SimCity 3000 vs. SimCity 4

[Zetona]

I've recently seen various anonymous commenters saying, essentially, that SimCity 2000 and SimCity 4 were the best games in the series, with some going as far as saying that SimCity 3000 sucked. Having essentially grown up on SimCity 3000 and having also played 2000 and 4, I'm a bit perplexed as to why people would regard 3000 as so inferior a game. Can someone shed some light on this?

 

[veloper]

In simcity 2000 fire departments, police stations and other buildings had a limited range and you needed to plan your city with these circles in mind. SC 3000 relaxed this rule and the game become more about building enough of each service, wherever you liked.
SC 4 brough back the range limitations of SC 2k.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Fully-loaded SimCity 4 (all the expansions), is a mechanically deeper and trickier game. The traffic-management system in particular is pretty cool to watch, and it's strangely appealing when you get something worked out.

But SimCity 3 has infinitely more charm.
It was easy to look at, easy enough to play (perhaps too easy, but hey, it's a builder), and was generally more fun for me.

 

[chuckdm]

I prefer SC3k just because of the lack of a The Sims tie-in.

In 3000 you had the ability to get feedback from random citizens. In SC4, you had to import your own sims from The Sims 3 to get THE SAME DAMN FEEDBACK. If the feedback had been somehow changed based on your Sims' personality or something that would've been cool, but as it stands it's just a way to sell more copies of The Sims 3. Which isn't a bad gamme, but I should miss a feature of SC4 unless I go buy another, mostly unrelated game.

Oh and while the system wasn't as detailed, there is a traffic management system in SC3k. You can see which roads are heavily trafficked in one of the map overlays, then if you build other roads which are both close enough and parallel it'll reduce the traffic on the main road, and more importantly, it'll lower your road maintenance costs overall.

That was the nice thing about SC3k, really. It had everything SC4 did. It was just more subtle, less in your face. "Sure, I have quasi-realistic traffic modeling. But if you wanna focus on your power grid, that's cool. You're the mayor."

 

[Soulrender95]

Because I can't get Simcity 3000 to play on windows 7 that's why! (no links to fixes or workarounds I've tried most of them and can't get em to work)

but no, in all fairness I prefer it to Simcity 4, mostly because of the advisers, other mayors and random citizens, they had personality and character and a nice art style that made them more charming than the blocky heads of the sims in 4.
and the news ticker, I miss it so.

I still enjoy Simcity 4, some of the additional options on buildings make it much easier to tweak taxes and being able to manage a region and have specialist zones for each zone if you want to opens up alot of room for customization.

 

[A Satanic Panda]

Because I can't get Simcity 3000 to play on windows 7 that's why! (no links to fixes or workarounds I've tried most of them and can't get em to work)

Really? I got it to work awhile back without any specially help. That said, I liked 3000 the best. Soundtrack and visually it was the best.

 

[Zetona]

Fully-loaded SimCity 4 (all the expansions), is a mechanically deeper and trickier game. The traffic-management system in particular is pretty cool to watch, and it's strangely appealing when you get something worked out.

But SimCity 3 has infinitely more charm.
It was easy to look at, easy enough to play (perhaps too easy, but hey, it's a builder), and was generally more fun for me.

I liked 3000 the best. Soundtrack and visually it was the best.

I knew I wasn't crazy. These posts sum up what I love about SC3K. SC4's gameplay is better, especially since it doesn't make me replace hundreds of pumping stations every 80 years in a big city. But, long story short, it lacks the charm. I would love to see a mod for SC4 that let me bring in the advisor and petitioner pictures from SC3K in place of those godawful 3D models they have. Actually, that on its own would make things significantly better. Not to mention the intoxicating soundtrack...

 

[Cowabungaa]

Simcity 3000 every day of the month. Why?


That game got me into jazz. Simcity 4 stressed me out a lot more while Simcity 3000 was a lot more relaxing.

 

[Marik2]

Oh man I wish my copy of 3000 was around here somewhere. Really miss that game even though I sucked at building cities.

The soundtrack made me play for hours on end and everything was charming

 

[Kushan101]

Because I can't get Simcity 3000 to play on windows 7 that's why! (no links to fixes or workarounds I've tried most of them and can't get em to work)

but no, in all fairness I prefer it to Simcity 4, mostly because of the advisers, other mayors and random citizens, they had personality and character and a nice art style that made them more charming than the blocky heads of the sims in 4.
and the news ticker, I miss it so.

I still enjoy Simcity 4, some of the additional options on buildings make it much easier to tweak taxes and being able to manage a region and have specialist zones for each zone if you want to opens up alot of room for customization.

I had the same issue, but dug around and managed to find a website that still had the simcity 3000 patch (1.1) on it, the one with the building architect tool, this got the game working for me.

Think 3000 is far superior to any of the others. Music, style, gameplay, loved it all. SC4 was a bit too much of a spreadsheet simulator for my liking.

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

I prefer SC3k just because of the lack of a The Sims tie-in.

In 3000 you had the ability to get feedback from random citizens. In SC4, you had to import your own sims from The Sims 3 to get THE SAME DAMN FEEDBACK. If the feedback had been somehow changed based on your Sims' personality or something that would've been cool, but as it stands it's just a way to sell more copies of The Sims 3. Which isn't a bad gamme, but I should miss a feature of SC4 unless I go buy another, mostly unrelated game.

Oh and while the system wasn't as detailed, there is a traffic management system in SC3k. You can see which roads are heavily trafficked in one of the map overlays, then if you build other roads which are both close enough and parallel it'll reduce the traffic on the main road, and more importantly, it'll lower your road maintenance costs overall.

That was the nice thing about SC3k, really. It had everything SC4 did. It was just more subtle, less in your face. "Sure, I have quasi-realistic traffic modeling. But if you wanna focus on your power grid, that's cool. You're the mayor."

They were sims 1 characters that you could import(sims 2 wasn't even out when SC4 was released**, let alone sims 3), and even then you didn't have to import to get access to sim characters, you could access them entirely within SC4, importing just allowed you to get a specific sim from the first game and bring them to your city.


They were annoying anyway, always complaining about stuff which wasn't even an issue/was obvious...
(You already have water dammit! and I know damn well I just demolished those buildings - the roads needed upgrading and they were in the way! Maybe in SC3000 their feedback was more important than in SC4, but wasn't that the job of the advisors?)


((**I think however sims 2 let you use city layouts from SC4 to make custom neighbourhoods, but it only picked up terrain and normal roads in the transition))

I like both games, and indeed played both when i was younger, but honestly can't remember/aren't familiar enough with the subtle comparisons to get into nitpicking... I suspect however that maybe you're a bit foggy on the whole thing too XD