Sim City 4..

[Bushtree]

what do you guys think about it.. i bought it last night have been playing all night and i think it is impossible.. i have been reading guides on the net but not helpping very much..

do you guys have any ideas?

what are your thoughts on the game?

[Force Flow]

Never cared much for the Sim games.

On the technical side, when they were made available for PC's (after being on Macs), it seems like then never made the cross platform transfer too well.

[Shifty Shellshock]

go on www.gamefaqs.com there might be something on there

[Doobie]

I have it but I haven’t had much time to play it. It does seem a little more complicated then earlier versions. It really lags my system. I think I need a new V.Card in order not to get frustrated when I play it. The graphics are great compared to earlier versions.

I think my population is about 100.

[Surge1243]

I personally don't like the game. I bought it because I loved 2000 and 3000, but this version is just a mess. The game is rather unstable and the minimum requirements of the game don't even come close to what it needs to run. My game gets so choppy that it eventually crashes to the desktop. It is a very nice looking game, but it is extremely hard. Some people love, others hate it.

[Bushtree]

yea. it is very hard. my system is pretty close to yours surge1234

it starts to lag for me when i get about 5000 people as my population.. I have read the the game needs a lot of memory.. someone sad that they upgraded from 512mb to 1gb of pc2700 and it made a big difference.

[Floppyman]

I think that they were maybe trying to make it a little bit more realistic, and that's why it's harder. What do you guys that play it say? TIA.

[ftrguy]

This is the first SimCity game that i've played, its fun, but it's quite hard to make the city profitable. And if it does become profitable, when i reach about 10,000 pop. the game becomes really choppy and very frustrating to play. My vcard is getting old, but this game won't make me upgrade it.
I hear there's a good strategy guide for this game, it's 400+ pages....yikes!!

[Bushtree]

yea i think i am go to the store and take a look at it.. i think it would be a good investment for this game..

[southrk]

ive had the game since the day it came out, best sim city game yet! easier than 2000 and 3000 especially easier to fill in water grids and such. A+++ for this game!

[Bushtree]

ok well i have been playing all night and now i have a city that has 18,000 people in it. But i am only making about 100 a month. and now my RCI bars are all below so noone wants to move to my city.. what can i do?? i lowered taxes and that got about 5,000 more people but now the residential as negitive again.. also witht the 18000 people in my city it is very laggy..

[mountaineer]

Sims.... I don't get it....

[whr2206]

I got it the day it came out and I loved it. With the problem that after 16,000 pop my computer couldn't handle it.. so I'm not playing it until I upgrade my computer. It simply cant handle it.

[Builder]

Would a Ti-4200 and 1gig of ram (2700) be enough? I'm thinking of buying the game, but not if it won't run well.

[southrk]

Yes, that would be more than enough! im running it on a ti4200 and 256 mb ram. My roomate can even run it on his old celly 600 with 256.

[Builder]

So it's basically RAM that this game wants?

[Bushtree]

yes its all RAM>. the more RAM the more POPULATION you can handle.. the videocard doesnt change much.. my gefore4 vs. my bros geforce2 looks exactly the same in the games.. its all about RAM>>

[Favre]

its even just hard on my comp when i have 10,000 people, then i got to 18000 and now it lags like hell.

[Demosthenes]

I am currently flirting around the 40k population mark with hopes of expansion in the near future. I really do not have too many problems with lag. Barring all the stupid logos and movies, the game does not take that long to load and the levels load in only about 10 seconds. In game, I can pan with no problems. Zooming does take some more time since it has to redraw the scene. Otherwise, things go fine for me.

The problem I have is keeping the budget. I only ever had one city succeed in SimCity 2000 and I played that city for a year and pretty much maxed it out as well as my desire to try another city. I do not remember if its ancestors were like this, but SimCity 4 is very biased towards losing money than making it. Very few buildings give you money, and even then you have to be in debt to get them, plus the usually have negative externalities tied to them.

I guess my question is how do you find ways to get money out of your city?

Respectfully,

Demosthenes

[Favre]

what i started doing is just raising all my taxes to 20%, if the poor dont like it, they'll leave and you'll have room for the rich, but you shoud make a mountain, then place all the money making things on the mouintain so their far away from your town.

[ammo]

None of the guides will help because I started out my playing like the game said to and i couldn't get anywhere. I suggest start buy making half low residential by your industry and make a suburb of high residential a little farther away. I got up to making 500,000 simoleons and a population of 60,000 so far. Also don't make any farms it's a waste of space. Make medium industry cause later it will turn into high tech. See if this works for you. Also the RCI indicator when you click on it and it says what type of zoning to do(low,medium, high) don't pay attention to that. Also raise your taxes to about 9% for low, 8.5% for medium, and 8.0% for high. Tell me if this works for you.

[sleepypost]

I have truthfully mastered this game. (using a cheat of course). Type: weaknesspaysoff after hitting ctrl ~. then before hitting enter, hold down shift and press up. then repeat while alternately hitting enter and up (while holding shift).

As for performance issues, My city has reached 1,000,000 and it doesn't slow that much down. Try building a city with only residential and commercial buildings. That should help. DDR RAM also helps a crap load. I'm using PC 3200 and it handles pretty well. ATi cards (I have a Radeon 9500 Pro) are not ideal for this game. Read the readme file for info.

[sleepypost]

btw, I would build all sorts of industry in the surrounding cities, that keeps your meters at full green just about.

[Favre]

Does anybody know how "neighbor deals" work on the screen where you see the income and expenses? i was wondering if it was like you build a city with all power plants and water and stuff and sell it to your other cities? just wondering.

[whr2206]

I hope the RAM is what the game wants. I had 256 mb... Now I have 512mb... right now im up to 50,000 in my city and it would barely run... so maybe this 512 will help it out...

[Bushtree]

yep hopefully.. i have 521 also and my starts to get laggy around 30k

[Bushtree]

sry,. i mean 512mb lol