Sim City 2000 - Manual
Contents:
INTRODUCTION..............................1
ABOUT THIS MANUAL.................3
FROM SIMCITY TO SIMCITY 2000......4
GETTING STARTED...................4
TUTORIALS.................................5
BEFORE YOU BEGIN..................7
TUTORIAL 1-THE BASICS............10
TUTORIAL 2-LANDSCAPE ENGINEERING.25
TUTORIAL 3-ADVANCED FEATURES.....33
REFERENCE................................45
THE BASICS.......................46
MENUS............................50
File Menu.....................50
Options Menu..................51
Disasters Menu................52
Windows Menu..................53
Newspaper Menu................54
WINDOWS..........................55
City Window....................55
Map Window.....................78
Budget Window..................81
Transportation.................82
Ordinance Window...............89
Population Window..............92
Industries Window..............93
Graphs Window..................94
Neighbors Window...............96
INSIDE THE SIMULATION............97
STRATEGIES......................119
Page i SimCity 2000
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to SimCity 2000.
When you play SimCity 2000, you become the planner, designer
and mayor of an unlimited number of cities. You can take over and
run any of the included scenario cities, or build your own from the
ground up.
You're in charge. You can choose to build small, rural towns, or
huge bustling megalopolises. As you design and build your cities,
simulated citizens, known as Sims, move in and build their homes,
stores and workplaces, raise their families and invite their friends.
If your city is a nice place to live, your population will increase. If
it's not, your Sims will leave town. And be assured that they'll let
you know what they think about you and your policies.
One of the toughest challenges of SimCity 2000 is to maintain a
huge city without sacrificing your Sims' quality of life, without
going broke maintaining the infrastructure, and without raising
taxes so high that businesses relocate. SimCity 2000 lets you face
the same dilemmas that mayors all over the world are facing.
We've all said at one time or another that we could do a better job
than our elected officials-here's your chance to prove it.
SimCity 2000 is primarily a "building" game, where you create and
try to increase the size of your cities-but you also have plenty of
opportunities to destroy. From bulldozers to earthquakes to air
crashes, the implements of destruction are only a mouse-click
away. But remember, it's a lot more challenging to build than to
destroy, and the lives, hopes and dreams of millions of Sims are
in your hands.
Page 2 SimCity 2000 - Introduction
ABOUT THIS MANUAL
This manual is divided into four main sections:
The Introduction welcomes you to SimCity 2000, explains a little
about the manual in general, helps you get the game up and
running on your computer and sends you on your way to play.
The Tutorials are small guided tours through different aspects of
city-building with SimCity 2000.
The Reference section describes in detail all the windows, but-
tons, features and functions of SimCity 2000, and explains much
the behind-the-scenes simulation action.
The Gallery section consists of contributions from a number of
people to give you varying views, feelings, interpretations and
predictions about real cities in words and pictures. Some of these
Individual pieces are located at the back of the manual in the
"official" Gallery section. Others are spread throughout the rest of
the manual.
And for those who are familiar with an earlier version of SimCity,
there is an Appendix that lists SimCity 2000's new features and
differences from the earlier versions.
In addition, the SimCity 2000 package includes a machine-specific
Addendum to cover installation, startup, and any special features
and functions on your computer.
Page 3 SimCity 2000 - Introduction
FROM SIMCITY TO SIMCITY 2000
If you're already familiar with an earlier version of SimCity, then
you should have no trouble moving into SimCity 2000. If you
haven't played SimCity before, then skip the rest of this section.
You will not be quizzed on this material.
A few major features have changed and some tools have moved
since the earlier versions of the game, so you may have just a little
trouble finding things. A summary of all the changes and differ-
ences between the programs can be found in the Appendix. But to
help you get started, here are the three most-asked questions by
SimCity users when we sat them down in front of SimCity 2000:
Where the heck are the power plants?
They're in a submenu under the power icon. Select Power Plant
from the submenu and you'll have a choice of from three to nine
different power sources, depending on the city's date.
I click and click-why won't the durn thing set down zones?
Instead of the fixed-size zones that you plop down, SimCity 2000
lets you make any size square or rectangular zone by clicking and
dragging the mouse where you want to zone. You can zone over
roads and rails, and place roads and rails in zones. By the way,
airports and seaports are placed the same way as zones.
What's the deal with the water system?
We've added a water system to the game, including pumps, pipes,
treatment plants, water towers and desalinization plants. You
don't need to worry about water to start a city. But you will need
a water system before the population can grow very dense.
GETTING STARTED
SimCity 2000 must be installed toahard disk before it can be run.
Please look in the machin&specific Addendum for complete in-
structions on installing SimCity 2000 to your hard disk and on
starting the program.
Once you're up and running, feel free to jump right in and play, or
if you want some guidance and a quick introduction to the main
features and functions of the game, check out the tutorials.
Page 4 SimCity 2000 - Introduction
Tutorials
Congratulations! By the virtue of owning SimCity 2000 you are
hereby proclaimed Mayor of a million cities and ruler of a billion
simulated lives (your Sims). It's a tough game, but somebody's
gotta play it.
These tutorials are designed to help you adjust to your new office
with as little transition time as possible.
There are three tutorials, each designed to be finished in one
short sitting so you can get them out of the way and get on with
the important business of building and running your cities. The
first one is a general overview of the basic features of SimCity
2000 enough so you can start a new city, and get going on your
own. The second one focuses on creating, editing and modifying
your city's terrain, both before and after you've begun building
your city. The third one goes into detail on a few of the advanced
features.
We suggest that you whip through the first tutorial, then go play
on your own for a while. You may figure everything else out on
your own, and never need the other tutorials, but they're here if
and when you want them.
Page 6 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Mouse And Keyboard Stuff
Before jumping into the tutorials, take a moment to look over the
following skills and conventions that will make your stay in
SimCity 2000 a pleasant one.
SimCity 2000 requires a mouse. To play, you must know how to
use a mouse for the following actions:
Click-point the cursor to an object and briefly press the
left (or only) mouse button.
Doubleclick-point the cursor to an object and briefly
press the left (or only) mouse button twice quickly.
Click and drag-point the cursor to an object, then press
and hold the left (or only) mouse button, then move the
mouse to drag the object. Release the mouse button to
release the object.
Unless otherwise specified, whenever this manual refers to click-
ing, doubleclicking or clicking and dragging, use the left (or only)
mouse button.
When you see the term "Shift-click," it means to hold down either
Shift key on the keyboard and click the mouse button.
When you see the term 'Option/Control-click," it means:
On a Macintosh you should hold down the Option key on
the keyboard while you click; or
On a DOS or Windows-based computer you should hold
down the Control key on the keyboard while you click.
Page 7 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
INSTRUCTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS
To prepare you for building your city in the rest of this tutorial
here is a basic explanation of exactly what is city in SimCity 2000
is made of.
While SimCity has many layers of complexity and lots and lots of
features and all sorts of stuff to put in your city, it's fairly easy to
get a small city started. All you need is:
A place for the Sims to live: a residential zone
A place for the Sims to work: an industrial zone
A place for the Sims to shop and conduct business: a commercial zone
A source of power: a power plant
A way to get the power from the power plant to the zones: power lines
A way for Sims to travel between work, home or shops: roads
That's all you need to build, and Sims with that pioneering spirit
will move into your city and build their own houses, factories and
offices. They'll drive their cars and carry on business and com-
plain about taxes. If you build it, they will simulate.
Page 8 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Once your city has begun to grow, you can add:
More zones with different density levels
Multiple above and below-ground means of transportation
A complete water system
Custom landscaping
Airports and seaports
Police and fire stations
Educational and recreational facilities
A whole lot more
Enough talk ... time for a simulating experience.
Page 9 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
TUTORIAL 1 - THE BASICS
If you haven't already, take a look at your machine-specific
Addendum, and install SimCity 2000 to your hard drive.
Start SimCity 2000.
See your Addendum for instructions.
Either the first time you play the game or during installation, you
will be asked to enter your name to personalize your copy of
SimCity 2000. Be sure to type your full name - and be polite
because the name that you type in will appear a number of times
and places in the game.
Soon a list of four choices will appear; it's time for your first real
decision. Here you can load a city that you've already saved, start
a brand-new city, edit a new map (we'll be doing this in Tutorial 2),
or play one of the pre-built scenarios. For this tutorial, we'll want
to start a new city.
Click on Start New City.
In mere moments you'll see a dialog box that asks you to make
three decisions: how hard or easy you want your game to be, what
year the game should start, and what your new city should be
named. The defaults are Easy and 1900, which will be just fine, so
all we need to do is type in the name.
Make sure the City Name is highlighted and type in: Tutorial 1 City.
Click on Done.
Note: On the Macintosh or other computers that
allow long file names, the city name you type here
will also be your file name. On computers that
run DOS or Windows, where file names must be
shorter, you'll get to type in a file name when you
save the city to disk.
Page 10 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Soon the founding of your city will be announced in the
newspaper. The newspaper is your tool for staying in touch
with your adoring SimConstituents.
Click on the headline. Read the story that zooms out. Click again.
Open and eead the other stories if you like, by clicking on them.
Click In the Close box In the upper-left comer of the Newspaper
to send It to the recycling bin.
You are now looking at the City window, where you will spend
most of your time as you build, run and rule your city.
At the top of the window is the Title bar. It contains the current city
date, the city name, and the amount of money you have in your
city treasury.
Over on the left side of the screen is the City toolbar. It has lots of
buttons-your tools for creating and running your city.
Note: Every January, the Budget window will pop
up. For now, just click on its Done button to make
it go away. We'll worry about the budget later. If
the Newspaper pops up, click on its close box.
Page 11 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
In the window itself you see the site of your city-to-be. A pristine
wilderness: bare land, some forest areas and some flowing water.
And the land isn't flat-there are hills and valleys, peaks and
canyons. The terrain is divided into tiny squares. Each of these
squares is called a "tile." Each tile is approximately one acre, or a
200 x 200 foot square.
We'll explore your new domain in a moment, but first, we need to
take a detour and go straight to the top ... of your screen.
At the top of your screen is, of course, the Menu bar. These menus
are well-behaved and work just like the menus in your other
programs. Click and hold on the menu name to open the menu,
slide the cursor to the menu item you want to activate, then
release the mouse button.
Take a moment and open each of the menus, revealing their hidden
glory.
Once you've looked them over:
Open the Options menu.
Select Auto-Budget.
This option makes the simulation repeat the same budget until
you tell it otherwise and stops that pesky Budget window from
popping up and spoiling your view.
Open the Disasters menu.
Select No Disasters.
This setting keeps random disasters from occurring. (Those
disasters really mess up a tutorial.)
Page 12 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
And speaking of views, behold the vistas and valleys of your city-
to-be. How'd you like another angle on the place?
Click on the Rotate CounterClockwise bullon in the City toolbar.
Do It again.
Click on the Rotate Clockwise button until you find the angle that
pleases you.
As you can see, you can rotate the city and view it from all sides.
This'll come in very handy later, when you're building your city.
What's that? You want a closer view? No problem.
Click once on the Zoom In button in the City toolbar.
How's that? Closer?
Click again on the Zoom In button.
That's as close as you get. (Notice that the Zoom In button is
ghosted and unavailable.) Now that you're here, how do you get
around? Let's zoom out for a wider view, then do some travelin'.
Click once on the Zoom Out button.
Click on the Center button.
Click anywhere on the landscape.
The landscape will redraw in the City window, centered on the
spot where you clicked. You can also use the Scroll bars to move
around the landscape, but the Center button gives you more
precise control.
Page 13 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME
Time to pick a spot to found your city. Since each landscape
generated by SimCity 2000 is different, the landscape on your
screen, and therefore the city that you build, won't look exactly
like the one in this manual-but it should be close. Kinda. Sorta.
Maybe.
Click on the Zoom Out button until you are as far out as you can get.
Look for a nice, flat spot.
If there is water nearby, or even running through your spot, all the
better, but not necessary. If there is no spot in your city that you
are willing to call home, then open the File menu, and select New
City. You'll be asked if you want to save the old one - click No.
Then a new landscape will be generated, and you'll get to name
your city and all that other stuff you did a few pages ago. You can
repeat this until you find a home.
Once you're satisfied, then it's time to zone out.
As mentioned in What Makes a (Sim)City above, we'll need three
kinds of zones in our city: residential, where the Sims live,
commercial, for offices and stores, and industrial, for factories.
Survey your chosen territory and pick a spot to zone residential. If
there is water nearby, include some waterfront in your zone.
Click on the Residential Zone button.
Click and drag on the landscape to form a rectangle where you want to
make a residential zone.
You can zone right over hills and trees.
Page 14 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Now find a spot for the industrial zone. It is in your Sims' best
interest to leave a bit of a buffer zone between residential and
industrial zones.
Click on the Industrial Zone button.
Click and drag on the landscape to form a rectangle where you want
to make an Industrial zone.
Now find a spot for a commercial zone. Close to residential is
handy. Some waterfront is nice, but not necessary.
Click on the Commerelal Zone button.
Click and drag on the landscape to form a rectangle where you want
to make a commercial zone.
Page 15 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
The Sims that live in SimCities may have that pioneering spirit, but
they won't move in until you supply electric power. After all, they
are electronic life-forms.
To supply power, you need a power plant of some sort and power
lines to get the power to where you want it. Both of these things
are available from the Power button in the City toolbar.
Click and hold on the Power button in the City toolbar.
Move the cursor to highlight Power Plant... and release the mouse
button.
An assortment of power plants will appear, with pictures of,
prices for and outputs from each plant. There is also an INFO
button for each power plant that brings up even more fascinating
facts. Power plants are not available to you until the city year
reaches the time when that technology is available.
words, you can't have nuclear fusion in 1901.
Click on the Coal Power Plant.
The power plant assortment will disappear, and a grey 4 x 4 tile
shadow will follow the cursor. This is the size of the base of the
power plant. Find a plac~preferably near your industrial zone
and far from your residential zon~to place the power plant. It
must be placed on flat ground.
Click on the terraIn to place your power plant.
Page 16 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
I'VE GOT A LINE ON YOU
Now we need to power up the zones. We'll need power lines to get
the power from the power plant to each zone. Power won't travel
from zone to zone without power lines, even if they're touching.
Within zones, the building-to-building power lines are built by the
Sims when they build their buildings. (But that's a private sector
problem-you only have to power up each zone.)
Placing power lines can be a bit tricky, so it's best to zoom in as
close as you can get.
Click on the Center button.
Click on your power plant.
Click on the Zoom In button until you are as close as you can get.
Click and hold on the Power button in the City toolbar.
Move the cursor to highlight Power Lines and release the mouse
button.
You're ready to lay some power lines.
Click or click and drag to place power lines that connect the power
plant to each of your zones.
If you place power lines that aren't connected to power, they'll
blink to indicate that they aren't hooked up yet. If your power lines
flash, then you've missed a connection. You may have to rotate
the terrain to get a good look at your power plant from all sides.
Note: Laying power lines in hilly areas can be
tricky. You may have to rotate the landscape and
zoom in for a good close look. Try to stay on flat
land for this tutorial
Page 17 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
THE DRIVE TO THRIVE
Now all we need is a transportation system, and your town should
be ready for some Sims to move in.
Click on the Road bulton in the Cily toolbar. out.
Click and drag through and around your zones to set up a network of
roads.
By the time you get your roads down, some Sims should be
moving into your town.
Power cannot travel through roads without wires, so place power
lines across the roads to make sure each section of every zone has
power.
Click and hold on the Power button and select Power Lines again.
Place power lines across the roads to connect all parts of each zone.
Now sit patiently for a few minutes as your city slowly begins to
grow.
Note: If nobody moves into your city, then it's
either because the zones aren't powered up, or
the residential and industrial zones are too far
apart. Sims like to drive their cars, but they hate
to commute very far.
YOUR JUST DESSERTS
Your city should be growing now. Go ahead and add some more
zones, or play with roads to get in some practice. Fairly soon a
newspaper will announce to the world that your little town has
reached the lofty population of 2000, and as a reward, you may
build yourself a house.
Note: if you don't get this message after 5 or 7
minutes, then you may not have made your zones
large enough.
Page 18 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
This is but the first of many rewards that you will reap as mayor
of SimCity. Rewards are based on population, and include your
own house, a city hall, a statue in your honor and ... well, you'll find
out.
Rewards show up under the Reward button in the City toolbar,
which is ghosted and unavailable most of the time. Once you
reach the population of 2000, then the Reward button will no
longer be ghosted.
Click and hold on the Reward button, slide the cursor to Mayor's
House and release the mouse button.
Place your house In a prestigious spot, preferably with a good view.
Connect your house to the rest of the town with roads and power lines.
Congratulations. You've successfully taken a hunk of barren dirt and
built a small city. But this is no time to rest on your laurels. For
now, save your city to disk, then we'll move on.
Open the file menu.
Select Save City.
Depending on your computer, it will either go ahead and save
without asking you any questions, or prompt you for a location
and file name. See your machin&specific Addendum for details on
saving files and file names.
Page 19 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
BELLY ON UP TO THE [TOOL]BAR
Let's take a quick look at the City toolbar. If it ever gets in your way
you can move it around the screen by clicking and dragging the
bar at the top.
An important-and useful-thing to remember is the built-in
help. Aust hold down either Shift key, and click on any button in the
toolbar for a complete explanation of what the button does.
All of the buttons in the top five rows activate submenus that give the
button more power and flexibility. You've already seen that with the
Power button.
Click and hold on all the buttons in the top five
rows, one by one, to see all their submenus.
Two of the buttons will not do anything: the Reward button and the
Emergency button. The Emergency button, which lets you dispatch
police and fire departments to the scene of an emergency, only works
during an emergency. And as you already know, the Reward button
only lights up as you reach certain population levels.
Seeing all those submenus should assure you that there's a lot more to
mastering SimCity 2000 than building a town of 2000 people. Many of these
features will be covered in Tutorial 3, but there are a few items that
will prove useful to you right away: the bulldozer, landscaping and
building bridges.
Page 20 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
DOIN' SOME DOZIN'
The bulldozer has a number of uses, but for now we'll concentrate
its Demolish/Clear function.
Click and hold on the Bulldozer button.
Highlight Demolish/Clear.
Now go on a rampage through your city. Bulldoze any extra
sections of road, abandoned factories or anything else you'd care
to eliminate. (Don't worry, the city has been saved to disk, you can
undo any damage you do by loading it back in.)
The first time you 'doze something, it turns it to rubble (with quite
a jolly explosion). 'Doze it again to clear the rubble.
The Landscape button lets you add trees or water to the land-
scape. Click and hold on the Landscape button.
Highlight Trees and release the mouse button.
Click or click and drag across the land to add trees.
Trees add value to land as well as an aesthetic touch to your
creation. Now for water.
Click and hold on the Landscape button.
HighlIght Water and release the mouse button.
Click or click and drag across the land to make a small lake - but keep
it small, adding water is expensive.
Water also adds value to land, and has recreational value, too.
Page 21 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
A LITTLE BRIDGEWORK
And speaking of water, how do you make your roads cross it?
Locate and center the screen on a lake or river that has flat land
surrounding it.
Click on the Road button.
Click and drag the cursor so it crosses the lake or river.
Just by laying a road over water, the SimConstruction crew knows
that you need a bridge. So they pop up this dialog box to let you
decide what kind of bridge you want and tell you how much it'll
cost. There is also an Info button you can press for more informa-
tion on each type of bridge. Depending on the year in your city,
and the width of the water, you will be shown a choice of one, two
or three different bridges you can build. For now, go ahead and
build a causeway bridge.
Click on the Causeway bullon to build the bridge.
The causeway is only one of the three types of bridges that you
can have in SimCity 2000. Let's build another one, or two if they are
all available.
Click and drag across the water next to the causeway.
When given the choice of bridges, build a raising bridge, if it is
available.
Now build a suspension bridge if it is available.
Page 22 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
A handy-dandy feature of SimCity 2000 is the ability to add signs to
buildings or spots of interest in your city.
Click on the Sign button.
Click on one of the bridges you just built.
Type "Orthodontist's Dream" into the dialog box.
Click the Done button.
At the bottom of the City toolbar are six buttons. The one with the
question mark brings up a reminder that you can get help on each
button of the toolbar by holding down the Shift key and clicking on
the button.
To the left of the help button is the Underground button. Clicking
on it reveals SimCity's soft white underbelly, where you can build
an underground transportation system and run water to all your
city's buildings. Clicking on it again takes you back up to the
surface.
The four buttons above Help and Underground are Show Buildings,
Show Signs, Show Infrastructure and Show Zones. Each of these
buttons toggles on and off different parts of the city. The parts
aren't destroyed, theyjust turn invisible until you want to see them
again.
Zoom out, center on the built-up part of your city and play with the four
Show buttons, the Underground button and the Help button forawhile.
Hang in there. We're almost done with Tutorial 1!
Page 23 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
YOU'RE IN DEMAND
Now take a look at the City toolbar and pick out the and Indicator. This
lets you know what type of zones are in demand in your city. The bars
stick up to show demand and down to show oversupply for Residential,
commercial and Industrial zones.
WHAT A PANE
To the left of the Demand Indicator are six buttons. Each of these
buttons opens small information windows that sit on top of the
City window. The information in these windows helps you under
stand what's going on in your city, and helps you keep things
running smoothly. Some of them will be covered in Tutorial 3. All
of them are explained in detail in the Reference section.
Most of these buttons (all but the one with the money sign) work
in two ways:
1. Click and hold on them to see a small pop-up information
display that disappears when you let go of the mouse button.
2. Click and drag them away from the toolbar to open a window that stays
until you tell it to go away.
One at a time, click and hold on each of the six buttons, take a quick
look at what comes up, then release the mouse button. (Note that the
Budget window stays there unless you click the Done button.)
One at a time, click and drag each of the six buttons to open all the
windows.
Close all the windows.
Well, that's it for Tutorial 1. When you're ready for more, check out
the next two tutorials. And the Reference section is always there
when you need it for details on every window, toolbar and button.
Now go play.
Play.
Have fun.
Have more fun.
Page 24 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Welcome back. In this tutorial, we'll be modifying and customizing
the landforms that you build your cities on.
In the last tutorial we touched on adding trees and water with the
Landscape button, and looked at the submenu under the Bull-
dozer button. These are powerful tools for molding, shaping and
beautifying the land. But if you make drastic changes, it can drain
your city's treasury.
All the time you spent in Tutorial 1 was in "City-Building mode." As
an alternative, SimCity 2000 has a "Terrain-Editing mode" that
allows you to make all the modifications to the land you want - at
no charge - before you actually start your city. When you've
created the perfect locale for a new town, you can switch to City
mode and start building. But you can't switch back. Sorry, them's
the rules.
Enough gabbing. Put on your work boots and grab your hard
hat-we've got mountains to move.
Page 24 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
TUTORIAL 2 - LANDSCAPE ENGINEERING
Welcome back. In this tutorial, we'll be modifying and customizing
the landforms that you build your cities on.
In the last tutorial we touched on adding trees and water with the
Landscape button, and looked at the submenu under the Bull-
dozer button. These are powerful tools for molding, shaping and
beautifying the land. But if you make drastic changes, it can drain
your city's treasury.
All the time you spent in Tutorial 1 was in "City-Building mode." As
an alternative, SimCity 2000 has a "Terrain-Editing mode" that
allows you to make all the modifications to the land you want - at
no charge - before you actually start your city. When you've
created the perfect locale for a new town, you can switch to City
mode and start building. But you can't switch back. Sorry, them's
the rules.
Enough gabbing. Put on your work boots and grab your hard
hat - we've got mountains to move.
Page 25 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
IN THE MODE
First, we'll get into Terrain-Editing mode.
If SimCity 2000 isn't running now, start it up. You'll soon see this
dialog box:
Click Edit New Map.
If SimCity 2000 is already running, and you've been playing for a
while, save whatever you're working on (if you wish) and:
Click on the Zoom Out button until you are all the way out.
Open the File menu.
Select Edit New Map.
This is the same old City window as in Tutorial 1, but
with a big difference - this time we're in Terrain mode,
and the City toolbar has been replaced by the Terrain
tool bar.
Near the bottom of the toolbar are six buttons that you are already
familiar with. The Zoom In, Zoom Out, Rotate, Center and Help buttons
work here exactly as they do in the City toolbar.
And, of course, if you ever need a reminder of what a button does, hold
down either Shift key and click on the button.
Page 26 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
MY GENERATION
The top section of the Terrain toolbar gives you a good head start
on reaching that perfect landform by letting you select some
general characteristics that you want, then generating the land to
your specifications. Once generated, you can customize it to your
heart's content.
The Coast button lets you choose to (or not to) have an ocean
coastline along one side of your city.
The River button lets you choose whether or not a river runs
through it.
The three slider bars let you set how much of the land you want
to be covered by mountains, water and trees. To set the slider
bars, you can either click and drag them or just click at your
desired setting. The higher the bar, the more mountain, water and
tree coverage.
When you've finished with the Coast and River buttons and the
sliders, clicking on the Make button generates the new landform.
To test it out, try generating landforms with each of theses settings:
Set the buttons and sliders to match example one, to the right
Click on the Make button.
Look over the landscape.
Repeat for the other two examples.
With the two buttons and three sliders you can create an almost
unlimited number of Iandforms. Play around with generating
landforms for a while if you wish, then generate the landform from
example 3.
Page 27 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
DID THE EARTH MOVE FOR YOU, TOO?
You should be looking at something approximately like this:
( INSERT K3WL PICTURE HERE!! - D.L. )
Note: As you go through the rest of this tutorial, feel free to zoom
in for a closer look and rotate to get a different angle on your
creation. You already know how to do it, so I won't bore you with
the details.
Look over the terrain and pick a nice, big, flat, boring spot. We'll
use the Raise Terrain tool to give it a lift.
Click on the Ralse Terrain button.
Click and drag on a flat spot of land to build a huge mountaln.
MAKING MOLEHILLS OUT OF MOUNTAINS
Well, maybe that mountain is a bit too high for this flat, prairie-like
wilderness. Let's bring it down with the Lower Terrain tool.
Click on the Lower Terrain button.
Trim the mountaln down to size, but not too small.
Page 28 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
ON THE LEVEL
Sometimes you need to flatten out the top of a mountain and form
terraces to make some usable, level space. That's where the Level
Terrain tool comes in.
Note: If you don 't have enough of your mountain left after lowering it,
use the Raise Terrain tool to build it back up again.
Click on the Level Terrain button.
Click and hold somewhere on your mountaln near - but not at - the top.
Drag the cursor across the top of the mountaln to chop it off.
You probably noticed that the Level Terrain tool raises land to
your chosen level as well as lowers it. Now make some terraces on
your mountain.
When you do a lot of terrain modifications, you will sometimes see
grey triangular areas. These are actually cement supports to keep
the land from shifting or caving in. SimConstruction engineers are
trained professionals who know how to do their jobs.
Page 29 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
A BIT OF A STRETCH
The Stretch Terrain tool lets you grab a section of land and
stretch it up into a mountain or pull it down to a mesa or canyon.
Locate a flat, empty section of land.
Click on the Stretch Terrain tool.
Click and hold on the land, drag it upwards to create a pyramid-like
mountain, and release the mouse button.
Click on the top of the mountaln and drag it down to flatten it into a
mesa.
Click and hold on the side of the mountaln and drag the cursor down
to carve out a canyon.
Page 30 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
WATER YOU THINKIN' ABOUT?
Enough of this dealing with dirt-let's get wet. There are a few
water tools in the Terrain toolbar. One works just like the Water
setting on the Landscape button in the City toolbar. The other is
a little more powerful-and little more unpredictable. It lets you
place flowing streams.
Find or build a small hill somewhere In the terrain.
Click on the Water button.
Click and drag on the flat terrain at the foot of the hill.
Click on the Place Stream button.
Click at the top of the hill to send a stream running down into the lake.
Click a few more times In the same area to produce a cascading
waterfall.
There are also buttons that let you raise and lower sea level.
Click on the Zoom Out button until you are all the way out.
Click once on the Raise Sea Level button.
Click twice on the Lower Sea Level button.
Click again on the Ralse Sea Level button.
These buttons let you turn mountains into a chain of islands, turn
wet grassland into a desert, or create swampland if you know any
rich suckers.
Page 31 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
OUT IN THE WOODS
SimCity 2000 lets you add trees and forests to your landscape,
with (of all things) the Tree and Forest buttons.
Find a spot in the terrain that is sadly lacking trees.
Click on the Tree button.
Click and drag across the barren plaln to plant some trees.
Click on the Forest button.
Click and drag across the plain to plant a lot of trees.
CITY A LA MODE
You are now the master of land, sea and forest, able to shape them
to suit your whims. If you wish, take some time and play around
with the landscape. When you're ready to get a city going, then
head for the Done button at the bottom of the Terrain toolbar. It
sends you into City mode, changes the toolbar, and starts time in
the city.
Click Done and start building a city.
You'll find the Raise Terrain, Lower Terrain and Level Terrain
functions in the submenu under the Bulldozer button. But remem-
ber: in City mode, you'll be charged for each tile you raise, lower
or level.
If and when you feel like it, Tutorial 3 is just around the corner,
filled with useful advanced city-building techniques.
Page 32 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
TUTORIAL 3 - ADVANCED FEATURES
If you're here then you must already be an experienced mayor
with complete mastery of all the tools and techniques in Tutorials
1 and 2. Either that or you're so excited about the advanced
features of SimCity 2000 that you just couldn't wait.
In any event, in this tutorial, you will:
Load in your old city from Tutorial 1.
Take a look around with the Query tool.
Add police and fire protection.
Take a quick look at all the smaller windows and get an idea
of what they do.
Play with the Budget window and city finance.
Make a couple political deals in the Council window.
Deal with an emergency.
A NEW BEGINING
If SimCity 2000 isn't running now, start it up. You'll soon see this
dialog box:
Click Load Saved City.
Load your city from the end of Tutorial 1.
If SimCity 2000 is already running, and you've been playing for a
while, save whatever you're working on (if you wish) and:
Open the File menu.
Select Load City.
Load your city from the end of Tutorial 1.
Note: Loading cities is a little different for each type of computer.
See your machine-specific Addendum for details.
Page 33 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Within seconds, you will be looking over the familiar landscape of
Tutorial 1 City. Before moving on, let's do a couple things: turn on
and hold on the City Services button in the City toolbar.
Select Police from the submenu.
Place the police station somewhere in your city.
Click and hold on the City Services button again.
Select Fire Station from the submenu. Notice the Rer
Place a fire station somewhere in your city, possibly near
police station.
Make sure the stations have power and access to roads.
THE QUERY THEORY
Inquiring mayors want and need to know what's going on in their
towns. And whether you need to research important city issues or
are just curious, the Query tool gives you the low-down on your
city.
Click on the Query button in the City toolbar.
Click on a house in your residential zone.
An information box has popped up with all the vital stats the simulator
has about the spot where you clicked.
Page 34 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Click on the Information box to close it.
Click on your police station.
Once again an information box has opened, but this time with different
information - information that is important in judging the effectiveness
of a police station. Whenever you query a place in your city, you will
see the most useful information for that place. Pay attention to the
numbers of officers, crimes and arrests in this box, and scribble them
down on a piece of paper if you have one handy. Later on we'll see what
cutting the police budget does to these numbers.
Notice the Rename button. SimCity 2000 allows you to personalize
your city by renaming many of the buildings and locations.
Click on the Rename button.
Type In your own name for your police department, something like,
"Tutorial Enforcement Unit," or "Sims In Blue."
Click the Done button.
Page 35 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
THE WHIRLWIND[OW]
Other than a brief glimpse at the other windows in Tutorial 1,
we've spent almost the whole time in the City window. The City
window is the mainstay of SimCity 2000. It stays active even when
other windows are open on top of it. Clicking on the City window
won't bring it to the front, covering any of the other, smaller
windows on the screen. When you place the other windows, try
not to cover the City window's Scroll bars.
After the City window, the Map window is the most-used and most
versatile.
Click and drag the Map window button in the City toolbar away from
the toolbar to open the Map window.
Click In the Grow box in the upper right corner to enlarge the Map
window.
Welcome to the Map window. It shows a number of different map displays
that give you location-based information about your city. You can open it
either through the Windows menu or with the Map window button in the
City toolbar.
Somewhere on the map is a white rectangle. The rectangle shows the area
of the map that is currently visible in the City window. When you click
on the map, you move the rectangle, and the city window redraws to show
the new area in the rectangle.
Click on the map a few times to move the rectangle, and see how the City
window changes.
Click on the map, over the middle of your city.
The buttons along the left side of the Map window let you choose
different map displays. Some of the buttons have submenus for
even more displays. Let's take a quick look at all the map displays.
Page 36 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Note: In map displays that show density or coverage, the darker the
greyscale, the higher the density.
Click and hold on the top Map window button.
Select the first Item In the submenu and release the mouse button. Take
a look at the map.
Repeat for every item of every submenu of every Map window
button - except the very last button. (Don't worry, it won't take very
long; some of the buttons don't have submenus.)
The last Map window button doesn't change the view in the Map
window-it turns the City window into a super-duper-extra-large
map. (This is the City window's Map mode.) Clicking the button
again returns the City window to its normal state. Sometimes you
need a huge, detailed map to see all the finer details of your city.
Click on the last Map window button.
Take a look, then click on it agaln.
Click in the Close box to close the Map window.
The Graphs window shows time-based information about the people, places
and problems in your city. Use it for identifying and tracking trends and
changes in things like pollution, land value, and levels of health and
education. You can open it from the Windows menu or by clicking and
dragging the Graphs window button in the City toolbar.
Click and drag the Graphs window button on the City toolbar to open the
Graphs window.
Spend 2 minutes and 37 seconds turning on and off each of
the graphs, and changing the scale Irom 1 to 10 to 100 years.
Close the Graphs window.
Page 37 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
The Population window gives you information about the people
in your city, and their levels of health and education. You can open
the Population window in the usual ways.
Click and drag the Population window button on the City toolbar.
Click on each of the three buttons at the bottom of the window and
look at each of the three displays.
Close the Population window.
The Industries window shows the ratio of the different types of industries
in your city. It also shows which industries' products are in demand
nationally, and allow you to set different tax rates for each industry to
encourage, discourage, or drain dry those industries like, don't like or
just want to exploit. You can open the Industries window by... you know
the rotine by now.
Click and drag the Industries window button in the City toolbar.
Look over the current (Population) display.
Click on the Tax Rates button.
Page 38 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Pick an industry you want to encourage, and lower its tax rate by
clicking and dragging its bar toward the left.
Pick an industry you want to discourage, and raise its tax rate by
clicking and dragging its bar toward the right.
Click on the Demand button and look over the Demand display.
Close the Industries window.
The Neighbors window shows your city surrounded by its neigh-
boring cities, and gives the populations for each city, and for
SimNation as a whole. I bet you can figure out how the Neighbors
window is opened.
Open the Windows menu and select Neighbors (unless you really
really want to use the Neighbors window button).
Take a look and close the window.
The Budget window is where you control all the finances of your
city. The Budget window is so important that it deserves its own
clever headline in this tutorial, so here goes:
THE BUCK STARTS HERE
Click on the Budget window button in the City toolbar.
Along the left side of the Budget window is a list of all the revenues
and expenses that you face as a mayor in SimCity 2000. For each
revenue or expense, there is:
Year-to-Date Column - a number (in blue) that shows the actual
cash amount you have made or spent so far this year.
Estimated Column - a number (in red) that shows what the
end-of-year expense or revenue will be at the current Budget
window settings.
Books - a button to push to see a detailed monthly report on the
revenue or expense.
Advisors - a button to push when you want a little advice.
Page 39 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Percentages - most (but not all) of the revenues and expenses have
a percentage setting so you can set the amounts of funding or
taxation.
Help is available by holding down either Shift key and clicking on
any word, number, column or button in the Budget window.
The very first revenue is your main source of income: property
taxes. To the right of the words "Property Taxes" is the current tax
rate given as a percentage (currently 7%). You can set the property tax
rate to anything between 0 and 20% by clicking on the up and down arrows
to the right of the percentage number. Give your Sims a break and lower
their taxes.
Click twice on the down-arrow to the right of Property Taxes and lower
the rate to 5%.
If your computer is equipped to play sound effects, you'll hear the
cheers of the populace.
Click once on the up-arrow to the right of Property Taxes and raise the
rate to 6%.
Once again, if your computer can play sound effects, you'll hear
the reaction of the masses. How soon they forget.
Skip down to Bond Payment. This is the amount of interest you
pay on bond issues. Part of financing your city is issuing bonds,
which is basically borrowing money from your citizens. The
interest rate the city pays varies according to the simulated
market and the difficulty level of the game. Everything you need
to deal with bonds is in the Bond Payment books.
Page 40 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Click on the Book button for Bond Payment.
The bond Payment books give you a month-by-month breakdown of the number
of outstanding bonds, their interest rate, the monetary amount of
interest you pay and a total of interest paid. Blue numbers show actual
year-to-date amounts, red numbers are projections for the rest of the
year.
At the bottom of the window are buttons for dealing with bond issues.
Click on the Show Bonds button.
You are shown a pop-up box with your city's credit rating, and general
status on bonds and interest rates.
Click on the pop-up box to close it.
Click on the Issue Bond button.
You are given the current bond interest rate and asked if you want to
issue the bond. Go ahead.
Click Yes to issue the bond.
Click on the Show Bonds button to see that it has been issued.
Click to close the Show Bonds box.
Later, when you have the money, you can come back here and repay the bond,
but for now, let's move on.
Click the Done button to close the Bond Payment books and return to
the budget window.
Look at the line just below Bond Payment. This is the financial
information for your Police Departments. To the right of the words
"Police Department" is a percentage number set to 100, and to the right
of that are up- and down-arrows that let you change the level of funding.
Page 41 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Click on the down-arrow to change the Police Department funding to
50%.
Click on the Police Department Book button.
Look it over, then click to close the Police books.
We'll check out the effect of lowering the police budget a little later.
There are no other buttons or adjustments in the Police books.
Let's look at another set of books.
Click on the Transit Authority Book button.
Not only do the Transit Authority books give you a monthly breakdown of
transit expenses, but they let you individually set the funding levels
for different transportation systems. Since the bridges we built in
Tuto lI 1 aren't hooked up to anything there's no point in funding them.
And just to see what happens, we'll remove funding from a couple other
systems.
Click on the down-arrow for Bridge funding until it goes to 0%.
Set funding levels for Subway and Tunnel to 0%.
Click Done to close the Transit Authority books and return to the Budget
window.
Notice that the percentage setting next to Transit Authority changed.
When you change settings in the books, they are reflected here.
One more set of books to inspect: City Ordinance (just under Property
Taxes).
Page 42 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Click on the City Ordinance Book button.
These are various programs, bills and ordinances that you can enact as
mayor. Each program contributes in some way to the quality of life in
your city, but each also has a drawback, usually its cost. Politics is a
rough business, filled with hard decisions.
That's it for the Budget window - except for one detail. Let's clear out
all this budget stuff then see how our funding change affected the police
department.
Click Done to close the Community Program dialog.
Click Done to close the Budget window.
Click on the Query button in the City toolbar.
Click on the Police Department.
When you compare it with your last query, you should have about half
as many officers. Depending on the size of your city, crime may be running
rampant, or it may be under control. In a very small town, you don't
necessarily need full police or fire department funding.
And speaking of fire departments...
A HOT TIME IN OLD TOWN
From time to time, or when you feel like it, you will have the solemn
duty (or distinct pleasure, depending on your personality) of dealing
with disasters. Of course, the best way to deal with a disaster is to
prevent it. The better fire coverage you have, the less fires will occur.
But sometimes, no matter how prepared you are, disaster strikes.
Especially when you choose them from a menu.
Page 43 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
Open the Disasters menu.
Select Fire.
Once you select Fire, two things will happen: a fire will break out
somewhere in the city limits and the Emergency button will become
available. The Emergency tool lets you dispatch your police and fire
departments to the scene of the emergency.
Click and hold on the Emergency button in the City toolbar.
Select Dispatch Fire.
Click near the fire.
Click and hold on the Emergency button.
Select Dispatch Police.
Click near the fire.
Note: If the fire went out before you had a chance
to dispatch your troops, start another one.
You can't place your fire fighters directly on fires, but you can use
them to block the path of the fire, and even chase it down. You can
place one police or fire icon for every station you have. If you have
three of four stations, it makes it easier to surround a fire and
block its path.
GRADUATION
You have completed an extensive tutorial in city design and
management. You are now an expert in everything from planning
to landscaping to politics.
When you're ready for even more advanced features, check out
the Reference section for tips on adding a water system to you
city, and improving and expanding your transportation system
with highways, onramps, tunnels, rails, subways, and bus lines.
Go forth and play SimCity 2000.
Page 44 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
This page of the manual shows a cool silhouette of a
city and this cheezy poem:
Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs
are incubators of apathy and delirium.
The Unquiet Grave
Cyril Connolly (1903-1974)
(Stay tuned for more poetry reading! - D.L.)
Page 45 SimCity 2000 - Tutorial
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++[<*| REFERENCE |*>]++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This Reference section is an in-depth explanation of (just about)
every window, button, feature and function of SimCity 2000 on a
number of different computers. This section will make a lot more
sense to you if you play through Tutorial 1 first.
THE BASICS
Here are a few basic points that should clarify your place in the
SimCity 2000 universe and prepare you for the rest of the Reference
section.
WHERE ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
In SimCity 2000 you are the planner and mayor of an unlimited number of
cities. These cities can be as small as you want or as large as you can
make them.
Your cities don't live in a vacuum. Their growth and decline are
affected by surrounding cities. These surrounding cities are both
a market for selling your manufactured goods and competitors,
vying for population and businesses.
In your role as mayor, you are directly responsible for:
Planning - zoning, long- and short-range strategies
City infrastructure - water, power, transportation
Government services - fire, police, hospitals, prisons
Education - schools, colleges, libraries, museums
Recreation and open spaces - parks, zoos, stadiums, marinas
City budget and taxes
Major and minor land manipulation
The health, wealth and happiness of the Sims that live in your city
You are not directly responsible for building houses, stores, factories
or other buildings (the Sims take care of them).
Page 46 SimCity 2000 - Reference
SCENARIOS AND CITIES
There are a number of scenarios built into to SimCity 2000. Each
scenario provides you with different challenges at different levels
of difficulty.
Each scenario has a "win" condition. If you meet this condition within
a specific time, you'll receive the key to the city and be allowed to
continue your job as mayor. If you don't meet the condition, you'll be
run out of town - until you're ready to try again.
When you start your own city, there are no time limits to beat and
no conditions to meet. There is no winning or losing. You are the
judge, passing judgment upon yourself. The only two criteria
in this judgment are your own enjoyment and the quality of life of
your Sims.
SIMCITY 2000 ON DIFFERENT COMPUTERS
Each computer platform has its own rules and conventions for
terminology, menu use, keyboard use, mouse use, file loading and
saving, and windowing. We have kept SimCity 2000 as consistent
from computer to computer as we could while staying true to each
computer's interface. In those few places where things differ
greatly from computer to computer, you will be referred to the
machine-specific Addendum.
The graphics for this manual were taken from the Macintosh
version of SimCity 2000. If there are any differences between the
graphics in the manual and the graphics on your screen, see the
machine-specific Addendum.
Page 47 SimCity 2000 - Reference
MOUSE AND KEYBOARD CONVENTIONS
In general, all instructions that refer to clicking, doubleclicking or
clicking and dragging refer to the left mouse button (if you have more
than one).
Things that are done on the Mac by holding down the Option key while
clicking, are done on DOS- and Windows-based computers by holding down
the Control key and clicking.
GETTING HELP
Help is available in most places in SimCity 2000. lf you see a button
with a question mark on it, click on it for help.
If you have a mouse with more than one button, clicking with the
right button on any button or icon will invoke a help message
explaining that button or icon. If you have a mouse with one
button, hold down either Shift key on your keyboard and click on any
button or icon for help.
Terrain in SimCity 2000 has 32 levels of altitude, with mountains,
valleys, lakes, rivers, streams, and waterfalls. You can customize
and modify the landform, both at the beginning of a game and during
actual city-building.
When you start a brand-new city with the Edit New Map command from the
File menu, you can mold and shape the terrain for your city as much as
you want, without any charge. Once you start playing a game and begin
building a city, it will cost you to modify the terrain.
The land is divided up into "tiles." A tile is the smallest piece of
land that can be raised, lowered or covered with water. It is
approximately 200 by 200 feet square, or about one acre.
The total city limits are equivalent to approximately 5 miles by 5
miles square. Buildings, objects, roads, etc., are also divided up into
tiles. One section of road is one tile. Some of the larger buildings are
made of many tiles.
Page 48 SimCity 2000 - Reference
The entire city limits is yours for city expansion, for parks and
open spaces, or to leave wild. A city in SimCity 2000 can be tiny,
or fill the entire rectangular city limits.
You can build multiple separate communities or small cities but the
simulation will treat them as one city. All the statistics and
information in the Graphs, Population, industry and other windows
collectively covers everything within the entire city limits.
THE CITY WINDOW AND THE REST OF 'EM
The City window is your main view of your city. It is always open
as long as SimCity 2000 is running. The game is easiest to control
with the City window as large as possible, but you can resize it on
some computers.
Most of the other, smaller windows, such as the Map and Population
windows, open either by selecting them in the Windows menu, or by
clicking on their button on the toolbar.
If you just want to take a quick look at one of the smaller windows
(momentary view), click and hold on their buttons in the toolbar.
The window will be visible until you release the mouse button. If,
while holding down the button, you drag the window away from the
toolbar then release the mouse button, then the window will remain
on the screen until you close it (tear-off view).
There are two oter important points to remember about the small
windows:
1. Some of them have extra buttons or controls that appear in tear-off,
but not in momentary view.
2. As long as small windows are open, they will remain on top of the
City window. When you click on the City window to modify the city,
it will not cover the small windows - place them carefully so they
don't block your access to the City window scroll bars.
Page 49 SimCity 2000 - Reference
MENUS
These are all the menus and menu items in SimCity 2000. There
may be a few slight differences on different computers.
FILE MENU
This menu has the commands for file management, starting new games and
scenarios and quitting SimCity 2000.
ABOUT SIMClTY 2000
Brings up exciting and thrilling information about the game and its
makers. If your computer has a special menu, like the Macintosh "Apple"
menu, this item will be there and not in the File menu.
LOAD CITY
Opens a file-loading dialog box allowing you to load in and play a
previously saved SimCity 2000 city. This command can also be used to
import a city from SimCity or SimCity Classic.
NEW CITY
First asks if you want to save your existing city, then generates a
new, empty terrain, prompts you for the city's name and game level, then
begins the game.
EDIT NEW MAP
First asks you if you want to save your existing city, then removes
all buildings and infrastructure and delivers the bare terrain into
Terrain-Editing mode. In Terrain-Editing mode, you have access
to tools to customize and/or regenerate the terrain to your heart's
content - without being charged.
LOAD SCENARIO
Opens a dialog box that allows you to view all the different scenarios,
then select one.
SAVE CITY
Saves the current city to disk under the same name and in the same place
where it was last saved. If it hasn't been saved the Save City As...
dialog box will open, allowing you to rename the city and choose the
destination disk and directory or folder.
Page 50 SimCity 2000 - Reference
SAVE CITY AS...
Opens a dialog box that allows you to name/rename a city and choose the
disk and directory or folder where you want to save it.
QUIT
Rips SimCity from your computer's memory and makes it go away until you're
ready to resume your mayoral responsibilities. It will first ask if you
want to save your existing city.
SPEED MENU
This menu has the commands for setting the simulation to different speeds,
including pause. The currently set speed will be marked by a check mark.
Actual speeds will vary, depending on your computer, its microprocessor
and its clock speed.
PAUSE
Stops time in the simulation.
TURTLE
Sets the simulation to run slower than molasses on a cold day.
LLAMA
Sets the simulation to run at a medium speed.
CHEETAH
Sets the simulation to run as fast as your computer will go.
OPTIONS MENU
This menu controls a number of simulation and sound options so you can
tailor the game to your style of play. Options that are active have a
check mark next to them.
AUTO-BUDGET
When selected, Auto-Budget stops the Budget window from opening at the
end of each year, and automatically repeats the previous budget.
Page 51 SimCity 2000 - Reference
AUTO-GOTO
When active, Auto-Goto automatically centers the City window over an
important occurrence, such as a disaster. When inactive you will still
receive messages to notify you of important goings-on on in your city.
SOUND EFFECTS
Toggles sound effects on and off. The audio quality of the sound effects
will vary greatly depending on the sound capabilities of your computer.
MUSIC
Toggles the musical soundtrack on and off. The audio quality of the music
will vary greatly depending on the sound capabilities of your computer.
DISASTERS MENU
This menu lets you activate various disasters, or disable them entirely.
For more information on disasters, see Dealing with Disasters in the
Strategies section below.
FIRE
Causes a fire to break out somewhere within the city limits.
FLOOD
Causes a wave of raised water to come in off the coast or down a river,
washing away anything that isn't tied down.
AIR CRASH
Causes an airplane to crash somewhere within the city limits.
TORNADO
Sets a tornado loose to wreak havoc across the city limits.
EARTHQUAKE
Sets the earth to quakin' and the ground to shakin'.
MONSTER
Releases the terror of the year 2000.
Page 52 SimCity 2000 - Reference
NO DISASTERS
Prevents disasters from occurring. No Disasters will not prevent the
"official" scenario disasters, or stop disasters already in progress.
No Disasters also prevents the City Council from voting in ordinances
without your approval.
Note:All power plants have a 50-year life span, and then they blow
up. They don 't cause fires or spread radiation - they just stop
working and collapse. Watch your newspapers for warnings that power
plants are getting old. If you have No Disasters active, when power
plants reach the end of their lives, they are automatically rebuilt
and you are automatically charged. If you don't have enough cash in
your city funds to pay for the power plant replacement, it goes boom.
WINDOWS MENU
This menu lets you access the various windows in SimCity 2000.
MAP
Opens the Map window for various displays of your entire city.
BUDGET
Opens the window for fiddling with your city's finances.
ORDINANCES
Opens the Ordinance window for setting and inspecting various bonds,
bills and ordinances.
POPULATION
Opens the Population window to see a demographic breakdown of the
Sims in your city.
INDUSTRY
Opens the Industry window to see the different types of industries
currently operating in your city, and to set individual tax rates for
different industries.
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GRAPHS
Opens the Graphs window to see graphical displays of city data and
statistics over time.
NEIGHBORS
Opens the Neighbors window to see how you compare with your
surrounding neighbor cities.
NEWSPAPER MENU
This menu lets you set your newspaper delivery rate and read various
local papers. Even with both delivery options below turned off,
newspapers announcing disasters will be delivered.
SUBSCRIPTION
When active, a newspaper will be delivered (popped up on the screen)
twice a year.
EXTRA!!!
When active, only newspapers that report important occurrences -
inventions and major steps in city growth - will be delivered
THE NEWSPAPERS
Opens and/or activates the various local newspapers. There will
be from none (at the start of a city) to six (in a very large city)
different local newspapers. The newspaper that is marked with a
circle to the left of its name is the paper that will be delivered.
Opening a newspaper manually changes it to the one that will be
delivered.
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WINDOWS
This section describes in detail each of the windows in SimCity 2000.
CITY WINDOW
IN GENERAL
The City window is your main work area for molding, shaping and growing
your city and the land under it. It is always open while SimCity2000 is
running (on most computers).
At the top of the window is the Title bar, containing the simulation
date, the name of the city and your current funds. On the right end
of the Title bar is some sort of box or button (depending on your
computer) for quickly resizing the window.
On the Macintosh and on DOS-based computers, it is the Zoom box,
which toggles the window between full-screen size and the last
previously set window size.
On a Windows-based computer, there will be two buttons. The Maximize
button toggles the window between full-screen size and the last
previously set window size. The Minimize button shrinks the window
to an icon.
You can resize the City window by clicking and dragging the Resize box.
The Scroll Bars and scroll Arrows let you move the city around in the
City window.
The toolbar provides all the tools you'll need to zone, build and run
your city. It appears differently, depending on the mode you are in.
And speaking of modes...
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MODES
The City window has three modes: City-Building, Terrain-Editing, and
Map.
City-Building is the main, most-used mode. It lets you build and grow
your city. You can also edit the terrain, but there are physical and
financial limitations.
In Terrain-Editing mode, you can make all the changes and modifications
you could ever desire to the new, empty landscape without being charged.
Once you leave Terrain-Editing mode and enter City-Building mode to start
your city, you can never return that same landscape to Terrain-Editing
mode.
Map mode turns the entire City window into a giant, scalable display that
mirrors the information in the Map window. The City window's Map mode is
toggled on and off from the Map window.
THE VlEW
The view in the City window is an isometric, simulated 3-D landscape. It
can be viewed in three different sizes, allowing you to see more or less
of your city at once, at various levels of detail.
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THE LANDSCAPE
Each time you start a new city in SimCity 2000, a new landscape is
generated. You can regenerate the landscape as many times as you like.
You can modify the land scape as much as you like.
When the City window is in terrain-editing mode, you can make changes to
the land at no cost to the city. You can raise or level mountains, dig
streams, raise or lower the sea level, and place individual trees or
forests.
Once the City window is in city-building mode, you can still make changes
to the landscape, but you'll have to pay for the work out of the city's
funds.
There are three basic elements to the landscape: land, water and trees.
The land in SimCity 2000 is divided into small squares, called tiles.
Tiles can be raised or lowered to provide 32 levels of altitude. Land
that is below sea level will be under water.
Water in SimCity 2000 flows downhill, as all good water should. When you
generate a new landscape in terrain-editing mode, you can choose whether
or not you want a river running through the landscape, and you can, if
you want, have one edge of your city be a coastline. Your landscape can
also have streams, ponds and lakes. And you can raise or lower sea level,
to make your city a desert or a chain of islands.
Trees in SimCity 2000, as in the real world, are big plants that provide
shade and homes for wildlife. They add an aesthetic touch to cities, and
improve land value.
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THE CITY TOOLBAR
When the City window is in city-building mode, it has the City toolbar -
your main control center for building, modifying and running your city.
It can be moved around your screen by clicking and dragging the bar at
the top.
For ease of use, especially for newcomers to SimCity 2000, you can simply
click on any button, then use the default setting of the tool. When you're
ready for more power, more features and more flexibility, you can make
use of the submenus that are hidden below many of the buttons. If you
click and hold on a button with a submenu, the submenu will pop up,
allowing you to access many more choices and options. The submenus, and
their available options, change over the years, reflecting the available
technology
The City toolbar contains tools that let you:
Modify the landscape
Zoom in and out for close-up and far-out views
Center on different areas of the City window
Rotate the city in the City window
Zone residential, commercial and industrial areas
Build the city infrastructure
Add special-purpos buildings
Closely inspect city areas
Add signs or markers
Turn on and off the display of various objects and layers in the
City window
Open various information windows
It also has a Demand Indicator for various zones.
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Any time you need a reminder of what each of the buttons does,
hold down either Shift key and click on a button. A friendly help
message will pop up and set you straight.
These are the tools in the City toolbar:
BULLDOZER
The bulldozer is a multi-function multi-level tool, with a default
setting and a submenu to choose between four additional actions.
Click and hold in the Bulldozer button to open the submenu. When
bulldozer is active, the cursor will appear as a bulldozer.
To operate the bulldozer, choose the function you want, then
click or click and drag where you want to do your 'dozin'.
Demolish/Clear (the default) destroys and removes trees, rubble,
and man-made (Sim-made?) objects without affecting the terrain
or zoning status. Just click on anything to destroy it.
Cost: $1 per tile
Level Terrain lets you choose an altitude level and slice off hills
and mountains at your chosen height. Level also clears, removing all
trees, roads, power lines and buildings.
Cost: $25 per tile per altitude change.
Raise Terrain lets you make mountains out of molehills.
Cost: $25 per til per altitude change.
Lower Terrain lets you lower mountains and dig canyons. (If you
lower the terrain below sea level, it will fill with water.)
Cost: $25 per til per altitude change.
De-zone lets you change undeveloped residential, commercial or
industrial zones to unzoned land.
Cost: $1 per tile
Raising, lowering and leveling terrain can be very expensive, so do
sparingly. If you want to make a lot of changes to the landscape,
do it in terrain-editing mode before you start your city, or save up
a lot of cash.
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LANDSCAPE TOOL
The Landscape tool lets you add trees and water to your city. When
active, the cursor will appear as a tree. Clicking and holding on the
button opens a submenu that allows you to choose between
trees and water.
Tree tool lets you place trees onto the landscape. Each click will
place either one or two trees. You can click repeatedly on a single tile
to create dense thickets, and click and drag across many tiles to
create forests.
Cost: $3 per click.
The Water tool lets you create lakes and streams by clicking where you
want your water to appear.
Cost: $100 per tile.
EMERGENCY
The Emergency tool lets you dispatch police and/or fire departments
to the scene of a disaster. This tool will be ghosted and unavailable
unless a disaster is occurring. When active, the cursor will appear
as an emergency beacon. Clicking and holding on the tool opens a submenu
that allows you to choose between dispatching police and fire.
Once you activate the tool and choose the department you want
to dispatch, click on the area of the city where you want your city's
finest to go. An icon representing either your dispatched fire or
police troops will be placed where you click. You can place one
icon for each station you have. After you have placed then all,
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Clicking again will move the first one you placed to the last place
clicked, enabling you to block, surround and contain a fire or riot.
There is no cost for dispatching police or firesims.
POWER
Power is a multi-use tool. Clicking and holding on it opens a
submenu that allows you to choose between two functions: laying
power lines and placing power plants. When this tool is active, the
cursor appears as a lightning bolt.
Power Lines (the default setting) lets you "paint" your power lines
onto the land by clicking in the place where you want the line to
start, dragging the cursor to the place where you want the line to
stop, and releasing the mouse button. If you start laying a power
line and change your mind, you can cancel the operation by holding
down the Shift key before you release the mouse button.
Power lines blink warning lights to let you know if they're not
hooked to a power source. Power lines can only be run in straight
lines and 90-degree angles. They can cross roads or rails but not on
curved sections or straight sections that run at 45 degrees. Laying
power lines across water is a little more expensive. If you lay power
lines across water, a dialog box will open and let you know how much it
will cost.
$2 per tile across land, $10 per tile across water.
Power Plant... lets you choose power sources for your city. Depending
on the year and the technology level of your city, there may be from
three to nine types of power plants available. Click on the power source
you want, then click on the terrain where you want it to go. There is
an info button for each power plant that tells you the advantages,
disadvantages and costs for each type of power plant.
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WATER SYSTEM
The Water System tool is a multi-use tool. Clicking and holding on
it opens a submenu that allows you to choose between five different
water-related functions: laying water pipes, installing water pumps,
buying storage tanks, and building treatment and desalinization plants.
When this tool is active, the cursor appears as a water faucet.
Depending on the year and technology level I your city, you may only
have access to pumps and water towers. As time passes and inventions
are invented, the other options become availible. A city can exist
without a water system, but population density will be limited. When
the Sims build, they install the underground water pipes for their
buildings. You're only responsibility is to hook the buildings up to
the water system.
Pipes (the default setting) lets you "paint" your water pipes onto the
landscape by clicking in the place where you want the pipes to stop, and
releasing the mouse button. If you start laying a water pipe and change
your mind, you can cancel the operation by holding down the Shift key
before you release the mouse button. Water pipes are always laid
underground. Activating Pipes automatically turns on the underground
view so you can see your pipes.
Cost: $3 per tile.
Water Pumps when placed on land act as wells, a good source of water.
water. Water pumps need to be hooked to the power grid to function.
When pumps are placed right next to a lake or river, they supply twice
as much water as a well. A pump placed next to a coastline (salt water)
only produces as much water as a well.
Cost: $100 per pump.
Water Towers lets you store precious water so you won't have summer
shortages in arid climates.
Cost: $250 per tower.
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Treatment plants clean and recycle your city's water, lessening
seaonal shortages.
Cost: $500 per treatment plant.
Desalinization plants remove the salt from sea water. They are expensive,
but sometimes necessary in beach communities with little or no other
source of water. Desalinization plants, which need power to function,
have internal pumps, and don't require extra water pumps. They produce
approximately twice as much as a water pump next to a river.
Cost: $1,000 per desalinization plant.
REWARDS
This button is like a surprise package. It will be ghosted and
unavailable until you deserve a reward. Rewards are based on your city's
population, and consist of special buildings and monuts to your mayoral
prowess. When this tool is active, the cursor appears as a mayor tipping
his hat.
The rewards you can strive to gain are... no, I won't tell you. You'll
just have to wait and see for yourself.
ROADS
Roads is a multi-use tool. Clicking and holding on it opens a submenu that
allows you to choose between five different road-related functions:
placing roads and highways, and building tunnels, onramps and bus depots.
When this tool is active, the cursor appears a a piece of paved road.
Depending on the year and technology level of your city, you may only have
access to roads and tunnels. As time passes, the other options become
available.
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Road (the default setting) lets you "paint" your roads onto the land by
clicking in the place where you want the road to start, dragging the
cursor to the place you want the road to stop, and releasing the mouse
button. If you start laying a road and change your mind, you can cancel
the operation by holding down the Shift key before you release the mouse
button.
Roads can run in straight lines, 90-degree angles and 45-degree angles.
When roads cross, they form an intersection. If you lay a road across
water and it is possible to build a bridge, you will be told how much it
will cost. If a bridge can't be built, you will be notified.
Cost: $10 per road tile.
Highways are high-capacity roads that are raised above the ground on
pylons. They can handle four times as many cars as regular roads. They
are placed the same way as roads. You will need to place onramps to allow
cars to get on and off highways. When highways cross, they form
cloverleafs. if you lay a highway across water and it is possible to
build a bridge, you will be told how much it will cost. If a bridge can't
be built, you will be notified.
Cost: $100 per highway section (4 tiles).
Tunnel lets you make pathways for roads through hills and mountains.
Tunnels cannot curve, and you cannot cross tunnels even at different
altitudes. To place a tunnel, click on the tile that you want as your
entrance point. The entrance point must be a sloped tile. Your highway
engineers won't try to build a tunnel where it's impossible to build, or
where it is unsafe, due to unstable terrain. If you pick a good spot, an
engineer's report will tell you how much the tunnel will cost and ask if
you want to go ahead or not.
Cost: $150 per tile of tunnel.
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Onramps allow cars and buses to travel back and forth between roads
and highways. Place them as junctions between roads and highways.
For best results, put onramps on both sides of a highway
Cost: $25 per tile.
Bus Depots allow commuters to take the bus to work and help alleviate
traffic. They must be placed on level ground. You will need at least
two bus depots since buses travel between them. Passengers can get on
and off between depots.
Cost: $250 per depot.
RAILS
Rails is a multi-use tool. Clicking and holding on it opens a submenu
that allows you to choose between four different rail-related
functions: placing rails, placing subways (underground rails), building
rail depots and building subway stations. When this tool is active, the
cursor appears as a length of track.
Depending on the year and technology level of your city, you may only
have access to rails and rail depots. As time passes, the other options
become available.
Rail (the default setting) lets you "paint" your tracks onto the land
by clicking in the place where you want the rail to start, dragging
the cursor to the place where you want it to stop, and releasing the
mouse button. If you start laying a rail and change your mind, you
can cancel the operation by holding down the Shift key before you
release the mouse button. Rails are useless without rail depots.
Cost: $25 per tile.
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Subways are an underground rail system. They are places in the
same way are rails, but while looking at the underground view.
Subways are useless without subway stations.
Cost: $100 per tile.
Rail Depots allow commuters to get on and off trains. Without depots,
rails are useless. They must be placed on level ground and adjacent to
tracks.
Cost: $500 per depot.
Subway Stations allow passengers access to access subway trains. Subway
trains only stop at stations. They must lie placed on level ground,
adjacent to a subway line. It's usually easiest to place subway stations
while looking at the underground level.
Cost: $250 per depot.
Subway to Rail Junctions allow you to hook up your subways and
above-ground rails for a continuous transit system. They must be placed
adjacent to a rail tile.
Cost $250 per tile.
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PORTS
Ports is a dual-purpose tool that allows you to place both airports
and seaports. Click and hold on the Ports button to open a menu
choose the type of port you want to place. When this tool is
active, the cursor will appear as an anchor and radar dish.
Ports are placed by clicking and dragging to form a square or rectangle,
then releasing the mouse button. If you start placing a port and change
your mind, you can cancel the operation by holding down the Shift key
before you release the mouse button. Ports must be powered be before they
will develop. Seaports must be on a shoreline to be of any use.
Cost: $150 per seaport tile, $250 per airport tile.
RESIDENTIAL ZONES
The Residential Zone tool lets you, as mayor, designate areas of
your city as places where people live. Clicking and holding on
Residential Zones opens a submenu that lets you choose whether the
zones will be low-density (light) or high-density (dense). When
this tool is active, the cursor will appear as a little house.
To zone an area as residential, click and hold on the terrain, drag
the mouse, creating a rectangle, then release the mouse button. If
you start laying down a zone line and change your mind, you can
cancel the operation by holding down the Shift key before you release
the mouse button. If you zone residential over an area that includes
some tiles that are already the same density residential, you will not
be chaged for zoning those tiles. If you zone over an undeveloped area
that is already commercial industrial or a different density residential,
it will be rezoned and you will e charged. You cannot rezone an area that
is already developed.
Cost: Light Residential $5 per tile, Dense Residential $10 per tile.
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COMMERCIAL ZONES
The Commercial Zone tool lets you, as mayor, designate areas of your
city as places where people build stores, offices and other places
of commerce. Clicking and holding on Commercial Zones opens a submenu
that lets you choose whether the zones will be low-density (light) or
high-density (dense). When this tool is active, the cursor will
appear as a little office building.
To zone an area as commercial, click and hold on the terrain, then
drag the mouse, creating a rectangle, then release the mouse
button. If you start laying down a zone line and change your mind
you can cancel the operation by holding down the Shift key before
you release the mouse button. If you zone commercial over area that
includes some tiles that are already the same density commercial, you
will not be charged for rezoning those tiles. If you zone commercial
over an undeveloped area that is already residential, industrial or a
different density commercial, it will be rezoned and you will be
charged. You cannot rezone an area that is already developed.
Cost: Light Commercial $5 per tile, Dense Commercial $10 per
INDUSTRIAL ZONES
The Industrial Zone tool lets you, as mayor, designate areas of your
city as places where people build factories. Clicking and holding on
Industrial Zones opens a submenu that lets you choose whether the
zones will be low-density (light) or high-density (dense). When this
tool is active, the cursor will appear as a little factory.
To zone an area as industrial, click and hold on the terrain, then
drag the mouse, creating a rectangle, then release the mouse button.
If you start placing a zone and change your mind, you can cancel the
operation by holding down the Shift key before you release the mouse
button. If you zone industrial over an area that includes some tiles
that are already the same density industrial, you will not be charged
for rezoning those tiles. If you zone industrial over an undeveloped
area that is already commercial, residential or a different density
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industrial, it will be rezoned and you will be charged. You cannot rezone
an area that is already developed.
Light Industrial $5 per tile, Dense Industrial $10 per tile.
EDUCATION
Education is a multi-function tool that lets you provide your citizens
with everything they need to improve their minds. Click and hold on the
Education button to open a submenu with the following smart choices:
School, College, Library and Museum. When this tool is active, the cursor
will appear as a mortarboard.
Cost: $250 per school, $1,000 per college, $500 per library, $1,000 per
museum.
CITY SERVICES
City Services is a multi-function tool that lets you provide your city
with those nesessities of life that we all wish weren't necessary. Click
and hold on the City Services button to open a submenu with the following
unpleasant choices: Police, Fire Station, Hospital, and Prison. When this
tool is active, the cursor will appear as a badge.
$500 per police station, $500 per fire station, $500 per hospital,
$3,000 per prison.
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RECREATION
Recreation is a multi-function tool that lets you provide your
citizens with places to have a little rest, relaxation and plain old
fun. Click and hold on the Recreation button to open a submenu
with the following exciting choices: Small Park, Big Park, Zoo,
Stadium, Marina. When this tool is active, the cursor will appear
as a bunch of balloons!
Cost: $20 per small park, $150 per big park, $3,000 per zoo, $5,000
per stadium, $1,000 per marina.
SIGNS
The Sign tool lets you label streets, buildings and points of interest
in your city. When this tool is active, the cursor will appear as a
little sign. To make a sign, activate the Sign tool and click on the
place where you want it to appear. When the dialog box opens, type in
the words you want the sign to say, then click DONE. There is no cost
for placing signs.
The display of your signs can be turned on and off with the Display
Signs button.
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QUERY
Query is a tool for closely inspecting different parts of your city.
When this tool is active, the cursor appears as a magnifying glass.
To get information, activate the tool, then click anywhere. A dialog
box will open, and display fascinating facts about the spot
where you clicked.
Once you have viewed the dialog box, you can usually just click anywhere
to make it go away. Sometimes the Query dialog box allows you to rename
buildings (like stadiums). In these cases, you will have to click on the
DONE button to close the box. Click on RENAME if you want to change the
name of the queried building. There is no cost to use the Query tool.
There is a keyboard shortcut for the Query tool - just hold down the Shift
key and click anywhere in the terrain.
ROTATE COUNTER-CLOCKWISE
Click on this button to rotate the entire city limits 90 degrees
counter-clockwise. There is no cost for rotating.
ROTATE CLOCKWISE
Click on this button to rotate the entire city limits 90 degrees
clockwise. There is no cost for rotating.
ZOOM OUT
Click here to zoom out for a smaller, fartherout view in the City window.
There are three zoom levels. If you are currently zoomed all the way out,
this button will be ghosted and unavailable. There is no cost for zooming.
ZOOM IN
Click here to zoom in for an enlarged, closer view in the City window.
There are three zoom levels. If you are currently zoomed all the way in,
this button will be ghosted and unavailable. There Is no cost for zooming.
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CENTER
The Center tool lets you pick a place in your city to be centered in
the City window. Just activate the tool and click anywhere in the city.
When Center is active, the cursor will appear as a target sight. There is
a keyboard shortcut for activating the center tool - hold down the Option
key if you have one, or the Control key if you don't. There is no cost
for centering.
MAP WINDOW BUTTON
The Map Window button can open the Map window in two modes: momentary
and stationary. Click and hold the button to momentarily pop pop up a
small map of the entire city limits. A rectangle somewhere in the map
will outline the area of the city that is visible in the City window.
The map will disappear when you release the button.
If you click the button and drag it away from the toolbar, the Map window
will open (and stay there), complete with its own toolbar for different
map displays. Complete information on the Map window can be found later
in this section of the manual.
GRAPHS WINDOW BUTTON
The Graphs Window button can open the Graphs window in two modes:
momentary and stationary. Click and hold the button to momentarily pop
up a graph of city data. The graph will dissappear when you release the
button.
If you click the button and drag it away from the toolbar, the
Graphs window will open (and stay there), complete with it's own
toolbar for different graph displays. Complete information on the
Graphs window can be found later in this section of the manual.
POPULATION WINDOW BUTTON
The Population Window button can open the Population window in two modes:
momentary and stationary. Click and hold the button to momentarily pop
up a population graph. The graph will disappear when you release the
button.
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If you click the button and drag it away from the toolbar, the population
window will open (and stay there), complete with three buttons for
different population displays. Complete information the Population window
can be found later in this section of the manual.
CITY INDUSTRY WINDOW BUTTON
The City Industry Window button can open the City Industry window in two
modes: momentary and stationary. Click and hold the button to momentarily
pop up an industry graph. The graph will disappear when you release the
button.
If you click the button and drag it away from the toolbar, the City
Industry window will open (and stay there), complete with three buttons
for different industrial displays. Complete information on the City
Industry window can be found later in this section of the manual.
NEIGHBORS WINDOW BUTTON
The neighbors window button can open the Neighbors window in two modes:
momentary and stationary. Click and hold the button to momentarily pop up
a display of your city and its neighboring cities, with their individual
and collective populations. The display will disappear when you release
the button.
If you click the button and drag it away from the toolbar, the Neighbors
window will open (and stay there). Complete information on the Neighbors
window can be found later in this section of the manual.
BUDGET WINDOW BUTTON
Click here to open the Budget window. (There is no momentary view.)
Complete information on the Budget window can be found later in this
section of the manual.
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SHOW BUILDINGS
Click here to toggle on and off the display of all buildings in the City
window. The buildings won't really go away - they'll just be invisible
until you turn them back on.
SHOW SIGNS
Click here to toggle on and off the display of all signs in the City
window. The signs will be invisible until you turn them back on.
SHOW INFRASTRUCTURE
Click here to toggle on and off the display of all miscellaneous city
infrastructure items in the City window (roads, rails, subway lines,
power lines, water pumps and subway stations).
SHOW ZONES
This button works differently depending on whether you're looking at the
normal or underground view. In the normal view, clicking here toggles on
and off the display of all buildings in zones. It doesn't affect city
owned buildings like police and fire stations, educational facilities,
depots or power plants, but does include ports and military bases. In
underground view, it toggles on and off a color display that lets you
know where your zones are without jumping back upstairs.
SHOW UNDERGROUND
Click here to toggle between the surface and the underground displays.
HELP
Click here for a friendly reminder that you can get help on each of
these buttons by holding down the Shift key and clicking on the button
in question.
DEMAND INDICATOR
The Demand Indicator gives you a constant readout of what of zones the
Sims in your city need. Depending on the size of your city, the indicator
can take up to a few minutes to respond to your changes, so be patient.
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THE TERRAIN TOOLBAR
When the City window is in terrainediting mode, it has the Terrain
toolbar - your control center for modifying and customizing landscapes.
It can be moved around your screen by clicking and dragging the bar at
the top. There is no charge for any terrain modifications in
terrain-editing mode. All the tools in the Terrain toolbar are explained
below.
COAST
The Coast button, when depressed, creates a coastline along one side of
the next landscape that is generated.
RIVER
The River button, when depressed, creates a river through the next
landscape that is generated.
MOUNTAIN, WATER AND TREE SLIDERS
These sliders let you adjust the amount of the surface of your city that
is covered by mountains, water and trees. Click and drag the slider bars
to the levels you want. The higher the sliders, the more mountains, water
or trees you get. The lower the sliders, the less you get.
MAKE
Click here to generate a new landscape based on the Coast button, the
River button and the three sliders.
RAISE TERRAIN
Click on the Raise Terrain button, then click or click and drag on the
terrain to raise the land. Clicking on water will eventually raise the
waterbed above sea level and turn it into dry land. When Raise Terrain
is active, the cursor appears as three upward-pointing arrows.
LOWER TERRAIN
Click on the Lower Terrain button, then click or click and drag on the
terrain to lower the land. Clicking on dry land will eventually lower it
below sea level and turn it into a lake or stream. When
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Lower Terrain is active, the cursor will appear as three downward-
pointing arrows.
STRETCH TERRAIN
The Stretch Terrain button lets you grab the land and stretch it up
or down. Just click and hold on the terrain, then drag it either up
or down. When Stretch Terrain is active, the cursor will appear as
an up-and-down-pointing arrow.
LEVEL TERRAIN
The Level Terrain button lets you pick an altitude and quickly
bring the land around it either up or down to match your chosen
level. Just click and hold at the altitude you want, then drag the
cursor around the area you want leveled. When Level Terrain is
active, the cursor will appear as a flat, four-way arrow.
RAISE SEA LEVEL
Click here to raise the sea level in the terrain by one tile.
LOWER SEA LEVEL
Click here to lower the sea level in the terrain by one tile.
PLACE WATER
The Place Water tool lets you create lakes and streams by clicking
where you want your water to appear. When this tool is active, the
cursor appears as a water droplet.
PLACE STREAM
The Place Stream tool lets you send streams flowing down slopes
into the valleys below. Click where you want the stream to begin.
When this tool is active, the cursor appears as a babbling brook.
PLACE TREE
The Place Tree tool lets you add trees to the landscape. When
active, the cursor will appear as a tree. Each click will place either
one or two trees. Click repeatedly on a single tile to create dense
thickets, and click and drag across many tiles to create forest
Hold down the Shift key while using Place Tree to remove trees.
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PLACE FOREST
The Place Forest tool works like Place Tree, except it places trees on a
number of tiles with each click. When active, the cursor will appear as a
tiny little forest. Hold down the Shift key while using Place Forest to
remove forests.
ZOOM OUT
Click here to zoom out for a smaller, farther-out view in the City window.
There are three zoom levels. If you are currently zoomed all the way out,
this button will be ghosted and unavailable.
ZOOM IN
Click here to zoom in for an enlarged, closer view in the City
window. There are three zoom levels. If you are currently zoomed
all the way in, this button will be ghosted and unavailable.
ROTATE COUNTER-CLOCKWISE
Click here to rotate the entire city limits 90 degrees counter-clockwise.
ROTATE CLOCKWISE
Click here to rotate the entire city limits 90 degrees clockwise.
CENTER
The Center tool lets you pick a place in your city to be centered in the
City window. Just activate the tool and click anywhere in the city. There
is a keyboard shortcut for activating the Center tool - hold down the
Option key if you have one, or the Control key if you don't. When Center
is active, the cursor appears as a target sight.
HELP
Click here for a friendly reminder that you can get help on each of these
buttons by holding down the Shift key and clicking on the button in
question.
DONE
Click here when you are done editing the terrain and are ready to
switch over to city-building mode.
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MAP WINDOW
IN GENERAL
The Map window shows your complete city limits at once with
vital information in a number of different map displays. It can be
opened by selecting Map from the Windows menu. It can also be
opened-in two ways-with the Map button on the City toolbar.
If you click and hold on the Map button, the map (just the map - no Title
bar or frame) will pop up, and then go away when you release the button.
If you click and drag the button, the full Map window will appear.
The Map window can be moved around the screen by clicking and dragging
the Title bar. It can be closed by clicking the Close box.
The Map window has two sizes. Click the Zoom box to toggle between the
two sizes. This may vary on different computers; check your machine-
specific Addendum.
All map displays include the terrain. Trees and forests are green, water
is blue and the land is different shades of brown-the higher the
altitude, the lighter the shade.
Somewhere in the map is a rectangle that outlines the area of the city
that currently shows in the City window. Clicking on the map moves the
rectangle to the place where you clicked, then redraws the City window
to show the rectangle's new contents.
THE MAP TOOLBAR
The Map toolbar has a number of buttons that let you see a number of
different map displays. The pop-up map, which has no toolbar, always shows
the last-selected display. Some of the buttons on the toolbar have submenus
for even more displays. In maps that display information in shades of grey,
the darker the grey, the higher, heavier or denser the item being mapped.
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CITY FORM
The City Form button controls two map displays. Click and hold on it to
open a submenu that lets you choose between displaying structures and
zones.
Structures shows buildings and city infrastructure, including roads,
rails, etc. Zones shows the areas that have been zoned. Residential zones
are shown green, commercial zones are blue and industrial zones are
yellow.
ROADS
The Roads button controls three map displays. Click and hold on it to
open a submenu that lets you choose between displaying roads, rails and
traffic density.
Roads and Rails show the transportation pathways in your city. Traffic
density shows the relative amount of traffic in different parts of the
city in shades of grey.
POWER GRID
The Power Grid button activates a display of the power grid in your city.
Powered zones are shown in yellow, zones that have lost power are shown
in red, and power lines are shown in white.
WATER SYSTEM
The Water System button activates a display of the water grid in your
city. Zones that are hooked to the water supply are shown in yellow,
zones that have no water are shown in red, and water pipes are shown in
white.
POPULATION
The Population button controls two map displays. Click and hold on it to
open a submenu that lets you choose between displaying population density
and the rate of population growth.
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Population Density shows the relative number of Sims in each part of your
city in shades of grey. Rate of Growth shows Where in the city the
population is increasing in shades of blue, and where it is decreasing in
shades of red. The darker the blue or red the more drastic the population
change.
CRIME
The Crime button controls three map displays. Click and hold on it to
open a submenu that lets you choose between displaying crime rate, police
power, and police department location.
Crime Rate shows the relative amount of crime in each area of your city
in shades of grey. Police Power shows the relative amount of police
coverage in different areas of the city, also in shades of grey. Police
Departments shows each of your stations as a white square.
POLLUTION
The Pollution button activates a display of the relative amounts of
pollution in your city. This is a reading of all types of pollution
combined, and is shown in shades of grey.
LAND VALUE
The Land Value button activates a display of the relative property values
in the city, shown in shades of grey.
CITY SERVICES
The City Services button controls four map displays. Click and hold on it
to open a submenu that lets you choose between displaying fire department
power, fire department location schools and colleges.
Fire Power shows the relative fire coverage of different parts of your
city in shades of grey. Fire Departments, Schools and Colleges show the
locations of these buildings as white squares.
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MAP MODE BUTFON
This button toggles the City window between its current mode and Map
mode. In Map mode the terrain in the City window displays the same
information as the Map window. You can return the City window to its
previous mode by either clicking the Map Mode button again or closing
the Map window.
BUDGET WINDOW
The Budget window reports and lets you adjust your city's budget. It
automatically opens every January, unless Auto-Budget (in the Options
menu) is on. It can also be opened manually by selecting Budget in the
Windows menu, or by clicking on the Budget window button in the City
toolbar.
The Budget window closes automatically all by itself after about two
minutes. The two-minute timer is reset whenever you click on the window.
You can close it any time you want by clicking on the Done button.
The upper-left corner of the Budget window displays your city's name, the
current year and month, and the timer.
Click the Help button for a friendly reminder that you can get help on
each area, item and button in this window by holding down the Shift key
and clicking.
THE NUMBERS
The Budget window has eight rows of figures that cover all the city's
revenues and expenses. Below those figures is a summary of the current
financial situation and an estimate of what your finances will be at the
end of the year.
Each revenue or expense has:
The name of the revenue or expense. Shift-click on the name to bring
up a helpful explanation of what it is and what it does.
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A percentage setting (in most cases) where you set either the tax
rate you are charging or the amount of funding you are allotting.
A year-to-date figure showing the up-to-the-moment amount
that you've spent or made.
An annual estimate of what you will have spent or made at the
end of the year at the current budget settings.
Detailed books showing a monthly breakdown of the revenue or expense.
In some cases the book dialog just shows information, but some of
the books also allow access to other, more detailed budgeting
functions.
An advisor who reports current status and/or gives suggestions about
what you should do.
Note: When the Budget window opens automatically at the
beginning of a new year, the Year-to-Date column
shows the total for the year that just ended and
the Annual Estimate column shows estimated costs
for the year that is just beginning.
Below is a detailed explanation of each budget item.
PROPERTY TAXES
Property taxes are your main source of cash for maintaining and
expanding your city. You can set the overall tax rate for all zones
by clicking on the up- and down-arrows. The minimum tax is 0%,
the maximum is 20%. Any taxes you set here will be equally
applied to all zones. You can independently set the tax rates for
residential, commercial and industrial zones in the Property
Taxes Books.
Clicking on the Books icon displays a detailed report of the year's
past and projected tax income. For each month, the following
information is given:
The residential zone tax rate and tax amount
The commercial zone tax rate and tax amount
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The industrial zone tax rate and tax amount
A running total of the taxes that will come due at the end of the
year
At the bottom of the dialog box, you can set individual tax
rates for the three types of zones. If you change the tax
rates here, the overall rate as shown in the Budget window
will display the average of the three rates.
Click on Done to close the Property Taxes Books.
CITY ORDINANCES
This line item is a summary of the costs and revenues of all combined
city ordinances. These range from education drives to sales taxes to
neighborhood watch to an annual carnival.
Usually, you, as mayor, must approve and establish these programs, but if
your city is doing very well, the City Council may take it upon itself to
enact some programs that benefit the city. These programs are viewed and
established in the Ordinance window, which can opened from the Budget
window by clicking on the Community Programs Book icon. The Ordinance
window will be described in detail below.
Click Done to return to the Budget window.
BOND PAYMENTS
This is the interest you pay on bond issues.
If you need cash above and beyond the money you make from property taxes,
you can issue municipal bonds, which is basically a loan from your
citizens. All bonds are issued for $10,000. The interest you pay on
outstanding bonds is prime rate plus 1%, plus an additional percentage
based on your city's current value and loan rating.
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Clicking on the Interest book icon opens a dialog box with detailed
information and buttons for extra financial transactions.
For each month of the year, the following information is given: (actual
amounts are shown in blue, projected amounts are shown in red.)
The bonds you have outstanding
The average interest rate you pay on the bonds
The monthly amount of interest you pay on the bonds
The accumulated total interest paid
Show Bonds displays:
Your city's current loan rating
The total number of bonds you have outstanding
The current interest rate the bank is paying on your account
The interest rate you will pay on a bond if you issue it now
The current value of your city (the infrastructure)
Loan ratings range from AAA to F. Your rating is based on your city value.
The higher your rating, the more bonds you can issue and the lower the
interest rate you pay on them.
Issue Bond opens a dialog that tells you the current interest rate for
bonds and asks you if you want to issue one. All bonds are $10,000. If
you need or want more than $10,000, then you can issue two bonds. If you
need or want less, too bad-take the $ 10,000 and keep what you don't
spend in the bank. If your loan rating or city value is too low, you
won't be allowed to issue any more bonds.
Repay Bond opens a dialog that tells you the interest rate on the oldest
outstanding bond, and asks if you want to repay it. Bonds are always
repaid from the oldest to the newest. During the life of the bond,
interest accrues monthly, and is paid out at the end of
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each year from your city funds. You will pay the interest every year until
you repay the bond, so once you're flush with cash, pay them off and get
out of debt.
Clicking on Done closes the book.
POLICE DEPARTMENT
This is the cost and funding level for police departments in your city.
You can set the percentage of funding for your departments by clicking on
the up- and down-arrows. In general, try to keep police funding as high
as possible to prevent rampant crime. Any funding you set will be equally
distributed to all police departments. Complete funding for a police
station is $100 per year.
Clicking on the Books icon displays a detailed report of the
year's past and projected police funding costs. For each
month, the following information is given:
The number of police stations in the city
The funding level you have set
The actual monthly cost to fund your stations
A running total of the yearly cost
There are no additional buttons or functions here, so just
click anywhere to close the books.
FIRE DEPARTMENT
This is the cost and funding level for fire departments in your city.
You can set the percentage of funding for your departments by clicking on
the up- and down-arrows. In general, try to keep fire funding as high as
possible for both preventing fires and responding to emergencies. Any
funding you set will be equally distributed to all fire departments. A
fully funded fire station costs $100 per year.
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Clicking on the Books icon displays a detailed report of the year's past
and projected fire funding costs. For each month, the following
information is given:
The number of fire stations in the city
The funding level you have set
The actual monthly cost to fund your stations
A running total of the yearly cost
There are no additional buttons or functions here, so just click anywhere
to close the books.
HEALTH & WELFARE
This is the cost and funding level for medical services in your city.
You can set the percentage of funding for your hospitals by clicking on
the up- and down-arrows. In general, try to keep funding as high as
possible to keep your Sims healthy. If you keep your funding at 100% for
several decades, the average life expectancy in your city will increase.
Any funding you set will be equally distributed to all hospitals.
Complete funding for a hospital is $75 per year.
Clicking on the Books icon displays a detailed report of the year's past
and projected medical funding costs. For each month, the following
information is given:
The number of hospitals in the city
The funding level you have set
The actual monthly cost to fund your hospitals
A running total of the yearly cost
There are no additional buttons or functions here, so just click anywhere
to close the books.
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EDUCATION
This is the cost and funding level for education in your city. This
funding supports both schools for the children and colleges for higher
learning. Without schools, education in your city will be entirely based
on verbal lore, and you will be unable to support high-technology
industries.
You can set the percentage of funding for education by clicking on the
up- and down-arrows. Any funding you set here will be equally distributed
to all schools and colleges. You can independently set the funding rates
for schools and colleges in the Education books. Complete funding for a
school costs $25 per year, and a college costs $100 per year.
Clicking on the Books icon displays a detailed report of the year's past
and projected education funding. For each month, the following
information is given:
The number of schools in the city
The funding level for schools
The monthly cost to fund schools
The number of colleges in the city
The funding level for colleges
The monthly cost to fund colleges
A running total of the yearly cost
At the bottom of the dialog box, you can set individual funding levels
for schools and colleges. If you change the funding levels here, the
overall level as shown in the Budget window will display the average of
school and college funding levels.
Click on Done to close the Education books.
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TRANSIT AUTHORITY
This is the cost and funding level for maintaining the transportation
system in your city. This funding maintains roads, rails, highways,
subways, bridges and tunnels. Without proper funding, your transit
systems will deteriorate and commuting and commerce in your city will
fall to pieces.
You can set the overall percentage of funding for your transportation
systems by clicking on the up- and down-arrows. Any funding you set here
will be equally distributed to all types of transportation. You can
independently set the funding rates for roads, rails, highways, subways,
bridges and tunnels in the Transit Authority Books. Complete transit
authority funding per year is: Roads $1 per 10 tiles; Rails $1 per 5
tiles; Highways $1 per section (4 tiles); Subways $2 per 5 tiles; Bridges
$2 per 5 tiles; Tunnels $2 per 5 tiles.
Clicking on the Books icon displays a detailed report of the year's past
and projected transit authority funding. For each month, the following
information is given:
The cost of road maintenance
The cost of rail maintenance
The cost of highway maintenance
The cost of subway maintenance
The cost of bridge maintenance
The cost of tunnel maintenance
A running total of all transit costs
At the bottom of the dialog box, you can set individual funding levels
for roads, rails, highways, subways, bridges and tunnels. If you change
the funding levels here, the overall level as shown in the Budget window
will display the average of all these funding levels.
Click on Done to close the Transit Authority Books.
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THE TOTALS
The bottom of the Budget window shows the totals for:
Year-to-Date Cash Flow
Estimated Annual Cash Flow
Current Funds
(Estimated) End of Year Funds
ORDINANCE WINDOW
The Ordinance window is where community programs and city ordinances are
established and inspected. This window can be opened either by selecting
Ordinance from the Windows menu or by clicking on the City Ordinance Book
icon in the Budget window.
There are five categories of programs and ordinances: finance, health and
safety, education, promotional and other. Click on the names of each
program or ordinance for an explanation of what they do as well as their
pros and cons.
To enact a program, click in the checkbox to the right of the program's
name. The cost or projected revenue will appear to the right of the
check. These amounts will vary with the size and development of your
city. The Estimated Annual Costs for all programs is provided in the
lower-right corner of the window.
Click Done to close the Ordinance window.
FINANCE PROGRAMS
1% Sales Tax will add cash to your coffers, but may also inhibit local
commerce.
1% Income Tax is a source of city revenues, but may discourage residential
growth, and even cause some tax-haters to move away.
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Legalized Gambling can provide extra money that can be put to good use,
but brings with it an increase in crime.
Parking Fines are a small, steady source of the green, but tend to hinder
commercial growth a little.
SAFETY & HEALTH PROGRAMS
A Volunteer Fire Department can be an economical way to fight fires in
small communities, but can't replace the professionals in a big city or
during a forest fire.
A Public Smoking Ban can increase the overall health level in your city
and eventually increase the average life expectancy, but will cost a
small fee to administer.
Free Clinics increase the overall health level in the city, but free
clinics aren't free - at least not to you.
Junior Sports increases the overall health level of the youth of your
city.
EDUCATION PROGRAMS
A Pro-Reading Campaign will increase the overall education level in your
city, preparing it for an influx of new, high-tech industries.
An Anti-Drug Campaign can help reduce crime.
Providing CPR Training as a service to your Sims increases the overall
level of health in your city.
Neighborhood Watch helps reduce crime in residential areas, but at a
price.
PROMOTIONAL PROGRAMS
Tourism Advertising may or may not pay off in bringing visitors
with their loose dollars to your fair city. If you do advertise for
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tourists, make sure you have the right attractions, like marinas,
stadiums, parks, zoos, rivers, etc.
Business Advertising can bring new industry into town, but make sure you
can support the businesses with ample water, power, transportation, and
enough residential and commercial space to hold the influx of new
citizens. And low taxes won't hurt, either.
City Beautification increases residential desirability and land value.
An Annual Carnival can increase tourist trade and local commerce, and
show your Sims a darn good time. The size, cost and benefit of the
carnival varies with your city size.
OTHER PROGRAMS
Energy Conservation establishes an educational drive to conserve
electricity by, among other things, adding insulation to homes and water
heaters. This program takes a few years to ramp up to full effect, but
will eventually allow your power plants to power up to 15% more buildings.
Declaring your city a Nuclear Free Zone costs nothing, but can make some
of your citizens feel safer, and may even attract new citizens to your
fair town. It's a small plus for residential desirability and a small
minus for industry. A Nuclear Free Zone will not stop the military from
building missile silos or basing nuclear weapons near your city if you
give them permission to build a base.
Homeless Shelters are expensive, but decrease the number of homeless
people and increase the number of residents, increasing the labor pool
for commerce and industry and marginally increasing land value.
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Pollution Controls slightly lower the amount of industrial pollution in
your city, but also make the city slightly less desirable to industry.
ESTIMATED ANNUAL COST
This section of the Ordinance window summarizes the cost or income from
each category, and gives both year-to-date and full-year estimated totals.
POPULATION WINDOW
The Population window displays graphs of statistics about your city's
population. It can be opened by selecting Population from the Windows
menu. It can also be opened - in two ways - with the Population button on
the City toolbar.
If you click and hold on the Population button, the population graph
(just the graph - no Title bar or frame) will pop up, and then go away
when you release the button. If you click and drag the button, the full
Population window will appear, complete with buttons for additional
displays.
The Population window can be moved around the screen by clicking and
dragging the Title bar. It can be closed by the Close box. The three
buttons on the bottom of the window let you choose between three
different population-related graphic displays:
Population shows the age distribution of your population, and
gives the percentage of the population that is your potential work
force.
Health shows the Life Expectancy (LE) of your population, by age,
and summarizes the LE of your work force.
Education shows the average education level of your citizens at
various ages, expressed in their Education Quotient (EQ). A high
EQ attracts high-tech industry to your city. EQ is affected by the
presence of schools, colleges, libraries and museums.
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INDUSTRIES WINDOW
The Industries window displays graphs of statistics about your city's
industry. lt can be opened by selecting Industry from the Windows menu.
It can also be opened - in two ways - with the Industry button on the
City toolbar.
If you click and hold on the Industry button, the industry graph (just
the graph - no Title bar or frame) will pop up, and then go away when you
release the button. if you click and drag the button, the full Industries
window will appear, complete with buttons for additional displays.
The Industries window can be moved around the screen clicking and
dragging the Title bar. It can be closed by clicking the Close box. The
three buttons on the bottom of the window let you choose between three
different industry-related graphic displays:
Ratios shows the distribution of various types of industries in
your city.
Tax Rates shows the rate at which various industries are taxed. This is
the property tax for industry as set in the Budget window. You can change
the rate for individual industries by dragging the blue bar to the right
(increase tax) or left (decrease tax). You may want to lower taxes on an
industry to encourage its growth within your city. You may want to
increase taxes to discourage an industry, or to fine it for causing
excess pollution.
Demand shows a graph of which industries' products are in demand
nationally.
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GRAPHS WINDOW
The Graphs window displays statistical graphs about many elements of your
city. It can be opened by selecting Graphs from the Windows menu. It can
also be opened - in two ways - with the Graphs button on the City toolbar.
If you click and hold on the Graphs button, the graph (just the graph -
no Title bar or frame) will pop up, and then go away when you release the
button. If you click and drag the button, the full Graphs window will
appear, complete with buttons for controlling the graphs displayed. The
Graphs window can be moved around the screen by clicking and dragging the
Title bar. It can be closed by clicking the Close box. The many buttons on
the bottom of the window let you toggle on and off various graphic
displays. Click on the 1 year, 10 year or 100 year button to set the time
scale for the graphs.
Each graph:
Is shown in a different color
Has a "marker" letter or symbol at its right end to help you
identify it
Is followed by a number that gives its current value
City Size, marked with an "S," is the total city population.
Residents, marked with an "R," shows the population that isn't part of the
job market, including children, elderly and spouses not employed outside
of the home.
Commerce, marked with a "C," shows the number of people employed in
commercial jobs.
Industry, marked with an "I," shows the number of people employed in
industrial jobs.
Traffic, marked with a "T," shows the average density of your road network
including buses, but not trains or subways. For this graph, traffic is
considered road congestion, not the total amount of travel.
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Pollution, marked with a "P," shows the growth or decline in the general
level of pollution in the city.
Value, marked with a "V," shows the fluctuations of the average land value
in the city by graphing the median home price.
Crime, marked with an "X," shows the changing crime rate in your city.
Power%, marked with a "p," shows the remaining capacity of your power
plant(s). When you get to 0 you'll start to have brownouts.
Water%, marked with a "w," shows the remaining capacity of your water
system. When you get to 0 you'll need more wells and pumps.
Health, marked with an "h," shows the growth or decline of the overall
health level of the citizens of your city.
Education, marked with an "e," shows the ever-changing average level of
education that the citizens of your city have reached.
Unemployment (Unemp.), marked with a "u,"shows the changing number of
people that are out of work in your city.
Gross National Product (GNP), marked with a "g," shows the total value of
goods and services produced by the residents of SimNation. This affects
the market for industrial goods produced in your city.
National Population (Nat'l Pop), marked with an "n," shows the
changes in SimNation's total population.
Fed rate, marked with "%," is the prime interest rate as set by
SimNation's Federal Reserve Board.
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NEIGHBORS WINDOW
The Neighbors window displays your city's population along with the
population of its neighboring cities and the total population of
SimNation. Use this window to compare your city with the cities that you
compete with for people and other resources, and to see just how big a
part of the whole nation you are (or aren't).
The neighbors window can be opened by selecting Neighbors from the Windows
menu. It can also be opened - in two ways - with the Neighbors button on
the City toolbar.
If you click and hold on the Neighbors button, the window, with no Title
bar or frame, will pop up, and then go away when you release the button.
If you click and drag the button, the full Neighbors window will appear,
and stay until you make it go away by clicking in the Close box.
You can move the window around on the screen by clicking and dragging the
Title bar.
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INSIDE THE SIMULATION
EASY MEDIUM AND HARD GAMES
Whenever you start a new city, you have the choice of three difficulty
levels, easy, medium and hard. The differences between the levels are:
The amount of money you start with. In an easy game, you start with
$20,000. A medium game gives you $10,000. In a hard game, you start
$10,000 in debt, with a bond issue to pay back when you can and interest
to pay every year.
The national financial model. Your city is located somewhere in SimNation.
The growth of your city depends on its surroundings - rich, financially
healthy neighbors are good customers for your industrial products and,
bring their money with them when they visit your tourist attractions. In
easy games, SimNation is in a boom cycle. In medium games, the national
economy is stable. For hard games, SimNation is in a recession.
The external industrial product demand. The easier the game, the more
demand for the products that your city's industries can produce.
The propensity for disaster. The harder the game, the more likely is it
that your city will be host to a disaster. Choosing No Disasters in the
Disasters menu prevents disasters at all difficulty levels.
THE EFFECT OF TIME
When you start a new city, you can choose between 1900, 1950,
2000 and 2050 for its founding year. And as time goes by, things
change, including:
The avallable technology. The technology levels in SimCity 2000
roughly follow reality, give or take a few years. (Except for the
future stuff, which is just guessing, so don't come to us in 2050 and
complain that we don't have fusion power yet.) Inventions that
give you access to new technology are announced in newspaper
headlines.
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The national financial model. Since the national and world population is
larger now than it was in 1900, there are more potential citizens and
more potential customers. External demand increases with time. It is
easier to build a bigger city in 2000 than it is in 1900.
The per capita (per zone) power consumption. In 1900 there aren't many
ways for the average citizen to squander energy. Then, starting around
1930, with the advent of muscle cars and electric-powered everything and
lots of electronic toys, power consumption zooms, peaking around 1970.
From 1970 to 2000, because of both conservation practices and more
efficient gadgetry, per capita power use sinks and levels off. This
energy effect in SimCity 2000 is subtle, but can be affected by passing
the energy conservation ordinance in the Ordinance window.
SCENARIOS
SimCity 2000 scenarios are special cities with problems, included both to
provide a number of gaming challenges and to help you better design your
own cities by seeing the mistakes and problems other cities have faced.
Scenario cities are all in separate files, and are read into the game
when you load them. Additional scenarios can be added later.
Each Scenario includes:
A pre-built city
A problem to solve or disaster to face
A goal to reach
A time limit to reach the goal
If you reach the goal within the time limit, you win the scenario, you're
given the key to the city, and you can continue to rule the city. If you
don't reach the goal within the time limit, you're kicked out of town.
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Typical goals include:
Reaching a population level
Reaching a financial goal
Rebuilding your industry
Reducing crime, pollution or traffic
ZONES
One of your primary functions as city planner is zoning-deciding what
types of buildings go where. Good zoning allows all city functions to be
accessed by all citizens, and sets the feel and flow of life in the city.
All zones in SimCity 2000 can be decreed to be either light-density (low
population) or dense (high population).
As you zone areas, the empty zones are shown in colors so you can easily
keep track of them. You can turn on and off the display of empty zones in
the underground view with the Show Zones button in the City toolbar.
There are three basic zones in SimCity 2000: residential, commercial and
industrial.
Residential zones, shown in green, are places where Sims live.
They include everything from luxury homes to slums.
Commercial zones, shown in blue, are the shops, stores and offices
of the city.
Industrial zones, shown in yellow, are the factories and
manufacturing centers of the city.
Zones can be almost any shape or size that can be made out of squares or
rectangles. If you zone over an area that is already zoned, you will be
charged for rezoning only if you change the type of zone or the density.
You won't be charged for zoning light residential over an existing light
residential area, but you will be charged if you zone dense residential
(or light or dense industrial or commercial) over light residential.
To remove zoning from an area without rezoning, use the D&zone
function of the Bulldozer tool in the City toolbar.
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Sims only build in zoned areas. You, as mayor, can build elements of the
city infrastructure (roads, rails, power lines, power plants, etc.), city
services (police and fire stations, etc.) and other public places (parks,
zoos, museums, libraries, schools, etc.) either in zoned or unzoned areas.
Zones grow and decay as Sims move in and out of individual buildings,
zones or the city. Depending on the times, the economy and your design
skills, booming, bustling zones may be abandoned, or empty zones may
suddenly become prime real estate and suddenly grow into a city center.
SPECIALIZED ZONES
Seaports and airports are actually special-purpose zones. They are placed
and sized like the basic (residential, commercial and industrial) zones
and they needn't be placed in existing zones. Military bases are also
specialized zones, but they are automatically placed by the simulation.
NON-ZONES
Roads, rails, stations, depots, and cityowned buildings like power plants
and police stations don't need to be placed in zones. In fact, when you
place them in a zone, they de-zone that land. For example, if you place a
road across a zone, then remove it with a bulldozer, the newly exposed
land will be unzoned. You can save a lot of zoning money by leaving spaces
between them for roads and rails and keeping your power plants, stations,
depots and departments out of zoned areas.
COMMERCE
Commerce is primarily trade within your city. It is slow in a small city,
since your internal market is small. Commerce remains a much less
important aspect of a city until it reaches a population of about 100,000,
where income from commerce catches up with industry. As your population
grows beyond that, your city may become primarily a commercial center. It
will become more and more independent, relying less and less on the
external market, but you'll always need at least some industry for a
well-balanced city.
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Commercial zones develop better and faster near the city center. Airports
provide a big boost to your city's commerce once your city reaches a
population of at least 20,000.
INDUSTRY
Industry is the manufacture of goods and services to sell. You can sell
both to the internal market (within your city) and the external market
(outside your city).
Industry is the lifeblood of a small city, and is much more important
than commerce while your population is small. When a city is small, there
aren't enough customers in it to support itself. You have to manufacture
things to sell to the external market and bring in more cash and people.
In fact, industry can be thought of as the reason to start a new city.
Industry is a primary source of employment in your city. It is also the
primary source of pollution. Industrial areas tend towards low land value
and high crime.
The Industry window is an important tool if you want to control the
direction of industry in your city. It gives you a readout of the current
distribution of industries in your city, as well as the external demand
for the products of the various industries. It also lets you set different
tax levels for different industries to encourage the ones you want and
discourage those you don't. You may want to discourage an industry that
causes a lot of pollution. You may want to encourage a small industry
that you think may be about to boom.
When you create an industrial zone, the Sims tend to build the industries
that are in highest demand. The demand for different industries is related
to the era. For example, in 1960, the electronics industry isn't nearly as
important, or in as much demand as in 1990.
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A forward-thinking mayor in 1930 just may believe that there is a big
future in that upstart, tiny electronics industry. Since it is in low
demand, the Sims won't invest in it - unless their mayor gives them a tax
incentive. So the mayor lowers the tax on the electronics industry and it
begins to grow. Thirty years later it begins to bloom, then boom. That's
when the mayor raises the taxes and makes a fortune for the city - while
securing lots of jobs in a high-tech, still-growing industry.
Another forward-thinking mayor whose city is almost entirely supported by
one industry, say automotive, may want to diversify before the market
crashes and the city becomes a ghost town.
And yet another forward-thinking mayor may realize that the new high-tech
industries won't thrive without an educated population, and will make sure
to provide schools, colleges and other educational institutions.
Many aspects of city design affect industry. The presence of hospitals can
give a boost to the petrochemical industry (pharmaceuticals). The presence
or lack of seaports can help or hinder heavy manufacturing like steel,
mining, and automotive. The presence or lack of a good highway and/or rail
system can also affect heavy industry's development. City ordinances can
also hinder or help various industries.
POWER
Yes, cities existed before electricity, but not in SimCity 2000. Sims are
electronic life-forms and can't exist without it.
All zones need power to develop - except for military bases. Power lines
transfer power between power plants and zones and between non-adjacent
zones. Power isn't transferred through adjacent zones or through roads or
rails that divide zones without power lines.
Tiles with power lines consume power. If you place too many power lines
you waste a lot of power.
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The types of power sources available are timedependent. You can't build a
nuclear power plant in 1900. As new technology becomes available, it will
be announced in the newspapers. All power plants are introduced when they
become coefficient - no early, flaky experimental models in this game.
Some of SimCity 2000's power sources do not yet exist in the real world.
We've made some rough predictions as to when they'll be available and put
them into the game. If our predictions are off, sorry - we specialize in
simulation, not real stuff. You can mix and match the types of power
plants in a single city.
All power plants have a 50-year life span, after which they collapse. When
they collapse, they don't cause fires or leak radiation, they just stop
working, and you have to rebuild them (and pay for them all over again).
You'll receive warnings about aging power plants in the newspapers, and
the Query tool will give your plants' exact ages.
If you have the No Disasters setting activated (in the Disasters menu),
then plants won't collapse. They'll be automatically rebuilt and you'll
be charged. If you don't have the cash to rebuild them, then they'll
collapse and you'll be out of power and out of luck. So save up cash for
power plant replacement or be ready to issue a bond.
Power is measured in megawatts (Mw). Developed areas require on the
average one Mw for three occupied tiles. The exact power consumption
varies with time, population density and an occasional city ordinance.
Connecting too many buildings to a power source results in brownouts.
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Here is a table comparing the different power plants. The years are +/-
10 years.
Type Year Mw Cost Cost
Avail per Mw
Coal 1900 200 $4,000 $20
Hydroelectric 1900 20 $400 $20
Oil 1900 220 $6,600 $30
Gas 1950 50 $2,000 $40
Nuclear 1955 500 $15,000 $30
Wind 1980 4 $100 $25
Solar 1990 50 $1,300 $26
Microwave 2020 1600 $28,000 $17.5
Fusion 2050 2500 $40,000 $16
Coal power is always available, even in 1900, and is fairly efficient,
but is the worst polluter.
Hydroelectric power is always available, even in 1900, is fairly
efficient, and doesn't pollute. Hydroelectric dams can only be placed on
falling water.
Oil power is always available, even in 1900, and pollutes about half as
much as coal.
Gas power pollutes even less than oil, but is very inefficient.
Nuclear power is expensive to build and not too efficient, but it puts
out a lot of power. There is also the risk of a meltdown disaster.
Nuclear power plants are unavailable if you declare your city a nuclear-
free zone.
Wind power is fairly efficient and very clean, but puts out very little
power, so you'll need a lot of wind generators to produce serious wattage.
Wind power is also subject to the whims of the weather. There is more
wind at higher altitudes.
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Solar power is non-polluting and fairly efficient, but has a low output
and is unreliable - very little power is produced when it's cloudy or
foggy. A combination of solar and wind power plants can produce a stable
energy flow since one generally thrives while the other snoozes.
Microwave power is actually solar power collected by an orbiting satellite
and beamed down to a microwave collector disk. It is very efficient and
produces a massive amount of power, but is very expensive to "get off the
ground," and once in a while the energy beam from the satellite misses the
dish. Oops.
Fusion power is very clean and reliable. It is the most efficient power
source and produces enough power to run a city half the size of your
entire city limits. It is very safe, with no radiation leakage or
meltdowns. But it costs a whole heck of a lot of money.
TRANSPORTATION
People gotta move. Sims gotta move. Products, delivery trucks,
construction materials and all kinds of things need to be moved around
the city. Transportation is the city's circulation system. Sims won't
start developing a zone or building any buildings until there is access
to some sort of transportation system.
It not only costs money to build your transportation system, but there is
a yearly maintenance fee, found in the Budget window. By examining the
Transit Authority books, you can set separate funding levels for roads,
highways, rails, subways, bridges and tunnels.
The most basic transpoftation system consists of roads. Sims won't build
buildings that are more than three tiles from a road (or other
transportation system), so if you're after density, the largest area that
will fully develop is a 6 x 6 square surrounded by road. If you're more
interested in aesthetics, then you can make larger squares or rectangles
and put parks or forests in the undeveloped center.
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Tunnels allow roads to run through mountains instead of going around them.
They can be a real convenience, but they can also be expensive. They cost
more to build than roads, and their yearly maintenance is higher. Tunnels
can't cross each other, even at different altitudes.
When roads carry up to 44 cars per minute, it is considered to be
"no traffic." From 44 to 88 cars per minute is light traffic, and above
that is heavy traffic. Watch the newspapers for traffic-related
stories and check the traffic map in the Map window to find
trouble spots. In addition to causing traffic, roads or the cars on
them are a major source of pollution in your city.
Once your roads are overloaded, you have a number of options, depending
on the year in your city. In 1900 your only transportation options are
roads, tunnels, rails and rail depots. Other options become available as
new technologies develop. Watch the newspapers for inventions that give
you access to new forms of transportation.
These are the years, +/-1 0 years, when different forms of transportation
become available:
1910 Subways and subway stations
1920 Buses and bus depots
1930 Highways and onramps
Buses allow roads to carry more people than roads alone without generating
problem traffic. To start a bus line, you need at least one bus depot.
Buses leave the depot and let passengers on and off all along the way.
There are no animated buses, so the visible effect of a bus depot is a
lowering of traffic near the depot. Bus depots must be adjacent to roads.
If they are adjacent to onramps or highways but, not a road, they won't be
effective. Buses are a more efficient use of gasoline than cars, so they
produce much less pollution per passenger. Pollution levels are slightly
but noticeably lower around effective bus depots.
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Highways are basically two roads, one in each direction, so they are
capable of carrying twice as many cars as a road. In addition, because
they can travel at a higher speed on a highway, Sims will commute farther
on a highway than on a road-up to three times as far. You must provide
onramps everywhere you want to let Sims enter or exit the highway. Sims
can't travel back and forth between zones and onramps without roads. A
highway system is an extension of a road system, not a replacement.
Rails are the paths your trains follow. Sims can only get on or off
trains at rail depots. Depots must be adjacent to rails, and you need at
least two for a working rail line. Rails can carry many more commuters
than roads, plus they are a big boost to heavy industry, allowing
shipping of goods and raw materials around the city. Since trains go
faster than cars on city streets, Sims will commute farther by train than
by car. Compared with cars, trains produce almost no pollution.
Subways are underground rail systems, but are primarily for passengers,
and less for the shipping of goods and raw materials. They can be
connected directly to rail lines for a continuous flow of train cars.
Passengers can only get on and off subways at subway stations. The
advantage of subways over other transportation systems is that they are
mostly underground. They don't take up valuable real estate. And if you
want to add rails to an already developed city, you'll have to tear down
a lot of buildings for the rails themselves as well as the large depots.
Subways only require small (1 tile) access ways above ground, so they can
be added to a city without calling in the wrecking crew. The disadvan-
tage of a subway system is that its very expensive to build and maintain.
Subways produce almost no pollution.
When simulating traffic, SimCity 2000 doesn't really simulate every Sim
in your city going to work and back and to the store and back and to
school and back and to the pub and back and everywhere else they go. With
thousands or millions of citizens this would take forever to simulate.
The way the traffic model works is a process called "trip generation" and
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works on a building-by-building basis. It also works on the assumption
that most trips will be from one type of zone to another.
For each building in each zone, the simulator generates trips to both of
the other types of zones. If the starting building is a house in a
residential zone, the simulation will search out a path to a commercial
zone and back, and to an industrial zone and back. It tries to avoid
heavy traffic areas, and if it bumps into mass transit, there is a 50/50
chance it will take it.
There is a time limit for each trip, and if the time runs out before
reaching a zone, then the trip is a failure. The time limit is stable,
but the allowable distance to the destination depends on the mode of
transport. Since highways, rails and subways travel faster than cars on
regular roads, the simulation can go up to three times as far while
looking for a destination zone.
If a failed trip involves mass transit, then the next time that same
building is checked, it won't even try that same type of mass transit.
So the amount of traffic alleviated by mass transit depends on two
things:
1. The whims of the Sims - that 50/50 chance.
2. Your city's design - if the bus or train won't get the Sims
where they want to go, they'll drive.
A bad mass transit system is worse than none at all, because it
won't get used. To promote the use of mass transit as much as
possible:
1. Put bus or rail depots or subway stations near busy intersec-
tions.
2. Make sure that mass transit lines travel through different
types of zones. A bus line that stays in a residential zone won't
have much business.
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PORTS
Airports and seaports are specialized zones. Placing them in areas that
are already zoned is a waste of your funds. An airport's primary effect
is to boost commerce. Seaports boost industry. Neither type of port is
necessary (or affordable) in a very small city.
Once your city starts to grow, your citiSims will let you know when they
want ports. The bigger the city, the bigger the ports it will require.
Since you can make ports any size you want, and they're very expensive,
start small - but leave open space for later expansion. When the city
outgrows your small ports, the Sims will let you know when it's time to
expand. But if you notice your commercial or industrial zones' growth
rate slowing down, you may want to add ports before your Sims ask for
them.
Both types of ports produce pollution, but airports pollute more.
TREES
Trees and forests add beauty to your city and its surroundings, and
improve property values. They are flammable and can help fires spread.
WATER
Lakes, rivers and oceans are sources of drinking water for your city.
They also provide recreational areas and tourist attractions, and improve
land value.
You can add as much water to your city as you want in Terrain-Editing
mode, but once you start a city, it is very expensive, so plan ahead.
Seaports must be on a river or the ocean to be effective, and marinas in
the desert are no fun at all.
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You can build a city without any water system at all, but the population
won't grow very dense. A basic water system consists of pumps and pipes.
When Sims build buildings, they put in the underground plumbing. All you
have to do is add the water mains to connect the buildings to the system
and supply the water.
Parts of the water system that are properly supplied with water are
animated in light and dark blue. Areas that aren't animated either aren't
hooked up or your water source is too small for the population.
Water pumps, when placed away from fresh water act as wells. The amount
of water they provide depends on your city's water table and the season.
Water pumps placed right next to fresh water (lakes or streams) produce
about three times as much as a well on dry land. A pump placed next to
salt water (coastline) acts just like a well away from water. To get
drinking water from a coastline you need a desalinization plant, which is
expensive, but sometimes necessary. Desalinization plants produce twice as
much water as a water pump near a river.
Since the amount of water varies with the season, you may end up with
shortages during the dry months. Water tanks store water during the wet
season so you don't run low in dry times. Another way to prevent droughts
is to build a treatment plant to clean and recycle your water.
RECREATIONAL FACILITIES AND OPEN SPACES
Open spaces, whether they are undeveloped greenbelts or manicured
recreational facilities, are important to a city, both aesthetically and
psychologically. Besides adding land value, trees, forests and open space
give a city a better feel, an openness that makes citizens feel
comfortable and encourages new residents.
As your population rises, your Sims will start demanding recreational
facilities. The developed recreation facilities that are available in
SimCity 2000 are small parks, big parks, zoos, stadiums and marinas.
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Recreational facilities are primarily for your city's residents,
increasing land value and promoting residential zone growth, but they
also influence tourism. Small parks increase land value about the same
amount as trees, and big parks increase it twice as much. Marinas, zoos
and stadiums are a big boost for residential growth.
THE CLIMATE
Even though you don't see the seasons change or the rains fall, and you
don't feel the wind blow (other than an occasional tornado or hurricane),
there is a climate model in SimCity 2000 that affects your city. Weather
reports are available in the newspapers.
Weather trends are generated on a monthly basis, when the simulation
looks at the current trend and the season and throws in a certain
weighted random element and decides the next trend. The different trends
are: cold, clear, hot, foggy, chilly, overcast, snowy, rainy, windy,
blizzard, hurricane and tornado. Blizzard, hurricane and tornado are the
least likely to occur.
Each trend has a temperature, a wind and a humidity element. In general,
temperature affects the water supply, the availability of solar power,
and the likelihood of fires and riots; wind affects the availability of
wind power, and humidity affects the water supply. These effects combine
in various ways in the various trends.
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Pollution as shown in the maps and graphs is a general overall level
combining air, water and noise pollution. The biggest polluters in your
city are automobiles, then industry and some types of power plants.
The main things you can do to keep pollution down in your city are to
provide good mass transit, opt for low- or non-polluting power sources,
and promote low- and non-polluting industries through tax incentives.
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REWARDS
So you're a great mayor. So you build a great city with the power of your
mind and the sweat of your mouse-finger. So your citiSims love you. So
what? Where are the perks?
That's where the rewards come in. For the most part the rewards are more
for the city than for you personally. Some say that the art and the
artist are one, so a reward for your city - your creation - is a reward
for you. Others say, "Give me the cash." In any event, there are at least
a couple rewards that should give your ego a boost.
Rewards are based on population. As you reach various population levels,
you will be notified that a reward is available in a newspaper article
and the offering will appear in the submenu under the Rewards button in
the City toolbar.
At population: You get:
2,000 A mayor's house
10,000 City Hall
30,000 Something cool that will boost your ego
When your population reaches 60,000, the military asks you if you want a
military base in your city. The pros and cons of military bases are
covered later in this manual.
As your city grows, there will be other things that you'll just have to
find out for yourself, because I won't tell you. Well, OK. I'll tell you
one more: Arcologies at a population of 120,000.
Arcologies are huge, tall, dense cities-in-a-building. They are like a
very dense combination residential, commercial and industrial zone.
Arcologies are a way to help your population zoom from mere hundreds of
thousands to millions, expanding your tax base. There are four different
arcologies, designed in 2000, 2050, 2100 and 2150. Even if you have a
huge population, you can't build an arcology until it's ready.
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Arcologies also spur the growth of nearby residential, commercial and
industrial zones. Even though they are theoretically totally contained
cities, people who live inside will come out to shop and see the sights,
and may even work outside. Others may live outside and work inside.
They look cool too. Unfortunately, arcologies have all the problems of an
extremely dense city: lots of crime, pollution and traffic. Technically,
arcologies have their own internal police force and traffic system, but
there is always an overspill of criminals, travelers and fun-seekers.
Make sure you have police coverage near arcologies and that there is
ample public transportation surrounding them.
MILITARY BASES
When your population reaches 60,000, the government will ask if you will
grant land for a military base. Depending on the base and your plans for
your city, this can be a good thing or a bad thing.
When you grant land to the military, you don't choose what type of base
you get or where it goes-the government does. The types of bases are:
army, navy, air force, and missile silos. If your city is on the coast,
the odds are that you will get a naval base. If you don't get a naval
base, then if your city is fairly flat, you'll most likely get an air
force base, and if it is fairly hilly, you'll get an army base. If it's
very hilly, you'll probably get missile silos.
The good parts about a military base are that it gives a boost to your
local commerce both by bringing in extra customers for the stores and
services in your city, and by supplying civilian jobs. The presence of
a military base (other than missile silos) also has a deterrent effect on
the monster, and may encourage it to leave sooner. During an emergency,
you may also be able to deploy military troops to aid your fire and
police departments with the Emergency button.
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The bad parts of a military base are a possible increase in crime (wild
times on shore leave and civilian crooks preying on soldiers) and traffic
congestion.
Missile silos are the least desirable base, since they don't have a big
enough staff to have an effect on your economy and they're useless
against monsters - these missiles would do more damage to your city than
to the monster. Even if your city is a nuclear-free zone, you risk getting
missile silos if you agree to a military base.
EDUCATION
Education in SimCity 2000 is expressed as an Educational Quotient, or EQ.
The higher the EQ, the more educated your population is. You can see a
readout of your citiSims' EQ in the population window. EQs range from
zero (brain dead) to 150. The equivalent of a high school education is an
EQ of 90. A four-year college degree is an EQ of about 140. The
SimNational average EQ is 100.
A high EQ is a source of pride to your citizens. It makes your city a
more attractive place to raise their children. It also attracts high-tech
industry. A low EQ is a source of embarrassment and causes insulting
stories to appear in your local (and unread) newspaper. A city with a low
EQ has a higher likelihood of both unemployment and rioting.
When you start a new city, the Sims who move in and start their new lives
are at least somewhat educated, so you don't have to build schools right
away. But don't wait too long, or your settlers' children will be
ignorant.
If you have no schools or colleges, then education consists solely of
verbal lore passed down from generation to generation, and children will
only achieve about 20% of their parents' EQ.
Schools each service a population up to about 15,000, depending on the
age distribution of your citizens. Enough schools with full funding can
increase your city's EQ up to 90 over a period of years.
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Colleges each service a population of up to 50,000, and can eventually
increase your city's EQ to as much as 140, but only if you have enough
well-funded schools to prepare students for college.
After Sims graduate high school or college, their EQ will slowly erode.
The presence of libraries and museums stops this erosion.
All educational facilities raise the local land value, and require yearly
funding in the Budget window to remain effective.
CITY SERVICES
City services consist of police and fire protection, hospitals and
prisons. All city services require yearly funding in the Budget window to
be fully effective. The locations and effective areas of city services
can be seen in the Map window.
Police stations lower the crime rate and raise the land value in a radius
around each station. They have the most effect right near the station,
and less as distance from the station increases. The locations of police
stations, their coverage and the crime rate can be seen in the Map window
by using the submenu under the Crime button.
Each police station has a small jail where prisoners are kept. As a city
grows and if crime runs rampant, the small jails will be so full and the
police will be spending so much time taking care of the prisoners that
their efficiency and area of coverage will go down. At this point you can
either build a lot more police stations or build a prison. In SimCity
2000, prisons raise the efficiency and effectiveness of your police
departments-but only if there is a lot of crime. Prisons are no help to
cities with low crime or small populations. If and when your prison gets
too full, the newspaper will let you know.
The presence of fire stations makes fires go out sooner, helps prevent
fires from occurring in the first place, and raises land value. They have
the most effect near the station. The locations of fire stations and
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their coverage can be seen in the Map window by using the submenu under
the City Services button.
Hospitals keep your Sims healthy, fix them when they're broken, and raise
their Life Expectancy (LE). A fully funded hbspital can serve a population
of 25,000 Sims. You can see the effect of hospitals on your population's
LE in the population window. If you don't have a hospital, your city's LE
will slowly decline to about 35. If you have enough fully funded
hospitals the LE will slowly climb to 85. There are also city ordinances
(in the Ordinance window) that can have a positive effect on your city's
LE.
NEWSPAPERS
Your city's newspapers are your link to your citizens. Reading them keeps
you informed, not only of current events, new inventions, city-
development announcements and other important or disastrous occurrences,
but also of public-opinion polls. Watch your papers closely to see what is
important to your Sims.
The newspapers change every month, so reading them all can be time
consuming - but useful. If you activate Subscription in the Newspaper
menu, your paper will be delivered twice a year. If you activate Extra!!!
in the Newspaper menu, then papers announcing important events-inventions
and rewards for city growth-will appear. Otherwise, you will have to open
the Newspaper menu and select the paper you want to read. Newspapers
announcing disasters will always appear.
The different papers (once your city is big enough to have more than one)
will have different angles on stories, so you may want to read through
more than one.
INVENTIONS
As time passes, things are invented. These inventions give you access to
new technologies that you can incorporate into your city. As the
technologies become available, new tools will appear in the submenus
under the buttons in the City toolbar. Inventions are announced in
newspaper Extra!!! editions.
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Here are the inventions and their approximate discovery dates,
+1-10 years.
Subway systems 1910
Buses and bus depots 1920
Highways 1930
Water treatment plants 1935
Gas power plants 1950
Nuclear power plants 1955
Wind power plants 1980
Solar power plants 1990
Desalinization plants 1990
Arcologies 2000, 2050, 2100, 2150
Microwave power plants 2020
Fusion power plants 2050
SimCity 2000 is a very complex simulation. It is also in 256 colors. Both
these facts require a lot of computer power. The actual time it takes for
a year to pass in your city depends on a number of things, including:
The type of microprocessor in your computer. SimCity 2000
runs on a wide variety of computers. The more powerful your
microprocessor, the faster time will pass.
The microprocessor's clock speed. The faster the processor,
the faster the simulation will run.
The resolution of your screen and the size of your monitor.
Depending on your computer, you may be running SimCity 2000
in as low as 512 x 384 pixel resolution or as high as 1280
x 1024 or more. The higher the resolution, the more dots
SimCity 2000 has to draw on your screen, and the slower it will
go. Of course the speed of your computer and your graphics
card may make up for lost time.
The size of your city. The simulation model spends a lot more
time and does a lot more calculations on tiles that are
developed than on bare land tiles. In a busy city that fills the
whole city limits, time will pass much, much slower than in a
tiny town.
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Ways to make the simulation go faster include:
Setting the speed to Cheetah in the Speed menu.
Keeping the City window small.
Keeping as few windows as possible open at a time.
Turning off both Subscription and Extra!!! in the Newspaper
menu.
Turning off Music and Sound Effects (in the Options menu)
helps a little.
But then again, sometimes you don't want time to pass too fast,
especially when disasters are sweeping through your city or when
you are trying to keep your city center from decaying. In these
times of need, you can always open the Speed menu and slow
things down - or even stop them entirely.
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STRATEGIES
IN GENERAL
The first thing to do is decide what kind of city you want to build. Once
you know what your long-term goals are, you can best plan your strategy.
If you want to grow your population as large as possible, then zone
densely, keep control of crime, and watch the newspapers for public
opinion and important inventions. If you want to make a lot of money,
then tax your subjects until they scream and keep your spending to a
minimum. If you want to create a city that you'd like to live in, then
keep your eye on the newspapers for public opinion, and mentally put
yourself in your Sims' places.
Once you start to build, stay small and go easy on the infrastructure.
Keep your costs down. You want to get out of the red and into the black
as soon as possible. Show a little patience and build up a good reserve
of funds.
As you build, try not to make large, densely concentrated areas. The
denser the population of an area, the more pollution and the more crime
you have. Try to find a happy medium between suburban sprawl and
super-dense city.
Remember that not only does it cost to build city infrastructure, but it
costs to maintain it.
If you need to skimp on city services, go ahead, but keep your police
well-funded. If your town is small or you have a lot of police stations,
you may not need to keep them fully-funded, but be careful. Use the Query
tool in the City toolbar to see your police stations' effectiveness. If
the arrests are equal to the crimes, you can try lowering the funding for
a while. Once the arrests fall behind the crimes, add more funding or
more police stations. High crime destroys land value, chasing out some of
your population and lowering your tax income.
Skimping on fire department funding is a little less drastic, but can be
dangerous. Do so at your Sims' risk. You can turn off disasters in the
Disasters menu-if you're a wimp.
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Try to maintain high land values to keep those property taxes coming in.
But be sure to zone for some lowcost housing, since all your Sims can't
afford to buy luxury homes on waterfront property.
Remember that you have to replace your power plants every 50 years.
Buying the big expensive power plants is more efficient as far as cost
per megawatt, but only if your city is large enough to need all that
power.
You need a good balance of the three basic zones, with the number of
tiles zoned residential approximately equal to the total tiles zoned
commercial and industrial. In a small city, you'll need more industrial
than commercial. You'll need equal numbers of each at a population of
about 100,000. Above that, lean more towards commercial. The Demand
Indicator in the City toolbar lets you know which zones you should be
adding.
Try to work with the land instead of using brute force to overpower it.
You'll not only end up with a much more "organic" looking and feeling
city, but it'll save you a lot of money. Best yet, pick - or build - a
beautiful site for your city before you start to build.
As for the actual layout of your city, maps of cities from all over the
world are easily available. Start with your favorite city and improve on
it.
Try the modular approach. First try to design a small, compact
"neighborhood," complete with all the zones, transportation and city
services you need, that runs very efficiently, or better yet, at a
profit. Then copy the pattern of that neighborhood all over the place.
Place them strategically so they can share the high-cost city items like
schools, colleges, museums and power plants.
Above all, use your imagination.
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DEALING WITH DISASTERS
Unless you have No Disasters set in the Disasters menu, disasters just
happen. The disasters that are connected with a scenario happen even when
you have disasters turned off. So there. If you're the adventurous type
(or just plain mean) you can set off your own disasters from the
Disasters menu and test your preparedness, your quick thinking and the
robustness of your city's design. Not all disasters are available in the
Disasters menu.
Certain conditions in your city attract or discourage disasters, and
certain city events can even cause them. So, to a certain extent, you can
prepare for and even lessen the likelihood of disasters.
In the event of a disaster, the first thing to do is stop any fires that
you can. Next, rebuild the utilities, then the transportation system. Be
ready to jump on that Emergency button in the City toolbar. It will let
you deploy your fire, police and sometimes the military to areas of need,
but be careful where you put them. In general, firemen are good at
fighting fires, but can be wiped out by rioters; police are good at
controlling riots, but can get burnt up in a fire. Both fire and police
can handle the manual labor of building dams to help fight floods. If you
have a military base, you may have access to troops during an emergency.
Military troops are capable of anything police or firemen can do, just
not quite as specialized or effective.
Where a disaster causes destruction in a zone, you must manually bulldoze
the rubble in Demolish/Clear mode before the zone will begin to rebuild.
FIRES
Fires are most likely to occur when the weather is hot and you don't
have good fire department coverage. Fires are also the byproducts of
other disasters including air crashes, riots and tornadoes. You can
fight fires by using the Emergency button in the City tool bar and
blocking their path with the Emergency Fire icons. As tiles burn up,
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move in and surround the fires. Dispatching your police to the scene of
the fire can help keep cars and crowds away and let the firemen do their
jobs, but police can't fight fire. If you have the right kind of military
base, the Emergency button may give you access to military troops to help
fight fires.
FLOODS
Floods occur in the wet season, and can be the byproducts of hurricanes,
tidal waves or tornadoes. They are most likely to occur on the coastline,
but occasionally a river will flood. There's not much you can do once a
flood begins, but you can prepare for the worst. Floods only destroy
things at sea level. Your buildings that are even one tile up will
weather the storm. Since seaports must be at sea level, they are prime
targets for flood damage. If you have a river, try building your
seaports upriver, away from the coast. You can also use the Raise
Terrain mode of the Bulldozer tool to build protective dikes in areas
that you think might flood. You can try deploying your police and fire
departments with the Emergency tool to help build dams to hold back
floods. You might lose a few civil servants, but it should slow the
advance of the flood.
RIOTS
The main causes of riots are heat, high crime and unemployment. Riots
can also occur if your city has a long blackout. A good economy and a
low crime rate are the best ways to prevent riots. And keep your power
going. You can fight riots with the Emergency button and your police
departments the same way you'd fight a fire with your fire departments.
Fires are byproducts of riots.
AIR CRASHES
Sometimes planes or helicopters crash. Other than a smashed building
here and there, the main danger from an air crash is fire. Put out the
fire as quickly as you can, then hold an investigation and call it pilot
error. If a plane crashed at the airport, fire the air traffic
controller.
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TORNADOES AND HURRICANES
Tornadoes and hurricanes occur because of climatic conditions, and
cannot be prevented. Keep an eye on the weather reports of high winds in
the newspaper and you might receive enough warning to reinforce your
police and fire departments in time. While they are very different in
the real world, as far as their effect in SimCity 2000 goes, they are
pretty much the same, except that tornadoes cause a narrow path of
destruction and hurricanes can really mess up the place.
EARTHQUAKES
Once again, there's nothing you can do to prevent them. All you can do
is treat the symptoms - and those are many. Earthquakes not only shake
down buildings and damage your city's infrastructure (roads, rails,
power lines, etc.), but cause fires, looting and riots. All you gotta
do is put out the fires, restore power and transport, control the mobs
and rebuild your city.
NUCLEAR MELTDOWN
If you have a nuclear power plant, there is a slight chance that it will
melt down. If it does, your city is in real trouble. There will be a big
explosion, fires will break out, and radiation will spread and
contaminate the surrounding land and water. The radiation lasts many
generations. Neither you nor your Sims can build on contaminated ground.
Don't confuse the end of your power plants' workable life span with a
disaster. Even though your nuclear plants will stop working and blow up
after 50 years, there is no danger, other than from blackouts or
brownouts. This is just the plant wearing out, not blowing up, melting
down or leaking.
Fusion plants don't melt down and don't leak radiation, only
fission (standard nuclear) plants.
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OOPS
The microwave power plant has its accidents, too. On occasion, the beam
of energy from the satellite misses the collector dish and causes some
inconvenient death and destruction. There's nothing you can do to
prevent it, but put the fires out as soon as you can. Play it safe and
build microwave power plants out in the boonies.
THE MONSTER
The monster is an intelligent creature from outer space. But then again,
it might just be a Hollywood movie special effect run amok. Since we
seem incapable of communicating with it, we don't know if it is really
out to destroy our cities or if it just doesn't understand that we find
it unpleasant to be smashed, set on fire or whisked away to another
planet. The presence of certain military bases may deter the monster or
rush it on its way. Maybe if you could make it understand that its
behavior is antisocial, it will stop. But then again, maybe not.
OTHERS
There are a number of other disasters that will pop up from time to time
in SimCity 2000, but you'll find out all about them in your own good
time.
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Typed by RaZoR D0X DiViSioN
