ElectroCity is a flash game from Genesis Energy, New Zealand's leading generator and retailer of electricity. Stick with me here, it's a fun little game. It is intended "to spark an interest and lay an unbiased foundation for later learning" about the issues involved in power generation, cost, and environmental impact. Sounds fun already, doesn't it? Let's set our cynicism about Big Power aside and for now call it an "edugame." It is obviously a very simplistic look at those issues, intended to give a broad overview and invite further research on the part of the player. It's also not a bad little town sim game to boot.
When visiting the website you are first presented with the option to view a tutorial entitled "How To Play". The game is not very difficult to understand, especially if you are a fan of sim games in general, but there are many facets to the interface and the tutorial may prove helpful.
When starting a new game you are presented with a random (or at least semi-random) map. You begin with a centrally located Sleepy Town with a small population, close to the beach; a river, mountains, and forests; and with a small wind farm nearby supplying your power.
Basically every single turn you collect revenue from taxes (as long as your income exceeds your expenses, naturally) and decide whether to build new town features or upgrade existing ones. You may even destroy existing upgrades if they are proving too costly, or buy and sell resources on the open market.
The main focus of the game is obviously power generation and its use, and in this area you have many options. Each turn you can prospect in one tile for natural resources like coal and gas. If you locate a resource, you can then choose to harvest that resource, and eventually perhaps build a power plant to burn that resource for energy generation. You may also build town enhancements like campgrounds, theme parks, beaches, ports, and airstrips that will make your town more attractive and bring in more people. Of course the more people that settle there the more power you need to generate. Once you decide what to do you click "End Turn" and see if your actions had any effect.
Every action in the game carries consequences in several areas. Raising taxes brings in more money but lowers your residents' overall happiness. Harvesting coal or gas is expensive and causes pollution, but opting to go with all wind power is inefficient and unreliable from turn to turn. Gameplay requires a balance of all of those factors to be successful.
At the end of the 150th turn, the game ends and you are scored based on your performance in four management areas: Energy Management, Popularity, Population (size, I guess?), and Environment; plus an overall score and letter grade. You can save your town once finished to be included in the "Finished Towns" area of the website and are given email links to send to friends and family so you can "show off" your completed town.
Analysis: ElectroCity is an extremely simple sim game that, despite having 150 turns, plays rather quickly. You spend a lot of turns clicking "next turn" just to try and build up money, or while waiting for a power plant to finish building so you have more power for your city. Unless I'm crazy it has no sound, which was disappointing. Some atmospheric sounds would have gone a long way towards immersion in the environment.
The game is effective at demonstrating the basic balancing act required when considering power generation and its effect on the environment. The graphics are simple and effective as well, evoking the feel of something like SimCity 4, and are very inviting. There are a couple of strange features in the interface, like the zoom option which gives you a close-up view of your town but offers no real gameplay benefit, so it's simply eye candy. I was also frustrated for several turns when I would come up short on power despite thinking I had ample wind farms (yes, I went all wind), but what I discovered was that wind farms are inherently unreliable due to the wind's capricious nature.
It's nice that you can also save your town (via a code that you enter when you return), and I always appreciate not having to create a new login just to play a game. That goes a long way towards my feeling that this game is a genuine attempt at education rather than a thinly cloaked marketing application. It's probably that too, but it's nice to be an optimist every once in a while.
Cheers to Jesse for the link! =)
cool game
so awesome
I just can't seem to pass that A-. I want an A, dashitall!!
It's amazing how quickly this plays through. I always want more time!
I agree, Meg. If only they had some sort of "no time limit" option.
This was fun, haven't finished it yet but still managed to build a few coal mines.
Ah, I'm such a fool :) If you don't want to go bankrupt before the last round:
Don't set your taxes to 0 % to try to get a quick happiness boost like I did! Bit fast on the trigger there, seing as I found myself with a huge debt and a ruined city...
good game, but its driving me nuts, its like the people hate it if i make money - the more money i get, the more people leave, i think its a bit difficult to keep control over the entire resource thing, theres no overview, but thats the point of the game i suppose
i loved this game! t took me 3 tries before i could make it all 150 turns and the deviation from map to map wasn't huge and it was still fun. amazing find.
I got a A+ on everything but power management in the end I had a huge power problem, I needed to buy about 3000 MW of energy every turn.
Real world policy lessons I learned from this game:
1) Running a mediocre (C grade range) energy policy doesn't mean you can't have at the same time fabulous (A+) environmental and growth/population policies and A+ popularity
2) It's only worth encouraging your citizens to be energy efficient and use low-energy light bulbs etc. if there's a regular power shortage and your tax/tourism/mining cashflow base can't cover it (or you can't be bothered to do the math for the cost benefit analysis and you have enough cashflow to not care)
3) Solar farms are imaginary even when the MMORPG scientists publicly announce their invention
oh and another thing I learnt:
6) To do really really really well like the top ranked players, you must plan to build like 6 or 7 nuclear power plants for your city
awesome games, thank u
I got it to A A+ A+ A+ one time, but haven't had an A+ for electricity yet.
I'm in New Zealand and I wonder if they're trying to convince the people that they need to build nuclear power plants :P
I don't know why you can't build more then two hydro plants. I want 4 or 6 :)
I can not seem to make any money. I never went over 200 bucks unless I upped taxes to over %70. Grr. So frustrating, but I still want to play. :D
i had a population of over 37,000,000 but only got a B+ and i built a large nuclear station on every bit of river
Every time I try to play it says "OH NO! You need Flash Player V8 or higher to play ElectroCity!." Yet I have Version 9.. what the heck is wrong?
Wow! Such a cute little game! I couldn't get over an A-, but it was still really fun! On one game, just to see what would happen, I set the taxes really high and kept clicking the Next Turn button, and it went from sleepy town to dodgy hamlet to truck stop to ghost town. It is impossible to have no people. The lowest I could have is 672.
- Start with building 3 farmland and upgrading your windmill to wind farm.
- Then press next turn until you have 800 and build your first hydro plant next to a river
go from there.
I try to use clean buildings. I never used the market and I never build a coal or gas mine/factory or dock or amusement park or stadium or the like. I just stick with beaches and upgrading them to pier, as well as whale watching if that's possible.
I got A's & A+'s on everything except population on my first try. My population was under 50 000 and I got a C. So now I am trying to build my population without going bankrupt!!
hey this is a lot of fun...but WAY too short and how on earth do you get enough money to afford a airport and also how can you get population more than 100 000!!! too short.
i think the game is way too short but the highest level i got to is "big city" still to short though and what relly sucks is my little sis is better than me
Wow, I thought this would kind of stink, but I really love it. Got to play some more now...
Fun game, though I wish it would last a bit longer, and give you some more room to build. I wanted to experiment more, but short of building another town, I couldn't. Another thing I wasn't too happy about, it seems that some things take way too long to build. I know in real life it'd take longer to build....say a nuclear powerplant, versus a wind farm, but IMO having unnecessary long build times takes away the fun.
I thought my town "Kusari" did pretty good, over three million population, but I see others who did even better. Oh well, back to the game
How the heck do you get the code to resume your game after 150 turns? Annoying!
This really shouldn't have a 150-turn limit on it. I'd much rather be able to play as long as I want. (That's sort of a compliment-I like the game enough to want to keep playing!)
this game is great!
my city ended up having 20,198,000 people living in it
with 3,327,783 $$$!!!!
here it is :)
http://electrocity.co.nz/Browse/visitcity.aspx?cityid=8345d97e-6cc8-47fa-addc-57c2e30f8ffb
i might just have to play again!
Woohoo! 160 million people, and so much money I didn't know what to do with it. (like 80 mil)
I advise getting the paper mill and aluminum smelter FIRST PIORITY. And the farmlands. get like 3 or 4 farms, and then as many tourism things as possible. Then when your citizens eventually start whining, put up forrests and kill the papermill and smelter. Money will pour in like 2000 bucks a turn to 15000 eventually. People will flow in like 30000 to 120000 people per turn. It's awesome stuff, tax rate ain't so important, keep it at 33, then take it down slowly and not too fast at higher money and population. The tourists supply all the money.
The highest I've managed to get is 96. My first try I got 91.
I'm still a little too low on population, but I always get A's-A+'s in everything else.
My suggestions?
First of all, no nuclear plants. That always gets the people in my towns upset, and it just ends up dropping my environment score. You'd rather have your people be happy so you can extort money out of them! :)
Secondly, I suggest upgrading the wind farm first. National parks next (this really boosts happiness, so you can up the taxes just a bit here). Whale watching is always a nice boost. Then slowly start building beaches, then piers, then waterfronts, then the Hot Springs Park (if you've got it)., if you have some on your coast. Then the mountains should be made into ski resorts. Once you have a stable flow of money, click your town and buy the first five "programmes"; this will really boost your environmental score.
Thirdly, don't participate in the market with coal and gas unless one of them flatlines; in this case, buy buy buy, then sell at a much higher price. :)
Fourthly, for my towns, I always end up with two large hydro plants and as many marine generators as I can fit in the ocean. After a while, I'd suggest dropping the wind farm and making all the hills CoGen farmland. There's not much else you can do with them.
Lastly, once you have all the waterfronts and a ski resort or two, most of the people won't mind if you take 99% of their money. :)
There is something wrong with the game.
I had 6 fully upgraded nuclear power plants and some other power generator buildings as well, but I still ran low on power near the end of the game. This always seems to be the case.
I still have to get my first A+ A+ A+ A+, most of the time I get A A+ A+ A+. I actually had C A+ A+ A+ when I got 6 nuclear power plants because of the big power shortage at the end.
There is something wrong with the game.
I had 6 fully upgraded nuclear power plants and some other power generator buildings as well, but I still ran low on power near the end of the game. This always seems to be the case.
I still have to get my first A+ A+ A+ A+, most of the time I get A A+ A+ A+. I actually had C A+ A+ A+ when I got 6 nuclear power plants because of the huge power shortage at the end.
I can get 99/100 (didn't save my city, but you can take my word for it :D). The strategy is like Master yurian's ^^
I can't get A+ on energy policy yet, but I suspect it might be to do with shortages early in the game outweighing the huge nuclear energy surplus I ended up with?
Strategy:
For max population, you need a map with 6 river spaces (=6 nuclear plants). Build a coal plant immediately. I then built the paper mill, but it might be better to have more energy sources first. Build the CoGen paper mill upgrade. Make sure you have about 3-4 forest/bush, then upgrade the coal plant and build the aluminium smelter. Switch to nuclear - upgrade the plant when you need to. Then build an airport, maybe some forests, and some touristy things like beaches. By now your cash flow should be secure, and you can use the money to add the more expensive touristy things.
Tax flow should be around 30%, dropping to 0% if you want to grow the population (but I find I have energy shortages at around 1.5 million even with 6 large nuclear plants and a lot of energy-saving programmes).
You can prospect and extract coal and gas, but you can get 99 without doing any of that (the space is needed for forests). Since space is limited, you should probably extract gas only if you find some in the sea.
Just managed to get 100 after posting. (Jigtown, population 1.36 million.) Used my strategy, with more emphasis on environment (3 national parks, 3 forest, no heavy industry, no marine generators). Population growth in the endgame was rather slow though.
I got an A for everything except population, I had about the same amount of people I started with at the end so I got a D and an overall C.
I wish they had more turns!!!!!!! What can you do with 150 turns, nothing, absolutey nothing. Everytime my town is about to become a bustling town it runs out of turns.
It would get sillier with more turns...I've just managed to build a city of population 417 million (UltraCity). That's the whole population of South America in a single city.
Help!
It says that I can build "solar farm" or the sorts, but where? I mean, on mountains, normal land, hills, next to river, or coast? or should I up-grade some other power source to it? I can't find a place to build it ...
wszhdmhj-The solar farms are just pretend. It's a mean joke for the creator to play on us, but he did.
There has been an update to the game which makes nuclear plants less desirable...so all the strategies posted here will be a bit out of date now. Looks like they're not trying to promote nuclear after all :D
Played the game a lot I have to say its obvious the game designers made game mechanics quite strong in favor of fosil and conventional energy sources :-( intentionally as well as unintentionally
Biggest reason: Did you notice you don't even have to have coal and gas, to power coal/gas plants? :-) Just build a gas plant, and get power, don't really worry about getting gas at all!!!
You never get solar panels, altough the scients message says so.
Then getting tidal plants, it tells "when the scientis stoped playing warcraft". I know its supposed to be funny, but its also a side blow against scientists developing alternative energy sources.
The tourism bonuses of hydro plants are neglected. (the huge water storage area is normally quite a tourism magnet)
The long-term negative effects of nuclear plants are neglected. All the negative about them is that the stupid people are unhappy about them, until they forget that again. (One should have to pay x dollars, every turn for nuclear waste ultimate storage for every turn you had a nuclear plant in the past, until 1 million turns into the future :-)
Even if you have the piece of luck of having thermal power, the message is: dont build a alternative powerplant there, use tourism instead.
And of course obviously the alternative energy sources are made very expensive, while having near to zero output (the marine generator is a joke as well tidal generators).
This is all rounded up, by the "carte blanche" to pollute as long the forests magically "absorb" everything without any consequences. Stupid who does not pollute here...
About the solar farms, if you go to the main page:
http://electrocity.co.nz/
And look at the big image, that says "MAYOR WANTED!", you can see a solar farm between the beach and the city.
So it would go on flat ground next to a beach? :)
I have to correct myself, you need coal/gas for the plants. You just auto-buy it, if you don't have any left on reservers, the game just doesn't notify you in anyway, until you also have no money left.
Actually, if you look at some already finished cities, examples at following links:
http://electrocity.co.nz/Browse/visitcity.aspx?cityid=789c6a7b-a21f-4897-afdd-2a5b8e20ad5b
http://electrocity.co.nz/Browse/visitcity.aspx?cityid=87e50aed-2456-4cd3-9330-75ab49072d9d
You can also see solar farm, or the sorts there, near the river.
However, I had no success on putting one there yet, no matter how many times I tried.
@wszhdmhj: what you see is probably just a camp.
Another big minus. They do have a "feedback" button on the page, but when you write your feedback, they won't accept it! *grrr*
I'm the lead designer of the game, and all your feedback is really valuable to me. ElectroCity certainly isn't perfect and there's lots of stuff we would have loved to include or improve, but you know how it is with deadlines and budgets...
Anyway, I'll look into some of the reported bugs, the like feedback not working.
Thanks again for yr thoughts
Cheers
Tom
It's nice to have the designer of the game here!
By the way, at the end, if I get an "A-" for my population, it will tell me "To get bigger next time, try building more airports to attract more people." However, I do not think it is possible to build 2 airports in one game, or am I wrong?
I got 'Add Precis description for Domestic Airport' in the 'about' of the domestic airport....
(1) The "No Growth" button that locks down population is a bit unrealistic - what is that supposed to represent in real life?
At the end of the game, your score seems to be heavily determined by your ability to micromanage this no growth button. The population leap during growth is so huge that it rapidly destroys your energy management score if you overshoot your power capacity. You have no way of reducing your population (except perhaps blowing up all your ski resorts). The problem is, your power capacity has been sitting at max for the last 50 turns, with all your power plants fully built and your pollution preventers (National Parks and Forest 1000s) sitting idle. The Tidal Plants and Marine Generators (10 MW and 30 MW) are nearly worthless at this population scale (although I build 'em anyway since there's nothing else to do).
For example, I wish that "No Growth" was replaced by a slider bar allowing me to activate from 0% to 100% of my (positive) Tourism. Suppressing tourism would reduce the late-game income, but allow better growth management of huge populations.
(2) Why do I only get to build 1 CoGen Rich Farm, 1 CoGen Paper Mill, 1 Aluminum Smelter, 2 Large Hydro Plants, and so on?
These build limits look like a kludge to prevent abuse of the "broken" buildings.
For example, if you want to make the game much harder, you could scale back the obscene profits of the Paper Mill and Aluminum Smelter.
To me this game looked like propaganda for the Hydro industry. The Large Hydro generates TWICE as much power as the Large Gas or Large Coal, for lower initial cost, half the upkeep, half the pollution, no fossil fuel usage, and better tourism!?! The Hydro series would still be a power bargain if they generated 25/125/175 MW instead of 30/150/400 MW -- maybe then they wouldn't have to be artificially capped.
I also wonder why CoGen on the Paper Mill generates 55 MW of power for free. I'd assume that waste recycling would cut into the Paper Mill's huge profits...
For the game designer: I found a small bug. If, say you click on a tile, and click on the Build tab, then click on something that requires upkeep (e.g. Amusement Park), You will be shown the description and the upkeep. Now click on cancel, and click on Amusement Park again. The upkeep info is appended to the existing text.
Brokenfixer: you can probably reversibly reduce population by setting tax at 100% and choosing the two energy saving programmes that make citizens unhappy. This could lower both your popularity though.
I got an A+ in environment and it said that Al Gore was gonna call me. lol
This is not propaganda for hydro industry but for nuclear power...
------------------
Murray Jackson is the Chief Executive Genesis Energy, a New Zealand energy company.
A biographical note states that Jackson was "Commissioner for the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme in Southern NSW and Director of Production for Pacific Power (NSW). Murray is a member of the Grid Security Committee, Chairman of the Genesis Oncology Trust and Director of the Gas Industry Company." [1]
In September 2006 told a New Zealand business conference that the country should support nuclear power as a measure to combat global warming. "Don't give up on nuclear," he said. [2]
------------------
source : http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Murray_Jackson
I'm still getting ~93 because of points lost on "Population." I think that perhaps the No Growth button reduces your population score (similar to 100% taxation - which also reduces your popularity). For example, I've seen finished cities with a perfect population score but only 400,000 citizens, and I've gotten well below perfect with 2-3x that many citizens.
Your electricity usage multiplier is based on your town category.
Sleepy Town (10K): 1.0
Pleasant Town (20K): 1.2
Bustling Town (50K): 1.5
Regional Centre (100K): 2.0
Small City (250K): 2.5
Big City (500K): 3.2
Capitol City (1M): 4.0
These multipliers are MegaWatts per 1000 population during peak season (even turns); off-season power usage is 80% of this. For example, a Capitol City of 1,001,000 people needs 4004 MW on even turns and 3203 MW on odd turns.
Energy programmes have no effect on your Environment score (as near as I can tell). They simply reduce your city's power usage by a fixed percentage (perhaps indirectly giving you a better Energy Management or Population score).
Energy Education: 2% for $1 per
Solar Panels: 6% for $1 per
Efficient Light Bulbs: 3% for $0.5 per
Household Insulation: 10% for $2 per
Micro Wind Turbines: 1% for $4 per
Gas Heating: 10% for 0.5 Nat Gas per (ie, about $3)
In Bed by 8: 10% for $2 per (and unhappiness)
Ban all Television: 10% for $2 per (and unhappiness)
Hence, you want to use: (1-tie) Solar Panels & Efficient Light Bulbs, (3) Household Insulation, (4) Natural Gas (depending on your buy price), (5) Energy Education, (6) Micro Wind Turbines.
In Bed by 8 and Ban Television give you 20% unhappiness due to "current events."
Money:
Building a Paper Mill (CoGen) and/or an Aluminum Smelter will accelerate your game tremendously.
Power:
Power is cheapest using Hydro plants. Coal, Gas, and Nuclear plants are also cheap -- $1-$2 dollars per MW. By contrast, the Medium and Large Wind Farms and the Marine Generator rip you off for about $7 per MW.
Green stuff:
National Parks in Bush squares are an easy way to cover your pollution (+6 Tourism, -8 Pollution). Forests also reduce Pollution by 1 per 100 Wood. An unlogged forest grows 10 wood per turn; a newly-planted forest starts with 200 wood. Once a Forest grows to full size (1000 Wood), it yields +2 Tourism, -10 Pollution, and $20 logging every third turn.
Warning: Logging at 50-69 wood destroys a Bush or Forest space!!
Some useless (?) buildings:
Stadium, Amusement Park: I haven't found a use for these energy hogs - Ski Resorts, Piers, National Parks give me more Tourism than I can handle. These might be worthwhile if you're shooting for 500million population and an F in Energy Management.
Dock-Seaport-MajorPort: By the numbers, these are straight-up worse than Beach-Pier-Waterfront in terms of Tourism and Pollution. Even worse, the Dock sequence converts much-needed MW-power in to worthless $-money -- at an exchange rate that is worse than you get by autoselling that surplus power to your next door neighbor!
Camp Ground: Umm, the River already gives you +1 Tourism for free.
Farmland, CoGen Farmland on Plains: Farms (and Rich Farms) might do okay on hillsides, but the CoGen Farm is typically worse than a simple Forest on Plains squares. Your CoGen Farm yields +2 Tourism +2 MW at $600 in 7 turns. A Forest yields +2 Tourism -2 Pollution at $100 in 1 turn, and can grow to -10 Pollution (and/or be logged for $20 every three turns). There are much better ways to get 2 MW of electricity.
Remember that you can cancel construction and get a full refund, and you can destroy completed buildings that you no longer want.
ok every time I upgrade the geothermal plant I go bankrupt instantly I had over 1000 save and right after my geothermal plant finished upgrading I was -200
A Large Geothermal Plant costs $600 every turn to upkeep! On the turn it says "completes this turn" you'll drop from $1000 to $400 and on the next turn you'll go bankrupt. $1000 is a very small amount of money. For example, when Natural Gas spiked to $36, I was spending $18000 per turn on a Natural Gas Heating programme.
The Geo Plant also destroys your Tourism (-8 or -10 instead of +5) which then destroys your growth and your income (tourism and tax revenue). Use the Tourist Park instead or leave the Geothermal unmodified until you're done building your cheaper energy sources.
Thanks folks for pointing out some more bugs and balancing issues.
I can assure you the game was not developed as a propaganda exercise to support any type of generation. The intention was to introduce the basic concepts of electricity generation (and some of the simple trade-offs) to kids in school, in a fun way. Previously it's been a subject that most people just didn't care about. But these days, it's a subject that everyone should have a basic knowledge of...hence this game.
The loopholes, bugs and unbalances in the game are all unintentional. We are a very small NZ team - not EA or Microsoft or anything - and game development can be tricky. So apologies for the frustrating bits of the game, and the bugs. But remember, this is aimed at kids in the classroom. Anyway, thanks again for the feedback, and we'll look to get a fixed version up soon.
Cheers
Tom Markham
Looks like the game is broken... it tries to load the shockwave file, but never is able to... anyone know what happened?
I got all A's even though I had lots of forests and only powered by hydro & wind. Strange!
I've built a solar farm before, so it's odd that nobody else seems to be able to. It upgrades much like the wind farm--way cheaper for the first upgrade than to build it and to buy the final upgrade.
I put it on a plain square. It had no bush, no trees, no hills, and no water (where you might build a farm).
Unfortunately, I don't save cities that end up badly in the end, so it's not there. Sorry!
Lol everyone hated my uber low taxes, so on the last few turns i set taxes to 99% just to make em angrier lol.
Yey, I made a capitol city. FINALLY.
-dies from playing for too long without food-
This is my 4th time trying it and it is fun! The only problem with it is how short it is. All of the maps are diffrent so you can't have exact things but this is what I did and ended yup with A+ A- D+ A+ I had 1725$ left over and had a pop of 20,838.
1.
Build 2 farms minimum and upgrade your wind genorator to max and don't do anything else until then.
2.
Build 2 camping spots and wait till you have enough money to upgrade them and your farms
3.
Build a wave genorator I think cost 2400$ and if you can buy the whale attraction
4.
Save your money until you can buy a hydro dam and max it out this does cost a lot of money. But once you do it your electricty and polution should be in the yellows and greens :)
5
Go to your city and get all of the good stuff, dont do the cheap stuff like turning of the t.v or maxing bed time etc..
6.
Finally build 2 Moutain Ski's and upgrade them once my final one upgraded it said I won.
Congratsulations on winning! The same results may differ due to diffrent settings/maps.
This is my strategy, but probably nobody will use it:
Lower your tax rate thing for more citizens (only do this if you have enough money to go far enough). Once you have enough citizens (I went to about 15,000), you raise your tax rate thing to 99% or so, you get about $500 dollars each turn :)
I got it to the 150 turns the first time around by keeping my city green with room to grow
THIS
NEEDS
TO
BE
LONGER
<:(
Seriously, this is an awesome game. I got my city really growing, there were thousands of people and tonnes of money coming in every turn. But then it ended! :(
I can't see any way around nuclear, given limited river space. It makes people unhappy, but why cry? Go heavy on the tourism and you get a capitol city at 1-1.5 mil, 0% tax, energy independence, perfect environment and 100 grand in the bank. Whaddya want, people? Tried unsuccessfully to find "Mint on every pillow" programme. Perhaps next update?
My strategy:
Tourism first and foremost. Plant forests, build parks, then beaches (all no energy use), plus whales or geo park if you got 'em, upgrading wind as necessary by your pop. Save your money for a few turns and buy your first nuke plant, and then you're on easy street. Sometimes, if I find a gas strike on land that's not in the bush, I'll hit that just to get a cash boost to buy the nuke plant. ALWAYS upgrade the small nuke plant, otherwise, your city is toast. People get very upset about a tiny nuke plant. Go big or go home, apparently. As soon as your first nuke plant is built, don't forget to nix the wind farms. Not a lot you can do on the hills, so farms are pretty much the only option. Once the first nuke plant is up, you can switch over to some more thirsty upgrades. May as well do the ski resorts, the piers and possibly the waterfronts, though full waterfronts will start to impact the environment by the end. Don't forget to build your nuke plants up and down the river. 6 river square starts are best. That's a half-million more people you can cram in with the extra juice, before hitting the "Neuter my pop" programme. Last thirty turns are pretty boring. You can build an airport and/or an amusement park (fascinating behavioral question: What is it about standing in lines that brings in so many tourists?). Even then, though, don't expect more than 20% happiness, and probably zero. Official response from the mayor's office: Sorry about building you the perfect city; kiss off.
The only propaganda message I saw was one I actually support. If you want to live in a big city and drink electricity like it's going out of style, don't be such a bunch of babies about nuclear. That's the way you get enough energy to support that kind of obscene consumption.
serious spoiler for population max, enviroment max and popularity max:
First, but 2-3 farms. Upgrade the wind farm as well. and also, you need 3 forests and 2 bushes. 5 forests is even better, so if you have 2 bushes and 2 forests, plant another forest. leave the forests don't do anything with them, they are responsible for getting your clean reputation. skip turns until you have $800, build a hydro plant and skip till 2.5K ($2500) and than buy alunium smelter (also turn the turn buy energy automaticly in a shortage to yes). You should be on around 50 turns. than buy 2 beaches, save a spot for the stadium (don't buy yet they cost 4000 bucks to run each turn)and build a dock. upgrade your farms, make a farm in the place of the windmill, upgrade the hydro power plant and also build another hydro. build a geothermal plant if you can, build a camp site, build marine generators, and also a whale watch thingy. don't build any mines or gas wells and build an air strip. upgrade the beaches, camp sites, docks, airstrips, and also make sure you have at least 2 ski resorts. you should be around 90-100 turns, build 1 stadium, and also 1 amusement park. than the fun part- watching your population and money grow. I just keep clicking next turn. I end up with 10-20 million people, A+ green, A+ population, A+ popularity, and c-b energy =[. I still havn't figured a way to make energy without making nuclear plants, which would get my popularity down.
This is really cool ...
If you right click on the white background of the game screen and click "Play" on the menu, it sort of starts again and after you enter a city name you get an "undefined" city. It says that you have $0, but you can build anything you want, even $15,000 stadiums and whatnot. There will also be an option to build a "Giant Thing" which sort of looks like a carrot to me. =D You can't save it, or really do much with it since it has no population and isn't ranked (e.g. Pleasant Town etc.), but it's still fun to play around with !
91 is the highest score i could get
http://electrocity.co.nz/Browse/visitcity.aspx?cityid=472e5756-e310-4133-958d-e6253aa07a84
there is no way to get A+ on evrything and manage energy alsohttp://electrocity.co.nz/Browse/visitcity.aspx?cityid=6c0b423d-fc19-4ea8-893f-10bd727bac30
http://electrocity.co.nz/Browse/visitcity.aspx?cityid=6c0b423d-fc19-4ea8-893f-10bd727bac30
There seems to be a problem loading cities, as I can't get anyone's city to load.
http://electrocity.co.nz/Browse/visitcity.aspx?cityid=364cd997-ed7c-4866-a02c-c24ffaed629d This is Jersey
http://electrocity.co.nz/Browse/visitcity.aspx?cityid=535dec31-d63a-4185-bb5b-f96ffcee7abc I finnaly got a core of 93, how do you get 99.. help anyone
i can load the finished cities just fine...
Nice game, but there a few things that annoy the crap out of me.
Is it really necessary to have angry mobs slow your progress down? I respect their attempts to add a bit of realism but there were plenty of other ways to do so. Moreover the mob incidents are so random! There have been several occasion where I've faced opposition to National Parks!
Also, it would've been nice if instead of having city size itself as part of the total score, for it to be weighted against the other three things. I mean, making the city as big as you can isn't really part of city managment is it?
This game is extremely addicting.
Probably one of my favorite games.
Though the time limit really does bring it down.
Anyways my strategy was actually pretty basic.
Started with environment first.
Did stuff like efficient bulbs and and other cheap programs.
Never used coal.
Only Gas and Wind and Hydro.
Made sure to only log one forest at a time.
Made at least 3 tourist attractions.
Made two farms (One ordinary and One Rich)
Made one paper plant for fun.
Basically it and I got 2 B+ and 2 A's
This game was super fun :D
Every part of my map was filled and upgraded to the max. I got a B+ for Energy Management, A for popularity, A+ for Population and Environment. 93/A :D 5,381,513 people living in my country, Kyoshoku. $214,890 left.
Awesome game!
But I can't seem to save my game )':
UWAAAAH!
Loved it. I wish it was longer. Does anyone else have the problem with viewing other cities? I tried a lot of strategies and found it was best to go by instinct, i would at the beginning get a farm and upgrade the wind. then save to get a rich farm. then 2 hydro power. then 2 gas. then beachs and docks.
I actually built a solar farm in one of my first games..
I've been playing this game for a while now. Never been able to get a score over 97, never. I've had populations as high as 18 million with the cash to match. Anyone have a strategy for gettign a 99? Some special sequence?
My city was "Rutherville", after Sir Ernest Rutherford, the guy on the New Zealand $100 bill and the discoverer of the atomic nucleus. And believe me, I was rolling in Rutherfords at the end of the game!
I ended my game with:
*Over $2 million
*Population of 9.2 million
*Overall score of 93 (A)
*A 30-metre-tall gold statue of me
*Leader of setting enviornmental standards and contacts with Al Gore
Here's the secret to my success:
The key is to go tourism-happy.
Rules:
1. Don't ever change your tax rate from the initial 25%.
2. No prospecting, no mining, no power plants other than hydro and wind.
3. No logging or otherwise cutting down trees (exceptions to put in an amusement park or stadium).
4. Absolutely no interfering with the hydroplants or wind farms once they are built (except to upgrade them).
5. No starting any programs within the city.
Instructions:
Start with the cheap tourist attraction. Build a couple of campgrounds, plant forests, make national parks, and set up whale-watching if possible. Also add beaches and set up two hydro-plants. Upgrade both your hydro plants to Large size.
This should give you a nice revenue. Now, build as many tourist attractions wherever you can and upgrade them as far as you can. Make sure to also build an airstrip somewhere, and upgrade that, too. Make sure every part of the coastline (except for the rivermouth) has a beach/pier/waterfront, and try to upgrade them. Make sure to upgrade ski resorts, too. If the amount of watts coming in leaves something to be desired, try to upgrade your wind farms. The hills are useless to tourism, so build wind farms on the hills and upgrade. Don't worry: even if you DO need to purchase electricity, your income is still going up.
When you've built everything you can build without going into the forests you planted earlier (or were there before you got here), build the amusement park and stadium on a normal forest. After this, you can't really build much more, so you just need to keep clicking the next turn button unitl you see the results.
Oh, and, the solar farms are real. Apparently, you only get them after your city grows past a certain size.
The solar farms are real. i was just playing (using only wind and hydro farms and nothing that badly affected the environmet) and after a while the solar panel opion came up.
That's just great. I look at the top cities, and they just barely get A+'s in all categories, and only has 4 million population. I get to 1 billion, and only get a 91 because it's just not possible to make that much power. The scoring system need some work.
Update