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SimCity Questions & Answers
| Q: | Saving the cities to disk and moving from computer to computer is a challenge every year. Can you provide step-by-step instructions? |
| A: | Okay. Instructions have been added to the "Tips & Tricks" page. Click here!
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| Q: | Can we use SimCity 4 instead of SimCity 3000? |
| A: | SimCity 4 and SimCity 3000 are quite similar, and if your team already has SimCity 4 at home or in the schools and wants to use it to learn and practice, that is fine. However, the final Computer City Design sent in to the competition must be done using SimCity 3000. The judges do not have SimCity 4, and so SimCity 4 files will be rejected and receive no points. As an option, consider buying a couple more copies of SimCity 3000 if that would be helpful (see Q & A below).
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| Q: | The SimCity 3000 CD-ROM must be in the computer in order for the program to run, so only one team is able to work on their Computer City Design at a time. How can we get additional copies of the software? |
| A: | One alternative is to order copies from the National Engineers Week website for $7.50/copy. Ordering capability for the software is in place through the Eweek product catalog.
Local software retailers will most likely only have SimCity 4 (the latest edition), so if you need additional copies, another alternative is to order from Amazon.com or Ebay.com. You can use either SimCity 3000 or SimCity 3000 Unlimited for the competition.
Amazon.com has used and new copies from $3.99/copy. Remember that you must have "SimCity 3000" or "SimCity 3000 Unlimited". No other version is acceptable for the Future City Competition.
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| Q: | How do you build the power lines underground? |
| A: | In SimCity, you can only build overhead power lines. However, you'll notice that as your zones develop, the power lines disappear. This is because as the Sims build buildings and houses, the power lines are absorbed into the development. That's why you only need to run the power line to the edge of a zone, and then the Sims will take it from there.
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| Q: | I always run out of money! How can I get started without a lot of loans? |
| A: | First, make sure you're starting in the "easy" level with $50,000. Also make sure you're starting in the year 2000.
Don't build everything to start with. You only need zones, roads, power plants, power lines, water pumps or towers, and water pipes. Add fire stations and police stations after a few years. Add schools and hospitals a few years later. Finally add colleges, libraries, museums, parks, zoos, etc. after the city is off and running. Also make sure you're adding the correct numbers of these things and are not wasting money (e.g. a city of 1,000 doesn't need 3 hospitals).
Your layout will be the biggest factor on how your city develops. If you spend a lot of money making long winding roads, or if you have to demolition things and redo them, you will run out of money. Changing the terrain also costs a lot of money (see tips on Editing the Terrain).
Consider making neighbor deals early on to sell your neighbors power, water, and dispose of their garbage. This will generate a lot of money for you. It will also create pollution, but later on once your city is successful and self-supporting, you can cancel the deals and fix the pollution. (see tips on Neighbor Deals).
Look at your City budget. You can increase taxes, enact ordinances, decrease funding for city services, and so on. Some of these will have more impact than others on your city. Raising taxes and cutting services might give you a little money in the short run, but over time if will make your city less desirable and it will quit growing or start to abandon.
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| Q: | How big should my city be? |
| A: | The FutureCity instructions say that the city needs to have a population of 50,000. If you can't get to a population of 50,000 don't worry... that's only worth 2 out of the 100 total points for the Computer City Design. However, with less than 50,000 population, it's unlikely that you will have been able to build everything that your city needs for transportation, recreation, factories, etc., so you probably will not be able to achieve full points in the judges scoring.
On the other hand, having a huge city might not be the best either. There are no "bonus" points for having really high populations. Also, the larger the city is, the more challenging it will be to minimize traffic problems and keep pollution low. It's much better to have a small to medium sized city that has an excellent layout, rather than an enormous but poorly designed city.
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| Q: | How old does my city really need to be? I can't get to the year 2150 on this old slow computer! |
| A: | The FutureCity instructions say that the city needs to be at least year 2150 or above. This can be challenging on older slow computers if you don't have enough time to work with it. See the tips on Recommended Settings for Slow Computers to help with this, and make sure you're starting in the year 2000 (if you start in the year 1900 it WILL take forever!). Also make sure you know how to use the "speed control" and are running the software in its fastest mode. The software will run slower and slower the larger the city gets, so if you're having difficulty with getting to the year 2150, you might want to consider scaling back the city so that it will run faster.
If you really can't get to the year 2150 don't worry ... that's only worth 2 out of the 100 points for the Computer City Design. If your city is too young, however, you may have a hard time getting High-Tech Industries, clean power plants, and high Education numbers, so you probably will not be able to achieve full points in the judges scoring.
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| Q: | Can the kids choose a city already in existence and build on that, or do they have to start from scratch? |
| A: | There are not any rules explicitly preventing somebody from using one of the built-in Starter Cities. On the other hand, the starter cities built-in to SimCity will definitely NOT give a team the best SimCity; probably just the opposite. The starter cities built-in to SimCity aren't designed or built with the Future City goals and judging criteria in mind at all, so they really don't help a team in getting all the points and top scores. In order to take a starter city and get it to what you really want for the Future City competition, the team would end up redoing most of it anyway.
The starter cities could be helpful to teams just learning or getting a late start, but the best cities and highest scores are ALWAYS the cities that were started from scratch.
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![[Future City logo]](../images/futurecity.jpg)