Joe Rosenthal

SimCity 4 is a video game of management, the fourth episode of the series SimCity.

Principles of the play

The principle is to create a city, all its infrastructures, powerplant at the subway stations while passing by the public gardens or the administrations principal, the whole while ensuring a positive budget.

With the wire of the versions, graphics evolved/moved much, with, now of the detailed shades, a realistic road traffic, and textures of buildings of high-quality. The complexity of the economic simulator was also geared down, making the play rather difficult at the beginning.

One of the principal innovations of this opus is to propose to the player to manage several cities, which together form an area. They can interact between them by the trade and specialize. For example a city can contain much zones residence and of trade without industry : thanks to a highway Sims (name given to the inhabitants of SimCity ) will be able to undoubtedly work in a close city.

Three modes

SimCity breaks up into three modes (a little like Sims™): God, Mayor and Sim.

God mode

The God mode is the mode which you use in first before creating a city. It is also used after its creation (in a mode much more restricted).

In the God mode, you are a divine character. You can work the landscape as good seems to you: ravines, mountains, plates, seas… Even the animals and the forests are with your orders! All that, to create the ideal ground for your Sims.

When your city is created, you can be useful yourselves of the God Mode but for other reasons: catastrophes. Indeed, if you are sadistic kind, a small volcano or an extraterrestrial giant robot will make the greatest evil in your Sims. It is also a way of putting to you to the test, and, moreover, if you succeed in saving the city without too many deaths, everyone will know that you are the right man for the job.

It is also possible to control the hour and to see your city illuminating itself the come night…

Mayor mode

The Maire mode is the mode more used. Indeed, it is in the Maire mode that all is played: you bought SimCity, not SimDieu or Sims… You can thus do what good seems to you: to make reach your small village the stage of mégapole, increase the taxes, listen to your advisers, delimit the residential zones, commercial and industrial (RCI), see the surveys and the studies, and build the buildings by adjusting their level of financing.

If you make the citizens happy and that your city grows, you could even be entitled to some gifts. But the inhabitants can also be dissatisfied, at the point from to go away, if the taxes are too high or if the public services are insufficient.

Sim mode

The last mode is the mode of espionage. Small definition of Sim: virtual character of SimCity. In light, Sims your are managed. And considering your immense capacity, you can even control some of them (five)! They are dissidents with the mounting, in short you can use them like barometers of district. They are the reflection of your actions: they will tell you all that they think, which they are good or bad. They deliver their opinions concerning your recent decisions, on the general state of their district of residence…

Moreover, during their creation, you will choose from their place of residence, their level of richness, thus allowing to have opinions coming from several social classes (Sims can grow rich or to impoverish itself but the best way to enrich them is to educate them).

Although some Sims are offered with the play, it is possible to import play of it Sims.

Zones Residential, Commercial, and Industrial

There exist three types of possible zones: Residential, Commercial and Industrial (RCI). For each zone, there are the choice between three levels of densities.

Indicator RCI represents the request of the inhabitants for a type of precise building. If it is negative, the buildings are deserted; if it is positive, of new buildings are built.

Delimitation of Zones RCI

It is interdict to build anywhere, but it is not you who have the capacity to raise buildings, they are private companies. On the other hand, it is you who known as where they must build: it is the delimitation of zones RCI. This point is very important (for example, so factories are built into full in the residential districts, the air will be polluted and the populations will desert your city, but on the other hand, if they are moved away too much from there, that will generate problems of circulation at the rush hours).

The choice of the density of the zones has also its importance: it is less expensive to delimit a residential zone with weak density, but no skyscraper will be built there if zoning is not changed.

Richnesses

In SimCity 4, contrary to the precedents opus, there exist several levels of richness: §, §§ and §§§ (§ being the symbol of Simflouz, currency of SimNation): Poor, Average and Easy. That has an importance on the esthetic level (the rich person live in luxurious residences, the poor in the small ones and modest houses) but also on the taxation, esthetics of your city and also and especially of the attraction which the city exerts on the others. Indeed, a city not containing that rich person will attract more industry of high technologies, luxury trades, etc

The Area

From now on the cities are not lost any more in the middle of nowhere. They belong to areas, which have several grounds (small, average and large) to build a city there. The edges of the grounds of the cities are connected, which creates a true feeling of unity (for example, if you create a river, it will continue in the adjacent cities), the areas are a true strategy. It is now possible to create suburbs, to inter-connect your cities!

Moreover, that supports the growth of the two connected cities: it is possible to go to work in the close cities (less unemployment), industry and the trade are interested by connections and requests RCI are shared between the cities. One can thus create specialized cities, like cities with dominant residential or industrial for example. Moreover, with the trade agreements between two cities, a city can sell its surplus of water, electricity or capacity of elimination of waste to another.

That makes it possible to create agglomerations: Paris intramurally does not exceed Berlin but, with the suburbs, it is the greatest agglomeration of Europe!

More Sim City 4

The principal interest of the play is its quasi unlimited lifespan, made possible by the continuous improvement of its realism. Indeed, the players can add many elements (buildings, monuments, cities, areas, textures, details of the decoration…) at their cities, elements created by each fan who will have provided it to the " purse of " exchange; specialized sites. The play thus will grow rich by the work of the community of the fans, who, all around the world, will propose their creations (thus, Freedom Tower, intended to replace the World Trade Center, as well as the most recent skyscrapers in construction, but also of personal creations).

Extension SimCity 4: Hour rush

External bonds

Official site of SimCity 4
Official site of SimCity 4 for Mac (At Aspyr, Distributer EA Games Mac)
greater site of fans intended for SimCity 4 (remote loadings, forums,…)
the first and greater French-speaking virtual microphone-nation dédidé with Sim City 4 and Sims

Simple: SimCity 4

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