The following tips on city building come from long experience on my Amiga. Each
city has taught me a great deal and playing the scenarios has helped test new
theories. I wish someone had told me some of this stuff when I was getting 
started.
        
In general, there are no lies in the User's Guide and the basic guidelines
mentioned so briefly form the framework of the Sim City legal system. I
subscribe to the victory criteria for a good city as stated in the user 
documentation and have firmed that up as follows:
        
  My victory criteria for a good city:
        
   Happy people, 10% or less on all complaints.
        
   Low taxes, 6-7% taxes, (adds challenge, but speeds growth) but still a
   positive cash flow (even if I started with a gigabuck).
        
   Visually pleasing (Tends to limit population to 250-300,000. Going for max
   population is a challenge but the resulting city is uninteresting.
        
   Complete police and fire protection
        
To build a good city, one needs the right mind set. "Sims are not people, they 
are tax payers". You're running a business here with a need to meet customer 
wants (Quality service) at the minimum overhead. Their demands are guidelines 
on how well the city is developing but if they get out of line, they meet 
Godzilla.
        
Defs:  (I=industrial, R=residential, C=commercial, PD=cops, FD=fire)
        
City layout: in general, go for a center of solid C zones, surrounded by R    
zones, with I on the outer edges. Modify according to tips below. Like zones  
tend to be mutually supporting. Plan on that basis and build in "wedges". Place
a couple C's at what will eventually be the city center, then some R's, I's on
the outside. Factories will grow and provide jobs anywhere but the good high  
tax paying R's and C's only appear toward the middle. In general, make the    
rails be the most direct route to the city center. Make roads the round-about 
alternative.

Roads and rails: Roads are cheap but traffic is a pain. Where does traffic come
from and who complains? Residents! (as in residential) You can run roads all
through the I and C zones and you will not have appreciable traffic, plus you
will save a fortune in construction costs and 3 fortunes in maintenance. I have
cities that can be traversed from end-to-end by road with no traffic pollution
except in the industrial areas where it doesn't matter. As soon as houses get
access, traffic mushrooms. Use I, C, and municipal zones as the recipients of
road access and only a few widely scattered R zones, and you'll save 1-2% alone
on the tax rate while still having positive cash flow.
        
Road and rail: Somebody pays for each section of road or track. A tax paying
zone on each side of a section makes for efficient tax coverage. Avoid long
sections of track with Sims only on one side. Definitely avoid stretches of
side-by-side road and rail. Double roads (boulevards) mean you have too many R
zones with road access and they'll complain about the smog as they drive to
work. Avoid transport along shore lines and on the outer edge of the city. Put
zones on the shoreline to maximize land value modifiers and have the transport
sandwiched between two rows of tax paying Sims.
        
Bridges and tunnels: these are stretches with no adjacent tax payers. Keep these
short, especially tunnel. Plan crossing points in advance to reduce their
length. Got a cute little island in the river big enough for one or two zones?
Ask yourself if those zones are going to generate enough taxes to pay for the
transport to the island before giving them a bridge (forget tunnel). If an
island is a handy stepping stone to connect two sides of town together, that's
different. C zones do well on islands and don't generate much traffic.
        
Police stations: You need them or crime will drive tax payers away. PD's will
be in a checkerboard pattern. PD and FD zones are like transport. You minimize
their cost by ensuring there is someone in as much of their coverage area as
possible, being protected, and paying for it. Avoid placing PD's on shorelines
and the edge of the map where much of the coverage is wasted. Use them as
buffers between I and non-I zones or on roads.
        
Pollution: I zones, sea ports, and airports all produce a pollution dead space
3 tiles wide around them. R and C zones do not develop well if any part of the
zone touches this dead space. Worse, Sims living in R and C zones trying to
develop in this space are the sniveling weenies complaining to city hall about
the pollution. Busy roads passing through R and C zones leave a pollution pall
and produce the same effect on the evaluation and composite score. Use PD and FD
zones as buffers. Otherwise, leave a 3 tile wide green strip with maybe a rail
through it. As mentioned, keep roads out of residential areas. Busy roadbridges
are fine as the pollution is over water and fish don't vote.
        
Crime: Some level of crime can be tolerated in the industrial zones (like
pollution) where most of the crime is generated, but R and C zones start wining 
as population density increases. Cops are needed. Crime drives out taxpayers.
Crime can also be reduced by increasing land value. In practical terms, avoid
any zone that does not have any tree or park tiles next to it. Tight banks of
zones with transport down each side, touching no green tiles, will foster crime.
Some city examples have roads all the way around most blocks. Wrong! Blocks 
only need a single tile frontage for transport so leave gaps between them.
Every open tile adjacent to any zone must have trees or a park. This does help
supplement the fuzz while making the map more attractive.
        
Airports and Seaports: These generate pollution (noise) as for I zones. Place
these zones in I areas or out on an island (with road access). There is no
benefit to multiple seaports or airports.
        
Airports and crashes: (on the Amiga) Expect plane crashes. You can't turn them
off. Always (he said ALWAYS) place a FD adjacent to an airport (notice he didn't
say 1 or more tiles away). If a fire isn't quickly extinguished, the airport
explodes, dies, and you're out 10K bucks. Worse, very quickly, the C zones in 
a mature city back paddle and mess up the tax base. Crashes most frequently 
occur when the airplane hits that loud mouth DJ chopper jock and they both 
plow into one of your prize highrises, burying countless Sims under burning 
rubble. "Sky watch One" picks its favorite stretch of road and hovers around 
it until the airplane eventually flies into it. That's why most crashes happen 
in the same area. Put FD's along what semi-congested roads you have. Make sure 
the city is covered. For overnight fund building in a younger city, "unplug" 
the airport (disconnect power. The aircraft stop flying after a short while if 
the a airport is unpowered) In a mature city, this may cause significant 
regression of C zones.
        
Healing: all municipal zones (PD, FD, power house, airport, seaport, stadiums)
will heal themselves if they still have power and the rubble tile is bulldozed.
If they don't, they are too far damaged to regenerate. Replace them. The other
zones are sometimes left with those annoying notches after a crash or
earthquake. There are still lots of taxpayers in the rest of the building so
don't dump the developed zone too quickly. One remedy is to maintain power to
the building but bulldoze the rubble and ALL transport access. The building will
immediately drop one notch of density, but the new icon will fill the WHOLE
zone. Immediately replace the transport access and soon the now undamaged zone
will be at full density again (note: queries shortly after doing this show
"declining". Don't sweat it). Again, this works to a limited point of damage 
and the center must be intact. If the bulldozed transport will cost more than 
rezoning the building, make a choice. 

Terrain editor: Use the terrain editor to add trees, tighten shorelines, place 
a real waterfront on harbors. Careful on smoothing. If you smooth the trees on 
an existing city, the trees trapped between buildings will be smoothed away and 
you have to paint them back in. Paint in a few reflecting pools too for added 
land value. When creating a new land plot from scratch, start with a city that 
has money, erase it redraw the ground and save under a new name (carefully).
There is zero benefit to going with Medium or Hard game levels. They just 
reduce starting money and slow tax growth. Never change the game level in the 
Terrain Editor. It will reset the starting cash to the default for that game 
level. Reset the year. Nobody needs to know how much time you spent on this 
thing.

Summary: this is not a trivial game. The designer has done some interesting 
work that has some of the meanest and rottenest victory criteria of any game 
(your own standards). I'm still learning and like to see other cities and hear 
tips and conjecture. (Why won't Maxis just send me the bloody source code?)
Originally written by:
In search of the ultimate beer
Roy Mengot                            Texas Instruments
Internet address panzer@flopn2.ti.com P.O.Box 650311, MS 3928
                                      Dallas Texas, 75265
                                      (214)424-8768   (214)917-1924


