We left the SimCity of Hell several months ago, but it is not forgotten. Heaven will not allow the crimes of its mayor to go unpunished. Or something. Anyway, please enjoy Part XI of this formerly dormant quasi-LP series.
One way you can tell that life has returned to normal after a disaster is that people start to complain about relatively minor things again. Going by that metric, Hell has definitely recovered from its earthquake quickly. Shortly after the quake that killed thousands and the quick rebuilding, the citizens begin griping about not having enough fun things to do.
Although they’re demanding a marina, really any of the entertainment options will do to sate their desires. The more expensive and bigger options naturally make the people happier and let them distract themselves from the fact that they’re apparently sitting on top of a fault line and right next to a nuclear power plant. Since that’s the case currently, the mayor decides to build the biggest and best entertainment venue possible: a stadium.
Stadiums take up a 4×4 tile space, though, so it can be hard to find a place for them without bulldozing entire city blocks. Instead of doing that, let’s create more space by moving some earth around.
The terrain-editing options cost money to use (think of it like hiring a crew to haul earth around) but they’re not really too expensive considering their value in creating more space to build on. In this case, let’s lower some terrain at the top of a still-undeveloped hill. This will make for a great spot for the stadium.
Lowering this terrain ended up causing the destruction of a few buildings and a road, but that’s a small price to pay. That’s how the mayor feels, anyway. And since the city has the power of eminent domain, it can pretty much do whatever it wants as far as demolishing existing buildings goes. (In real life eminent domain is a lot more complicated and requires the government to fairly compensate the owners of the land being taken if it turns out that the government has the power to use the land in the first place, but in Hell, eminent domain is an absolute privilege. Just like sovereign immunity!)
Anyway, let’s just build the damn stadium already.
Before you can build, though, you’ll have to pick the sport played at the stadium and the name of the home team. As far as I can tell, these options are purely cosmetic, so pick your favorite sport, as long as your favorite sport is baseball, soccer, football, rugby, or cricket (though if cricket is your favorite sport you’d probably be just as happy watching grass grow.) Since I’m a god damn American, though, we’re going with football. And since there’s already a soccer option in place, we know that this is American football.*
I didn’t name this team the Llamas, by the way – that was the game’s suggestion. At Maxis in the 90s they had an obsession with llamas and related animals like alpacas for some reason. We may as well go with it.
Hell yeah. Doesn’t that look majestic? The mayor is pretty pleased with the whole arrangement and looks forward to the increased business that the stadium will bring from out of town. (He doesn’t care about the increased traffic, or the increased crime around the stadium, or even about the cost of building it – it’s the taxpayers’ money, after all, and the mayor doesn’t live in the city anyway.)
The mayor, now high on the feeling of building massive prestige projects, orders the building of a university hospital downtown. Not for the purpose of helping his citizens – though it will help raise life expectancy in Hell – but just to brag to other mayors that his city has a university with its own hospital.
The Llamas really suck, by the way. Maybe it’s just because it’s their first year. Hopefully they start to gel better next season.
Two years pass, and the Llamas don’t get any better. Here’s some better news, though – the average intelligence of Hell’s citizens has risen! A whole lot, in fact, from 76 to 87. 87 still isn’t great, but it’s a hell of a lot better than it was thanks to the building of the university and a few libraries. People are living longer lives as well, though pollution is still a serious problem.
Maybe things are looking up for Hell!
Or not.
Another plane falls out of the sky in 2050, and it decides to fall in almost the worst possible place – right next to the nuclear power plant. Every fire truck in the city is lined up in defense of the plant before the plane even hits the ground.
Thankfully, the crash only takes out a few pieces of road and rail (along with every person on board, presumably.) The fire is easily put out. But if the plane had crashed a few tiles to the southwest, it could have caused an enormous disaster. Nobody is sure whether the plant can withstand a fire without causing a meltdown, but it would be better to not have to find out.
Despite the danger posed by the nuclear plant and the fact that it was nearly involved in an accident that could have caused a catastrophic meltdown, people keep moving to Hell, which now contains over 67,000 souls. Maybe it’s the low property tax.
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* Coincidentally, both the pro and college football seasons just started here in the States. I hope my alma mater doesn’t choke like they have the previous few years.
2 thoughts on “SimCity 2000, Part XI: Bread and circuses”
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Everything is bad for you 
I find American Football to be pretty boring, but given a choice I would pick that sport over cricket any day.
Yeah, I think I’d pick almost any sport over cricket.
I live in the South, where football and Nascar are the kings as far as sports go. To me, Nascar is even more boring than cricket, so I have to follow college football, at least to see how my school disappoints us this year.