Hey PaRDians,

I got the urge recently to play my favorite old copy of SimCity 4. But instead of jumping in and playing, I got an idea to compare two cities over time based on the policies I do in each.

Its obviously just a game, but I think there's a few indirect paths I could try out in the name of SCIENCE, and It'd probably end up with some ridiculous results given how the game statistics work.

If any of you have any ideas, please share. Some I have are cities purely for and against technological advancements or purely public and private education/services, but I'd prefer something outrageous.

If I start this up I'll try to update it every so often. And at the end you'll see both cities explode from next-gen predator drone strikes UFO's

As someone who's only played SimCity on SNES, maybe some options would be good cause I don't really know what's available

A libertarian society. No taxes and no regulations on industry. Whenever a disaster strikes, have the citizens voluntarily solve them.

Basically turn it on and walk away

Good point lol, I should probably give something to work with. Its changed quite a bit since then too

I really like SimCity 4 because it takes a LOT of things into consideration

Policy wise, it lets you design income-based taxes, public ordinances to change population behavior (ie. gambling, curfew), how each specific public service is funded right down to the building. Public services include education (elementary, high, and college), police, fire, healthcare, leisure, power, water, garbage, etc.

Diversity wise it lets you choose housing density ( spread out houses vs high-rises), type of industry (farming, commercial, industrial, or high tech), type of transportation (roads, highways, airports, ferries, subways, monorails, etc), method to provide public services (solar power vs coal, aquifer vs water treatment), a bunch of leisurely things (parks, zoo's, churches, monuments, etc.) It even lets you make deals with industry (military, casinos, etc) to make more money by allowing them in your town.

And with its statistics engine it creates a lot of data like commute time, pollution, approval rating, education quality, life span, crime rate, etc.

Well, the only public things you're allowed to have is a judicial system to enforce contracts. Legalize all sorts of behavior.

As for choosing things, you have to let the free market decide that. That means you have to flip coins (otherwise it would be a planned economy and we can't have that).

I like this, all I'd do is make a power plant and roads. Citizens will have to figure out clean water on their own

I'm assuming the second city would be single-class fascism?

Yea I like one of the cities being as close to free-market libertarianism as possible.

Maybe make the other a sort of socialist "utopia" maybe even pseudo-communist.

"disaster" in "industry"

those tend to solve themselves, yes.

Sim City is not the real world. You will get the best results from whatever the game programmers intended to work best.