SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition

What you do need is the ability to make risk-benefit decisions, and a sense of how the real world works. You need to know, for example, that people with a few bucks in their pockets don't choose to live next to a factory, and you need to understand whether it's better to spend money to build a fire station now, or risk having to rebuild if you wait.

One thing that SimCity 4 does real well is it's simulation of how a government budget works. If, for example, you build an infrastructure that appropriately supports your city, you'll find that funding everything at 100% would require raising taxes beyond what the residents and business owners will stand for. Pretty soon you'll see abandoned residential, commercial and industrial properties. That means your tax base goes down, and you'll have to raise taxes even further.

If you take the alternative and cut the funding to your infrastructure so you can lower taxes, you'll be faced with teachers, fire fighters, police, transit and healthcare worker strikes, and satisfying them enough to bring them back to work will cost you more than appropriate funding would have.

Just when you think you've found that balance between funding your infrastructure and your tax rate, the power plant and roads you originally built start reaching the end of their lives, and you need to replace them. (You were building up a surplus you can tap into, weren't you?)

While your budgetary problems may consume you, there are other factors to consider. A big one is transportation. Sims don't like rush hour traffic any more than you do - and probably less. If you let commutes get too bad, the Sims will stop going to work. You'll either need bigger roads, more efficient mass transit, or you'll need to move the factories and residential areas closer. But wait... Didn't we already establish that people don't like to live next to factories? Again you have to struggle to find a balance - and that balance needs to fit within your budgetary constraints, too!

SimCity 4 Deluxe includes the Rush Hour Expansion Pack. In addition to more transportation options, Rush Hour (and thus Deluxe) adds a "you drive it" feature that allows you to control cars, planes, helicopters, and other transports. If you're really getting into the planning and strategy of the game, these options are a distraction. But if you're showing your city to someone less interested in city planning, a you drive it mission may be a fun way to tour the city.

Something I would love to see in real life is instead of having candidates for public office debate each other, set them down in front of computers, and have them prove their ability to successfully build a working city in SimCity 4. The only governing skill SimCity 4 doesn't simulate well is the ability to work with others. I think we should be very worried about any big city mayor who isn't able to demonstrate their abilities by being successful in SimCity 4.


4.5 Stars---The Best SimCity Yet!   April 12, 2004
Robert J. Schneider (Tacoma, WA USA)
219 out of 231 found this review helpful

With SIMCITY 4 DELUXE EDITION, which conveniently contains both the regular SIMCITY 4 plus the RUSH HOUR EXPANSION PACK, EA Games is really beginning to live up to their tagline "Challenge Everything." Apparently, the game designers decided to challenge everything that seemed to be holding the game back in the past, and have taken a brave step forward in designing this new edition with those of us in mind who want to be able to create a SimWorld. In other words, you now have an entire continent on which to build cities; instead of having fake adjacent cities that you're forced to do business with, you now can make your own adjacent cities yourself! You can choose from any of a hundred or so "squares" on which you can build one city after another and have them all trade with each other and everything! You can connect them with superhighways, rail, roads, power, water; it's great!

Another major improvement is in the increased flexibility in building up each of your cities. Remember how, in previous SimCity versions, it's such a pain to figure out where to place your streets within your zones? Not anymore; each time you lay out a zone, whether it be Residential, Commercial or Industrial, the game will automatically lay down a grid of streets for you! That saves A LOT of time right there. Also, remember how you had to blow up your streets in order to replace them with bigger streets? Now, it's a lot easier, because first of all, the road system is much better organized. For example, when you start building a town, you start by using the simple, narrow streets (which are now specifically labeled as being "streets"). However, as people move in and your streets begin to get crowded with traffic, you can then upgrade to wider roads. Eventually, as traffic begins to overwhelm your roads, you may upgrade to wide avenues. All you need to do to "upgrade" is to simply drag a road along a street, or an avenue along a road and---boom!---it automatically changes to a road or avenue. No more having to demolish anything in the process!

The Rush Hour Expansion Pack just adds a new dimension to the game: now you can go out on selected "missions" by car, boat---even helicopter---and earn new buildings, more money, etc. for your city. Admittedly, I'm still trying to get the hang of these missions, as they aren't too easy, but it's still a cool feature for the game. Also, the buildings and airports are in much better detail now, and there is far greater variety of them. There are also many new landmarks to choose from; they are in much greater detail and there is no longer any limit how many you may place. (However, you now have to pay to place them.) There are many new rewards for being a good Mayor, too!

My hope is that with SIMCITY 5, they will make everything more 3-D and will finally provide us with the ability for a ground-level Pedestrian View; imagine being able to walk the streets and boulevards of your own cities, drive around, even take your own trains! I think the possibilities are endless. Till then, this will have to do. But, for what it's worth, it's still a pretty darn good game!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR SIM FANS


Great game at any time   March 10, 2004
Nick (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
62 out of 69 found this review helpful

Simcity 4 could probably be one of the best of its kind ever. The game is very realistic and involves most of the daily problems a city mayor has to deal with. It is even very difficult to keep the budget balanced. But here is a tip for this: when you start a new city, always create industrial zones and some commercial that will start to generate new business that would add an income to the city and they do not need any or but a few public services. One you have a big budget surplus you start creating residential zones and leaving space for public buildings. Never create small hospitals, fire and police stations, because in the long term you'll need about 3 times de number of big buildings to keep your citizents happy.
The only bad thing the game has is the fact that it needs a super pc to run always at a normal speed. I have a Pentium 4 2.80 ghz and 512 RAM with and excellent Video Card and when you use the zoom in your city it sometimes goes a bit slow. So I would suggest that if your planning to get this video game you better have a superb pc or you'll find it frustating to see that the game runs slow.
I don't know if this game can get any better but I sure hope so. Buy it, you'll end up playing it for hours.


Failed attempt to advance the series.   September 5, 2004
Prime Reviews
47 out of 57 found this review helpful

In over five years since SimCity 3000 ("Unlimited" included only add-ons), one would expect major advances in gameplay with this next in the series. Sadly, SimCity 4's creator Maxis failed horribly. The result was SO bad, that the original version of SC4 is no longer published. "Deluxe" includes the "Rush Hour" expansion add-ons that were intended to improve gameplay and fix major errors with the game, but ends up doing neither.
For the first time, SC4 attempts a system where the citizens of the cities would actually "think" (AI) about what is located around them within the city and how each would get to that destination. Unfortunatley, this system is a disaster. Citizens most likely pick congested streets instead of a clear highway next to them to get to a location. Since nearly everything else in a city is intended to run off of this AI (from pollution - to emergency services - to land worth), thoughtful city planners will fail in maintaining a city. Patient and easily entertained gamers may eventually come up with goofy stategies to combat this awfully designed system, but SC4 Deluxe will leave thinking gamers wondering how (and WHY) this game was even released. Even Maxis has admitted it will be "back to basics" with the next version of the series. Given this disastrous version, SC5 should take MANY years to release. Those of us gamers not easily hyptnotized by colorful graphics are hoping more thought goes into it ... for the sake of ALL gamers.


Extremely addictive and entertaining   November 11, 2003
Anuj Agarwal (San Francisco, CA USA)
42 out of 49 found this review helpful

Let me start by saying that the first few times i played this game (my first SimCity game) i wasn't too happy. It seemed a little hard and made me feel that playing this game is more about money management than planning and building a city. However as i tried it out some more i got the hang of things and began to realize that the simulation is pretty realistic and has a lot of variety built in.
The key to enjoying this game is to understand that adding more amenities to the city - like colleges, garbage collection, hospitals, public transportation,... is expensive and to prevent those investments from draining your money, the city needs to expand as soon as every one of these things is added. So basically you need to zone more areas for residential, commercial and industrial growth as you add more facilities so that these facilities are shared by more people which makes them cheaper to you and more people means more tax revenue.
The other thing i found very interesting is how the city doesn't always need to grow the same way. You could decide to build a farming community where you don't bother much with education and pollution or you could build a high tech city where you have to make sure you're encouraging the right kind of industry and people to move into your city.
The Rush Hour expansion (which is part of this Deluxe edition) is more useful when your city gets really big (i would say 50,000+) so that you can now add different kinds of public transportation means. To make the right decision regarding the location of subway stations, etc. you can look at the traffic flow across the whole city or concentrate on one building and see how people are getting to this place.
Then there is also the next step of connecting cities together. This enables you to build an industrial city with high rises and a neighboring one thats an affluent suburb with big mansions and boutique stores.
This game has a lot of depth. It does take a little time to get the hang of it but hey... no pain, no gain :)