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I purchased this PC "game" for $10 at Sam's Club. I had fond memories of the original Sim City, which was a fairly ground breaking piece of software that had amazing flexibility for the day in which it was created.
This "new" product is an evolutionary leap above the original. You can zoom in and see people and vehicles. You have a lot more flexibility over the budget, controlling both spending and income from a variety of sources, including making deals with neighboring towns.
The great thing about SIM CITY is that you are in complete control. This is also the worst part of it. You make decisions to zone areas for commercial, industrial or residential use. You build schools, parks, fire stations, police stations, or not. You can create just about any town you can think of and in just about any era from 1900 to now.
I made a town just like Dodge City. No law. Just people and money. We stabilized at about 700 population while the rest of our neighbors grew to number in the millions!!!
I created a city that was basically one giant landfill. Lots of jobs in garbage, it turns out. And you can recycle it in to energy and sell that to neighboring towns. If they'll talk to you. Mostly they just turned up their noses.
I made a very high density town where the people lived stacked on top of each other like rats in a sardine can...or something like that. It was really kind of cool because we didn't need very many roads so our maintenance costs were low on that end. Of course, I neglected to put in enough public transportation so the air in my town became more like chocolate syrup, which any younger sibling of mine will tell you does not work well in the lungs.
I made a futuristic town where we got our power from a nuclear plant that I thought was far enough outside the city limits. Ooops. Oh well. I think some of the resulting deformed SIMS were kind of cute.
Which brings me to the power to create disasters. The disasters are really fun. When you think about it, this is just the computer version of making sand castles or playing cars. Eventually, every game ends in the powermad destruction of all you have built.
But I have to note that every single town I built and then destroyed was already failing. Dismally. I had borrowed to my limits and paid back maybe 1/10th of what I owed. Municipal services crumbled. Education budgets were slashed and teachers would walk out. Then I'd give them more money and the police and fire would strike. The towns were chaos. What roads did exist looked more like mine fields than pavement.
And then it struck me. SIM CITY is really great training for dictators. Basically, the reason things were going wrong is because I didn't have ENOUGH control. It wasn't that my decisions were flawed, it was that the parts of the game that are programmed to behave like people were flawed. Seriously, seriously flawed. Look at them building right where I'm trying to knock things down to put in a railway. Watch the fools walking endlessly on a bit of pavement I meant to remove but hadn't gotten around to. There was a guy in a wheelchair rolling along a dangerous street in the sector that I'd decided just didn't deserve police protection. What kind of foolish behavior is this? What is wrong with people? Shouldn't they figure out what it is I'm trying to accomplish and then GET WITH THE PROGRAM?
I've played the more person-oriented game by the same company (SIMS) before and I know the inhabitants are rather simple-minded creatures. But this is absurd. They move into areas with high crime just because I lowered the taxes. They start having babies without consulting their lord and master. Idiots! All of them!
No wonder God and Saddam Hussein are so frustrated. If this is the kind of stuff they have to deal with on a daily, or minute-by-minute basis, I can't blame them for a few floods or the desire to stockpile weapons. It's just too infuriating for words.
But I'm trying to build a utopia, people! Every time I start the software, that's my aim. Is it my fault that what comes out is more like Hell than Heaven? Maybe if I was allowed to write a stirring national anthem, or maybe start a war, I could get these SIMS in line? Or how about I just post 10 rules for them all to obey? Would that work? Shoot, I'm grasping at straws here.
Maybe I'll just wipe the whole town out and start over.
Yeah, that's it. Tornado, fire, riots, and an earthquake ought to do it. How about rain for 40 days and 40 nights?
Wham!
Let there be blight!
Okay. New Town (the default name provided by the software) is now open for business. Our only requirement for citizenship is that you be willing to pay 22% tax and work on a garbage heap/water treatment plant.
I promise never again to destroy a town by flood. Here's a freakin' rainbow. Okay?
quote:Which brings me to the power to create disasters. The disasters are really fun. When you think about it, this is just the computer version of making sand castles or playing cars. Eventually, every game ends in the powermad destruction of all you have built.
My 19-year-old daughter takes great glee in distroying the "stupid people" she's created, usually by starting a fire in the fireplace then removing all the doors and windows. As she mutters, "The 'idiots' can't even take care of a fire without help." She doesn't have any tolerance for stupidity or helplessness.
I'll have to show her your post, she just might catch your vision and become a benevolent dictator.
Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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As terriable as this may sound, I find the above description of your daughter insanely funny. It actually sounds like my four-year-old sister. Posts: 903 | Registered: May 2003
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Thanks Wheat, she can be insanely funny. She does run the gamut between four (when she’s irritate) to forty (when she wants to be MY mother), but I love her anyhow. I sent her up to Kodiak Island Alaska for the summer. She's working in a fish processing plant. She thinks she'll bring home about $7K net. Not bad for 12 weeks of work. She needed to get out of small town Idaho where she's a hair dyed, bondage belted, pierced punk who just looks at someone and they are frightened beyond words. She tries to act scary up there and they just
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As soon as I have a large successful city I build trees on every remaining inch. I turn the disasters off. I build parks and landmarks everywhere.
I am the exact opposite of Bob.
I haven't played that game in so long. You can buy it for $10 now? *sigh*
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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My strategy has been since the beggining to not build any fire departments, schools, police departments, or pretty much anything else that would be an expense monthly.
Then, I get about $2000 a month, build a huge city, then destroy some buildings and start the school n'stuff... Works like a charm.
Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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will wright
