Sim City 4 Expansion Pack

simu

Was thinking of buying this, gives you more transport options and you get to name individual streets among other things. Has anybody else given it a go? Any good? Bear in mind I'm the kind of person who spends hours designing motorways for my sim citizens!

Actually, while I'm at it, any other sim city fans out there? - you don't hear much about it around here!

Tusky

I heard its good, you can drive the cars around the roads...I think

technobob

i never really liked any of the sims series

i got the game and played it a lot,but found myself getting very bored very fast

i dunno maybe i just found it too boring

Balfa

it's not a sims game.

i think i'll wait for SC4+expansion bundle on budget though

segadreamcast

Getting SC4 + Expansion Pack as soon as I upgrade my PC to the extent that it can play it .

simu

it's not a sims game.

True. You can port ready-made sims into your city in SC4 though but all they ever do is complain!

simu

Getting SC4 + Expansion Pack as soon as I upgrade my PC to the extent that it can play it .

Maxis is releasing both of these together as a deluxe edition in spring 2004 - might be cheaper if you still haven't upgraded by then.

simu

I got it - it's so cool!

You can drive around your city and do missions in cars, boats, helicopters and planes. (You can even terrorise your citizens by driving around in a truck full of toxic waste - watch them scream with fear!)

There are 3 difficulty levels to chose from so it's easier than SC4 on its own.

There's a whole load of new transport stuff - monorail, ferries, carparks etc and there's a map that shows the traffic connections between the cities in a region.

There's more options for building schools, hospitals, fire and police stations etc.

There's 4 different building sets and you can have all 4 running simultaneously or have the style of building change every X number of years.

I'd recommend it to anyone. To quote the Sim City 2000 manual - if it was any more realistic, it would be illegal to turn it off!

segadreamcast

Wicked !.

Sadly won't be buying the double pack in spring 2004 the upgrade'll be completed in about 3 weeks. (Got a job especially for it - 'awwwww, my first job' - etc)

Looking forward to it !

tba

Sim City 4 is Great! I havnt tried the expansion pack, but apparently it improves on the difficult to use and fix transport system.

bizmark

im going to get sim city 4 today

tba

excellent another turned to the sim side.

bizmark

iv had sim city since 1989 m8

i hate THE sim's though ..eww

bizmark

Oh sweet jesus they have made Sim city a fair bit harder

school's and hosptial's are FAR to expensive 1,200 quid a month for 1 hosptial !!!

even with 65,000 people i bearly have any surplus and my city is turning into a slum ....... damn it's like limrick all over again

tba

the key to Sim City Four is Micro Managment, Clicking on the individual school or Clinics will allow tou to drop local funding, For example a low density area could have a school with about 10% funding, whereas a medium density area could have the same school with a 100% funding.

bizmark

i see
but wouldnt the guy's go on strike if you lower the funding that much ?

flogen

when i was a wee one i loved sim city 2000, thought it was the s*hit..... got sim city 3000 a year or two back and hated it, thought it was boring as hell, and so they lost a fan.

a friend of mine has sim city 4 says its really good, but i dont know if i can ever trust them again.....<sob>

Flogen

simu

but wouldnt the guy's go on strike if you lower the funding that much ?

No, not if the capacity of a building is higher than the number of ppl that use it. When the city grows though, you have to remember to adjust funding.

It's a lot easier with the expansion pack, though as you have 3 difficulty levels - even a child could build a successful city with the easy setting.

got sim city 3000 a year or two back and hated it, thought it was boring as hell, and so they lost a fan.

I've played all the sim city games. loved all of them. Give SC4 with Expansion pack a go - it rocks!

bizmark

this game is doing my head in

tba

Originally posted by bizmark
this game is doing my head in

It gets better the more you play it and remember that there is a great help section on the web site.

http://simcity.ea.com/tipstricks/tipsntricks.php

Suaimhneach

can someone please tell me the diffrence between sc4 and the sims?

i have sims deluxe edition and then superstar. i never use superstar though. but i love the sims creator!

i love the idea of running a city!

simu

I haven't played the Sims but from what I make out, both games are quite different.

In Sim City, yes, obviously you have to build a city.

To give more detail, you start with an empty landscape with hills, trees, sea and so on and you have to mark out zones where ppl in the game can build businesses(commercial zones), houses(residential zones) and factories (industrial zones). You have to build power plants and pumps to provide electricity and water and build services like schools, police stations, parks etc. If you do this well, you attract people to live in your city and you see buildings starting to grow on your zones and cars driving around on the roads.

You start out with a certain amount of money - you have to pay to build things or make zones and there are also monthly fees for services like schools and road maintenance. You make the citizens pay taxes to make a profit and you can also make business deals to make more money. The challenge of the game is to buid a good city without falling into debt!

That's just a really basic outline- there are many more details. It's a great game because you can be creative and design any type of city you want (a rural community or a hugh New York-type urban area etc).

If you're not sure you'd like it, you can pick up sim city 3 or sim city 2000 (earlier versions) cheaply in the budget games sections of any good games store and although they don't have as many features as the latest one - sim city 4 - you'd get an idea of what the game is like.

Also, in sim city 4, you can port the characters you create in the Sims into your city, give them houses, see if they like your city and, with the expansion pack, drive around your city in their car!

Suaimhneach

that sounds great.
might consider putting it on my xmas list!

can you explain the diffrence in what sc4 is though? is it just another name like maxis? also people were talking about upgrades on computers and the like, my computer is 6 months old, will it be ok?

thanks for all the help, sorry for the ongoing questions!

bizmark

my pc is a 2600xp 512 meg of ram .Geforce fx 5200 128meg and it run's it fine i love my pc

Your telling me jesjes u have never hear of Sim city ?

SprostonGreen

Yeah I bought Rush Hour, its great, I already loved SC4, I really like the transport options.

Now and again I mess round with the driving missions.

Its good to see a few people into Sim City on boards, last time I posted, nobody was interested.

Tellox

simcity on the snes was best game evar. period.

simu

can you explain the diffrence in what sc4 is though? is it just another name like maxis? also people were talking about upgrades on computers and the like, my computer is 6 months old, will it be ok?

Maxis is the company that developed all the Sim City games.

Sim City 4 is the latest version - before that there was Sim City, Sim City 2000 and Sim City 3 plus a load of less successful games like Sim Ant, Sim Tower and so on. (Just like they had Super Mario Bros 1, 2, 3 etc). So, you don't need the previous versions to play Sim City 4 but you do need Sim City 4 to use the Expansion Pack.

A 6 month old computer should have no problem - as always, the more processing power you have, the better the game runs.

simu

simcity on the snes was best game evar. period.

Did you ever get the Mario statue on that?

I didn't but i got the game for my SNES emulator recently so I'll have to give it a go!

segadreamcast

Hm, so where to get these two games cheapest together then?*

*Physically speaking - not on the internet :P

--

I *loved* Sim City 3000...but it always seemed to hit a dead end...once you got the fusion plant there wasn't anything else really, from what I remember...the game just hit a wall...and the houses looked like the same 1990's houses for ever!

With a bit of luck, this game will have more continuity?

simu

Well at the moment you're going to have to shell out 50 euro for sc4 and 30 for the expansion pack.

In Cork, they have Sim Ciy 2000 for half nothing in Eason's and Sim City 3 as a budget release in the Software Zone (besides Smith's Toystore).

I'm sure they have them in shops in other cities too.

As for the original Sim City, try 2nd hand SNES carts or downloading it from online rom sites. Don't know about the PC version of it, though.

I thought SC 3 was cool - I got a bonus feature with mine that allowed you to design your own cities - unlike the sc2000 one where you had to draw the building, in this one you built the building with 3d blocks which was a lot easier.

Suaimhneach

eh, bit slow to cop here, sc4 stands for sim city 4!

opps:ninja:

anyway, yeah sounds good, might get a lend of it to try it, seeming as there are mixed opinions, otherwise it might go on my xmas list!!

thanks!

vac

Sim city games where always ****, boring as hell..

simu

Sim city games where always ****, boring as hell..

They're not everybody's cup of tea but unless you're going to say what exactly you found boring about them, there's not much point posting.

tba

Id say that the biggest addition to Sim City 4 over its predessors is the use of the region system. It allows you to create vast citys on average more than twenty times the size used in Sim City 3000. If you have a fast PC you can make even bigger ones. The basics behind the region system is that you can have a major city spread across several regions and have satilite towns or rural areas spreading out from this. I am still on the first Region I started and have just recently moved into a third city square.

Depending on the speed of your PC you can make huge regions and if you have a paint program you can create custom regions.
Here is a tutorial-->http://www.geocities.com/gordeon/sc4hints.html

simu

Cool link, tba.

I'll have some fun with that!

tuxy

Originally posted by simu
Well at the moment you're going to have to shell out 50 euro for sc4 and 30 for the expansion pack.

wrong you can get both for under 40 euro
14 euro
http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=PC&title=104158
and 25 euro
http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=PC&title=135834

bizmark

**** i payed 55 euro for sim city 4!

how the hell can they cut 30 pound for the game ??

tuxy

the shop is in jersey which is ouside the e.u you dont pay vat
but even considering that its still very cheap , some games they just seem to have on special offer and they are insanely cheap