SimCity 2000 - Players Guide

City building isnt as simple as it used to be in Maxis enormously enhanced 
version of SimCity 2000 - so here are a few choice hints and tips to help you 
create a thriving metropolis with a happy populous... 
Because of the open nature of SimCity 2000s gameplay, its very hard to say 
definitely whether something is right or wrong - your own urban ambitions will 
decide that. If you set out to create a huge, sprawling mass of pollution and crime 
(inspired by the likes of Judge Dredds MegaCity One or the Gotham City of 
Batman), for example, then your design will differ radically from a small 
environmentally-friendly utopian set-up created by another player. With this in 
mind, the following sections are an attempt to explain how the game works and to 
help you achieve your goals, whatever they may be, and not someone elses (who 
wants to build anothers urban nightmare?).


Zones
Not only is the placement of new zones the major part of city design in SimCity 
2000, it also has the single biggest effect on the success (or failure) of your 
community. Correct zoning takes a great deal of thought and foresight, so bear 
these points in mind...

Getting Around - Sims (the inhabitants of your city) will only walk three tiles to 
reach another form of transportation. Thus, the maximum width of any zone is six 
tiles. You can build long strips six tiles wide, but they must have roads on either 
side.

Density - Low-density zones have higher land values than high-density zones, but 
contain less people. As tax income is based on both population and value, the tax 
gained is largely the same, whatever zone type you opt for. Its largely a matter of 
taste.
The exception is industry. Certain industries prefer one density or another - 
generally the preference is obvious, with heavy industries preferring high-density 
zones and vice versa. Remember that dense industrial zones create more pollution 
than light ones, though.

The NIMBY Syndrome - Be careful when placing residential zones, because they 
suffer strongly from the Not In My Back Yard syndrome. While sims want and 
need lots of different things from a city, rarely do they want to live right next door 
to them. Then again, they dont like travelling very far to get what they want 
either. You should always separate industrial zones from residential areas by at 
least a couple of tiles, and preferably a bit more. Creating buffer zones of parks, 
water or trees is a good way of doing this.

Ratios - As a rule of thumb, the number of tiles zoned for residential use should 
equal the total number of tiles zoned for industrial and commercial use. Once you 
have gained the City Hall reward, getting info on it will tell you exactly what 
percentage of your city is given over to each type of zone, and keeping track of 
the situation is made much simpler.
In addition, the ideal ratio of industrial to commercial zones varies with your 
citys population:

Population	   Ratio
20,000 or less	     3:1
60,000	                   2:1
100,000	                   1:1
150,000	                   1:2
200,000 and above   1:3

Thus, when starting your city you need more industrial than commercial zones, 
but as the city grows commerce becomes more important.


Transport
Along with zoning, providing adequate transport ranks as one of your most 
important tasks. SimCity 2000s transport model is based on the idea that sims in 
a given zone must be able to travel to each of the other two types of zone. People 
in an industrial zone, for instance, must be able to reach a commercial zone and a 
residential zone. If they cant, the zone simply wont develop. As explained 
earlier (See Zones - Getting Around), sims only walk three tiles to look for 
transport, so any zoned tile more than three tiles away from a road (or other 
means of transport) will not grow. And another thing, sims wont walk from zone 
to zone - even if the two zones are right next to each other. They have to use some 
other mode of transportation.

Trips - To find out if a zone is near enough to other zones, SimCity 2000 uses a 
routine called the trip generator. The computer simulates a sims journey from his 
zone of origin, giving him a limited amount of steps to find another type of 
zone. If the sim can reach both other types of zone without running out of steps, 
then his zone of origin will develop. For travel by road (either in a car or a bus), 
the maximum distance you can count on a sim travelling in search of another type 
of zone is about 24 tiles.

Roads Or Rail (Or Subways)? - Roads are the cheapest form of transport to build 
and maintain.Theres also a built-in weighting factor towards using them - sims 
like to drive. Whenever a sim on a trip comes across another form of transport, 
theres only a 50/50 chance hell take it. Otherwise hell continue to drive. On top 
of all this, any sim within three tiles of a road can use it, whereas he can only use 
rail and subway transport by using stations or depots.
Of course, roads create their own problems - traffic and pollution. Too many sims 
trying to use the same road leads to heavy traffic and eventually a gridlock. 
Likewise, too many cars chuck out a lot of pollution.

Buses A Go-Go - The solution is the bus. Bus stations are cheap to build, use the 
existing road network and sims can get off buses wherever they want. Even better, 
traffic is reduced around them for about a ten tile radius, with the effect 
decreasing the further away you get from the station. Although the other methods 
of public transport may be more appealing aesthetically (at least in the short run), 
buses are by far the most effective means of getting from A to B for your citys 
populous.

Off Map Links - Transportation links to the cities surrounding yours have a neat 
side-effect - the trip generator assumes that all types of zone exist just off of the 
map, which means that any zone near to an off-map link almost develops 
automatically. You can use this to your advantage by placing all your heavy (and 
therefore horribly dirty and environmentally unfriendly) industry at the edges of 
the city, near to off-map links, and then creating a few light zones near the centre 
so that your commercial and residential zones can still reach some industry (and 
no-one has to go about town wearing a face mask and rubber gloves).


City Services
The third part of your job as a mayor is to provide your sims with city services, of 
which there are a considerable number to choose from. Although some are 
relatively simple, a few are often neglected, and many are more complex than first 
meet the eye. This month, were just going to deal with one of the least 
understood areas: education.

Making The Grade - Education in SimCity 2000 is measured as an EQ rating, 
with 90 being high school equivalency, 140 being a college graduate and 100 
being the SimNation average. Providing your sims with a good quality education 
is often the most underestimated area of the game, but has many important 
benefits. Not only do sims like to move to a city that offers good education for 
their children, but sims already living there take great pride in their intelligence, 
and are less likely to emigrate. In addition to this, the more advanced industries 
(i.e: the ones that become important in the later years of the game - such as the 
media, finance, automotive, petrochemical, electronics and aerospace 
industries...) all prosper in a city with a high average EQ.
A sims EQ is determined at birth, and is 20% of the parents average EQ. Going 
to school adds 70 to this figure, and attending college multiplies this total by 1.5 
to reach that sims maximum EQ. To increase your average EQ is therefore a long 
and slow job, best initiated early on in the game, so that you can reap the benefits 
later. Dont forget, though, that a sims EQ gradually falls as he or she grows 
older. Libraries and museums serve to offset this loss, so its a good idea to build 
a few of these. You can check the efficiency of your education system by using 
the inquiry tool on schools, colleges and libraries. 
The grade given in the info box is a function of the number of teachers (or 
whatever) compared to the number of students. As such, its not actually the 
average grade of the students, but it might as well be. The simple way to improve 
your grades is to build more of a specific type of building, thus providing more 
facilities. By the way, SimCity 2000 doesnt check where your education facilities 
are, just that they exist, so youre free to place them virtually where you like.

