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
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 thing 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.

breaking ground
"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 mapthe 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.

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.

The benefits of an eyesore city strategy
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 Housing is dirt cheap to build and keep and also space efficient. but they make 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, a pickpocket can be the trigger of this sim going commie rogue and shutting down a 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 (i guess they come with tap water or something), good overhead cost but a bit too big for too few people, and suffer eyesore penalty.* Row Houses: cute and soundly built, average-sized houses that need authority to work (council housing i guess?), they are too good for your workers, highest overhead cost of early options and suffer eyesore penalty too.the next ones aren't readily avalible but are easy to get:* Housing Project: high-density housing, healthy (comes with indoor plumbing!) and a bit ugly, but suffer eyesore penalty, a shame, also make easier to spawn hooligans (i'm pretty sure this ones are council blocks).* Victorian Home: Comfortable upscale victorian homes for victorian barons, good for making an "uptown" but uptowns are absolutely useless in this city and no one sells house improvements in the city, just for flavor, if you ask me the true fat cats are smart enough to live out of this forsaken city.* 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 (they are close-knitted people, after all the folks who live here are at only a cardboard of distance from the others tenants)the last ones the workers barracks, 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) after some experience the best option 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, pretty cool buildings. however for the worker welfare they're not too good, the 7-day week means no weekends at all and power looms have the nasty habit to snap fingers and legs of worker sims. but as said an english king, we have reserves!as for the entertainment of the masses there is nothing like booze and gambling, however it's better to keep it nice and legal, as the first option which comes to mind are dive bars, ahh nothing like local beer and a football match on the tv, however this working man venues have the same problem as slum apts., they attract crime, and crime, people is "usually" bad for business, at least for us it's quite bad. so search more established ways to wet the thirsty workers throats, a liquor store will do it well but need some small requirements like a established population and some productivity already running. horse track betting will provide some higher leisure to the masses and will shelter some drunks in the cold nights of your city.