SimCity is broken. Yes, we knew about the roads and the pathfinding and we even grew to love the rollercoaster-esque bridges but what shouldn’t be possible, what flatout should not work is a 100% residential city. Each city is supposed to be in equilibrium; a blend of industrail, commercial, and residential properties, each feeding into one another.
Redditor Photism has shown that’s not the case.
Not only has Photism built a 100% residential city it has a population of more than 1.3 million sims. Any city with more than 1 million sims is impressive, that 99.75% of them are unemployed and still remain in the city is ridiculous.
The city isn’t without its problems.
Because there are basically no jobs, Photims “had 4800 criminals in the city”. This turned out not to be much of an issue because with “no commercial, and shoplifting is kind of the “gateway” crime, I had no crimes being committed, so they were just friendly criminals.”
On the plus side of no jobs is that the city is virtually “traffic free, only some service vehicles and criminals running around.” Sounds as if this whole no jobs thing has solved one of the game’s primary problems.
At the point that Photism broke 100,000 agents – an agent is a sim realised in the game, so the point that they leave their home and begin being rendered – a couple of problems developed, nothing major, but there were “a couple of moving vans going in an endless loop at one point”
While this is clearly an achievement to be admired on Photism’s part, it says a lot about Maxis simulations system that this sort of a city is even possible to build.
It will be interesting to see if the loopholes that made this possible won’t be patched out of the game soon.