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How to Get Your Population to Start Growing on SimCity 2000 PlayStation

SimCity 2000 is a city-building simulator developed by Maxis, an Electronic Arts subsidiary. The goal of SimCity is to build a flourishing city on a large map. Gamers must take into account such factors as pollution, crime, supply and demand, transportation, energy, population happiness and other game aspects. Getting a city to grow initially can be difficult; however, building the correct type and amount of zones, roads and power plants, as well as allowing time to elapse, can start the foundation for a strong city.

Instructions

- 1
  Build a coal power plant. Although coal power plants create pollution, they are cheap and therefore a good choice for a first power plant. Locate a spot on the map where you want to begin building a city. Because it is expensive to build long power lines, the spot where you build your power plant is where your city should begin growing. As your population will need fresh water, select a spot on the map relatively close to a body of fresh water.
- 2
  Select the "Light Industrial" zoning icon on the in-game controls window. Light industry is cheap, and in order for a city to start to grow, the population will need jobs -- industry provides jobs. Build a square- or rectangular-shaped industry zone of no more than $120. Make this zone touching the power plant.
- 3
  Build a road along an entire side of the light industry zone. Transportation is key to growing a city. In order for zones to begin growing, a population needs roads to connect the zones. Roads are a good first choice for transportation, as they are cheap and allow for fluid population travel.
- 4
  Build an equivalent amount of light residential to light industry. Select the "Light Residential" zoning icon and build a square- or rectangular-shaped zone on the opposite side of the road from the light industry. It is important to first build industry and then residential, because population growth will not occur unless jobs are available before housing.
- 5
  Place power lines from the power plant to the zones. All zones must have power in order to develop. Flashing "Lightning Bolt" symbols will appear if a zone or power line is not adequately being powered from a power plant.
- 6
  Click the "Speed" menu on the top of the screen. Select a faster speed, such as "Cheetah." Initially, a city will grow slowly. By speeding up the game speed, the industrial and residential zones will begin to develop at a faster rate. You can reduce the game speed later on once these zones grow.
- 7
  Build and place a water pump next to the body of fresh water. You do not need to do this right away, but in order for a city to continue to grow, you will need to water all zones. Select the "Water Pipe" icon in the controls window to ensure that all zones are properly being watered. You do not need water pipes -- or power lines -- to completely cover every zone, because once a single zone has water or power running to it, adjacent zones will develop and be watered -- and powered -- from the first zone.
- 8
  Watch the city develop and note the needs of the city. At this point, the industrial and residential zones should be developing. Watch the demand bars in the controls window, as the yellow (industry), blue (commerce) and green (residential) will increase and decrease depending upon what the population desires. Also pay attention to the happiness of the citizens. Over time, too much pollution from dirty power plants and industry can make citizens unhappy. This can be fixed by building heavy industry and clean power supplies, or separating residential and commercial zones from dirty industry and power plants. Also, building parks, stadiums, zoos, police stations, schools and hospitals are important to keeping a population happy, safe and educated. Building these will also further increase the growth demand of a city.

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