! Turn that congestion into cash by strategically building a few toll booths. Every trip that passes through a toll booth puts Simoleons into your city’s budget. Select the

Toll Booth

tool to build your little money-maker

on any

Road, Street, Avenue

segments only).

Every silver lining has its cloud—sigh.

run the same trains and

Subway

Elevated

train to go

comes in. Build one

Subway

provide a great way for people to

Subway Stations

are pricey, but if you are building a

to the rescue! Build a

, or

Public Parking

Highway

Toll Booths

train to

line to your

Public

(straight

nothing to help solve your trafc problems. In fact, they might make things worse. Being told they now have to pay to travel on routes they previously used for free also gets your commuting Sims a little resentful. Was that your

Mayor Rating

BUILD AIRPORTS

If you plan to have your commercial development go through the roof, then you need access to the skies. Without an Make sure your white collar Sims won’t be able to make their ights. Take into consideration that airports are large, noisy, and generate a lot of trafc and air pollution. Neighboring residential Sims might not be too happy with planes zooming low over their rooftops.

Unless you’re a wizard at managing your funds—and who is—you are better served to build the

Airport

that meets your city’s current needs. Three different choose from— be expanded as your air trafc increases. Keep in touch with your requests necessary expansions when the time comes.

Airport

servicing your city, you won’t see huge commercial districts develop.

Airport

has good transportation access to your commercial zones, otherwise those

Landing Strip, Municipal Airport

? Did it just go down?

Airport

, and

International Airport

types are provided for you to

. Each may need to

Transportation Advisor

—he

WATER TRANSPORTATION

If you have built a city on an ocean or large waterway, same purpose for commuter and freight transport as overland forms of travel do for landlocked communities.

Passenger Ferry

Build at least two

Terminal/Car & Passenger Ferry Terminal

Building a bridge that spans a body of water can be very

expensive. Constructing a

you by until your city coffers can afford the more

expensive alternatives. Place a both sides of the water and connect them to a road system so that people can drive to and from the There are two types of passengers only, and another for pedestrians and automobiles. terminal for the other type, so be sure to set up your

Ferry System

the same body of water—or else no one takes the ferry.

Ferry

are built on the same body of water, making for very pleasurable commutes (according to Sim data sources)!

Build Bus Stops Passenger Ferry Terminals

Water Transportation

Ferries

of one type do not dock at a

with this in mind.

Ferry Terminals

trips can take your citizens to adjacent cities that

and

Public Parking Garages

can serve the

Ferry System

to encourage more use.

can often get

Ferry Terminal

, one for pedestrian

of the same type on

Ferry

next to

Page 24

Seaports

Are you a Mayor who encourages mega-Industry?

Marina

Marinas are not really about getting around, but more for

Hopefully, you’ve already built connections to your neighboring communities. Another way to help get your industrial goods out of town is to provide a Seaport or two. This might not work if your city is situated in Nebraska—but you can always try. Just make sure that you build Seaports near industrial zones and provide good roads leading to them so that freight trucks can get there lickity split.

your Sim’s recreation. Building a Marina improves local residential desirability and—ta da!—provides you with new drivable water craft. Have fun, and don’t forget your life-vest!

BRIDGES

So you built your city on a bay, hmmm. It was pretty once, but now it is one big commuter headache. Luckily you have the nest engineers in the land at your command, and the building of

Bridges

is within your grasp. Your headache may be on its way out, if you have the cash on hand

for the cure. To build a

Bridge

select a transportation network such a

Monorail

and drag a line so that it extends completely across the body of water. You can not build

Bridge

while laying down sure that you extend the line onto plenty of land on each side of the water. If your engineers have made the correct calculations, the red line turns into a beautiful mouse button, the

Choose from one of the available the height of the bridge. Some appear on the selection menu. Be sure to provide enough room for ferries to pass under your new construct if they ply your waters. Click the OK button, and—VOILA! Maestro Mayor, you have a new

Bridge

Bridges

can also be built to span areas with large slope changes on land—over a gorge, for instance.

Streets

One-way Roads,

Bridge Selection Window

Bridges

. If over water, use the

Bridges

have a minimum length requirement, so they may not

Highway, Road, Avenue, Rail

or when building on a diagonal. Make

Bridge

appears.

. When you release the

Bridge Height

slider to adjust

, or

TUNNELS

Sometimes it’s just easier to go under than over. And what’s a good commute without a or two to spice it up? When you attempt to build a transportation network over a hill, part of the preview line may turn green. If so, when you release the mouse button, that green section becomes a

Tunnel. Tunnels

both

Ground

Ah, the electrical hum of power lines, the echoing metallic “ping” of water starting to ow through underground pipes, the call of seagulls at the dump! As Mayor, you need to be sure your Sims are supplied with the bare necessities of life: power, water, and somewhere to throw that dirty tissue. Ewww.

can be created for

and

Elevated Highways

UTILITIES TOOLS

Roads, Avenues, One-way Roads, Rail, Monorails

Tunnel

, and

BUILD POWER SYSTEMS

No Mayor gets far without providing power. Abraham Lincoln may have read by candlelight, but your Sims are not too interested in life off the grid. You can’t start a city without a power supply. Want to try anyway? Watch. See the zones? You may enjoy seeing the little lightning bolts adorning your buildings, but your city will go nowhere fast.

At rst, your power options are limited. You can power up by building a

Coal Power Plant

has good stuff and bad stuff going for it. The but it’s also the biggest polluter. and

Natural Gas

HINT:

As Mayor, two things help you decide which plant to place: your monthly costs and the desires of your Sims. If you go with a polluting power source, then try to keep it far from your commercial and residential zones. Connect the plant to your zoned areas with a power line. Remember, power ows both through power lines and zoned areas. Zones and powerlines need to be within four tiles

, a

Natural Gas Power Plant

fall in between as far as capacity and pollution go.

Think about putting your pollution-generating power

plants, landlls, and even your dirty industry in another city (you can do this in region play). Don’t forget to set up connections and neighbor deals so that you can access jobs and services. Pollution doesn’t travel well between cities, so you are left to concentrate on building nice, clean, desirable residential and commercial districts. Nice work if you can get it. If you do keep the dirt in town, try playing on a larger map and setting up different sectors for polluting and nonpolluting development.

No Power Zot

Wind Power

show up over all your buildings and

Wind Power Plant

, or an

Oil Power Plant

Coal Power Plant

is very clean, but doesn’t have great capacity.

. Each of these options

may be the most cost effective,

, a

Oil

Page 25

of another powered area to conduct electricity. Once you’ve built a plant, don’t forget to use the

Query Tool

As your city grows alternate power sources become available. These alternate sources are visible in the can be built. Take a look at the earn the new power sources.

A look at the future? Demand for a public water supply is a sign of socio-economic growth, both for your city and your Sims. You don’t need to build a development (Sims seem to be pretty handy at digging wells), but if you want Sims with simoleons to spare to take up residence, you need to make sure their showers run good and hot. High wealth businesses (commercial services CS$$$, commercial ofces CO$$$, and Industry high tech (I-HT) also require water. Any medium to high density development requires water, so if you intend to build a thriving megalopolis, don’t skimp on the wet stuff.

to check on the efciency with which you are providing Sims power.

Power Systems

menu but are grayed out until you have created the conditions in which they

Tool-tips

for these plants to determine what you need to do to

BUILD WATER SYSTEMS

Water Supply System

early on in your city’s

PROVIDING WATER

First build a source—either a provide less water than the best for you? Once you have a source, you need to build a delivery system. You have a crack team that can build

View

the pipe on either side. If your water supply runs short, the supply distance from the pipe shrinks and some Sims go without water until you rectify the problem. Do you really want Joe Bob Sim to go without a bath for that long? The water but is not being supplied.

HINT:

Water Pipe

. Build pipe underneath the zones that need water.

Don’t bother providing water to your Sims until you are

ready to have high wealth residents or medium- and/or highdensity development move in. Contrary to what you may think, no one else needs it. If you nd that you aren’t getting high wealth or medium- and/or high-density development, check to see that you are providing water.

Water Tower

Water Pump

in no time. You can even watch it being built in the nifty

or a

Water Pump. Water Towers

. Back to the budget and city needs, Mayor! Which works

No Water Zot

Water Pipes

shows up over any building that requires

carry water six tiles beyond

are cheaper but

Underground

WATER TREATMENT PLANTS

Scum, germs, and industrial waste are major factors in the amount of water that the towers and pumps can distribute to your Sims. And mega-industry isn’t the only culprit. Although nice and pastoral, farms are one of the biggest sources of water pollution around (think pesticides). If you place a tower or pump in an area of high water pollution, its output dramatically decreases or even shuts down. Technology to the rescue! Clean up your water by building a in highly polluted areas.

As with your city improves. Take a look at the grayed out entries in the need to do to make the new options a possibility.

Power Systems

, options for water structures increase as the size and quality of your

Water Systems

Water Treatment Plant

menu to see what you

BUILD SANITATION SYSTEMS

Sims can be awfully messy folk, and if you don’t provide a means of dealing with that mess, the trash can pile up quickly (peeuw!). Fortunately, there are several options at your—ahem— disposal (sorry). You can zone a

Energy Plant

may seem to be the most cost-effective choice, but monthly maintenance costs can be quite high. Only zone what you need. landll capacity. Otherwise, watch desirability levels for these areas plummet. Don’t forget to build roads to your

Landfill

You wouldn’t think so, but the free, Mayor. The on reducing garbage in the city is somewhat limited. With any you have built road connections to your city. Sanitation workers balk at packing out your trash, so you’ll be paying for services you aren’t receiving.

. The

Waste to Energy Plant

Landfills

, otherwise the Garbage Trucks can’t get there!

Recycling Center

Landfill

, build a

Recycling Center

generates power as part of the bargain.

Landfills

eat garbage even while they ll. Start small and get a feel for

are nasty polluters, so keep them away from your nice neighborhoods.

Waste to Energy Plant

is a more environmentally-conscious alternative, but its effect

is an even worse polluter. Energy ain’t

, or construct a

Sanitation System

Waste to

Landfills

, be sure that

Page 26

CONNECTING CITIES

City Connections make the connection

the edge of your city. When you let go you are presented with the

Click

line to indicate that a neighbor connection exists. Go visit your neighbor. You should see the small nub of the network line on the edge of the city that abuts yours, with the yellow arrow indicating connection. Once each side of the connection is connected to the heart of your two cities, they will become intermingled, sharing jobs and residents. As you add amenities to one city, such as

plants, water pumps

through

can be made with any transportation network, power lines, and water pipes. To

, choose your desired transportation or utility tool and drag out a network to

Create a Connection

and—voila!—the connection is created. A yellow arrow appears on the network

, and

landfills

, you can begin to sell those services to the neighboring cities

Neighbor Deals

dialog.

power

CIVIC TOOLS

If you want your Sims to thrive in your Shangri-la, there are many things that you, as Mayor, need to provide. Are your citizens protected from criminals and re? Are you providing a high quality educational system, adequate health care, recreational opportunities and other amenities found in the

Civic Tools

menu? Prudent placement of these services can have great impact on your city’s

demographics, as well as the desirability of its neighborhoods. In most cases,

you can see its coverage, or service area, indicated by the ring that surrounds the building. Any area that falls outside that radius receives no service. Want more coverage? You can usually enlarge a building’s service area by increasing the funding for that building or city department. Or, for the construction-minded, just build another station or hospital to provide more service.

Don’t worry about destroying existing civic or utilities buildings; the game won’t allow you to plop on top of those structures. But plop on top of RCI buildings and they will be destroyed.

HINT:

Civic Buildings

Don’t place parks, police stations, or re stations before you

can afford them. You won’t need them early in your city’s development. A good rule of thumb is to build your rst re station when a re breaks out in your city (just build it quickly).

have a radius of effect. For instance, when you build a re station,

BUILD POLICE STATIONS & JAILS

Crime rates are dependent on several factors. Didn’t know you would need to study law enforcement theory to be a Mayor, did you? If you have worked to improve living conditions, increase the average Sim salary, and provide ample educational opportunities for your Sims, your city’s crime rate decreases. But happy, considerate citizens cannot quell criminal insurgence alone. That’s where the police come in. The police help you maintain public order, and respond to various kinds of emergencies. If there is little or no blue-uniformed presence in town, watch the crooks move in.

You may choose between several sizes of police stations to suit the law enforcement needs of your city. Each station varies in size, capacity, cost, and coverage area. Stations also come with a set number of squad cars that can be used for emergency dispatches. If your Sims get uppity, and start a riot, you want to be sure to have enough squad cars available for dispatch to quell the melee.

As your police force apprehends criminals, they toss them in the jail cells provided with each station. The on duty apprehends a suspect, the potentially guilty party is taken to the jail cells at the nearest station. When the jails in your police stations are lled to capacity, it may be time to build a

Jail

If you are experiencing a crime wave, you better build more police stations. Check the

View

held in check. Lower funding of a police station signicantly lessens ofcer efciency in criminal apprehension.

Police Kiosk

. Watch overcrowding in the jails, though—jail riots make everyone in town a little jumpy.

to see if your efforts are having an effect. Don’t lower station funding if crime is barely

alone does not have enough room to house criminals. If a police ofcer

Crime Data

City

Page 27

BUILD FIRE STATIONS

Sorry to say, buildings are inherently ammable (some more so than others—especially industrial buildings). To keep your city from being engulfed in ame, make sure that you have enough re stations to cover the developed areas. Like police stations, re stations have a radius of coverage within which they can subdue any res that might break out even before they are reported to the Mayor’s Mansion. Outside the coverage area, however, res can spark up and spread throughout your city. This is where you need to be quick on the draw, Mayor. These res are doused only if you send out a dispatch order to the re trucks and planes that come with your stations. See the

Emergency Tools

HINT:

section for more information on

Wait until a fire breaks out to build your first fire station,

then build it near the conagration. The reghters go into action immediately. This way you save money by building re stations only as you need them.

Dispatch

BUILD EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS

A high quality dominated by low paying jobs and poor inhabitants. Educate your populace and your city can evolve into a thriving, sophisticated metropolis lled with prosperous Sims and high end jobs. Education also plays a part in reducing your city’s crime rate.

To fulll your city’s educational needs, you need to keep tabs on the age of your Sims. Younger Sims require elementary and high schools, while growing Sims need colleges and universities. Adult Sims prefer ongoing educational enrichment offered through libraries and museums. You probably won’t be able to afford all of these educational institutions right off the bat, so you need to pick and choose what to build based on which age group predominates your city. For information about the age of your residents and their education levels look at the Education and Residential Average Age Data Views. Also helpful are the graphs for

by Age Graphs

click on them for information. Make sure that the Sims that live within the school’s service area meet the age criteria for the school. Place schools only in your residential neighborhoods. Schools in commercial and industrial areas will attract no students.

It’s a good idea to begin building your adjusting their funding to match the population they serve. As your population increases, be sure to increase funding as well. Otherwise, you may have a strike on your hands when your overworked teachers complain about having too many students.

HINT:

Educational System

. Schools also have a radius of effect, which is indicated when you build them or

A note on education and pollution. Investment in a good

educational system and neighborhoods that are highly desirable for wealthy Sims attract low polluting, high salaried, high tech industries. Over time, dirty industry, manufacturing industry, and farms move elsewhere to make way for these new businesses.

is critical if you aim to develop your city beyond one

Education, Education by Age

Educational System

early. You can save money by

, and

Population

BUILD HOSPITALS & CLINICS

Healthy Sims make for healthy workers. And when your city’s health depends on the productivity of your citizens, wellness programs become vital to the big picture. When you improve the health of your Sims, you increase the number of citizens that can hold a job (Live longer, work longer!). This, in turn, increases the city’s tax revenue and lures more businesses to your city. So, Mayor, you can see that it’s in your best interest to provide proper health coverage for all of your Sims. Sims feel more secure if there is a health center near home, so build health facilities in residential zones, and don’t bother putting them near businesses. Watch your population relative to the funding levels of your

Health Centers

to serve too many patients.

. Health workers get riled up and may strike if they feel they are being asked

BUILD LANDMARKS

A favorite lunch spot in your downtown commercial district just happens to be at the feet of The Great Sphinx? Lucky city. Landmarks are expensive to buy and maintain, but add grace and

distinction to your city. They also happen to greatly increase desirability for high end commercial businesses (which offer high paying jobs to your citizens).

BUILD REWARDS & BUSINESS DEALS

You have to create certain civic conditions before you are able to add the buildings found in the

Rewards & Business Deals

become available. If you are having difculties, particularly nancial ones, become available. Even though the buildings are and sometimes have a monthly maintenance price tag. Usually, though, they offer services and opportunities that greatly add to your city’s overall quality of life. and provide monthly income, but—you guessed it—there are often hidden costs (Mayorville: Future Site of the World’s Largest Toxic Waste Dump).

Reward Buildings Rewards

and

Power Systems

you need to take to earn the either reach a specied milestone or threshold in your city, such as a specic population level or mayor rating; or you successfully complete one or more U-Drive-It missions. When you have earned a

Reward

presents the reward for your approval and site location.

menu. If you are successful in building your city, these

Rewards

, they sometimes cost money to build,

Business Deals

can often be found in multiple locations (the

). Read the tool-tips for these buildings to determine what action

Reward

. You can earn

, or are deemed to be in the position to entertain a

Reward Buildings

Hydrogen Plant

Rewards

Business Deals

cost nothing

is in both

in one of two ways: you

Business Deal

, an

Advisor

Page 28

BUILD PARKS

Who doesn’t want to shoot some hoops, or relax during lunch hour in a shady city plaza? If you wish to make an area desirable for residents, commercial businesses, or high tech industry, build a

Park

in the neighborhood. it. Sims tend to be happier when they have lots of greenery around. If you start to see your residential demand stagnate, you may just need to add a playground or two.

BULLDOZE

Mayors may change their minds. And when only a hands-on approach to destruction can do the trick, the

Bulldoze Tool

structure that you’d like to see gone from your city. It’s as simple as that. But beware! Bulldozing private development in your city—this means any zoned building—has extra “acquisition” costs. You have to buy it before you can destroy it. Think twice before bulldozing that skyscraper—it could be a budget buster!

The

Bulldoze Tool

Tool

in the

Zoning Menu

Parks

have a small monthly cost for upkeep, but they are worth

is right at hand. Click on this tool and then click on the building or other

removes buildings, but not zones. Remove zoned areas by using the

De-zone

EMERGENCY TOOLS

You cannot sleep on this job. When your city faces a disaster, Mayor, you need to call your forces into action. Pronto! If a re has broken out, then send a re truck or plane to that location. If your Sims are rioting, then calm them down with the steadying inuence of your police ofcers by dispatching a police car or helicopter to the scene.

During a disaster the simulation pauses to give you a chance to get your bearings—you see a red border around your screen when this occurs. Unless you choose to disable function, the camera takes you right to the scene of the action. If you’re having trouble zooming in on that ve alarm blaze, click on the takes you right to the heat.

Be aware, you are unable to save your city when a disaster is in process. Sims like to see that you can deal with whatever emergency has occurred. So exit the game after the terrible event has run its course, otherwise you lose whatever development has occurred since your last save.

Go To Disaster

button found in

Auto Go To Disaster

Emergency Tools

menu. It

MAYOR PANEL

If you are an observant sort of Mayor, you probably look to the your city’s problems lie. At times, though, you will want an in-depth look at the city. The

Panel

is there for you, your administrative mightiness. The your city’s population, keeps track of how many Sims are clamoring to move to your city, lets you know how much money you have and where it’s being spent, provides up-to-date historical data on a variety of subjects, and gives you access to your all-important City Advisors.

MAYOR RATING

What kind of Mayor doesn’t want to keep Sims happy? Oh. Well, most Mayors truly care about the well-being and satisfaction of their citizens—for good reason. Different sectors of city governance have different approval ratings based on a variety of factors. For a quick peek at the city average of all these areas, look to the Sims may be precariously near to a revolt against you. No one likes to see efgies of themselves burning in front of City Hall. If the bar is to the right and green, then your citizens are very pleased with your work. Congratulations.

There are two types of factors that affect

Factors

LONG TERM FACTORS:

 Pollution Indices (air, water, garbage, and radiation)  Quality of Educational Systems  Quality of Health Care  Affordability of Housing  Crime Rates  Trafc Flow (specically commute time and congestion)  Quality of Park System

If the pollution levels in town are high, your quality health care systems, your

Mayor Rating

bar. When the bar is to the left and red, then your

Mayor Rating, Long Term Factors

Mayor Rating

looks brighter.

City View

to determine where

Mayor

Mayor Panel

takes a hit. If you have provided

includes information on

and

Short Term

Page 29

SHORT TERM FACTORS:

The effects of these factors are more ephemeral. Time heals these wounds. These factors include:

 Tax Policy changes  New Civic Structures  City Beautication (specically the planting of trees)  Fires  U-Drive-It Missions

If you increase taxes, for a period of time your approval rating drops. Over time, though, your Sims become accustomed to the new policy and the effect on Mayor Rating fades.

FUNDS

One of the most common pitfalls for new Mayors is a tendency towards scal irresponsibility. At times, every mayor will be forced to see their budget dip into the red, but you can’t keep it there for the long haul. Keep a vigilant eye on your money stores by checking the

Mayor Panel

. If you don’t, your

Finance Advisor

won’t let you forget it.

Funds

section of the

POPULATION

One of the best indicators of your success at mayoring is pretty basic. How many people choose to live in your city? The count of the souls in your city.

Population Indicator

in the

Mayor Panel

gives you an up-to-the-minute

RCI DEMAND METER

To get a more detailed view of how demand breaks down for occupant type, click on the

Demand Bars Occupant type Abbreviation RCI

Low Wealth Residential R-$ R Medium Wealth Residential R-$$ R High Wealth Residential R-$$$ R Low Wealth Commercial Service CS-$ C Medium Wealth Commercial Service CS-$$ C High Wealth Commercial Service CS-$$$ C Medium Wealth Commercial Ofce CO-$$ C High Wealth Commercial Ofce CO-$$$ C Agriculture Industry I-AG I Dirty Industry I-D I Manufacturing Industry I-M I High Tech Industry I-HT I

HINT:

. Here is a breakdown of

Sometimes demand may be high for a certain sector, but you

aren’t seeing development. Check to see that you have zoned enough area for that sort of development, and make sure that the area zoned is also desirable for the occupant type. Finally, check that you have good transportation between your residents and businesses. Trafc congestion can have a dramatic impact on development. If people can’t get to work, then development stagnates. Upgrade your transportation systems—streets to roads, roads to avenues, and avenues to highways—as needed. This can help keep your city in demand as a place for Sims to live and work.

occupant types

RCI

Okay. Hands down this is the single most important indicator in the

Demand Meter

development. The bars indicate how many people and how many businesses want to move into your town. The higher the bars, the higher the demand for new construction of that zone type. When the bars are low (below the center bar—which indicates negative demand), you may begin to see abandoned buildings in your city. This is ne if you wanted to develop a ghost town. Use the

RCI Demand Meter

industrial development.

consists of three bars for Residential (R), Commercial (C), and Industrial (I)

to determine if you should zone more areas for residential, commercial, or

Mayor Panel

. The

RCI

HINT:

You’d like to attract high wealth Sims? Bank on education.

Invest in your schools and you start a nice cycle of better educated Sims, who want higher paying jobs, which bring in higher tax revenues and less pollution. And what kind of Sims want to live in an attractive, clean city with good schools and high paying jobs? Well, all kinds. But who can

afford

it?

Page 30

BUILDING STYLE CONTROL

DATA VIEWS

Being Mayor has always had its aesthetic side. You set the artistic tone of your city by choosing the style of architecture used in new construction (residential, commercial, and industrial). There are four styles of architecture to choose from:

 Chicago 1890  New York 1940  Houston 1990  Euro-Contemporary

By selecting a style in the type of architecture for any new development. Existing development is not affected. Of course, if the former lack of artistry offends your aesthetic sensibilities—there is always that nice

Tool

. Or perhaps a strategically placed Volcano?

If unity of architectural style leaves you cold, you can select multiple styles and have them cycle after any number of years that you specify. Click on the option and adjust the spinner to set the cycle period. When you choose this setting, each newly developed part of town develops its own style, giving your city the feel of one that has developed over time. If you are a happy-go-lucky type, an eclectic kind of Mayor, you can have all styles develop simultaneously by selecting the “Build all styles at once” option.

Building Style Control

panel you dictate (ah, that’s a nice word) the

Bulldoze

Change building style every X years

As Mayor, you need to keep your ngers on the pulse of your city. Knowing that there are problems is only the rst step to being the best Mayor you can be. Before you can address any problem, you need to know the what and where of the situation. It isn’t enough to know that your education system is poor. You need to know where the situation is worst, and what factors may be contributing. Statisticians are at your constant beck and call, Mayor. a slew of diagnostic tools to track current conditions. This data helps you identify where to focus your efforts so that you can improve all aspects of city management.

Fire Hazard

Crime

Education

With any construction there are inherent risks of re. Some buildings

are more ammable than others. Abandoned buildings, in particular, are retraps. Use the re risk is greatest. This view also shows you all city re stations with their coverage areas. The deciding where to build additional re stations.

If you have not provided your Sims with well paying jobs and a quality

educational system, your crime rate is probably soaring. One way you can combat crime is by building a strong police force. The data view shows you where criminal activity clusters, and can help you decide on the most strategic placement for your police stations. As in the

Fire Hazard

their coverage areas.

Education is truly one of the main building blocks for a successful city.

If you want to attract businesses that provide the highest paying jobs for your Sims, you need to have an educated workforce. As noted earlier, a city with highly educated citizens tends to have lower crime rates. A lesson for us all, yes? The intelligence of your Sims is measured by

Education Quotient

that have the lowest E.Q., you can determine where to place schools, libraries, and other education structures for greatest effect. Existing educational structures are shown in this view along with their coverage

Fire Hazard

data view, existing stations are shown, along with

, or E.Q. If you know the areas of your city

Data Views

data view to pinpoint areas where

data view is invaluable when

provide you with

Crime

Page 31

areas.

Education Quotients

take some time to improve, so don’t be frustrated if your data view remains red even after you have built a new school. In a few years the effects begin to show.

Desirability

So you have a high demand for high wealth residential development?

Doesn’t mean diddly if you don’t provide desirable locations for construction. Know which areas of your city are most desirable to help you determine where to zone next. Check out the section on the

Demand Meter

for a breakdown of the 12 occupant types.

Although you can’t directly affect the types of occupants that develop

in your city, you do have indirect control by affecting the desirability of the zoned areas of your city. The following actions can be taken to improve the desirability for each of these occupant types:

Residential Commercial Service Commercial Office Agricultural Industry Dirty & Manufacturing High Tech Industry Industry

R-$ CS-$

R-$$ CS-$$ CO-$$ ID-

R-$$$ CS-$$$ CO-$$$ I-Ag I-M I-HT

Reduce Air Pollution Reduce Garbage Reduce Garbage Reduce Air Pollution Reduce Crime Reduce Air Pollution

Reduce Garbage Reduce Crime Reduce Crime Reduce Garbage Lower Freight Trip Length Reduce Garbage

Reduce Crime Reduce Air Pollution Reduce Air Pollution Reduce Traffic Reduce Crime

Place Schools Increase Traffic Place Landmarks Lower Freight Trip Length Place Parks

Place Parks Place Near R Increase Traffic Reduce Crime Lower Freight Trip Length

Place Hospitals Place Landmarks Place Near CO

Lower Commute Place Near CO

Reduce Traffic Noise

NOTE :

Actions are listed from most effective to least effective.

For example, you can increase the desirability of a high wealth

residential neighborhood by keeping the pollution down, among other things. Try locating pollution-generating buildings like the away from

Residential

and

Commercial

zones. Make sure trash isn’t piling up by providing a landll, and reduce crime by placing a police station in the neighborhood.

Water

Although water is not required to get your city started, development

is limited to smaller buildings with low and medium wealth occupants if you don’t eventually get H2O piped in. Once you are ready for high wealth or medium- and high-density development, you need to put in water for that development to occur. The

Water

data view shows you where your city is adequately supplied with water and where it is dry as a bone.

Power

Nothing in your city develops without power. Nada. Use the

map to see where your city is on the grid, and where Sims are reading by candlelight.

RCI

Coal Plant

Power

Traffic

If you don’t know it by now, provision of an adequate transportation

infrastructure for your commuting Sims is critical to city development. If your system is a big, snarly mess, your Sims are unhappily stuck in congested trafc. Accidents, road rage, and perhaps even riots may occur. By using the

Traffic Data View

you can locate your areas of greatest congestion. Relieve the situation by upgrading streets to roads, roads to avenues, and avenues to highways. This map is also helpful in diagnosing problems with your mass transit systems.

The

Traffic Data View

includes two views:

Congestion

vs.

Volume

for morning or evening commute.

Congestion vs. Volume

The Congestion map tells you whether or not your transportation

networks are near or over capacity. Use this map to determine where you need to beef up your transportation infrastructure. The Volume map tells you where the bulk of your trafc is routing itself. While the Congestion map indicates where you have capacity problems (read trafc jams, pile ups, standstill), the Volume map simply shows you the numbers of travelers using that route. For example, you could have a highway with very little congestion (which would show up green in the Congestion map), but very high volume (which would show up blue in the Volume map).

The Volume map also allows you to see a breakdown of the different

types of transportation in your city. Want to see the volume of car vs. bus trafc in your city? This data view is the one for you.

Page 32

Commute Time

Sims don’t always use the same route going inbound to work as they do

on the way home. This is particularly the case when you have used oneway roads as a trafc control strategy in your city. For this reason, the Trafc map can look very different for the two main Switch between morning and evening commute in the Trafc Map to see the difference.

Zones

Sometimes it’s valuable to see what type of

in your city, particularly if you are growing your city and wish to see where your low vs. high density your buildings disappear to reveal the underlying zone types at any time.

Land Value

Mayor Rating

Residential Average Age

Health

The

Quality of health care is a major factor in residential desirability, and

Land value

city. Low wealth folks often can’t afford to live in areas of high land value. The strongest.

your average approval rating for the whole city. If you want a more localized sense of how your citizens rate your performance, the

Rating

revile your very existence).

Different areas of your city attract different age groups of Sims. These

patterns can dramatically impact the usefulness of your educational structures. Place an elementary school in a neighborhood of elderly residents, and you’re paying for teachers and building maintenance that are not used to capacity. Check out the distribution of age groups in the about where to build education structures. Be a role model, Mayor! Show those Sims that you can crunch the data with the best of them!

can have a dramatic impact on the number of working folks in your city. Healthy Sims mean longer living Sims—all of which translates to a larger workforce, which spurs a dramatic increase in the demand for new businesses. This is a somewhat dim view of the value of health, but as Mayor, you must always be interested in your bottom line. Welcome to politics. Use the health levels. Build clinics and hospitals where they are most needed. The map shows your existing health care system, along with areas of coverage.

can inuence the wealth levels of Sims that move into your

Land Value

Mayor Rating

data view shows which districts like you the most (or which ones

Residential Average Age

bar in the

Health

Zones

are. The

data view shows where this inuence is at its

Mayor Panel

map to make intelligent decisions

data map to check out overall and local

Commute Times

Zones

you have laid out

Zones

map makes

lets you check out

Mayor

Air Pollution

HINT:

Water Pollution

Garbage

Radiation

No one likes to live in polluted areas, yet some types of businesses

spew out gobs of noxious, smoggy pollution. Know where pollution is rampant, so you know where not to put your residential zones.

Placing dirty business (I-D and I-M) in a neighboring city

enables you to keep pollution away from your “clean” commercial and residential zones. Pollution tends to stay within city limits. You can even go a step further and put your power plants and landlls in the dirty city. This way you keep all your polluting buildings in one city. Just be sure to create good connections for services and jobs.

High water pollution can dramatically decrease the output of your

water supply structures. The decide where to avoid construction of water towers and pumps. This view also facilitates siting of water treatment plants, which decrease water pollution in areas where it is high.

If you aren’t providing garbage removal services, stinky piles of refuse

build up all over your city. Funny, but this tends to decrease desirability in those areas. The has reached Eiffel Tower proportions. Call in the sanitation workers, Mayor!

Yup, radiation. Scary. Even the smallest amount of Geiger activation

results in the absolute stalling of development. Sims tend to avoid Chernobyl-type situations. Check out the where to avoid zoning. Of course, if you have successfully avoided construction of a meltdown, you won’t need this map.

Water Pollution

Garbage

data view shows you where the buildup

Toxic Waste Dump

data view helps you

Radiation

data view to see

or a nasty little nuclear

Page 33

ADVISOR PANEL

Your

Advisors

provide you with expertise, timely tips, and alert you to impending events. Their

feedback is invaluable in helping you understand where your governing attention is needed. Each

Advisor

has his or her own agenda, however, so you may sometimes get conicting advice. This

can lead to some difcult decisions, but this is what being Mayor is all about, right? If you have chosen to play at the “Easy” level, your advisors get in your face whenever there’s

a problem. If you chose to play at the “Hard” level, they appear only in the most dire of circumstances.

City Planner

Finance Advisor

Utilities Advisor

Public Safety Advisor

Health & Education Advisor

Transportation Advisor

Environmental Advisor

The

guidance on how you can become a very popular mayor. He’s also the lucky guy who gets to present your with your

Your

vs. income. She gets very upset if it looks as if your city is heading into the red. If that happens, she tells you what

Business Deals

Your

water, power, and sanitation systems. He also lets you know when capacity problems are looming, and alerts you to

Your

issues regarding crime, police coverage, re coverage, and disasters.

Your

concerning the health and educational demands of your citizens.

Your

all of your transit systems.

Your

pollution levels and demands for more greenery.

City Planner

Rewards Finance Advisor

Utilities Advisor

Public Safety Advisor

Health & Education Advisor

Transportation Advisor

Environmental Advisor

gives you tips on building your city, and

keeps you up to date on spending

might get you out of the hole.

gives you information on your

Neighbor Deal

opportunities.

keeps you informed of

gives you the lowdown on

keeps you posted on

updates you on issues

ADVISOR PANEL HEADLINES

Click on the head of one of your Sometimes this list can be veeerrry long. by clicking the headline or on the arrow next to the headline . If you are no longer interested in a message, click

hear about it again. Nag nag nag.

Expand button

next to the headline to delete it. If you don’t take care of a problem, though, you’re likely to

Advisors

—you now see a list of headlines from that advisor.

Advisors

love to advise. Expand the view of the headlines

. To read the message body of a given headline, click on the

GRAPHS

Unlike

City Data Views, Graphs

you’ll want to know what things were like in your city, ve, ten, even 100 years ago. Track historical trends to see if raising funding for your educational system over the years has really had an effect on education levels. you where your city has been, and where it is heading in a variety of categories.

Crime

Is your crime rate going up or down? Check this graph out to determine

Commute Time

Power

Water

Air Pollution

Check out how the length of Sims’ commute times has changed from

This graph provides insight as to when your city’s power usage might

Similar to power, the

Use the

depict data city-wide and show you trends over time. As Mayor,

Graphs

provide a healthy list of histograms and line charts that tell

which way the trend is heading. You can track both the number of crimes and the number of arrests.

past to present.

exceed its power capacity. Handy when planning for big expenditures like power plants. You see both usage and capacity.

Water

graph helps you plan for when your water

supplies run low.

Air Pollution

are working to give your Sims a fresh lung-full whenever they take a breath.

graph to see if your environmental policies

Page 34

Jobs & Population

Water Pollution Garbage

If garbage starts to build up in your city, the

Education

Are your Sims getting more erudite or stupiderer? Dumberer? Less

Education By Age

Population By Age

Life Expectancy

Residential Average Income

City Income vs. Expenses

Funds

Is your city heading for bankruptcy? The

RCI Demand

Mayor Rating Traffic Volume

A more detailed version of the

The

Jobs & Population

for all 12 occupant types. Check to see if you have enough jobs for your Sims, and if you are attracting the kinds of businesses you desire.

Is the water crystalline, or is it slowly becoming green ooze?

the trend. Anything above zero means that you have a problem. You better nd a way to export your garbage to another city or zone more landll space for its storage.

intellijent? This graph shows whether or not your educational policies are working.

This histogram shows you the age group. Use this tool to determine if you have focused too much on the education needs of one group at the expense of another.

Is your city dominated by youth, or are you fostering a retirement

community? This histogram shows you how the age groups break down in town.

If your health care system is lacking, the life expectancy of your

Sims is tragically short. This graph shows you whether your Sims are increasingly ripening to a nice old age, or if your city is continuing to suck the life right out of them.

Everyone likes to make money, and lots of it. The

Average Income

or living in poverty.

Are you spending your city out of business, or are your miserly ways

paying off? Check out the compare your spending versus your earnings. In general, Mayor, try to keep the green line above the red.

the coffers are going to dry up, if you stay on course.

In fact, this is the graph you see when you click on the This bar graph shows demand levels for all 12 occupant types. Use this graph in conjunction with the and where to zone.

Check this graph to see if your

Are you relying too heavily on the automobile to get your Sims to

work? Or have you constructed a well-utilized mass transit

infrastructure? For a breakdown of trafc volume for a variety of transportation types, check out the new

graph shows the number of residents and jobs

Garbage

graph registers

Educational Quotient

graph tells you whether your Sims are striking it rich

City Income vs. Expenses graph

RCI Meter

Desirability Map

Mayor Rating

Traffic Volume

of your citizens by

Residential

Funds

graph tells you when

is provided in this graph.

RCI Meter

to know exactly what

has improved over time.

graph.

BUDGET PANEL

Budget management—an area any Mayor knows and loves. Managing your city’s coffers is one of the most important jobs you have as Mayor. Control your expenditures and maintain reasonable tax income and ALWAYS watch your bottom line. Your city can carry debt up to a point, but if the hole gets so deep there is no hope for escape, your Sims will start packing up for greener pastures. The

Budget

panel shows you how much money you have, and where it’s going. Use it to make

adjustments to your income and spending.

BUDGET SUMMARY

For a quick breakdown of income vs. expenditures take a look at the

Expand

button to get a more detailed view.

Budget Summary

. Click the

EXPANDED BUDGET

The

Expanded Budget

coming in and how it is being spent. For a further breakdown within a department or to make budget adjustments in a department, click on any of the

Many of the department detail panels include sliders for funding adjustment.

In every case, the white vertical line under the slider indicates 100% funding. Moving the slider all the way to the left reduces funding to 0, while moving the slider to the right of the white line increases funding to over 100%, going as high as 120%. What does the police department have on you anyway, Mayor?

For a description of each budget department, read on. Click to expand the department rst.

view gives a complete breakdown by department of where money is

Open Details

buttons .

Taxes

Page 35

TAXES

ORDINANCES

You’re the tax man. Oh yeah. If your vaults are echoing, one option is to raise taxes in order to increase revenues. Use the types. Remember, though, that increasing taxes decreases demand for that type and lowers your mayor rating. Your Sims may eventually get over the tax increase and decide they like you again, but demand in that sector takes a long term hit. Even if you bring taxes back down, demand can take a while to recover. It’s a good idea to raise taxes only when you are seeing more demand in a certain sector than your city can support.

Enough doom and gloom. Your ability to adjust taxation rates can be used as a powerful tool to inuence the type of businesses and residents that move into your city. If you want to keep the rich snobs out of town, simply increase taxes on the fat cats and scare them off. If you want to keep polluting business like Dirty (I-D) and Manufacturing (I-M) industries out your city, tax ‘em to Timbuktu. They’ll stay away.

HINT:

Learn how taxes control demand. When you raise taxes,

watch demand for that sector decrease. Lower taxes? Increase demand. As Mayor, you can set tax rates for each occupant type, so you can affect the kinds of Sims and businesses that move in. need educated workers for high tech industry to develop. Lowering taxes gives a boost if there is initial demand, but it won’t work miracles.

Taxes

window to adjust taxation rates for any of the 12 occupant

Affect

, not control. You still

Mayors who really understand every little trick in the book often use direction of city growth. These little policy gambits carry both costs and benets when enacted, so use them wisely. For example, if you decide to enact the do increase your city’s revenue, but often at the expense of seeing crime rates rise. To get more information on each ordinance and its potential effects, click on the next the

Ordinance

title. Specic

development, so keep checking to see what laws you can put in place.

Ordinances

become available at different times in your city’s

Ordinances

Legalize Gambling

Open Details

to inuence the

ordinance, you

button

NEIGHBOR DEALS

Once you’ve connected two cities with roads, power lines, or water pipes—you may choose to have one city sell resources to its neighbor. The following requirements need to be met before a

Neighbor Deal

 The selling city must have an excess of supply over demand of the resource.  The purchasing city must be near or above capacity for the resource (i.e. there is a clear,

demonstrable need for the resource).

 The purchasing city must have enough money to fund the purchase of the resource for ve

years.

Once these criteria are met, you can go to the wheeling and dealing. Your

can become available:

Utility Advisor

Neighbor Deals

will let you know when conditions are right for a deal.

section of the budget panel to start

Page 36

The cost of a resource plus a reasonable prot margin. Seems fair, doesn’t it? The initial deal is for one year, but is automatically renewed if the original conditions of the deal are still met at the time of renewal.

HINT:

Neighbor Deal

Place your power plant and landll in neighboring cities,

then set up a connection (a power line connection for power and a road connection for landll) to start a neighbor deal. See the Connecting Cities section to learn how connections work. If your city decides to purchase power, rather than generate its own, you can set up a Neighbor Deal based on your city needs. This way you pay only for the resources you actually use. Smart, eh?

is automatically determined based on the cost to the city providing the

BUSINESS DEALS

TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT

You’ve been a road-building fool? Your transportation network rivals none. Just so you know— whenever you construct a transportation structure or network, a monthly maintenance cost is added to the expense side of your budget. Ouch! The you adjust funding in a variety of categories. rail, monorail, passenger and freight trains, and ferries. If you lower funding too far, though, your lovely network may end up in disrepair and trains tend to derail, which can adversely affect trafc conditions. Look around. If you notice a sudden epidemic of potholes, you may want to increase your road maintenance funding. In fact, if you have let things really deteriorate, better increase funding above 100% to cover the costs of repairs. That hurts!

Transportation Department

Mass Transit

refers to buses, subways, elevated

budget detail lets

Is your city struggling through budget woes? Not to worry, Mayor (heh heh). Several income generating

Business Deals

stipend of cold hard cash if your city hosts one of the following structures:

 Federal Prison §250  Casino §300  Army Base §350  Area 5.1 §380  Toxic Waste Dump §400  Missile Range §450

If criteria for the deal is met (the casino deal only shows up if you’ve enacted a gambling ordinance), then a new building appears in your the deal, and the money starts to pour in. If you decide you no longer need to provide a location for these particular businesses, you can always demolish the building (at a hefty price).

can be made available to you. Each deal provides you with a monthly

Rewards

catalog. Placing the building initiates

PUBLIC SAFETY DEPARTMENT

The

Public Safety Department

Stations

, and

Jails

. If you lower the funding at the department level, you diminish budgets for every police building, re station, and jail in town. You may nd that your ofcers aren’t catching as many crooks, your re ghters aren’t quite up to snuff, and more and more inmates are escaping from the jails. Lower these budgets only under dire circumstances. You want your institutions of public safety to be in top form.

You can also adjust the funding for re and police stations on a per station basis. If you decide that one area of your city can stand to live without the most effective police protection, you can lower funding at the local station. Click on the opens a list of all the police departments in your city, with a funding slider for each station. You can also adjust the funding of an individual station by using the adjusting the funding slider in the building’s

budget includes operating costs for

Open Details

button for the Police Department. This

Query Tool

Dialog Query

Police Stations, Fire

on that station and

Page 37

HEALTH & EDUCATION

UTILITIES

You can use the and

Hospitals

on the size of your city, the density of population in the facility’s coverage area, or the changing demographics of the neighborhood. You can save money by funding these structures according to current needs. When you adjust the bar next to health or education you are adjusting funding for doctors and teachers across all health and school facilities. You can also adjust funding for the number of ambulances or buses serving your systems. When you decide to lower funds for teachers or doctors, the number of students or patients that can be served is reduced. When you adjust bus or ambulance funding, the service area for the school or health center increases or decreases. In the

Health & Education

citywide. Click on the structures in your city.

This allows you to adjust the funding of each structure independently. When you click on the name of each school, the camera repositions to that school’s location.

In the Health Department budget, you can adjust the funding for number of doctors and number of ambulances. Click on the structures in your city. You are able to adjust funding for each locality, depending on district needs.

For both

Tool

Health & Education

. Your education and health care facilities are used to varying capacity depending

budget panel, you can adjust the funding for your education department

Open Details

Health & Education

to bring up its

Dialog Query

budget window to adjust funding for your

button for

Open Details

structures, you can also adjust the local funding by using the

button for

Education

to see a list of all the educational

Health

to see a list of all the health

Schools, Clinics

Query

The

Utilities Department

Sanitation departments

forewarned, once the utility structure is near capacity, it wears down more quickly. Utility buildings have a denite shelf life.

For the

Power Department

Click on the your city. Funding for

You can adjust funding for these structures both here and in their

Open Details

budget contains a summary of spending for the

. You can adjust the overall funding for each of these departments, but be

, the budgets for each power plant can be adjusted independently.

button for

Water

and

Power

to see a list of all of the power structures in

Sanitation

systems can only be adjusted citywide.

Power, Water

Dialog Queries

, and

CITY BEAUTIFICATION

Both

Landmarks

funding of these departments, the parks and landmarks in your city begin to look scruffy and their benecial effects diminish. You can always get things gleaming again by returning their funding to 100%.

and

Parks

fall under the category of

City Beautification

. If you lower the

Page 38

GOVERNMENT BUDGET

CITY OPINION POLLS

Many of the listed in the these buildings increase both desirability and mayor rating in the area where they are sited. Decrease their funding, and watch their positive impacts diminish.

Reward Buildings

Government

budget panel. Now before you start kvetching, Mayor, remember that

you earn cost you a monthly maintenance fee. These fees are

TAKE OUT A LOAN

If you could just get your hands on a few Simoleons, you know you could turn this city around. Well, Mayor, there is a way. You can always take out a loan. Loans are available for up to

§200,000, and Mayors are allowed to take out up to 10 loans. Ah, but money is never free. Interest rates on these loans are 8.5%, and you must pay back the loan amount with interest on a monthly basis for ten years. So unless you are in a real budget crisis, loans are not the best way to go. It’s probably not a good idea to take out a loan in order to build the Taj Mahal next to the Mayor’s House. Tempting, though.

For a quick glance at how your city is doing, check out the feedback on city development in six categories. Green bars show you just how positive opinion is in a certain area. Red bars indicate that the situation is negative and show just how bad it is. The arrows on either side of the bars tell you if the situation is improving or deteriorating.

Environment

Health

Safety

Traffic

Education

Land Value

This gives you an overall rating of health care quality and coverage in

Get a quick read on how well your police and re departments are

This shows you the average road congestion around town. If your

How well do your schools and educational institutions serve your

This poll gives you a read on the average land value in your city. To

This bar reects total pollution levels in your city. To see improvement, reduce air, water, and radiation pollution levels by removing high polluters such as dirty industry, farms, and toxic waste dumps. Also be sure that you have made provisions to dispose of the garbage produced by your lovely citizens.

your city. To bring the rating up, build clinics and hospitals in all of your residential zones, and make sure they have enough funds to serve your Sims’ needs.

protecting your city. Want to provide a safer environment for your Sims? Start building police and re stations in all of your zones, and be sure they have enough moolah to be efcient.

transportation networks have a really bad cold, try replacing congested streets and roads with higher capacity transportation networks. You can also improve matters by building a mass transit system, and providing plenty of alternate routes for your commuting Sims.

Sims? To raise the level of discourse in city coffeehouses, build schools, libraries, and museums in residential zones. As always, once you have built these structures, make sure they are funded well enough to satisfy your Sims. If you manage to keep this opinion poll in the green, the Educational Quotient of your Sims eventually improves.

raise land value, build parks, schools, hospitals, and other amenities in your residential zones.

Opinion Polls

. These polls provide

Page 39

NEWS WINDOW

Every good Mayor keeps current with local news and events. To know how your administration is being represented around town, keep an eye on the messages are constantly displayed here. The messages change according to changing conditions. News messages can come from these messages, click the

This brings up the

News

Advisors

or you’re

Open News Window

window:

EXPANDING MESSAGES

To read the entire story of a given headline, click the headline or the arrow next to the headline

. If you are no longer interested in a message, click the next to the headline to delete it.

News Window

My Sims

button .

. The two most important

. If you wish to see a complete list of

CLOSING MESSAGES

Once you’ve gotten the gist of the message you can discard it by clicking the to the right of the headline.

URGENT MESSAGES

Don’t worry, Mayor, you won’t miss any really important messages. An urgent message window pops up when your immediate attention is needed. Play in “Easy” mode, and you see important but not-so-urgent messages popping up. Not interested in proactive advisors? You prefer to go it solo? You can disable urgent messages in the

Game Options

panel.

Sometimes these messages contain hyperlinks that you can click to take you to a needed tool or city locale that is relevant to the message. Hyperlinks show up as blue underlined text within the body of the message.

Page 40

MY SIM MODE

What is life really like in your city? Have you created an upscale manufacturing center where your Sims contentedly go about their daily lives? Or do your Sims walk in fear to the bus stop because budget crunches have forced you to cut back on public safety expenditures? You can nd out, Mayor. In

My Sim

mode, you can import Sims from The Sims and direct their lives, listen to the thoughts of any Sim on the street, and—in the ultimate demonstration of proactive Mayorhood— use U-Drive-It to take control of vehicles in your city to ght crime and solve problems.

MICROPHONE TOOL

Want to hear the musings of the “Sim on the street”? Click the any Sim in your city to hear their thoughts on the job you’re doing. Citizen feedback on local conditions and transportation networks is shown iconically.

U- DRIVE-IT

Not interested in being relegated to a desk job? Well, put on your driving gloves! It’s time to get out there and experience life on street level. You are no longer just a spectator in events—you are now part of the outcome, Mayor. Use in your city. It doesn’t stop there. crime, or even help encourage crime depending on what kind of mayor you are.

You are urgently needed, Mayor! A heart has nally become available, and it is your job to pick little Jenny up and get her to the Medical Center pronto. Or perhaps your evilness opts for taking unsuspecting passengers on the last ferry boat ride of their little Sim lives. More of a Wright Brothers-type of leader? Some elds need emergency crop dusting, and you are just the pilot to get it done. Successfully completed missions, whether of the devilish or angelic variety, bring rewards to you and your city of either mayoral prestige or cold hard cash.

U-Drive-It

includes scads of missions where you can help ght

Microphone tool

to take earned vehicles for a leisurely spin

, and then click

MISSIONS

There are over 80 missions involving all the various missions and to learn how to trigger each mission, check out the training mission for each type of vehicle (car, tank, boat, aircraft, train). The training missions give you a chance to get familiar with the controls for each vehicle and introduce you to mission play. You can press s at any time to cancel out of a Mission.

Successful completion of good

Reward Building

missions earn which rewards take a look at the

Missions

bucks, but your city may experience mayhem, and your local Mayor Rating plummets.

(these buildings often add new vehicles to your repertoire as well). To see which

help you build a thriving city. Successful completion of an evil

Missions

improves your

U-Drive-It

Mayor Rating

Mission Chart

vehicles. To see a list of the

Mission Chart

in this manual. Rewards for good

. There is one

, and may net you a new

Mission

brings in the

SELECT A MISSION

There are two ways to select a selecting a vehicle from one of the

U-Drive-It Mission

Earned Vehicle catalogs

: by clicking on a

Mission Indicator

or by

MISSION INDICATORS

Mission Indicators

Mission Indicator

follow mission-ready vehicles around your city. When you click a

, a

Mission Dialog

appears.

MISSION INDICATORS ON/OFF

Tired of

Mission Indicators

them back on at any time. You can always get to whether or not the

clogging your

Mission Indicators

City View

Missions

are activated.

? Use this tool to turn them off. You can turn

from the

Earned Vehicle

catalogs,

EARNED VEHICLE CATALOGS

Earned Vehicles Earned Watercraft Earned Aircraft

There are many driving experiences to be had in of the

Earned Vehicle catalogs

to see a list of all land vehicles. Click on vehicles, and click on the catalog and take it for a Grayed out vehicles are locked and not available for use. To nd out how to unlock these vehicles hover over the vehicle in the catalog. The vehicles in the catalog have a yellow outline a select a

Mission

HINT:

You need certain buildings to unlock vehicles for use in U-

Drive-It. Eyeing that military helicopter? Look at the Tooltip

to nd out what structure you need in your city to support it.

under

Earned Aircraft

Free Drive

U-Drive-It

, and you can nd them all in one

U-Drive-It

My Sim Mode

Earned Watercraft

to see what you can y. Click on any available vehicle in

, which allows you to drive, oat or y around your city.

Tooltip

will tell you what building is required. When

Mission

is available. Click the highlighted vehicle to

. Click on

Earned Vehicles

to see (surprise, surprise) all water

Page 41

Already have the building in your city but still not getting the vehicle? If you are playing with a city from previous version of

SimCity 4

Sorry, U-Drive-It doesn’t recognize previous incarnations of the buildings in your city.

, you’ll need to re-build the required building.

MISSION DIALOG

STATUS WINDOW

This window gives you a description of the you be successful. Most vehicles can be used for good or evil. To see a lighter) side, click Mayor, or you may just want to take this particular vehicle for a nice little to survey your domain.

If you choose to accept a heed the directives of an evil genius by orchestrating an “accidental” spill of toxic green goo.

What’s my alternative

Mission

objectives, and reveals your rewards should

Mission’s

darker (or

in the Mission dialog. You may accept the

you might nd yourself in hot pursuit of thieves or rushing to

Free Drive

Mission

around town

DRIVING PANEL

Once you have entered border around the screen. The

Driving Panels

maps, and other indicators. If you’re not sure what an indicator means, hover over it for a moment and a Tooltip will appear to explain it.

Want to see more of the screen as you’re driving? You can minimize a driving panel by clicking the “

Minimize

” button in the lower left of the panel .

U-Drive-It

mode (

Free Drive

Accepted a Mission

Driving Panel

differ for each type of vehicle. They all display useful information via meters,

appears in the bottom middle of your screen.

), you see a green

Whether you opt for

Window

in the upper right corner of the screen while you are at the helm. The

displays the control keys for each of the vehicles. A complete list of control keys can be found in the

Keyboard Shortcut

the helicopter off the ground, and even how to shoot missiles. With most vehicles you have special controls (starting the siren on the cop car or controlling the spotlight on the helicopter). Once you’ve learned the keys, you can minimize the

Having so much fun driving that you’ve forgotten your

Window

in the upper right corner of the screen. It includes a brief summary of what you need to do. When you are playing a just says

Free Drive

Many

Missions

much time you have left. Have you created an efcient transportation network? Hope you don’t encounter gridlock as you rush to put out a re.

Free Drive

or decide to try your hand at a

section of this manual. Find out how to make the cars go faster, how to get

Status Window

Mission

, the window shows a brief

include a time element. The

Status Window

Mission

, you see a

Status Window

Mission

objective? Check the

Mission

description. Otherwise, it

also has a timer showing you how

Status

MISSION TARGETS

Many

Missions

require that you reach a moving (an absconding car jacker). Sometimes you have to destroy the is your vehicle of choice). Targets are indicated in your indicators can help to keep you on track as you frantically navigate your city’s streets.

Target

(or a series of targets). Sometimes the

City View

with a bulls-eye. Hopefully these

Target

(often when a tank

Target

FREE DRIVE

Free Drive

is available for unlocked vehicles at any time. Choose your city with no objective or time limit. Want to just check things out around town? Take a drive! To cancel

U-Drive-It

mode press s at any time.

Free Drive

to toodle around

Page 42

MISSION CHART

Here’s a rundown of vehicles, their

VEHICLE MISSION NAME MISSION TRIGGERS REWARD BUILDINGS UNLOCKED Any U-Drive-It Road Vehicle Training Mission “Road Vehicle Training Mission” not Completing this mission is a pre-requisite for all

Land Vehicle completed and Residential > 0 other land vehicle missions. Police Car On the Trail Police Station > 0 and Commercial > 100 Complete the four “good” police car missions to

and Residential > 50 unlock Deluxe Police Station Police Car Disturbance Reported Police Station > 0 and Residential > 50 Complete the four “good” police car missions to

unlock Deluxe Police Station Police Car Catch the Robbers Police Station > 0 and Commercial > 50 Complete the four “good” police car missions to

unlock Deluxe Police Station Police Car Shakedown Police Station > 0 and CS§ > 100 Police Van Cop Gone Bad Deluxe Police Station > 0 and CS§ > 100 Police Car Nab the Car-jacker Police Station > 0 Complete the four “good” police car missions to

unlock Deluxe Police Station Stolen Vehicle Freedom of Expression Police Station > 0 and Commercial > 50 Get Away Van Escape with The Loot Fire Truck Fire! Fire Station > 0 Complete this mission three times to unlock the

Fire Dept. Landing Strip Fire Truck Hose Down the Cats Fire Station > 0 and Residential > 500 Fire Truck Help the Cats Fire Station > 0 and Residential > 500 School Bus Get Little Binghamton Elementary school > 0 and Residential > 50 Private School

to School School Bus Study for Profit Elementary school > 1 and High school > 0 Nuclear Power Plant

and Commercial > 50 Garbage Truck Uncle Vinnie Asks a Favor Police Station > 0 and Residential > 0 Federal Prison

and Landfill Capacity > 0 Garbage Truck A Special Load of Garbage Police Station > 0 and Commercial > 0 Toxic Waste Dump

and Landfill Capacity > 0 Ambulance Slipped on Llama Dung Hospitals > 0 and Commercial > 50 Disease Research Center Ambulance Shady Ambulance Driver Hospitals > 0 and Commercial Service § > 50 Court House

and Commericial Office §§ > 50 Mayor Limo You CAN Throw Money At It Mayor’s House > 0 and Commercial > 50 City Hall Mayor Limo High Roller in Town Mayor’s House > 0 Casino Mayor Limo Mayor [Name] Landmark > 0 and Mayor’s House > 0

Visits Landmark Mayor Limo Ribbon Cutting for Commercial > 200 and Mayor’s House > 0

[Mayor Name] City Bus Sick Bus Driver Bus Station > 3 Convention Center City Bus Dr. Vu Steals A Bus Bus Station > 1 and Residential >50 Army Truck Launch Time Missle Testing Range > 0 and Army Base > 0 Army Truck Steal a Warhead Army Base > 0 Deluxe Police Station > 0 Tank Tank Training Mission “Tank Training Mission” not completed Completing this mission is a pre-requisite for all other

and Residential > 0 and Army Base > 0 tank missions. Tank New Missile Testing Army Base > 0 Missile Testing Range Tank Tank Joy Ride Deluxe Police Station > 0 and Army Base > 0 Tank Teach the Strikers A Lesson Army Base > 0 and Commercial > 0 Tank Dr. Vu Gets A Tank Police Station > 0 and Residential > 50 Movie Studio

and Mayor’s House > 0 and Army Base > 0

Mission

objectives, and rewards. Evil missions are listed in italics.

Deluxe Police Station > 0 and Commercial > 50

VEHICLE MISSION NAME MISSION TRIGGERS REWARD BUILDINGS UNLOCKED

Hearse Get the Deceased to Cemetery > 0 and Residential > 50 House of Worship The Funeral

Hearse Simlent Orange Cemetery > 0 and Commercial >50 Army Base Taxi Cab Scientist Late For Flight Small Landing Strip > 0 and Residential > 50 Opera House Taxi Cab Insane Taxi!! Small Landing Strip > 0 and Residential > 50 News Van Mayor’s Got New Socks! Mayor’s House > 0 and TV Station > 0 The Bureau of Bureaucracy News Van Paparazzi Mayor’s House > 0 and TV Station > 0 Any Train Train Training Mission “Train Training Mission” not completed Completing this mission is a pre-requisite for

and (Freight Train Station > 0 or all other train missions. Passenger Train Station > 0) and Rails > 20

Passenger Train Whistle Stop Tour Passenger Train Station > 3 and Rails > 20 Tourist Trap Passenger Train Hijack the Train Deluxe Police Station > 0 and

Passenger Train Station > 0 and Rails > 20 Steam Train Train Ride for Rocket Formula Freight Train Station > 0 and Rails > 20 Part of Space Port Steam Train Sell Secret Rocket Formula Freight Train Station > 0 and Part of Area 5.1 unlock

Deluxe Police Station > 0 and Rails > 20 Freight Train Super Seatbelt Fabric Freight Train Station > 1 and Rails > 20 Part of Space Port

for Space Ships! Freight Train Train Station Tour Freight Train Station > 3 and Rails > 20 Grand Railroad Station Monorail Monorail Ride Monorail Station >= 2 Solar Power Plant

and Monorail Track > 20 Toxic Waste Truck Goo for the Masses Toxic Waste Dump > 0 and Residential > 100 Cemetery Ice Cream Truck Ice Cream Delivery Elementary school > 2 State Fair Ice Cream Truck Pure Evil Ice Cream Elementary school > 2 Part of Area 5.1 unlock

§ My Sim Vehicle Run Some Errands CS§ lots >=2 and MySim§ > 0 and CS§> 50

§ My Sim Vehicle Knock Over [Mission Target] Police Station > 0 and Residential > 1 and MySim§ and CS§ lots > 2

§§ My Sim Vehicle [My Sim Name] Residential > 100 and MySim§§ > 0 Goes Shopping and CS§§ lots > 2

§§ My Sim Vehicle White Collar Crime Residential > 1 and MySim§§ > 0 and CS§§ lots > 0

§§§ My Sim Vehicle Take a Break at the Casino Residential > 1 and MySim§§§ >0 and Casino > 0

§§§ My Sim Vehicle [My Sim Name] Residential > 500 and MySim§§§ > 0 Goes Gift-Shopping and CS§§§ lots > 2

§§§ My Sim Vehicle Took the Casino For A Bundle Casino > 0 and Residential > 1 and MySim§§§ My Sim Vehicle [My Sim Name] Wants to See Residential > 1 and MySim (any wealth) >0

(all wealths) [Mission Target] and Landmark > 0

Page 43

VEHICLE MISSION NAME MISSION TRIGGERS REWARD BUILDINGS UNLOCKED Air Vehicles

Aircraft Training Aircraft Training Mission “Aircraft Training Mission” not completed Completing this mission is a pre-requisite for Mission and Residential > 0 and any aircraft unlocked all other aircraft missions.

Medical Helicopter Give Jenny a Hand, Residential > 50 and Hospital > 0 and a Heart

Medical Helicopter Organs for Profit Industrial > 50 and Hospital > 0 University Attack Jet Cripple [City Name] Industrial > 100 and Power Plant > 0 Hydrogen Power plant

Industrial Complex and Area 5.1 > 0 Attack Helicopter Take Out Dr. Vu’s Industrial > 100 and Army Base > 0 Advanced Research Center

“Secret” Lair Attack Helicopter Raid on [City Name] Train Station > 0 and Water source > 0

and Army Base > 0 and Mayor’s House > 0 News Helicopter Cover the Hostage Crisis Residential > 50 and Commercial > 50 Radio Station News Helicopter Get the Perp’s Story Commercial > 50 and TV Station > 0 Police Helicopter Catch the Crook from the Air Police Helicopter Disturbing the Peace Residential (low density tiles) >= 100

and Deluxe Police Station > 0 Fire Plane Water Drop for Fire Fire Dept. Landing Strip > 0 City Zoo Fire Plane Let it Burn! Fire Dept. Landing Strip > 0 Sky Writing Plane Who Loves You, Baby? Small Landing Strip > 0 Major League Stadium Sky Writing Plane Secret Sky Code Small Landing Strip > 0 Crop Duster Farmer’s Got Vermin Crop Duster Spread Zombie Dust Small Landing Strip > 0 and Cemetary > 0 Part of Area 5.1 Sky Diving Plane Infiltrate Vu’s Secret Meeting Small Landing Strip > 0 and Industrial > 50 Sky Diving Plane Skydiving Show at Small Landing Strip > 0 and Landmark > 0

[Mission Target]

Water Vehicles

Boat Training Mission Boat Training Mission “Boat Training Mission” not completed Completing this mission is a pre-requisite for and Marina > 0 or Car Ferry > 0 all other boat missions. or Passenger Ferry > 0

Ferry boat Whale Watching Tour Car Ferry > 0 Marina Ferry boat Ferry of Evil Car Ferry > 0 Speed Boat Rx Pick-up & Delivery Marina > 0 and Seaport > 0 Resort Hotel Speed Boat Water-proof Marina > 0 and Seaport > 0 Cruise Ship Building

Mind Control Device Fishing Boat Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy Marina > 0 Light House Fishing Boat Mmm... Endangered Dinner Marina > 0 Stock Exchange Motor Boat Water Escape Deluxe Police Station > 0 and Marina > 0 Cigar Boat Jet Ski Fiesta Marina > 0 Tug Boat SOS Marina > 0 Major Art Museum Yacht Rare Fish Viewing Marina > 0 Country Club

Deluxe Police Station > 0 and Commercial > 50

Small Landing Strip > 0 and farm tiles >= 50

Television Studio

Farmers Market

MY SIMS

You created them. You have watched and directed them as they made life choices. Now you can move the Sims you have nurtured into your city! If you have not yet experienced the wonders of The Sims, don’t fret, SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition comes with a slew of Sims just aching to move into your city. But if you have The Sims 1.x installed on the same machine as SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, you can import Sims from their Sim neighborhood into a new neighborhood—yours.

Click on one of the empty slots in the have up to ve

My Sims

living in your city at any one time. The

My Sim Panel

to move a

My Sim

into your city. You can

Select A My Sim

panel appears.

SORT YOUR SIMS

Have lots of Sims to choose from? You might nd it handy to sort your Sims to simplify things. You can sort by gender , by astrological sign , or alphabetically by name .

IMPORTING SIMS FROM

If you’d like to add to your catalog of Sims from The Sims 1.x, you need only click a button. Click the

Download More Sims

city. Note that your Sims must be placed in a house in a neighborhood in The Sims to become available for import into SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition.

If you have imported scads of Sims, you may need more than one page of the panel in which to house all of your potential citizens. No problem. Click on the blue numbers below the heads to switch pages.

When you select a Sim from your list, you can change their name or astrological sign.

button to search your machine for potential Sims to move into your

THE SIMS

Select A My Sim

Page 44

MOVE IN A MY SIM

Ready to move the lucky candidate into your city? Click the choose where you’d like your the house, its wealth level, and valuable information about the conditions in the neighborhood are displayed. Is this the right dwelling for this particular Sim? Click the house, and then bring out the welcome wagons for the neighborhood’s new member. Sorry, you can’t move commercial or industrial structures. Sims have not yet gotten the hang of the whole loft space idea.

When your My Sim has moved in, he or she takes on the attributes of the neighborhood in which they live. If you moved JimBob into a home of high wealth, then he is rolling in bucks. If the education system in the neighborhood is poor, then JimBob has trouble spelling big words.

My Sim

to live. Just move the cursor over a house. The name of

Move In My Sim

button. You can

My Sims

into

NAVIGATING THE MY SIM PANEL

MY SIM NEWS

Here’s where you receive JimBob’s feedback about your city—in the expanded details of news items, click the headline or the arrow next to the headline . Once you have dealt with a message, delete it by clicking on the to the right of the headline.

My Sim News

items by clicking on the

My Sim News

Expand

button . To expand individual

panel. See

MY SIM PROFILE

The

My Sim Profile

residence, wealth level, job title, employer, education level, and health. The only a way to see what JimBob is up to, but is also a quick way to get a read on the state of affairs in his neighborhood.



Evict This My Sim

My Sims

evict him with a click of the

panel provides you a plethora of information about your My Sim—age, sign,

My Sim Profile

can get whiny, or, heavens forbid, boring. Ready to see the back of JimBob? You can

Evict This My Sim

button. Bye-bye, JimBob.

is not

MY SIM TRANSPORTATION

The Sims currently living in your city appear on the information on JimBob, click his image in the JimBob thinks of you and your city, where he lives and works, information about his goings-on, and tools you can use to help direct JimBob as he explores life on the streets you have created.

My Sim Panel

. If you want more in depth

. You receive information on what old

The

Transportation Panel

life—including what he drives, where he works, and where he lives.

is the place to go to control the daily comings and goings of JimBob’s

Page 45

MY SIM TRANSPORTATION

DISPATCH MY SIM

Dispatch your

Sim

way for you to know about your city.

My Sim

to any location in town using the

travels to the destination, you see their feedback displayed in a thought bubble—yet another

Dispatch My Sim

paddle. As your

DRIVE MY SIM’S VEHICLE

Take control of your carjacking, because you’re the Mayor, right? You can take JimBob for a spin around town, or try out a

Mission

My Sim’s

, if one’s available.

car by clicking on the

Drive My Sim’s Vehicle

button. Not really

CHOOSE MY SIM’S VEHICLE

Does JimBob drive a sedate sedan or a broken-down heap? Controlling JimBob’s life doesn’t stop at just driving his car, you even get to choose which car he drives! Available cars for JimBob are based on his wealth level. JimBob may want that pricey sports car, but he needs to be living life at the highest wealth level to be able to pay for it.

CHOOSE MY SIM’S PEDESTRIAN STYLE

How does your way to the bus stop? Does Shirley Sim have a penchant for cycling? Choose here, and watch your Sims travel around the neighborhood as you have directed.

My Sim

get around when not using a vehicle? Does JimBob walk or rollerblade his

OPTIONS

Gameplay Options for SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition are available in both the Choose graphics settings, sound settings, and game settings.

CAMERA MODE

Got a special moment you’d like to capture for posterity? Click on snapshot. Once in to capture the image. Press s to exit

Camera Mode

, press the to change the image size. Press

Camera Mode

PHOTO ALBUM

Region

and

City Views

to take a

CHANGE MY SIM’S HOUSE

Tired of JimBob living near the fast food place? Think he needs a change of scenery? You can move your

My Sim

to a new residence at any time. This is not, however, a way to improve JimBob’s

nancial situation. The wealth level of the new home must match the existing wealth level of your

My Sim

CHANGE MY SIM’S JOB

Provide new employment challenges for your the wealth level of the previous job. If JimBob decides to complete a degree, he may receive a promotion, and may even want a new job and new house. He lets you know.

My Sim

. As with domiciles, the new job must match

When you take snapshots, images are automatically stored in peruse your photo collection, click on the and album and then you can cycle through your photographs by clicking on and

Show Previous Picture

Want to add a descriptive label to a photo? Type your text in the “( section. Delete images by clicking

buttons.

Photo Album

Delete Picture

Photo Album

icon. In the

Photo Album Panel

add descriptions here

organized by city. To

, select

Show Next Picture

)”

Page 46

GRAPHIC OPTIONS

Because PC’s come in so many different avors and congurations, SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition offers

Graphics Options

will set your graphic options to appropriate settings based on your machine specications. For a machine with minimum specications, it is highly recommended that you set all these options to low

to customize performance for your machine. During installation, the game

VISUAL EFFECTS

Visual Effects

explosions, res, smoke, and pollution. Setting this to low limits the number of effects you see as well as their complexity.

# OF CARS/SIMS

SHADOWS

BUILDING DRAW SPEED

TEXTURE QUALITY Texture Quality

CITY DETAIL

can be set to low, medium, or high.

Control the number of vehicles and pedestrians you see on the streets of your city.

This option regulates the sharpness of shadows cast by buildings and

other structures. SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition constantly purges and loads graphics to

conserve memory as you explore different areas of your city. This setting effects how quickly the models and textures are loaded when you change your

Building Draw Speed

buildings and other structures. Players with machines or graphics cards that have low RAM should set

Buildings in SimCity do not exist in solitude. Lots are adorned with additional structures like swing sets, gardens, statues, shrubbery, and lots of other stuff (use your item’s identication). Limit the number of additional structures with the

City Detail

has a major impact on how quickly your

setting. For systems with low RAM, how you set

Visual Effects

City View

to the lowest setting.

controls the rendering of detail in textures of

include things like reworks,

. For systems with low memory, set

Texture Quality

Query Tool

to low.

if you are stumped at an

City Detail

City View

changes.

CLOUDS/FOG WAVES

UI TRANSLUCENCY

COLOR CURSOR

COLOR QUALITY

VARIABLE SPEED AUTOMATA

RESOLUTION

RENDERER

DEFAULT SETTINGS

Turn the display of clouds and fog ON/OFF. Tired of watching waves lap at your shores? Turn wave effects ON/OFF

here. This option allows for smooth transitions between the Tool panels and

the background. Turn this option ON/OFF here. Some graphics cards are unable to display color cursors. Turn the

Cursor

OFF if your graphics card is having difculties displaying the

cursor. The

Color Quality

Choose either 16-bit (65,536 colors) or 32-bit (millions of colors). With this option ON, the speed of the cars and Sims will vary based on

the simulation speed. At screen. When you pause the simulation, everything will stop. If you turn this option OFF, cars and Sims run at a constant speed regardless of the simulation speed.

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition can be played at a variety of resolutions. The lower the resolution, the faster the game runs. Some display cards and monitors are unable to run at higher resolutions. Check the specications of your display card and monitor before setting

Resolution

Some video cards do not support cards, choose the

If you’d like to return all of your settings to the factory defaults, click this button.

setting allows you to set the bit-depth of the display.

Cheetah

speed, cars will zoom around the

to medium or high.

Hardware Rendering

Software Renderer

Color

. For those

Page 47

AUDIO OPTIONS

You appreciate ne music? Not only can you adjust the volume of music and sound effects, you can also choose the tunes you want to hear while playing.

Music Volume

Sound Volume

Playlist

Custom Tunes

Adjust

Can’t quite hear the sound effects? Turn the

You are provided with a list of tunes for your enjoyment during

Want to be your own DJ? To play custom MP3’s, place them in the

Music Volume

levels, or turn the music OFF by unchecking the box to the left.

to get the right mix. Uncheck the box to turn sound effects OFF.

gameplay. Select tunes to create your perfect

My Documents\SimCity 4\Radio\Stations\Mayor\Music My Documents\SimCity 4\Radio\Stations\Region\Music

Music in Region\Music plays when you are in the Region, and music in Mayor\Music folder plays when you are playing in city view. Check the

Custom Tunes

uncheck all tunes in the

up or down to suit your tastes and hearing

Sound Volume

Playlist

box. If you want to listen to custom music exclusively,

Playlist

up or down

and directories.

like riots and res. Disasters from the showers, volcanoes, and the like—require your manipulation to be seen in the

City View

Edge Scrolling

Auto Edge Reconciliation

Urgent Advice Dialogs

Expanded Tooltips

Reset Tutorials

Credits

Check this option so you can scroll around your city by moving the

cursor to the edge of the

When you enter a city, you are automatically asked if you’d like to

reconcile the edges of your city to its neighbors. To disable this dialog, uncheck the

Normally your advisors display urgent messages for city emergencies

and earned buildings and vehicles. Disable this feature by unchecking the disasters.

When you hover over a SimCity tool, both the name of the tool and

information about its use appear. To disable the see only the tool name, uncheck the

If you’ve played through the tutorials but would like to go through

them again, just click the have continued to develop a city after completing the tutorial, it is replaced with the original tutorial city when you click this button.

Want to check out the list of happy Maxoids that worked on this game?

Click

Auto Edge Reconciliation

Urgent Advice Dialogs

Credits

to scroll through the list.

City View

Reset Tutorials

Disaster Menu

option.

box. If you do, keep a sharp eye out for

Expanded Tooltips

—meteor

Tooltips

option and

box.

button. Be careful! If you

ADDITIONAL CITY VIEW OPTIONS

PLAY OPTIONS

Play Options provide ways for you to customize several elements of the game.

Auto Go To Disaster

This option directs the camera to automatically center on any disaster

in your city as it occurs. It’s a nice way to alert yourself to tragedies for quick response. The camera centers only on simulation-based disasters

SAVE CITY

Happy with how your city is going? Be sure to save it. City les are saved in My Documents\ SimCity 4\Regions\.

EXIT TO REGION

Click here to exit your

City View

for the Region View.

QUIT

It’s 3 a.m. and you know that really productive Mayors need to get at least a few hours sleep. Time to click

Quit

and call it a night.

Page 48

INDEX

24 Hour Clock............................................ 15, 27

Abandoned Buildings....................................... 54

Advisors........................................... 4, 53, 62, 74

Budget.................................6, 28, 54, 65, 68, 69

Expenses ......................................... 64, 69

Income....................................... 65, 66, 68

Building Style ..................................................56

Bulldoze Tool ...................................................52

Business Deals................................................. 68

City Connections ........................................ 39, 48

City Departments

City Planner..................................... 34, 62

Clinics .................................................... 51

Environmental .................................62, 63

Finance.................................................. 62

Health & Education .......................... 62, 70

Public Safety.................................... 62, 69

Transportation .................................62, 69

Utilities ............................................62, 71

Clock (see 24 Hour Clock)

Crime .................................................. 57, 63, 67

Date .........................................................15, 49

Day/Night Cycling ..........................15, 27, 29-30

Desirability.................... 6, 16, 17, 34-36, 40, 44,

47, 49, 51-52, 58, 60-61

Disasters...............................................25-26, 30

Earthquake ............................................26

Fire .................7, 25, 49-50, 52, 57, 62, 69

Meteor ...................................................25

Tornado ................................................. 26

Volcano ..................................................25

Earned Vehicles................................................ 77

Education........................... 57, 60, 62, 70, 84, 85

Fire Department

Fire Stations............................... 50, 57, 69

Funds ........................................................ 54, 64

Health Care ........... 49, 51, 53, 63, 64, 70, 71, 85

Hospitals.......................................................... 17

Jails ........................................................ 49, 69

Land Value....................................................... 60

Loans .............................................................. 72

Mayor Rating............................................. 53, 60

News ...............................................................11

Occupant Types ..............................58, 63, 64, 66

Options

Graphics ................................................ 88

Ordinances ...................................................... 67

Parks ..............................................................71

Police Department ........................................... 69

Police Stations....................... 17, 49, 57, 69

Pollution........................................ 45, 53, 61, 88

Garbage..................................... 47, 53, 57

Radiation ..........................................47, 60

Water................................................ 47, 61

Population .....................................13, 38, 53, 70

Power ...........8, 17, 45, 46, 47, 48, 58, 62, 63, 67

Query Tool

Hover..................................................... 84

Region ................................................. 12, 13, 86

Reward Buildings............................................. 72

Sanitation Department .........................47, 53, 61

Landfills............................................. 8, 48

Save ...........................................................9, 91

Schools .................................................17, 50, 57

Seaport............................................................ 43

Signs & Labels Tools................................... 32, 33

Simulation Speed Controls ................................19

Snapshots ........................................................87

Taxes .............................................................. 51

Terrain Tools.................................................... 21

Transportation

Avenues ........................................... 45, 59

Bus .................................................. 18, 59

Cloverleaf ..............................................39

Highways................................... 39, 45, 59

Mass Transit .........................18, 40, 59, 64

Monorail ................................................44

One Way Roads...................................... 38

Onramps................................................ 39

Rail ..........8, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 45

Roads..................18, 40, 41, 45, 59, 60, 67

Streets ............................................. 59, 88

Trees .............................................................. 23

U Drive It......................................................... 76

Water ........................... 8, 26, 32, 44, 45, 47, 48,

53, 58, 61, 62, 63, 67,

Zones ...................................... 34, 37, 50, 51, 60

Industrial ...............................................44

Residential .......................................45, 51

© 2003 Electronic Arts Inc. Electronic Arts, SimCity, EA GAMES, the EA GAMES logo, Maxis and the Maxis logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All Rights Reserved. MPEG Layer-3 audio coding technology licensed from Fraunhofer IIS and THOMSON multimedia. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. EA GAMES™ and Maxis™ are Electronic Arts™ brands.

This product contains Font Software licensed from Agfa Monotype Corporation and its suppliers, which may not be distributed, copied, reformatted, reverse engineered, or decompiled for any purpose. You may transfer the Font Software as part of the product to a third party provided that (i) the third party agrees to all the terms of this agreement and (ii) you have destroyed all copies of the Font Software in your custody or control, including any installed in your computer, immediately upon transferring such product. The Font Software is also protected by copyright and any copying or distribution of the Font Software, with or without the product, constitutes both copyright infringement and a theft of valuable property. You acquire no right, title or interest in the Font Software except the personal right to use such software, consistent with this agreement, as part of the product when installed in your computer. All rights reserved.

To see the Agfa Monotype Corporation complete Font Software End User License Agreement please go to their website www.agfamonotype.com.

MPEG Layer-3 audio coding technology licensed from Fraunhofer IIS and THOMSON multimedia.

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