Hello everyone!

What does Simcity 4 have that 3000 doesn't? And vice - versa?

Thank you in advance for replying.

I haven't played either in quite a long time (especially 3000), but from memory:

One of the most important things missing going from 3000 to 4 are neighbour cities. In 3000 you had 3 or 4 neighbouring mayors, with their own portraits that would periodically contact you for business deals, like buying power or whatever. In 4 you start in a massive area consisting of several zones of different sizes with no cities, and you can play on each individually. That's by default in any case. You can import regions, perhaps even populated ones as far as I know. What I used to do was to pick out a large region where I wanted to build my metropolis, but then I would start off by building small towns in the neighbouring zones, so that I had faceless towns to interact with if I wanted to sell water/power/landfill space.

There are many additions going from 3000 to 4, and here are a couple
1.) You don't drag select port and airport areas anymore. They are now of fixed sizes (eg small/large airport).
2.) God mode which can be used to extensively terraform a zone into just about any landscape.
3.) There is a sim mode of sorts, which allows you to track individual sims (up to 5 or something) living in your city. You can see where they live, where they work, and receive ground level feedback from them.
4.) GOG's version includes the Rush Hour expansion, which adds several cool traffic features, like one-ways, toll roads, the ability to drive certain vehicles yourself and more.

Thanks a bunch!

Pleasure :)

SimCity 3000 allows you to do some crazy things that SimCity 4 really wasn't meant to do. For example I had an archipelago city in SimCity 3000 that was scattered across a bunch of tiny islands that would be very difficult to create, let alone connect together with roadways.

Some of the awards are different as well, and the graphic style is more colorful in SimCity 3000. I definitely prefer SimCity 4, but SimCity 3000 still has its charms for the way it handles everything differently.

There's no challenge in SC4 and it's really hard to screw up without doing so deliberately. I can put down huge swaths of low-density zoning and keep them happy with only a power plant, garbage dump, and the occasional park. No water/school/fire/police. Then I hit the fast forward button and have a sandwich while my city rakes in millions of simoleons before building further. If I tried the same thing in SC2k or SC3k, I'd quickly end up with a derelict city because the citizens won't put up with negligence.

If I remember rightly, SimCity 4 does NOT allow random terrain generation. I think because it is a region set to hold multiple cities, rather than just the one city with other mayors running the neighbouring cities like in SimCity 3000. And I think there is a workaround for it by creating a heightmap that you could then import, but that is a lot of effort considering the earlier games just had a terrain generator.

Looking at PrezKennedy's post I'm wondering if I could make a teeny little town like the one I actually live in? How about a small college town based on Arkham Mass. I've tried all of these with the other SimCitys and it just doesn't work.