OpenTTD hands down is my favorite simulator, but Simcity 4 is close to that. Wish that more people pickd up openTTD and Simcity 4 (A lot of people ignore anything beyond Simcity 2000 sadly).

Thought I always been weak for the sim games, sadly only The sims have been decently. Otherwise after Simcity 4, anything else with sim in have been shit. Spore was a disappointment.

Kiyoshi: I played the original The sims out of nostalagia recently, but the lack of customization bugs. I really like the personality system in The sims 3 since it's less... statbased. I love to put on funny flaws. :p

OpenTTD and Simcity 4 have depth. The sims is not really as deep but makes it up for the insane customization that I yet have to see in other games. There are some roleplaying games that tries, but they all fall short compared to The sims.

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Simcity 4 with Rush hour is the best version seriously. :p Simcity 3000 is way too easy, and Simcity 2000 lacks the depth that Simcity 4 have (I love the traffic simulation). But you need the expansion pack or the deluxe edition for the best experience (if you buy the game today you get the deluxe edition anyway). People seem to have trouble getting into Simcity 4 since it's the hardest one (but as long you're careful and waits with public services until they're needed rather than building them haphazardly, you do fine).

Genres tend to spill into each other, so Civilization does have quite a few elements typical to simulation games. But it's still mostly about turnbased strategy, although it originally was designed with realtime in mind, somewhat like Simcity. Just turned out making the game turnbased was more fun.

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Posted by Liliana

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Yes, SC4 is notorious for being really hard to get into if you don't know what you're doing. The overly helpful advisors don't really help.

In reality all you need at the beginning is power, people and jobs, but most people don't get that.

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A way for newbies to play the game is to create a ghetto on purpose, that is building and zoning a city with just roads, zones, water and power and nothing else. Money is no problem, and then you fix the problems afterwards.

Plus there is a certain charm with a polluted and crime-ridden city with zero education. :p Although poor areas like that tend to have a low average age, so you schools might wind up being overloaded by the time when you build them. I usually find that the schools that was full at the beginning of the game barely uses 10% of their capacity much later in the game. Actually the only service you should probably worry about providing in the beginning is education, and start with elementary schools. And only fund "enough" to service the capacity used or else you're burning money.

If you keep education good enough you will get clean hightech industry. The geeks does not like being next to stinky chemical factories though. I find it easiest to just put a new industrial area for hightech industries elsewhere, they get along well with residential areas surprisingly well. High landvalue scares dirty industry away and manufacturing to a certain extent.

The game isn't balanced with industry fully though. Since the high density industries aren't as dense as commerical or residental buildings, you find yourself covering wast swaths of land with industry in lategame. At that point it's clean industry for the most part but it gets ridiculous turning half the city into silicon valley. Mods that increases industry capacity (at least for high-tech) is well-recomended.

The best part with simcity 4 is it's highly active modding community. Look up NAM at least.

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