SimCity Societies/Assembly Required

"build a massive industrial powerhouse of productivity where crime and pollution are irrelevant nuisances and citizens are replaceable tools Assembly required scenario menu text."

Before Starting
"The Industrial Revolution is upon us, and with it a new decade of building power and industry on the sweat of working Sims. Unfortunately, this power comes at a price. As if having to worry about labor unions, strikes, and labor costs wasn't enough, crime is on the rise and day seems like night with the smog choking the air. Bearing these burdens, lead this city -- and SimNation -- into a glorious new age of history."

Scenario Introduction Text in this map

Assembly Required is a good scenario to try the new challenges that bring the maintenance costs to the game as many the budget strains will force you to expand methodically and avoid expensive overhead daily costs. starting up the city maybe a little tricky but often once it starts rolling it becomes a cakewalk as industry kicks up the budget. as many SCS scenarios one can win this scenario with different city plans and building mixes however they'll look pretty similar as the industrial filter is on. important things to keep in check in this scenario are:
 * always have more sims than jobs, it let the unemployed "cool off" in the venues for the day
 * production drive is your best friend, auto-enable it wherever you can
 * the city WILL be ugly and it is meant to be in that way.

The Landscape
the terrain setting of the city will have a good amount of water and some rough little hills. Don't try to build the whole city in one huge block, probably the city will have to split itself in several neighborhoods to fit between the hills and the water.

The benefits of an eyesore city strategy
As always in SCS, the first action to do is build a power plant, in this scenario there is only Coal power plants and Coal Super power plants. as a rule of thumb this kind of power plants are better placed in the farthest corner of the map, however in this scenario it won't matter at all if you put it near the worker houses. as most buildings will be eyesores anyways. Usually, eyesores are ugly thing that lower surrounding buildings's happiness, however that doesn't happens between eyesores. For example: The coal plant lowers the the happiness of the strip mall from +3 to +1 if it's in the influence area of the plant, however, a little butcher shop, in the same place doesn't get the penalty. The same goes to all building with the shanty (eyesore) icon in the building card. This is mean that eyesore housing can be placed aside eyesore venues aside eyesore workplaces and everything will work fine as normal. This eases a lot the space and traffic problems as neighbourhoods can be compact and at walk distance of everything just as real victorian slums!!!. Casually also many eyesores have low manteinance costs, so they are very good buildings for the city on the grow!.

Poor but honest: Why slum apartment aren't so good
So the first objective recommendation is to skip slum apartments, Slum Apts. are dirt cheap to build and keep and also they are space efficient, but they attract crime. Crime is the true cancer of the cities in SCS, crime means pickpockets and that lowers the happiness of the worker sims. Maybe pickpocketing a normal sim isn't a big deal, but pickpocketing a hard-working sim which has a 7-days work week, hasn't blown off some steam and has flu because the roof of the room leaked while he was sleeping AND he doesn't find a clinic in the town, then a pickpocket can be the trigger of this sim going commie rogue and shutting down a valuable factory. Often sims can handle a few downers without going rogue but putting them all together is asking for it. Also trying to fight crime by force is expensive, those policeman won't pay their upkeep with the money which they get doing paperwork or who knows what they do in the station. and the riot police from jails are even more expensive guys, they don't even do paperwork!!. So it's way more smart to cut police costs by keeping honest law-abiding working masses rather than a police state (at least by now that it's an small boomtown)

After discarding the slums we have the next housing options for our workers:


 * Trailer parks: A bit ugly but "healthy" tin cans of people, good overhead cost but a bit too too much space for too few people, and suffer eyesore penalty.


 * Row Houses: Cute and soundly built, these average-sized houses need authority to work, they have the highest overhead cost of early options and also suffer eyesore penalty.

The next ones aren't readily avalible but are easy to get:


 * Housing Project: high-density housing, sims find them a bit ugly and suffer eyesore penalty, also make hooligans more prone to appear.


 * Victorian Home: Comfortable upscale victorian homes for victorian barons, good for making an "uptown" but uptowns are rather useless in this city as no one sells house improvements for private homes. They seem to be just for flavor reasons, anyways, the most of fat cats often are smart enough to live outside of cities like this one.


 * Tenements: Medium-density slums, ugly, unhealthy and an eyesore, but pack a good bunch of workers for a good price (12 sims for the same daily cost as row houses and trailer parks!) and more important, they don't attract crime as slum apts (after all, most posibly the folks who live here are at only a cardboard of distance from the others tenants).

The last ones the workers barracks, they have a HUGE build and maintenance costs, and are far away from start options, also they pack a lot of workers but few people (a lot of single people, maybe like in mining towns) anyways, in strategic mode are a very bad housing option, too expensive in many ways.

founding industries: a new Cottonopolis
There are many options of industries to start, sawmills, breweries, gas stations (old-fashioned ones), however after some testing one of the best options are textile mills. First than nothing, they have a 7-day workweek, so overhead/profit balance is evenly distributed over all the weekdays so there are not weekend deficits as in 5-days workweeks. Also the textile mill has the production drive action, which gives lump sums of cash almost every week. However the textile mills aren't so good for the worker's welfare, the 7-day week means no weekends at all, and power looms have the nasty habit to snap fingers and legs of worker sims. As for the entertainment of the toiling masses there is nothing like booze and gambling, however remember to keep it nice and legal. The first option which comes to mind for this cities are the dive bars, well might be nothing like local beer in the counter and a football match on the tv but this proletarian venues have the same problem as slum apts, they attract crime, and crime is bad for business. So, search more established ways to wet the thirsty workers throats, often liquor stores will do it very well (+5 plus drunk status) but need some small requirements like an established population and some productivity value already running. Horse track betting will provide some good leisure (+5) to the masses and also will shelter some drunks in the cold nights of your city as they don't close in the nights.

to give or not to give: if healthcare and salvation are needed
It's perfectly possible to run this scenario without any healthcare facilities, however, it adds a bit of extra difficulty as injured and sick sims are more cranky than healthy sims. In the real industrial cities soon or later some altruistic-minded people started to care about the bleak lives of the working people and began to set up charities, free clinics and other things to lighten their lives. A good charity combo in this scenario are parochial schools+clinics+churches, in this childless city (unless you make victorian homes) the parochial school is a relatively cheap source of knowledge and spirtuallity,two schools easily give enough values to run two clinics and one stone church. Surprisingly, one of that meager combo facilities can in fact, liven up a population of around 60 sims easily (of course counting the standard booze and gamble venues as provided too) in fact the thanks to this "Charity Outposts" the mood of the sims can stay very high,even with the rampant sickness and bleak housing. As the parochial schools often won't find any visitors at all (as the sims are too busy drinking and gambling) in this combo they tend to look and work more like values-giving decorations rather than educational venues, so it's wise to put them between the slums and the mission perimeter to save up space and keep untouched from the eyesore penalty the +10 happiness which gives the churches.