SimCity

After much toil, Adorable Andrew reaches Megalopolis status on Hard Mode.

A brief rundown of things discussed by Adorable Andrew:

• Krocketneo challenges Andrew to build a Megalopolis in hard mode.
• Andrew discusses the challenges involved in building a city in hard mode, such as monetary constraints and frequency of disasters.
• Andrew discusses strategy for building a Megalopolis in hard mode.
• Andrew admits that his strategy didn't pan out the first time through, so he had to take another run at it.
• Andrew suggests that "presents" are your best friend when building a city in hard mode, because they boost the land value and bring in special income.
• Andrew shows us around the city and pulls up the stats to prove his achievement.
• Andrew continues to build up the city until it reaches population 560,000.

Andrew discusses the scenarios in SimCity.

A brief rundown of things discussed by Adorable Andrew:

• Andrew summarizes the objectives implicit in the scenarios.
• Andrew discusses the Bern scenario. The objective of this scenario is to solve the traffic congestion problem.
• Andrew discusses the San Francisco scenario. The city is plagued by earthquakes, and the player must restore the city after the impending disaster(s).
• Andrew discusses the Detroit scenario. The crime rate is soaring in this city, and the player must correct this problem using every tactic possible.
• Andrew discusses the Boston scenario. The nuclear meltdown in this city makes a portion of the map unusable.
• Andrew discusses the Rio de Janeiro scenario. Flooding is a recurring problem in this city unless you bulldoze the shoreline.
• Andrew discusses the bonus scenarios: Las Vegas and the Freedom map.

Using the Freedom map, Andrew managed to create a city with a population of 675,000. He was never able to build a city of this size before, though there are probably people who have. Check out the video below to see how he did it.

A brief rundown of things discussed by Adorable Andrew:

• Andrew discusses his ambition to create the biggest city he could using the Freedom map. Having done pretty much everything else, this was a new challenge for him.
• Andrew's city reaches population 600,000.
• Andrew showcases the city's stats and overviews.
• Andrew discusses filling in all the green space on the map, and giving the citizens tax breaks in order to reach the highest population possible.
• Andrew revisits the city's stats and overviews.
• Andrew discusses how maps with any bodies of water don't allow you to build up as big.

Building a Megalopolis is not as hard as it seems. In this video, Adorable Andrew demonstrates how to take it one step at a time!

A brief rundown of things discussed by Adorable Andrew:

• Andrew briefly touches on his previous video in which he demonstrated how NOT to build a city and contrasts this idea with the scenarios.
• Andrew jokes that the first step in building a Megalopolis is to give the city a good name.
• Andrew suggests that step 1 in creating a Megalopolis is selecting a good map. Andrew suggests using 137.
• Andrew suggests that step 2 is choosing Nuclear Power over Coal Power.
• Andrew suggests that step 3 is taking loans when you need them.
• Andrew suggests that step 4 is demolishing schools and hospitals.
• Andrew suggests that step 5 is using parks to your advantage.
• Andrew suggests that step 6 is dealing with crime as early as possible.
• Andrew suggests that step 7 is using rails instead of roads.
• Andrew suggests that step 8 is to obey the "2-1-1" rule.
• Andrew discusses what a healthy city should look like.
• Andrew discusses the importance of the layout of the city.

Adorable Andrew demonstrates how NOT to build a city in SimCity. Admittedly, you could do a lot worse than he did here.

A brief rundown of things discussed by Adorable Andrew:

• Andrew introduces the idea that there is a particular way of building a thriving city in SimCity. Although SimCity does enable you to build your city your way, it may not lead to favorable results.
• Andrew spends his budget on zoning instead of dealing with the brownout problems inherent in his city.
• The citizens continue to demand a power plant, so Andrew reluctantly decides to save up.
• Andrew finally builds another power plant only to be asked to build another one.
• Andrew saves up for another power plant, but this time the citizens demand a sea port. A sea port, naturally, costs as much as a power plant.
• Andrew reluctantly builds a sea port and the city continues to grow. Only this time, the citizens demand an airport.
• Andrew somehow manages to build up to a Metropolis, in 125 game years.

Recently I decided to start over and build a Megalopolis again. I managed to accomplish this feat using Map No. 61 again, but even with every space filled, I was not able to reach a population of 600,000 (even though I was able to do it previously). That's when I decided to take advantage of the Freedom map, which you gain access to after completing the 6 (original) scenarios. The map contains absolutely no water so you can make the most out of the land available to you, but there is one catch: you don't get any presents. Presents go a long way in increasing the land value of your city, and without them you have to do your best with parks.

I didn't have too much trouble building a Megalopolis, although it did take a significant amount of time. I left plenty of space for industrial zones, as they are the only zone type that grows later on in the game. Residential zones on the outskirts tend to turn into slums, and commercial zones only grow so much before quitting on you. Of course, industrial zones also tend to produce a lot of crime so you have to place a significant number of police stations around them.

I still had a fair bit of green space once I reached the Megalopolis status, but I had to fill in most of the space I left for the additional industrial zones. I also left a fair bit of green space in between residential zones as they tend to develop best this way, but to reach a population of 600,000 you have to start filling in that space as well. Unfortunately, this also tends to turn some of the residential zones into slums.

Once you build a Megalopolis, there tend be a lot more plane crashes. It's a minor annoyance, but even minor annoyances can turn into bigger irritations when it happens frequently enough. When your city reaches a certain size, you can't avoid planes hitting (usually) residential zones. It would be a frightening world indeed if planes came down on houses as frequently as they do in SimCity. Nevertheless, as far as disasters go, it's probably the easiest to deal with.Other than that, there weren't too many challenges in reaching 600,000 people, and I still have some space left to develop if I so desire. Technically population: 600,000 is the ultimate goal in the game, and I'm pretty sure there aren't any rewards left after that. I might develop the rest of the space anyway, just to see how far I can get.

In conclusion, I'm pretty much tired of SimCity now, and don't think I will be revisiting it for awhile. I forgot to mention this earlier, but I played through practiced mode and finished all the scenarios again, and had trouble with Detroit and Las Vegas again (:P). I hope you enjoyed this series.

Recently I achieved a feat I was never able to accomplish before: I built a Megalopolis in SimCity. My map of choice? - No. 61 - a map highly recommended for building large cities in one of the three guidebooks I purchased in Japan. Map selection is actually quite crucial to the development of your city and it's best to plan accordingly.

After completing all of the scenarios (damn you Detroit and Las Vegas), and building a Metropolis in practice mode, I decided it was time to try my hand at a real city. While I still lived in Japan, I managed to create a sizable city of 480,000 people, but I was never able to reach the Megalopolis status (population 500,000). Part of the problem was the SNES cartridges. They're supposed to be able to store saved games, but more often than not you'd insert the game into the console after a few weeks of negligence, only to find that your saves were utterly wiped (this wasn't a problem exclusive to SimCity, mind you). This time around I played using an emulator (yes, I bought and still own the game).

In any case, using my fairly comprehensive knowledge of the game, I was easily able to build a Metropolis (population 100,000). This is where it really started to get interesting, as I had previously never been able to create a city beyond that size without using cheats. This time around, however, things were going smoothly.

Part of the secret of creating a city that grows consistently is to avoid overbuilding. It's important to monitor the progress of your recently built residential, commercial and industrial zones before moving on and building more.

It was surprising to me how well I remembered the game, and how addicting it still was. I'm practically a walking SimCity dictionary, and yet, I had never achieved a Megalopolis before, and that was the one thing standing in the way between me and complete mastery.

Well, I'm happy to say that I was finally able to build a Megalopolis. Not only that, my city still has plenty of room for development. Technically, the game doesn't really "end" until you create a city with a population of 600,000. Suffice to say, I think it may be possible considering the amount of undeveloped land still available to me. Since I made it this far, I may as well give it a go.

As a side note, one of the things that kept the game interesting was the music. Each time your city reaches a new stage (your city starts as a Village, then grows into Town, City, Capital, Metropolis, and Megalopolis respectively) there is a new musical theme. Of course, most of these themes are very familiar to me by now. The Town and City theme aren't quite as recognizable (most people can make it as far as Capital without too much difficulty) but the Capital and Metropolis theme (which is quite fitting I might add) become very familiar to a seasoned player like me. After all, it takes a great deal of effort to build a city beyond a Metropolis. Part of the excitement and drive of reaching Megalopolis for me was to hear the elusive theme accompanying it. When I finally got to hear the bizarre fast-paced music, I suddenly realized I was no longer treading familiar territory. The theme hasn't really solidified in my mind yet, but I'm sure it will become familiar as I continue to play.

I know most of you teens out there say this game "sux", and "it's so old", and "the interface is awful" but I will defend it to the end (this isn't to say that I don't play more modern games either). SimCity is a fabulous game and you really have no idea how much strategy and depth is involved until you investigate it for yourself.

This article was originally published on September 22, 2007.