So, there are no future buildings in this one?

[Rise]

I use to love playing Sim City 2000 back in the day. One of the neat features about it was the time scale where you would advance in available technology and building styles up into the future.

Am I correct in seeing that Sim City 4 appears to have no time based development aspect to it at all? That's disappointing.

In which case, how does Sim City 4 compare to Sim City 3000 or Sim City 2013? Would you say one of those is superior to Sim City 4 in terms of city building options and features? Do either of them have future city tech modeled like 2000 did?

[TheDiaz]

The only way to get futuristic buildings is with a mod. There's one called SimMars which, obviously enough, takes place in Mars and it goes all scify.

And how this one does. Once you pass over a little problem with modern systems, which is just typing a little command and you are set for life unless you reinstall the game, it's actually superior than the other two, in a lot of aspects. City building is much more realistic in every sense: traffic is simulated much better, bigger maps (they are huge), more reallistic graphics that any pc today should be able to play. There's a more realistic budget play, where every option counts and you have a more direct impact on how much money you give to health or education, for example. Schools and hospitals have an area of effect, which is important for your city layout.

But what makes this better is region play. You are not building only one city, you are building an entire region of inter connected cities that will affect each other, allowing you to build big heavy industrial zones to give more jobs and small suburbs, away from the smog. And yes, you can take energy or trash to other cities to get revenue or just give oyur problems to other people.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

You don't actually have to go full on SimMars to get futuristic buildings as there are several BATs over at Simtropolis, SC4Devotion and a lot of the other affiliated sites out there. Just glance over this list as a start:

http://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/44709-list-of-futuristic-plugins/

Also try BATs by Bixel:

http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_search_00.php

[Rise]

Thanks for the responses.

Really? Sim City 4 is the best one in the franchise? Interesting. I probably won't need to buy Sim City 2013 then. I do appreciate the greater realism and options. I do especially like the options that regions give me.

So far the only thing I miss from 2000 is the progressive tech over time. Maybe I'll get some mods for it after I master the basics of SC4.

One minor complaint might be that I think the disasters were handled better in SC2000. You could have more than just fires happen randomly as I recall. And fires would spread so you had more of a need for multiple firehouses to contain the blaze from multiple angles. If you didn't have enough, and the fire was big enough, you'd actually have a real danger of it getting out of control. But so far everything else seems just as good or better, so it's a worthwhile tradeoff.