TGDB.net - Game news, cheats, solutions, walkthroughs, trainers, saved games and much more!

SimCity 4: Rush Hour (PC)
Full Strategy Guide

Document written by PyroFalkon (pyrofalkon@hotmail.com)
Latest update: 26 February 2004
Current version: 1



+---------------+
|+-------------+|
||LATEST UPDATE||
|+-------------+|
+---------------+

v1 (26 February 2004)
First release, yo. (What does "yo" mean, anyway?)



+-------------------+
|+-----------------+|
||TABLE OF CONTENTS||
|+-----------------+|
+-------------------+

PART 1: INTRODUCTION
====================
1. Intro
2. Claiming Your Land

PART 2: MAYOR MODE
==================
3. What do these buttons do?
a. Landscaping
b. Zones
c. Transportation
d. Utilities
e. Civic Buildings
f. Bulldozer
g. The Panic Button
h. Everything Else
4. Getting Started
a. Infrastructure
b. Recon
c. Expanding
5. Small Towns
6. Medium Cities
7. Metropolises and Beyond
8. The Peanut Butter Point
a. What To Do About It
b. An Alternate Method
9. My Sim Mode
a. The Microphone
b. U-Drive It

PART 3: REFERENCE
=================
10. Power Plants
11. Ordinances

PART 4: STRATEGY
================
12. Zones
a. Residential Zones
b. Commercial Zones
c. Industrial Zones
d. General Zoning Advice
13. Education
14. Transportation
a. Asphalt
b. Highways
c. Mass Transit
d. Bridges and Tunnels
e. Seaports and Airports
15. You Are Not Alone
16. Reader Strategies

PART 5: GOD MODE
================
17. God Mode Tools
a. Landscaping
b. Winds and Global Changes
c. Reconcile Edges
d. Disasters
e. Day/Night Cycle
18. God Mode Strategies and Effects

PART 6: FAQ STUFF
=================
19. Contributors
20. Version History
21. Copyright Info
22. Contact Info



======================================================
| PART 1: INTRODUCTION |
======================================================



+----------+
|+--------+|
||1. INTRO||
|+--------+|
+----------+

I've owned Rush Hour since it was released several months ago, but I never took
the time to update my FAQ for SC4. Why? Probably because I didn't want to. But
now, I'm a little bored tonight, so what the hey. (And besides, I've been
getting a lot of mail lately about SC4 and Rush Hour, so maybe I can help some
people out.)

If you've read my FAQs before, you know what to expect: accurate, reliable
information; my personal opinions on strategies and techniques; and attempts at
comedy. As my inspiration told me forever ago, if the game is meant to be fun,
why not the FAQ too?

This FAQ is going to be a minor overhaul of my pre-expansion SC4 FAQ. In my
guides for The Sims, I merely added to the content when a new expansion came
out. For this pair, I won't merely add because I never checked my SC4 FAQ as
thoroughly as I do most of my guides. In short, if you're used to how things
are arranged in my original guide, it'll take you a little time to get used to
the new order, but no content was slashed.



+-----------------------+
|+---------------------+|
||2. CLAIMING YOUR LAND||
|+---------------------+|
+-----------------------+

As good of a mayor as you are, there's no way you can start your plans without
some place to build. All cities start the same way: grabbing a hunk of earth.

The game has no formal title screen. Instead, you're thrown to the region
screen. This is SimNation, a big huge plot of land that represents not one
city, but a county, or state, or country, whatever you want it to be. See all
those gray borders? Every single box is one place where a city can go. Yeah,
regions are that big.

You could spend your entire SimCity career without touching the topography, and
that's fine. I was itching to get in the driver's seat and start building
skyscrapers, so I ignored God Mode and such entirely for awhile. Assuming you
think like that, I'm touching on Mayor Mode first. That's where you'll be
spending most of your time anyway.

In the very top-left corner is a compass. Notice that north is to your upper-
right, but it's not at a perfect 45-degree angle. This gives you a rather
unique view, one you may curse at until you get used to it.

There are four buttons at the top. The one on the left is the Region View
options. Here you can turn the grid lines on and off, as well as show or not
show the city names, and even see a region-wide transportation map. You can
also create a new region from here, load an existing one, or nuke your present
one off your hard drive.

The second button is only useful if you're on the Net at the same time. It's a
shortcut to connect you to the official SimCity website, where you can exchange
regions and cities.

The third button is your quit button. You're not ready to finish already, are
you?

The fourth button is your options button, where you set the more mundane things
like graphics details and audio volume, along with a few game assists.

In the bottom-left corner is the name of the region that's loaded, along with
its total population.

All right, now that you've got all that down, it's time to get some grass. I
personally recommend that you make a new region (set it to grass), so you have
a clean slate to work with. Your first town (and any other experimental towns
or testing towns) you make should be on paper-flat land with no water. That
gives you the most room to work and gives your sims far fewer problems from the
outset. Also, by making a region and giving it your own name, it customizes and
personalizes your playing experience. I'm big on stuff like that.

Once you have a new region or choose to stick with what's loaded, take a look
at the borders. Notice all the different sizes you can choose. Like a lot of
spam e-mail tries to make you believe, size does matter. However, unlike that
same spam e-mail states, bigger is not always better. A huge plot of land can
get eaten up pretty quickly, and it's quite easy to get carried away in this
game, especially if you're used to the old SimCities. The smallest plots don't
provide much room, especially to learn the game, so go with the second-smallest
plot for now.

Once you click a plot, you're given a few options. If you had clicked an
existing town, it would give a population, service, and job count, along with
the town name and city funds. You can also remove it permanently from memory.
For a new town, you have the option of importing a town you downloaded, or just
starting from scratch. Obviously, we're starting from scratch here, so hit that
play button.



======================================================
| PART 2: MAYOR MODE BASICS |
======================================================

I debated with myself about whether to start out talking about God Mode or
Mayor Mode first. I decided that if you're reading this, you MIGHT want help
with God Mode, but you WILL want help on Mayor Mode. Considering that you could
ignore God Mode entirely and be all right, it made my decision easier.

I write the rest of this document with the SimCity rookie in mind. If you're a
SimCity 3000 vet, you could skip a bunch of this, but it really would be best
to read it, or at least skim it. I'm a SimCity 3000 vet myself, and I sure
could have used this info back when I started due to the amount of changes that
have been incorporated.



+------------------------------+
|+----------------------------+|
||3. WHAT DO THESE BUTTONS DO?||
|+----------------------------+|
+------------------------------+

Initially, once you claim land, you can alter it to any way you see fit. We're
going to ignore that for now and just jump into Mayor Mode, the meat-and-
potatoes of the game. Click the second button in the big three, the one with
the top hat and rolled-up paper.

A box will pop up asking for the city name, mayor name, and difficulty level.
The mayor name field is sticky, so if you enter, say, "PyroFalkon," it will
default to that ANY TIME you make a new city. You can change it, though, so
you're not locked into it in case you have multiple people playing the same
region.

For city names, I use the finger method. I close my eyes, spin in circles, and
point to something. I then open my eyes and name my city after whatever I'm
pointing at. So, let me demonstrate... Okay, I'm pointing at my stapler. I'd
name my city Stapleton, or Staplepolis, or Stable City... or if you're a fan of
the Lakers or Clippers, Stables Center will do. Be creative!

The difficulty affects a number of things. In Easy Mode, you start with 500K.
In Medium, you've got 200K. In Hard, you've got 100K. It's more than the money,
though. The harder the difficulty, the less advice your receivers give you, and
the slower the city grows. Now, prior to the expansion pack, we only had one
difficulty, and it was the equivalent of Hard, which means Maxis "newbified"
the game. Bah. I'm a grizzled old veteran. Anyway, once you fill out all that
crap, hit OK.

Okay, you're in the game now. Fireworks light the sky, marking the debut of
your term in office! Where to start, where to start?