SimCity 3000 - The Offical FAQ

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When will SimCity 3000 be released?

SimCity 3000 will be released in February 1999. Please keep checking simcity.com for more specific information as the release date gets closer.

1/2/1999 Update: SimCity 3000 is now in stores!

What are the key differences between SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000?

SimCity 3000 represents a whole new experience, a quantum leap from previous editions of the best-selling line of SimCity games (guess you can tell that we're having a lot of fun playing it). SimCity 3000 gives you unprecedented power to build and control your city and has a whole new depth of gameplay.

Zoom out to a 747's eye view of your city and you'll see puffy clouds drifting by above the cityscape. Zoom in close and you'll see Sims moving down your sidewalks and cars, trucks, construction vehicles, buses, police cruisers and fire engines tooling along your streets.

Place roads, power plants, water mains, public buildings and parks; draw zones; and watch your Sims build homes, factories and commercial businesses with over 350 pre-rendered 3-D buildings. Spruce up your skyline by choosing from landmark buildings ranging from New York's Empire State Building to Turkey's Hagia Sofia.

Keep a close eye on the newsticker at the bottom of your screen -- it will bring you word of petitioners pressing you to pass or repeal ordinances, opportunities for business deals that can feed your city treasury (and bring unintended consequences), and neighbor deals that will allow you to buy or sell trash-disposal, electricity and water.

Keep reading this FAQ to learn even more about the wonderful new world that awaits you in SimCity 3000.

What can you tell us about the process of importing cities we've started in SimCity 2000 into SimCity 3000? What happens to the SimCity 2000 cities we import in terms of map size?

The process of importing a SimCity 2000 city into SimCity 3000 is simple -- simply load your saved SimCity 2000 city file upon entering SimCity 3000, and the file will be imported automatically. That having been said, any SimCity 2000 city that you import will have a map size no larger than the maximum size in SimCity 2000 -- 128 tiles by 128 tiles, compared to a maximum map size of 256 tiles by 256 tiles in SimCity 3000.

In addition, because there are significant differences between SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000, you'll need to do a bit of cleanup work before your imported city is completely ready for your playing pleasure. In general, we did our best to ensure that you can import your SimCity 2000 cities. The reference for SimCity 3000 outlines the main differences as well as any specific issues you'll need to take care of in your SC2K cities to make them playable in SC3K. One thing to note: The simulation starts in PAUSED mode in SC3K. This allows you time to rebuild before you get going.

How does pollution work in SimCity 3000?

Industry, power plants, cars, landfills -- all of them generate pollution. And in SimCity 3000, pollution plays an even bigger role than in previous releases of SimCity.

SimCity 3000 mayors will have to contend with air and water pollution from factories, cars, power plants and garbage landfills -- and also possibly with radiation from nuclear power plants. Pollution can have an extremely negative effect on your city's attractiveness to current and potential Sim residents. Sims will simply refuse to live near pollution sources, so if you zone residential areas near industrial areas or landfills, it is unlikely that those residential zones will develop. Waste from factories and landfills will also seep into your city's water supply and turn your lakes, rivers and coastal waters a discomforting black, causing your water system to lose efficiency and your Sims to complain -- and then, if you don't deal with the problem, to move away.

There are number of ways in which you can cope with pollution. First, it's a good idea to create residential and commercial zones far away from factories. Unlike previous editions of SimCity, Sims will make longer journeys from their homes to their jobs at factories, especially if your city has adequate mass transit systems, such as buses or subways (this will also help cut down on air pollution from cars). You can cope with water pollution by creating water treatment plants, and by finding alternatives to landfills -- such as incinerators, garbage-to-energy plants, or making a trash-export deal with a neighbor.

In the end, however, the best way to deal with pollution is through a little strategy and long-term thinking. At the beginning of the game, you'll have little choice but to accept dirty industries to get your city going and growing. But as you build schools, community colleges, museums, libraries, and even site a university, you'll be able to raise the educational quotient (EQ) of your Sims in a way that will attract cleaner, high-tech industries that will create less pollution in both the water and air. You'll also have at your disposal (no pun intended) a range of tax incentives and ordinances that will help make your city the cleanest in SimNation.

What are the different kinds of zones in SimCity 3000?

Each of the RCI types (Residential, Commercial, Industrial) now have three kinds of density: low, medium and high density. And the differences between these densities is very visible. You also zone for airports, seaports and landfills (one of the ways you deal with the new garbage problem).

What are all the recreational activities and places in the game?

Well, let's answer the question directly by offering you a partial list. Over the course of the game, you'll get the chance to site large parks, small parks, fountains, marinas, ponds, zoos, ballparks and playgrounds -- and a number of other recreational facilities for the enjoyment of your Sims and to draw tourists (here's a teaser: Wait until you get a load of Geyser Park). As in previous editions of SimCity, your commitment to building these recreational facilities -- and lots of them -- will be a major determinant of how nice a place your city is to live, which in SimCity 3000 is referred to as "aura." Most of the recreational opportunities listed above will be available at any time during the game -- except for special places like Geyser Park, which will represent rewards and opportunities as you take your city to new levels of growth and achievement.

How do landmarks work in the game?

Landmarks are basically there to enhance the visual look of the game and allow the creation of more realistic cities. You can place up to 10 of them in the game at a time, and mix them up as much as you want. (And a hint: Aliens seem to be very attracted to landmarks -- which may not be such a bad thing ...)

Landmarks come from all over the world, and range from the obvious (Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal) to the not-so-obvious (such as Spain's Temple Expiatiori de la Sagrada Família); from the huge (Empire State Building) to the small (the Alamo). In addition to the dozens of landmarks that ship with the game, you will be able to download many more from our Web site and use those as well. Also available at www.simcity.com will be dozens of real city terrain maps, based on topographical data, which you can add to those that ship with the game.

What's the difference between a landmark and a reward?

Landmarks are available all the time, and are based on famous real-world buildings. Rewards are buildings and features you gain access to by achieving a level of success in the game, and are not based on specific real-world buildings. In addition to the ones from SimCity 2000 such as Mayor's House, City Hall and Statue, there are many new and exciting rewards you will see during play.

And those new and exciting rewards would be?

You'll just have to wait and see! We can tell you that there are 17 reward buildings/elements in SimCity 3000, compared to six in SimCity 2000.

What improvements have been made to subways?

We've made a couple of really major improvements in the subway system for SimCity 3000. First, establishing a subway system will have a much more marked effect on the traffic level in your city than in SimCity 2000. Second, we've increased the visual reward of establishing a subway system. We've created separate views for the subway and water systems, so looking at one won't get in the way of looking at the other. And when you establish your subway, you'll see a cutaway view of subway tunnels with trains running inside.

We've been told there are different development phases in the game when we can only get light zoning, then only medium and light, and then light, medium or dense. Can you elaborate on how this system will work? Will zone availability depend on size, population, time or some other variable?

Hmm, let's clear up a bit of confusion. You can zone for low, medium or high density at any time during the game -- be it the beginning or later in your city's development (and with SimCity, there's never really an end). It costs more to zone land high density than medium density, and more to zone for medium density than for low density)

What is true, however, is that you can't get certain kinds of buildings until you've a certain population and have land that has achieved a certain land value. You'd never see a building like a bristling skyscraper in a town of 2,000 people in real life -- and the same holds true for SimCity 3000. When you start the game, you'll find the simulator building only low-density buildings such as houses, two- to three-story apartment buildings, flea markets and drive-ins in residential and commercial areas -- even if the underlying zoning is high density (high-density development kicks in industrial areas much earlier than it does in the other zone types). But if you're successful in building your city's population and increasing land values, you'll start to see tall apartment buildings in your high density residential zones. If you continue down this path of increasing your population and land values and also successfully zone and build an airport, your Sims sooner or later will start building beautiful skyscrapers in the areas that you've zoned high density commercial.

Can you explain in depth how the historic zoning will work?

There isn't really historic zoning in the game per se -- but you can designate a building historic so that it can't be plowed under and redeveloped by the simulator if conditions in the area -- particularly land values -- change. To designate a building historic, you would use the game's "query tool" to bring up a window listing information about a particular building. On that window, you'll see a check box asking you if you want to designate the building as historic. Check that box, and that building will remain intact regardless of changes in the surrounding area -- except that it can be destroyed in a disaster. To remove a building's historic designation, you just query the building again and uncheck the historic designation box.

How do you get Sims to build farms, and what affect do they have on the game?

Sims are likely to build farms on low-density Industrial zones that are away from roads, relatively unpolluted and have low land value. If you zone a large area of low-density industrial with less than three edges with roads, where pollution is low and land value is low as well, you have a good chance of seeing Sims set up a farm. Farms are an exception to the rule that nothing will develop unless it's close to a road (part of it must be close enough to a road for the barns to develop, but fields and pastures can spread over a large area). As time goes on, though, and local land value or pollution increase, some canny Sim real estate developer will convert the farm into other types of low density industry. So you will usually see farms only in small cities or on the edges of large cities.

How will traffic appear in the game? Will you be able to see gridlock? Do cars park when they arrive at their destinations?

Traffic is much more complexly illustrated in SimCity 3000. You'll see animated cars, trucks and other vehicles stopping at corners to let pedestrians cross in front of them, turning corners, taking highway on- and off-ramps, etc. Vehicles such as police cars, fire trucks and construction machinery will show up in the sorts of places you would expect to find them. Traffic will bunch up where there are too many travelling Sims, and also at places where intersections have been badly designed or where damaged roads are showing up due to inadequate transportation funding.

What's the news ticker, and how will it differ from the newspaper in SimCity 2000?

The news ticker is a continually scrolling text box at the bottom of the screen giving you "headlines" about current events. It's a lot like the scrolling news banners you see on many news-oriented Web sites, or the strip encircling One Times Square in New York. It will tell you about everything going on in your city, from warnings that tornadoes are likely (something to watch out for so you can in turn warn your Sims) to more mundane stuff like complaints about traffic and not enough schools. It serves a somewhat similar function to the newspapers in SimCity 2000, though it's much less "in your face" and more up-to-the-minute.

Different types of messages come across the news ticker, signaled by different colors. Some give you general information about the goings on in your city. Others are communications from one of your Advisors or a Petitioner; if you click on one of these messages, a Meet window will open for that character. A third type of message updates you on game states, such as when your simulation speed is set to Pause. Finally, red underlined messages alert you to emergency situations that require your immediate attention. Click on these messages to take you to the site of the emergency in progress.

What about disasters?

The disaster animations in SimCity 3000 are beautiful and complex. When a tornado funnel passes over a road, you'll see vehicles, people and debris sucked into the funnel, tumbled about and eventually tossed into the air (that is, if you have failed to warn your Sims by activating the Early Warning Siren, which causes them to clear the streets and take cover). Other disasters are fire (which happens in a series of stages, culminating in an explosion), earthquake (which happens along fault lines and actually shifts terrain), riots and a complex UFO-related disaster.

What are the start dates in the game, and how much money will you get at different levels of starting difficulty?

For start dates, the start dates are the same as for SimCity 2000: 1900, 1950 and 2000. Difficulty affects not only the amount of Simoleons (the unit of currency in SimCity 3000) that you start with but also features of your terrain.

Please list the languages in which SimCity 3000 will be released.

In rough order of appearance:
English (US), English (UK), French, German, Dutch, Swedish
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Russian, Polish, Japanese
Chinese (traditional and simplified), Thai, Korean
Turkish, Greek (manual only)

What's the resolution and color depth at which the game runs?

SimCity 3000 will support any resolution from 640x480, 800x600 and up and runs in 16-bit color.

Will you have a SimCity 3000 Network Edition?

Not with release of SimCity 3000, although you will be able to participate in contests and events that we run at www.simcity.com. We also intend to release new buildings and other elements on the Web site over time, the first of which, the Building Architect Tool, will allow you to create your own buildings and use them in SimCity 3000.

Will there be a SimCity 4000?

There definitely will be future versions of SimCity.

Will I be able to use SimCopter or Streets of SimCity with our SimCity 300 cities?

SimCopter and Streets of SimCity are optimized to work only with cities imported from SimCity 2000. We currently have no plans to update SimCopter and Streets of SimCity to work with cities that you'll generate by playing SimCity 3000.

Will SC3000 be available on any other platform such as Playstation or Dreamcast?

We're currently planning to release SimCity 3000 for the PC and later for the Macintosh. We haven't announced plans to support other platforms.

How will players be able to interact with the new simcity.com to enhance their gameplay?

The new www.simcity.com will offer you a number of ways for enhancing your gameplay. We'll be regularly posting hints, tips and strategies that will help you build bigger better cities. We'll have downloads that you can use with the game, including the Building Architect Tool, pre-built cities, terrain maps and additional buildings.

We'll have chat rooms and message boards so you can swap city-building experiences with other fans from across the world. We'll regularly post tips on building great cities with SimCity 3000. We'll feature articles, polls and quizzes that will enhance your understanding of real-life city-planning and urban issues that you'll confront while playing SimCity 3000. Finally, we'll have contests that will test your city-building prowess.