SimCity 4 Hands On - IGN
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Maxis lets us be mayor for a day.
By Steve Butts
Last week we took a quick trip out to see the gang at
to check up on the progress of . Since this is the latest title in one of the most significant series in PC gaming, we've been anxious to try the game out for ourselves. Thankfully, producer Sean Decker was willing to sacrifice an afternoon and talk us through a few years worth of city building. While there's still a bit of work to be done on this one, the game is reliably stable and roughly complete, at least in terms of functionality.
The gang at Maxis have "added a touchy-feely interactive tutorial that takes them step-by-step through things." Assuming I knew what I was doing, we quickly moved past the tutorial stage and jumped feet first in to the game. But even if you don't play the tutorial, there are extensive help functions within the game. The tooltips that appear over each button on the interface not only explain how to do things but why as well. So the entry for low-density residential zoning will include a bit of strategy on how best to place them so that they interact with the other areas of your city to everyone's maximum benefit. Sean says the designers
"want people to be able to get in and not have to refer back to the manual every five minutes."
For our first city, Sean showed just how easy it is to get things started. Laying down a few residential blocks, a smallish industrial area and a power plant is all you need to do to get your city going. Where before you had to place the roads and power lines and water pipes for each of your zones, the new game smoothes out the process considerably. Each zone is built with its own power lines already installed and the streets are automatically placed so as to be accessible to all of your residents.
This last convenience is one that I was pretty skeptical about. Like a lot of hardheads, I prefer having control over more rather than fewer features. But I honestly have to say, it speeds the game up considerably and reduces the amount of micromanagement involved in creating a city that works. The only rough area in the street drawing routine shows up when you're building a number of small areas in succession. If you lay down smallish and irregular zones in sequence, the roads are much rougher and much less efficient than if you lay down large swaths.
A handy graph lets you see the demand (or surplus) of particular zones. Since it's divided up among quality in addition to type, you can really fine-tune your city to meet the needs of your citizens. Each type of zone (residential, industrial and commercial) is divided in to types based on wealth. Industrial demand also includes a section for agriculture so you can see how much food you need to produce to support your population.
Once your city starts to get underway, you have a number of tasks to take care of. First off, you'll need to place commercial areas for your citizens' shopping needs. These are ideally placed in high traffic areas. The more people who drive by a shop, the more it prospers.
But this sort of visibility is the only upside to high traffic. You'll need to take steps to eliminate the congestion on your streets if you want your citizens to be happy and if you want your industries to have clear lanes to move goods. Each of the streets laid down initially are of the low-density variety. You'll have to paint road improvements over them to ease the traffic flow. The new roads are much darker and come with real streetlights so you can see at a glance which areas have been improved.
As any visitor to the IGN Compound knows, people make trash. As garbage begins to fill the streets of your city, your citizens will start to get a bit unhappy. Eventually you'll have to start a landfill or recycling plant to take care of the waste. The trash that piles up in the landfills attracts seagulls as well adding another little form of feedback that lets you know how things are working. Garbage is a bit like education in that it takes a little while for the results of your policies to take effect. Once my two landfills were brimming with garbage, it took quite some time for the nearby recycling plant to put a dent in the debris.
Along with garbage collection, you'll also need to provide your citizens with water. There are a number of options available here, from water towers to pumps to treatment plants. Since my town is still kind of small a water tower is more than enough for my needs. You'll need to keep your sources of water away from your polluted areas if you want them to function at peak capacity. You'll still need to draw pipes out to spread the flow of water but since the pipes provide water in nearby zones, you won't have to string them all across the map to get the full effect. (A good water supply is also effective in suppressing the risk of fire in your town.)
While you're monkeying about trying to find the correct proportion and arrangement of your zones and worrying over your water supply, you'll also need to be mindful of other city services. Numerous buildings contribute to your citizens' overall security, health and happiness and, if you want to succeed as mayor, you've got to juggle them all.
First up on my own agenda is the need for fire and police coverage. Each city service has a corresponding ring of influence. You'll need to lay them out so they can cover the problem areas of your city. But while the police patrol around the station house, you'll have to dispatch them (as well as the firemen) manually to deal with any emergencies.
Each police station supports a certain number of cells that can house offenders. If the crime is too high (or if funding is too low) and the number of criminals exceeds the number of cells, the police will start releasing prisoners back on to the streets. You could lay down a federal prison to take up the slack, but most folks don't like living in prison towns.
The developers should be applauded for basing their crime model on a socio-economic foundation. While police can control crime, they can't prevent it before it happens. To minimize the risk of crime, your best bet is to remove any cores of low-income, poorly educated residents
On the health front, you'll need to provide your city with a number of clinics and hospitals. While this isn't any big change from the previous game, now you'll also have to consider the placement of farmer's markets to help ferry the food from farms to families. Things like cemeteries are also considered health improvements (in that it's pointedly unhealthy to toss dead bodies in your backyard). When you add items like this, that improve the overall well-being of your citizens, they come out to celebrate. Much like the way Sims applaud new furniture, a whole crowd of neighborhood types walk out to the cemetery and hold an impromptu party. You might even see a little TV news van pull up and cover the grand opening.
Schools are perhaps even more important. Education policies take a long time to take effect and need to be sustained to have any lasting impact. Each generation in your population is served by different buildings (elementary schools for the kids, high schools and junior colleges for the teens and museums and libraries for the adults) so you'll need a complete solution to maintain education as people grow older. On that same note, a poor health level compromises your education initiatives by forcing a higher turnover rate for employees.
IN THIS ARTICLE
You create and run the city of your dreams in SIM CITY 4.
As a big-city mayor, manage every last detail of your busy metropolis.
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