Customer Reviews

Simcity 3000: Unofficial Strategies & Secrets

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Where to begin....

This book is so poorly done. It is inexcusable. The writers obviously took the SC2K book and lightly modified it to be the SC3K book. And they left things in from SC2K that no longer apply, or are different in SC3K. For Example:

On page 9, they say we should work without disasters for now. "From the menu bar, pull down Disasters and select No Disasters." Well, since the book doesn't include any pictures describing terminology, we are left to assume the menu bar is the list of icons on the right. However, when you scroll over the icons and look at the cue cards, none of them are labeled "Disasters". The closest is "Emergency" and it doesn't have a "No Disasters" option. The directions they give work in SC2K. In SC3k, you have to go to the "Change Settings and Exit" icon and then choose "Preferences" and uncheck "Disasters".

In numerous places, the book says that sims will not want to walk more than 3 tiles (Example, Page 15 in the Tip Box.) While that certainly is true in SC2K, in SC3K, the depth depends on the type of zone. Residential can be 4 tiles, Commercial 3, and industrial 5. This can make a huge difference in strategy requiring fewer roads and less cost!

On page 43, the book states that Hydroelectric Power has been removed from SC3K. Then on page 47, in the advantage to oil section, it states that they do not have to be placed on waterfall tiles. (?) Since hydro power is gone, what do waterfalls have to do with power?

On page 16, the book states that you have to place one power line spanning a road. Again, this was true in SC2K, but not in SC3K. The manual that comes with SC3K, on page 96 states: "Any building or zone placed within two tiles of an already powered building or zone automatically gets power. Connections over roads are not necessary." "You only need to lay power lines if you wish to transmit power beyond five tiles." On page 53, the book again states, incorrectly, that "Power does not cross roads, railways, or highways."

The book states that pumps provide more water if they are placed with more sides exposed to a water source. In SC2K, this was certainly true. However, the section titled "Notes to Simcity 2000 Players" (Which the authors of this book must not have read), says that "Water pumps must be placed within one tile of fresh water to have full pumping capacity, within two tiles to have any pumping capacity."

The book also states that if you turn disasters off and have enough money, the game will automatically replace your power plant when it dies of old age. Again this was true in SC2K, but not in SC3K.

These are just the issues I found in the first 50 or so pages of you book. I already own the SC2K strategy book. If I wanted to read that book again, I could have done so for free. It is inexcusable that they would release a book with so many glaring errors.

When I sent E-Mail to the publisher requesting that they fix the problems with this book, they said they would only fix the errors if the book sold enough copies to warrant a second printing. How many people are going to buy this book expecting to have a strategy guide to help them play SimCity, only to find that the information contained in the book is useless?

Sybex should pull this book and fix it now.

Currently, this book is full of spurious information that is simply false. Much information has been ported over from the previous version that is simply not applicable for this game. Very little research went into this guide. Choose the Prima guide over this trash.

This book is a very poor guide to SimCity 3000. Many of thereferences are for events and screens that occur in the SimCity 2000edition and which are not duplicated in the 3000 game. For example, the book refers many times to specific increases in the dollar value of tiles, even though the 3000 game does not identify specific dollar values, only ranges such as "very high" or "astronomical". The book even refers to the bus station as a four tile building (which it was in the 2000 game), not a one tile building as it is in the 3000.

The final insult is an entire chapter dealing with 2000 scenarios which are not included in the 3000 edition.

Overall, this is a poorly edited older guide book with little work done to properly update the information for the new edition.

Todd, you are so onto it. This book is an utter waste of cash. Even the new info is highly doubtful. Best to ignore tham completely methinks... And if you've bought it- get a refund!

I have read this book on the internate. There are alot of mistakes. First of all, in one page it told about brownouts(like microwave beam torhing other buildings). I have never seen this happen. It also said that rioters ae suppose to set fires, I have never seen this happen. The prices to all these buildings are wrong. The cost for a Coal Plant is 4,500 doolars is suppose to be 5,000 dollars. It says that when there is a nuclearmelt down, fires are set. This is true in SimCity 2000 but not in SC3K. And there many other mistakes. Throw this book out.