SimCity 4/Walkthrough

This is more, extended and full version of the mayor tutorial at the tutorial page.

Landscape button
This button is a smaller version of the God mode tools except that the tool is shrunk so much that it only has 2 or 3 or 4 tiles within its radius. It also costs $ when you are leveling land or planting trees so don't go dumb with it.

Zone button
The R for residential, C for commercial and I for industrial. There are 3 zones each with its own 3 levels and its dense level. Low density may have a limit to mansions and the smallest apartments. Medium densities have apartments that are not really scraping that skies. High density is all about skyscrapers that touch the skies and even hold more than 1,000 sims! Commercial is the same but with jobs. The industrial zones, however, are different. Low density goes with crops and farms. These farms also cause water pollution so make a decision with farms. Medium density has dirty industry. You don't want dirty air. Unless you are an environmentalist or just like clean air and water, you probably won't need to zone medium. High density makes computers, radios, walls and more without dirtying the air.

Transportation button
The 1st button contains roads, bus stops and, the new part to SimCity series, streets.

Roads are the main transportation for from-to paths. These can handle not as much traffic and a fair speed. Streets are a prototype of them. They handle a little amount of cars and speed. So don't use them for travelling from home to work and vice versa.

Bus stops are your handy helpers to board sims. It cuts down traffic to avoid congestion.

The 2nd button takes you to the latest generation of highways. Cloverleafs and T-intersections are the only intersections for the highways. On ramps are needed for them to work. They are monster transportation that holds 1, 000 cars and a lot of speed!

The 3rd introduces rails which lessen the congestion a bit. Rails need to stop at a building and its a train station. They aren't alike with the bus stops however. They are needed everywhere when a rails stops or starts.

The 4th button contains subways. Since its underground and for passengers only, they need to go underground and cost so much $ and subway stations are needed. Villages or Towns don't need it.

The 5th contains 3 airports that can boost demand because of all tourists and workers!

The 6th and final button lets you build seaports which draw in commercial and industrial demand.

Utilities
More things need power and more power means more things working.

The 1st button lets you plop plants. However, the last 3 are very powerful but are locked. Descriptions about them are later on the guide.

The 2nd button contains water plants and pipes. There is not a lot to see but it will become more describable later.

The 3rd and final button has garbage disposal. Landfills are zoned like the RCI. A power plant is available but is both costly and produces a lot of pollution. The last is you can put in a couple of garbage centers.

Civic
The primary buildings to making a good city. Good enough just to make a megalopolis.

The 1st button lets you drop in a few police stations and a jail if its safe. Small stations can be built for small towns but as it grows bigger, the crimes grow bigger too. So hit in a couple more stations but make it a large station. Both of these has tiny internal cells but they quickly get full. So put in a jail if you need it.

The 2nd button throws down fire stations. This goes the same as above. Small stations for small towns but large for large cities.

The 3rd button is where you plop down schools. These come in 3 tastes: Elementary for the young kids. High school for the older kids and teens and College for young adults. Libraries and museums are also needed for adults and senior citizens.

The 4th button is the medical department. You can build small clinics, big hospitals and maybe a disease research center but you have to decide on building that. They might protest you to remove it.

The 5th button is about landmarks and not made-up ones. Real life ones but also in real life, they cost more and more as you scroll down the list.

The 6th button allows you to access rewards and how to get them. However, some rewards like cemeteries and mayor statue are not listed instantly.

The 7th and final allows you to access parks and things that go green.

Bulldozer
This is the switch to destroy everything. This does not destroy zones.

Dispatch
Dispatch is when someone calls you and you help them. Mostly for crimes and fires. Dispatch those people and they help you do the job.

The other buttons
The 1st re-enters God mode. However, the only options is to put the city in doom but there is a red flag in using that function. It is permanent so be careful. The 2nd is to reconcile the city so they do look good in region view. The 3rd makes disasters to destroy the city and the 4th is the night and day view.

The 2nd button is mayor mode. And all the other tools I explained earlier.

The 3rd brings you to sim mode.

We all go through sim mode in another section.

Below all those buttons is the query tool that is shaped as a question mark. Press that, then click a random building to see some information about that building.

The lower-left corner is a mini map, zoom buttons and rotate buttons. And like in all the sim games we've been through, even the sims, sims 2 and others, is a speed option.

The last contains the options button. Exit it, save it or alter it.

The basics
OK, you buy land, know the tools and now we are going to use them. Remember what we learn in order to pass this section.

You see empty land. A chunk of hills and a river or a sea. Put in a plant. Here is what you choose. Wind, coal, oil or natural gas. If you want clean air, go with wind. If you want a big city in fast amount, go with natural gas, oil or coal.

Here is the 1st question: Do you really want to live near a stinky, coal, smelly plant? Neither do I!

Ahem. Where was I? Oh yes! Put the plant near a corner. Pollution that goes with the other edges doesn’t go to the neighboring city. If you chose wind, take a few but if you choose something else, go with one.

Put in medium industrial zones around it. Make it large enough so the city isn't filled with dirty smoke!

Go a lot of tiles away but not too much. Then build commercial zones of low level. Let the computer build the streets.

Since those are the jobs, we need some workers to fill them. Put in medium density residential zones and again, not too near or too far from the pollution.

You also need roads that link to all the 3 zones. And power lines to connect them all.

Within the a few months, you get the 1st ever people in your city!

When mayor mode is active...
Other things are in control and each have their own function.

Check the stuff on the bottom.

Mayor rating is on a scale from 100+ down to 100- where they try throw heavy things at you.

Money and population are - You know already.

RCI is a chart. The higher the bar, the higher the demand and vice versa. Click that and a more detailed version comes up. It also makes the 5th tab active. Forget about it and we will cover that later. For now, click the 2nd tab. With a person in it. There is your adviser staff. Each with their own stations. If the background is green, they are excited. If its red, they are angry and if its blue, they just don't care about the news either of the 2. Click on the picture to see what they are trying to say to you. However, when you start, its the 1st adviser or all advisers that say hello and tell you what to do. When time goes on, they go on to real life talks.

The 3rd button is your budget. There is your income, expense and the cash you will have at the end of the month. Click on that and more will come up. You really wanted income to get the gold medal and expense have a copper medal but younger towns will have expense winning.

Click the 4th tab and you see a couple of buttons. Click one of them and your buildings go to different colors. Check the data view map to see more.

Click the 5th tab which shows graphs.

Growing everyday
Cities are doing its thing but improvements are needed to make them better. Services are not needed but the timer is almost done, like the pie is almost ready to eat. Putting more zones are ok. Some people might see that residential zones are the fastest to fill up so zone more of that first before going to the others.

This also includes the trash. Put in a landfill away from those zones and give them a road access.

Small towns up to 2,000
When your population is around 500 sims, you will be given the Mayor’s House for a job well done thus far. While education and medical facilities are not big items during this initial growth, your sims are concerned with safety so keep an eye out for potential crime and fire hazards. Your first police and fire departments should be small and focused on areas most likely to have such incidents, usually near industrial zones, and each facility has a radius ring shown to indicate their coverage area. Power plants tend to catch fire more often than other facilities, so ensure that your fire coverage includes all power production facilities.

Early on, your sims will not demand education facilities, however they do enjoy going to the park or playground so go ahead and build several parks scattered around your residential zones. As these have a monthly cost, manage the quantity of these to ensure you don’t bust your budget. The parks will also improve the desirability of your town so placement should be given some forethought.

To educate your sims, place a small elementary school such that its radius ring encompasses the most number of residential zones. Once built, query the school by selecting the “?” mark icon and clicking on the school. Adjust the slider bar so that it accommodates roughly 10% of your population, $25-50 a month more or less, so that its operation fits within your budget. Regularly query your schools to ensure that enough funding is being applied to meet demand but don’t allocate unnecessary funding as you gain nothing from its waste.

As your population grows with the expanded development of your city you will need to provide water to ensure that your zones grow accordingly. Clean water is essential to your city’s growth so ensure that water pumps, water towers, etc. are not placed near or within industrial zones and try to minimize placing them in commercial zones as well. Your water network is finicky at best and a natural disaster can cause havoc if a line is interrupted. Try to develop your water supply network so that you have double or triple coverage in terms of water pumps and water towers. In order to do this you need to make sure that your water pipes have access to more than one of these facilities.

Once your population exceeds 1,500 sims you will be given a cemetery and/or a church. Their influence on your sims' overall lifestyle and desirability of the city is their benefit.

Medical facilities, like schools, should be built to maximize their coverage area and budgets should be monitored regularly. Additionally, you should ensure that you do not have too many medical facilities as their drain on the budget is substantial.

Medium cities 2, 000 - 15, 000
Happy? Well, you're happy but your adviser staff are asking you to fix the issue.

First, go to the 4th tab in mayor mode then go to desirability. You can see the whole map green. Check a button and it will change color. Green is that your zones will develop gradually and the red, never grows. Low level residents like it everywhere and high level wants the 4 services to have a happy life. Paint the residential zones with the high density and paint over them. And don't destroy it. You are just ruining the game if you do and waste money also.

Do the same with commercial but expand them a little. You can't forget the industrial zones anyway.

Also, upgrade the stations into their larger versions but you need to destroy the original building first before putting the large stations.

However, you need to increase funding if they are overloading.

The large cities, metropolises and the ones beyond 15, 000+
After upgrading, you are still in square 1. Your income is almost equal to expense as they have boost it up. Keep value up, expansion down and success is yours!

But wait! Keep tabs on pop… and by listening to the advisers.

Dangerous Point
There are times we are stopped in real life.

That also happens in sim city 4. Basically, zones are done and filled. Your income has finished first as you excepted to be. No replacements are made. It's not game over yet.


 * Here is a check list from Pyro in IGN
 * Are ALL your schools funded enough to avoid overcrowding?
 * Are ALL your hospitals funded enough to avoid over crowding?
 * Are ALL your libraries and museums funded enough to give the people what they want?
 * Do you have enough police stations and fire stations to cover your whole city?
 * Do you have enough jails so they have room to accommodate more prisoners?
 * Is your trash amount under your capacity?
 * Are you getting few (if any) complaints on the tax rate?
 * Are all zones and buildings powered and watered?

Those problems are easy to fix. If you answered yes to those questions, here's the second (shorter) list:
 * Are ALL your zones set to maximum density? (Assuming you want maximum density; farms can't be in areas that dense, of course)
 * Do you have an airport complimenting your commercial sector?
 * Do you have a seaport complimenting your industrial sector? (Assuming you've got water access)

If the answer to those questions are "yes" also, then you're doing well.

So, the part is to fix it but how?

Fixing the problem
This problem is like a trap cage. Everyone goes in, no one goes out.

3rd question: How will your city overcome this fear?

"Leave the audience wanting more." If you heard some sort of radio or TV show, you may be familiar with this quote.

Hitting this point means it’s not too happy nor too angry.

It means, there is too much of a scale of the right things and the wrong ones.

I'm sorry to say this but *Gulps* You have to make your sims out of your city and that's the only method.

Before starting, you may have to have lots of money since this is a bit expensive.

First, check the land vaule map (4th tab in mayor mode) and find the best and highest value stop. Think ''Why is it the highest land value? ''

Multiple spots? The method is to find a big but not the biggest spot.

Turn on the bulldozer and destroy the schools and jails.

You are still wondering why this is the best method? Just let them be confused and yell and complain BUT they won't protest.

Take some money from the coffers (Not a loan) Think its a new city. Build a new power plant but make sure it’s cheap (Natural gas or several wind plants)

Build zones, all 3 types, use streets not roads and refuse it to give fire and police coverage and education.

Back at the spot I said earlier (not the new city) and throw out the parks into the trash (Just figure speech. What I meant is to destroy the parks) don’t rezone or destroy any RCI buildings.

Back at the colony, give them decent systems: elementary school, clinic and small police station and fire station. A few people are coming in but not enough to get out of the trap.

After that’s done, expand out. REMEMBER: Pretend its a new city. Give them water but DON'T upgrade the other services. This is optional, let is harm for now.

OK, to finish it all: Restore the old part by working reverse: Give them back services, water, parks and everything but fast enough before the people thinks that place is extinct.

After that, upgrade the colony in every way or make it a large city on its own.

The easier but trickier method
That method is very risky and you waste a lot of money unless you downloaded a mod that makes you have lots of money.


 * So this method is much easier and trickier
 * 1) Find a spot with high land value again.
 * 2) Check traffic, freight distances, civics and such. Improve the obvious first way up to the least.
 * 3) Look on any spot in the crime map that is yellow. IT can be any size and destroy them and plop a large police station.
 * 4) Plop in a landmark and intact some tourist ordinances. Put some residential zones and within a sim year, they will come. And lastly, toss away some business deal buildings.

Strategy
This is the strategy, which is part of the site.

Zones

 * Residential zones have 3 flavors
 * Low
 * Medium
 * High.

Low wants nothing but from old bungalows to a new cottage. They want nothing more but commercial jobs in low. They are the blood of the city