Unlocking Observatory

[Lorax]

How are you suppose to ever unlock the Observatory? How do you first of all get 1000 abandon buildings, then how do you actually keep them to get the Observatory? Because they just get buldozed.

[tulle040657]

Turn off the automatic bulldozing in the auto bulldoze mod you seem to have

[Lorax]

I don't have the mod... i 've seen people mention it but I don't understand it as buildings already auto bulldoze. They don't do it instantly but if you just look at your city you'll find that old building get knocked down.

[Jupiter3927]

You could just cut the power to your city and watch everyone leave.
A decent sized city would have at least 1,000 abandoned buildings after that and you can reload the save to before you decided to be a terrible mayor and keep the observatory.

[Lorax]

Hmmm thats an idea. Just fake the end of the world then because you can keep buildings across cities bring it back. I'll try it. I was worried I would have to cut water to like one section of the city and hope everyone left around the same time, lose tons of people, then slowly grow it back.

[Jupiter3927]

The building unlocks are so easy to exploit when you figure it out.

[jynx712]

My city is full of abandoned buildings, but the count stays at 3/1000. It shot up to 653/1000 during an earthquake, but dropped back to 3 right after.

[-MaVerick-]

Set all taxes to max, earn lots of money, wait till the building is unlocked and set back those taxes to normal.

The extra amount of money should keep you afloat while your city is getting back on track. Watch for electricity though as most connecting houses wont be there anymore.

[SirSmoss]

just so you know abandoned buildings eventually get reinhabited, it's super annoying when trying to get the observatory, but most of the time its pretty useful

[SirSmoss]

Originally posted by Jupiter3927:

The building unlocks are so easy to exploit when you figure it out.

can you Elaborate?

[db48x]

I’ve never actually unlocked that one; I never cared to disrupt my city that much.

[SirSmoss]

Originally posted by db48x:

I’ve never actually unlocked that one; I never cared to disrupt my city that much.

I'm currently trying it and I'm just about to give up

[kristofburger]

Easy, just cut power to a large enough area so that you meet the 1000 buildings criteria, and don't provide any until you've maintained it for 5 weeks.

Also save the game before doing that. You can just reload the game and still have the observatory unlocked forever, if you don't want to bounce back yourself.

[Jupiter3927]

*Has been summoned by the great necromancer*
Turn off any mods you have that demolish or remove abandoned buildings and raise taxes or cut power or something to make your citizens move out.
They'll leave their buildings behind and each one counts as abandoned.

It should be possible to get that low health building and the one to have lots of dead citizens too if you 'accidentally' add pollution to the water supply.
Low water quality will make all citizens sick.
They'll eventually die.
Your hearses will be overloaded and the still living citizens will move out.
And now you should have 3 unlocked buildings.

Once buildings are unlocked, they're unlocked forever across all saves forever.

[Mr. Monday]

Originally posted by db48x:

I’ve never actually unlocked that one; I never cared to disrupt my city that much.

Just save the game before you try going for the award and reload it once you get it.

Alternatively go for it and then see if you can get your city to bounce back.