From: paul2@dcs.exeter.ac.uk (Paul Day)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: SimCity Hints & Tips (Summary)
Date: 21 Jul 92 12:54:50 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. - University of Exeter. UK

As promised, here is the summary of SimCity hints & tips that I have
been sent. There is not as many as I thought there would be, and if
anyone has any more I would still like to recieve them from you.

Thanks to everyone who sent me hints & tips

Paul

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From gmcquary@com.ingres (George F. McQuary)

There are two published books on SimCity that offer more info than an 
cheatfile on the net could offer. One is called "Simcity: a guide" and 
includes games never covered here (like how to grow a city to maximum
population, including maps of one huge one). There is also a more recently
published book that covers three sim games in one volume.

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From aa395@yfn.ysu.edu (Perry Tarantine)

Well, this isn't exactly a hint or tip but if you need money fast...
hold down shift (or caps lock) and type fund.
this should advance you $10,000.00 each time you do it.
there is no limits to how often you can do this but
the more you do it in 1 year the more likely for massive earthquakes 
to rip you up. If you do it once a year you shouldn't have problems. 
also, if you do it about 50-100 times before you build your city
then those earthquakes won't be able to destroy anything and you 
can start with molto dinero.

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From: dedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Aengus MacKenzie)

[about the above message]

This is not 100% true...every 3rd time you do it you get an earthquake.
wether you do it once a year or 3 times in a year.

so what you do is, do it when you start (if you want to cheat) and keep
doing it till you think you have enough $$$...(put pause on while you do
it, and do it before you build ANYTHING)... then when your happy with your
cash flow, take it off pause, and wait for the earthquake. then start to 
build.

when I dont feel like taking forever to get going I run it up to like
1 milllion then start out :)

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From dmarsh%dmarsh%wybbs%wyn386@edu.umich.cc.sharkey (Dan Marsh)

The mistake I kept making when I first got the game was that I was building
too quickly.  If you've got the money to burn, like you do in the beginning
of the game, it's too tempting to just build another square whenever a
residential area fills up with individual homes, or whenever ANYONE moves
into a commercial zone.  The residential demand (the little green bar at the
left edge of the screen) should ALWAYS be at the maximum.  Even during the
most severe recessions, it should never be less than 3/4 of the maximum.
Don't build new residential until the old residential "goes condo."  Also,
you can never have too much industrial, it seems, but commercial is easy to
overbuild.  DON'T do it--commercial and industrial are cyclical, and the
bad times for commercial really wipe out your "commercial districts."

No roads.  ALL rail.  It costs more, but there's no pollution or congestion
to drag down property values.  You do get notified occasionally "Need more
roads," but I've never noticed any sort of penalty associated with NOT
building roads, the way there is with not building an airport or seaport.
(If you need an airport and don't build it, each time you're notified that
you need an airport your commercial demand--the little blue bar--drops to
zero.  Same for seaports and industrial.)

My favorite tactic for reducing pollution from industrial zones is to build
all my industrial in a ring at the edges of the map.  That way, half the
pollution doesn't even show on the map, and thus (to SimCity) doesn't exist.
The drawbacks are that you need more rail to get to all the industrial sites,
and more police stations to patrol them fairly well.

A way to keep property values relatively high is to "beautify the neighbor-
hood," as the manual tells you.  To accomplish this, I build my "districts"
in large square bands around a central park, with rail around the outside
connecting them.  For example:

     |                        |
   --+------------------------+--
     |RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR|    | + -  Rail tracks
     |R RR RR RR RR RR RR RR R|    R      Residential unit
     |RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR|    .      Park
     |RRR..................RRR|
     |R R..................R R|
     |RRR..................RRR|
     |RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR|
     |R RR RR RR RR RR RR RR R|
     |RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR|
   --+------------------------+--
     |                        |

The result of this is that each residential zone is touching the park, which
is good for its property values.  The corners, since they do NOT touch parks,
usually don't do as well as the rest of the band.  Try fixing this somewhat
either by building bigger bands, or using the corners for police and fire
stations.  Of course, you know that Park is equivalent to Trees for all
intents and purposes, so don't bulldoze trees in the central parks.

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From cfjenkin@au.edu.adelaide.cs.teaching (Chris Jenkins)

   A good although risky way to raise funds in Sim City is to muck
around with the taxes like this:

   When it is just about the end of the year and nearly time to set a
new budget you choose budget and change the taxes to twenty percent.
You will notice that all of the little Mr and Mrs Simms start to leave,
but if you timed ot correctly then the budget screen will pop up very
soon and you will receive heaps of money. Now you simply change the tax
to 0%. Your population will boost up and you simply repeat this yar
after year to get money.

   NOTE: The risk is that you mistime it and the budget suddenly comes
up with you getting no money. This is a disaster.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games