The Sim City Thread

I looked but didn't find any threads about Sim City. I am currently playing Sim City 3000 (old I know) but all Sim City questions/discussion would be welcome here.

A few questions.

My city (started in 1900) is now completely developed and has a pop of 670k. My taxes are at 5% and I am making a profit, but my population seems to have plateaued (sp?). Anyway my questions are:

What is the highest populatin you ever attained in Sim City 3000?
Any idea's of what I could do. All my advisers are content and everything (police, garbage, water, power, hospitals, eduction, jails, connections to all neighbors, etc...) is in place. I even just expanded my very heavily polluting airport b/c an adviser said itwas needed.

If I lower taxes anymore (to 4%) I barely break even.

I've tried putting trees and parks EVERYwhere but to no avail. Landvalue's stay pretty much the same and there is no noticiable population increase. Almost all my zones are dense and while they;re developing, it's SLOWLY.

Any Ideas? (I dont want to cheat).

Speaking of which, anyone played SimCity for the DS? That's freaking harder than the original PC version!

Sim City 3000 is my favorite of the series. It's been a while since I've played it though, so I can't tell you any stats from my best cities. You got me interested in digging it up and giving it another go though. I have sim city 4, but it's kind of disappointing.

[quote name='n25philly']Sim City 3000 is my favorite of the series. It's been a while since I've played it though, so I can't tell you any stats from my best cities. You got me interested in digging it up and giving it another go though. I have sim city 4, but it's kind of disappointing.[/QUOTE]

really? I was looking forward to this one (SC4) when I picked it up this week from CC.

Don't get me wrong, SC4 is a good game. I just felt like they took some of the really good things out that were in SC3000 and the additions weren't very good.

From best to worst:

2000, original, 3000, 4, societies

SC4 is fun, but it's a system hog and is too complex for its own good. I never could get my cities to grow into metropolis without using cheats. First time I've ever had that problem in the series.

Kinda off-topic, but has anyone here played City Life? I find it way better than Sim City 4 (Although that's not saying much).

Ahh yes, SimCity. I may know a thing or two since I ran a semi-popular fansite for a while as well as held a moderation position as a Mayor on Maxis' website.

Pittpizza, if I recall correctly, SimCity 3000 implement population caps until a certain requirement is met. Once you reach that cap, your population won't increase any further until that requirement is met. I believe you've reached the 600-700k cap which won't increase until a Spaceport is built.

For those of you who think SimCity 4 doesn't hold up, really should check out SimTropolis. By itself, SimCity 4 is a pretty good game, but with all of the mods and extensions users have created, it's fantastic. Below are some photos are what is possible with mods:








Some of the mods let you do fantastic stuff, such as build custom golf courses, seaports, boardwalks, etc. There's even mods for traffic which introduce more realistic roads in addition to turn lanes.

Ya, I visited SimTropolis for several years. But even with all of the fantastic user-created stuff there, SC4 still felt like building a model railroad town more than a city sim. Those pictures look awesome, but crafting those type of cities takes way too long, especially using SC4's horrible interface (which isn't very accommodating to custom content).

Thanks so much ... I was looking for something that would make my towns more realistic. It is such a hog though ... even on my computer which is bad. Only game I have problems with. Hope to fix this very soon though

I know about pop caps blue lobstah and have built zoo's museums large and small parks and baseball diamonds galore.

I just hit 2050 last night and was offered a spaceport for the first time, I guess I'll stick it next to my airport since it'll probably be polluting pretty bad.

My pop did increse to 730k last night. What do you keep your taxes at? I have em at 5 % and nobody is complaining, and lowering them doesnt seem to do much.

It's been a while since I've played 3000, but I have a fairly standard way of doing taxes in most of my games of SimCity.

Generally, I have taxes be the most expensive in this order: Industry > Commercial > Residential. I start my cities early on with taxes about 11 > 10 > 9, then as my profits increase I lower them according usually settling around 9 > 8 > 7, or something like that. I'll adjust them accordingly to help boost population growth, or if I need a few extra funds.

Ive got mine set at about 4% and it regularly keeps me in the black. Sometiems it seems that raising taxes actually helps to spur growth in the idustrial sector, wierd eh?

I'll have em at 0 for soem time and it doesnt seem to bring the industry indicator back up.

I've been looking online for a downloadable version(to purchase) of sim city 3000 for about 30mins now (lost my cd long ago, been wanting to play again).

Searched direct2drive, ea onlinestoreand looked through several google searches..anyone know where i can get it?