SimCity 2000 - Player’s Guide City building isn’t as simple as it used to be in Maxis’ enormously enhanced version of SimCity 2000 - so here are a few choice hints and tips to help you create a thriving metropolis with a happy populous... Because of the open nature of SimCity 2000’s gameplay, it’s very hard to say definitely whether something is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ - your own urban ambitions will decide that. If you set out to create a huge, sprawling mass of pollution and crime (inspired by the likes of Judge Dredd’s MegaCity One or the Gotham City of Batman), for example, then your design will differ radically from a small environmentally-friendly utopian set-up created by another player. With this in mind, the following sections are an attempt to explain how the game works and to help you achieve your goals, whatever they may be, and not someone else’s (who wants to build another’s urban nightmare?). Zones Not only is the placement of new zones the major part of city design in SimCity 2000, it also has the single biggest effect on the success (or failure) of your community. Correct zoning takes a great deal of thought and foresight, so bear these points in mind... Getting Around - Sims (the inhabitants of your city) will only walk three tiles to reach another form of transportation. Thus, the maximum width of any zone is six tiles. You can build long strips six tiles wide, but they must have roads on either side. Density - Low-density zones have higher land values than high-density zones, but contain less people. As tax income is based on both population and value, the tax gained is largely the same, whatever zone type you opt for. It’s largely a matter of taste. The exception is industry. Certain industries prefer one density or another - generally the preference is obvious, with heavy industries preferring high-density zones and vice versa. Remember that dense industrial zones create more pollution than light ones, though. The NIMBY Syndrome - Be careful when placing residential zones, because they suffer strongly from the Not In My Back Yard syndrome. While sims want and need lots of different things from a city, rarely do they want to live right next door to them. Then again, they don’t like travelling very far to get what they want either. You should always separate industrial zones from residential areas by at least a couple of tiles, and preferably a bit more. Creating ‘buffer zones’ of parks, water or trees is a good way of doing this. Ratios - As a rule of thumb, the number of tiles zoned for residential use should equal the total number of tiles zoned for industrial and commercial use. Once you have gained the City Hall reward, getting info on it will tell you exactly what percentage of your city is given over to each type of zone, and keeping track of the situation is made much simpler. In addition, the ideal ratio of industrial to commercial zones varies with your city’s population: Population Ratio 20,000 or less 3:1 60,000 2:1 100,000 1:1 150,000 1:2 200,000 and above 1:3 Thus, when starting your city you need more industrial than commercial zones, but as the city grows commerce becomes more important. Transport Along with zoning, providing adequate transport ranks as one of your most important tasks. SimCity 2000’s transport model is based on the idea that sims in a given zone must be able to travel to each of the other two types of zone. People in an industrial zone, for instance, must be able to reach a commercial zone and a residential zone. If they can’t, the zone simply won’t develop. As explained earlier (See Zones - Getting Around), sims only walk three tiles to look for transport, so any zoned tile more than three tiles away from a road (or other means of transport) will not grow. And another thing, sims won’t walk from zone to zone - even if the two zones are right next to each other. They have to use some other mode of transportation. Trips - To find out if a zone is near enough to other zones, SimCity 2000 uses a routine called the trip generator. The computer simulates a sim’s journey from his zone of origin, giving him a limited amount of ‘steps’ to find another type of zone. If the sim can reach both other types of zone without running out of steps, then his zone of origin will develop. For travel by road (either in a car or a bus), the maximum distance you can count on a sim travelling in search of another type of zone is about 24 tiles. Roads Or Rail (Or Subways)? - Roads are the cheapest form of transport to build and maintain.There’s also a built-in weighting factor towards using them - sims like to drive. Whenever a sim on a trip comes across another form of transport, there’s only a 50/50 chance he’ll take it. Otherwise he’ll continue to drive. On top of all this, any sim within three tiles of a road can use it, whereas he can only use rail and subway transport by using stations or depots. Of course, roads create their own problems - traffic and pollution. Too many sims trying to use the same road leads to heavy traffic and eventually a gridlock. Likewise, too many cars chuck out a lot of pollution. Buses A Go-Go - The solution is the bus. Bus stations are cheap to build, use the existing road network and sims can get off buses wherever they want. Even better, traffic is reduced around them for about a ten tile radius, with the effect decreasing the further away you get from the station. Although the other methods of public transport may be more appealing aesthetically (at least in the short run), buses are by far the most effective means of getting from A to B for your city’s populous. Off Map Links - Transportation links to the cities surrounding yours have a neat side-effect - the trip generator assumes that all types of zone exist just off of the map, which means that any zone near to an off-map link almost develops automatically. You can use this to your advantage by placing all your heavy (and therefore horribly dirty and environmentally unfriendly) industry at the edges of the city, near to off-map links, and then creating a few light zones near the centre so that your commercial and residential zones can still reach some industry (and no-one has to go about town wearing a face mask and rubber gloves). City Services The third part of your job as a mayor is to provide your sims with city services, of which there are a considerable number to choose from. Although some are relatively simple, a few are often neglected, and many are more complex than first meet the eye. This month, we’re just going to deal with one of the least understood areas: education. Making The Grade - Education in SimCity 2000 is measured as an EQ rating, with 90 being high school equivalency, 140 being a college graduate and 100 being the SimNation average. Providing your sims with a good quality education is often the most underestimated area of the game, but has many important benefits. Not only do sims like to move to a city that offers good education for their children, but sims already living there take great pride in their ‘intelligence,’ and are less likely to emigrate. In addition to this, the more advanced industries (i.e: the ones that become important in the later years of the game - such as the media, finance, automotive, petrochemical, electronics and aerospace industries...) all prosper in a city with a high average EQ. A sim’s EQ is determined at birth, and is 20% of the parents’ average EQ. Going to school adds 70 to this figure, and attending college multiplies this total by 1.5 to reach that sim’s maximum EQ. To increase your average EQ is therefore a long and slow job, best initiated early on in the game, so that you can reap the benefits later. Don’t forget, though, that a sim’s EQ gradually falls as he or she grows older. Libraries and museums serve to offset this loss, so it’s a good idea to build a few of these. You can check the efficiency of your education system by using the inquiry tool on schools, colleges and libraries. The grade given in the info box is a function of the number of teachers (or whatever) compared to the number of students. As such, it’s not actually the average grade of the students, but it might as well be. The simple way to improve your grades is to build more of a specific type of building, thus providing more facilities. By the way, SimCity 2000 doesn’t check where your education facilities are, just that they exist, so you’re free to place them virtually where you like.