Now residential and industrial demand are high.

Industrial demand is high, even though there are 500 unfilled “low-wealth” jobs (a euphemism that would make any politician proud). Weirdly, though, SimCity actually seems to encourage failure, making learning more difficult than it has to be.įor instance, the ratio of residential to commercial to industrial zoning has a very small sweet spot, which I like-it's a hard game to master-but SimCity's advisers almost always push me to solve problems by expanding rather than by achieving balance with what I have. There's almost always room to bulldoze half a city, pass a bond measure, and start over. Learning through failure is a frustration SimCity gets away with by allowing for failure. Sims sometimes do dumb things, or have unexpected complaints, and identifying and solving these behaviors takes time. Even after nearly 100 hours, I'm still discovering new quirks and features of the simulation. The only way to learn how to plan for and balance all this is trial and error. Getting a handle on such minutiae becomes overwhelming when I try to expand too fast.

And because service vehicles like fire trucks have to actually drive to where they're needed, seemingly minor details like whether they're more likely to make right or left turns out of their garages really do matter. Bigger cities also need more water, more power, more sewage treatment, and more garbage trucks, as well as police, fire, and health coverage, public transportation, parks, and schools.īuildings can be upgraded, but even upgrades such as extra water pumps and fire truck garages need space. As houses become towers, too many intersections and not enough high-capacity avenues will cause traffic gridlocks, and density won't increase at all without enough space. The early game is all about anticipating the midgame. Big decisions like this happen at every stage of a city's development, and my choices often influence how I feel about my city more than my city itself. The type of power plant I choose first will influence the whole narrative of my city, not because I can't switch at any time, but because I refuse to be an inconsistent mayor. Clean energy solutions-wind and solar plants-also pump power into the city, but require swaths of valuable land to keep the lights on. In the beginning, demand for services is low, and how you choose to provide power to your city is the most important decision early in the game.Ĭoal and oil plants cough out pollution and require resources from mines or the Global Market, an online feature that functions as a commodities exchange enabling players to buy and sell resources. At the macro scale, beautiful data overlays show me subterranean concentrations of water, as well as resources like ore, coal, and oil, which I can exploit when my city is ready for heavy industry.

Simcity 3000 patch