I wrote out this page based on Sulla's Designing a New Civilization Game, but not just because I thought the page was cool and wanted to clone it for my own purposes.
Rather, it is an adaptation of a design document I wrote out for a city simulation game of the future, which is a combination of things I did and didn't like about recent city simulation games. I don't think that game will ever come to fruition as it needs a lot of artists to do the work, and even more to not look like it came out of the year 1994. Unlike the page I'm linking I can't just call my hypothetical city-building game "New City" because there WAS a game called that. So for the purposes we'll call our game "SC6". SC6 refers to S*mCity 6 assuming SimCity (2013) was "SimCity 5". Also, if "SimCity" is used it refers to the franchise while specific games are italicized. We will also refer to the simulated citizens in this game as "Sims" despite that too is a trademark of Electronic Arts.
Also as Cities: Skylines does so many things wrong it won't be mentioned here unless it has to be as a point of example. This document goes back only to looking at SimCity (2013) and SimCity 4 as the best frames of reference.
The biggest issue of SimCity as it stands today is what corporations are accused of doing—"line must go up". That is, MORE population, MORE density, and MORE money to spend. The main goal in the "free" campaign is maximizing "Quality of Life", whether this is done through population growth or careful planning. That is, you want to make your city a good place to live, not a miserable cesspit.
Part of the reason why population and density was so important in previous games was that there was an extremely limited space to grow on, whereas in SC6 you get a large map that can go as long as your computer has memory for. (Think Factorio.) That being said, if you could make a city as big as you want while still being a great place to live, more power to you. Much like how some of the late 1990s Maxis games were designed from (though not necessarily released was) the idea would be that SC6 would be designed to have compatibility with other products in the line (this may or may not come from the same developer, but built on common tools). The example Will used in the CD version of SimCity 2000 was building a car and placing it in the bigger virtual world. The idea that I would visualize is you could build a theme park in something like Planet Coaster (not Planet Coaster itself, obviously) and then place that into the city with import tools. The file would be permanently linked, meaning that it will check for updates with every load. You would be able to see the whole theme park (minus the people walking around) in SC6 and it would also have different effects in the game, so a popular park in that game would be reflected in SC6.
One of the "big" features of SimCity (2013) and ultimately its downfall, is agent-based gameplay. (Cities: Skylines features similar issues). The idea of every Sim going to work and back is an interesting idea but even in a simplified state still causes the simulation to choke. It is unrealistic to have millions of agents all working every morning and evening. Rather, the simulation needs to have a hybrid focus—a handful of agents are used to create the appearance of a living, breathing city, the rest is just statistics-based modeling. The ultimate idea is that you could have a massive, 3D city but steps are taken to maintain a minimum frame rate and prevent unnecessary strain on your computer's abilities.
In previous games going back to SimCity 2000, Health was an important feature of your city. In SimCity 2000 this was a simple variable, this led to longer lifespans which ultimately meant fewer schools needed (due to fewer generations) and a longer tail on EQ which would ultimately achieve clean energy and high-tech industries. SimCity (2013) introduced the concept of sick Sims, which means that they don't go to work and makes them less effective. Cities: Skylines expanded on this with sick "Cims" which needed ambulances and would cause massive death waves. (The whole of Cities: Skylines is broken.) Both Houston and Dallas have concentrated "medical districts" but it doesn't mean that everyone around it is healthy. In real life the only advantage of living near a hospital besides being convenient when you NEED the emergency room (which shouldn't happen very often) is that when the power company needs to do rolling brownouts the hospital is a high priority, meaning power will stay on even when others' aren't. The main reason for this is that when hospitals were implemented in SimCity 2000 they used city funding, which isn't realistic under any healthcare system, and just a money sink that Sims will whine about if there isn't enough. Hospitals should be what some of the other buildings became--a reward when your city is doing well and has positive effects to what replaces the Health feature, "Quality of Life". Now, in real life Quality of Life is highly subjective but in SC6 Quality of Life would be a general meter that takes all the other variables like wealth (regardless of economy), pollution, crime, and other aspects, including education and commute time.
One of the things I liked about NewCity is the fact that buildings and tenants are independent of each other. While it wasn't fully implemented it meant buildings could in theory be no longer strictly single-use, you could have a commercial tenant in the ground of a fancy apartment building, or have a mall that could be full, partially empty, or have a mix of fancy or less desirable tenants. In SimTower you had a better look inside of businesses and could see if a shop (they all behaved functionally the same) was doing well or not. If it wasn't making ends meet (usually by poor foot traffic/high rent) it went under. It would be a similar concept in SC6. When a business opens it has its own schedule (not everyone works 9-5, after all) and its performance in-game is based on a variety of factors including nearby wealth, traffic volume (real life businesses find high vehicle count desirable), and overall economies. There would be some variety in what types of restaurants and shops (supermarkets versus clothing shops versus small convenience stores, etc.) operate with each having their own rules in how they work (convenience stores operate 24 hours, specialty services have few hours but need less traffic) but again, a lot of it is simplified. You won't have tenants sub-dividing or joining tenants, or a business going under simply because the parent company filed for Chapter 11.
One of the things about the older SimCity games was that it was possible to have TOO MUCH police power, an overfunding of police in SimCity 3000 puts a dent on your city's "aura" levels (a variable that was only in that game) and put you at risk for riots. Yet there isn't a punishment for too much education. The idea of over-education in SC6 would result in an imbalance of citizens and jobs. A highly-educated workforce without any high-paying jobs would simply skip town after reaching a certain education level (this is the case for most college towns) unless a sufficient level of high-paying, high-education jobs were available to them. The trick to making education work in SC6 is that it wouldn't be just the school to university to "???" pipeline, there would be various trades your Sims could partake in, but only after gaining a solid foothold in your school system. Neglecting that means that all the Sims who grew up in your city is just unskilled labor and there are only so many jobs in unskilled labor, even without real life issues like huge numbers of foreigners (both illegal and with work visas) entering your city.
The answer is what games in since the mid-2000s have done...tech trees. With more options for education you can redirect how your city trains Sims for the workforce. While there will be some Sims always coming and going with various skills, you can achieve balance in how education is done to make sure that everyone has some sort of decent job in the economy and ultimately improve Quality of Life.
In SimCity 4 there were three types of pollution—air pollution, water pollution, and radiation pollution. While there would be localized air pollution which would affect Quality of Life, the air pollution would get rolled into a larger Air Quality Index. Like real AQI levels, the numbers would be affected by weather and terrain. Los Angeles has smog issues because the fog from the Pacific Ocean's weather patterns gets trapped by the mountains to the east. Houston doesn't have these same issues (despite more air pollution) because the flat terrain means it just gets blown away. Water pollution in previous games was created by just "polluting industries" but in real life there's certain industries that tend to pollute waterways more than others (near me it's the chicken plant, and having worked in a similar plant a lot of chicken bits will fall out of the plant and find their way into the waterways). These were both in cities where the storm drains and the sewage pipes were not the same thing (older cities have them combined; New York famously dumped raw sewage into its waterways into the mid-1980s. SC4 handled this well enough, water pollution can come from anywhere, but water treatment plants mean that you won't be re-drinking sewage later. While the air pollution simulation can be tweaked and the water pollution simulation can mostly remain as-is, the radiation pollution (leftover from a toxic waste dump/meltdown) would be reworked into ground pollution. As SimCity is based on America and not third-world countries, a site that has had significant ground pollution is effectively condemned because of the severe health effects that resulted (stuff like Love Canal or the Brio Superfund site). To abstract into a simulation, certain sites like old gas stations or industrial buildings means that if they get destroyed or redeveloped you have to pay for cleanup for it to be used again.
While the original SimCity was in a vacuum, its sequels had the city as part of a larger region (partly to explain why space was limited). This was called "SimNation" in SimCity 2000 (providing an economic incentive to connect with the nearby cities) and Neighbors in SimCity 3000, which let you trade you utilities or garbage. The now-defunct multiplayer online version of SimCity (2013) was supposed to do the same thing but with other players. The way to rework this would be that every new city the player makes contributes to a larger region population (higher region population = more perks) even if they don't physically connect (by default, at least). The region option in these games let you build a city without starting off with a coal power plant, but the simpler option (and arguably more realistic) is to just trade with the "grid". "The Grid" would be a slightly changing value that is affected by a random number variable but never outrageously priced. It is not designed to merely "sell" or "buy" utilities, it is flexible. For an example, if a city is running on an overloaded coal power plant, the Grid will continue to supply the city at a cost. While the player can set a price ceiling to prevent overpaying (but risking brownouts), the Grid could in theory supply utilities indefinitely. If the player added a brand-new power plant and suddenly created an excess of electricity, the surplus is now a net positive as the Grid responds in kind to pay back. Unlike SimCity (2013)'s "Global Market" trading with the Grid wouldn't be trying to game the system, it's just a random number that can go either way on buying or selling. However, like SimCity (2013) you could still set price ceilings.
You can still place water pumps or power plants, those have a purpose, but landfills can be done away with entirely since most real landfills are sanitary landfills that take up lots of space and are located far away from the city anyway (it will still be in there as a business deal).
At the core of SC6 is a good traffic simulator. There has not been a good city simulator (by Maxis or Paradox) that contains a good traffic simulator, to accurately show inbound/outbound traffic. SimCity 2013's traffic simulator was famously broken with cars seeking the shortest (not fastest) route and patches didn't significantly fix the issue. Older SimCity games didn't use a traffic simulator at all, a "trip generator" based on distance and had points where trips could "fail". The biggest change of SC6 is the fact that roads will dominate with new ways to handle traffic like stop signs and stoplights, and one of the variables Quality of Life will be judged on is commute, how fast it takes people to go to work and back.
From the original SimCity (1989) rail was buffed to be better than roads in every metric and assumed that it was just as convenient and accessible as driving. (This was based on Will Wright's personal opinions on freeways and roads—I know there was some interview or article that stated as much but the only thing I can find is a bit in this 1992 Los Angeles Times article). In SC6, mass transit is still there but just as hard it is to run in real life, it will be hideously expensive, not really be worth it unless population reaches critical mass, and drives up commute times as it requires scheduling and stops.
One of SimCity's biggest existing problems is the fact that the scale is not 1:1. In SimCity 4 there was an actual tile-to-kilometer scale but most lots were dramatically shrunk down to fit in the rather tight for the 4km x 4km city size (plus the way larger lots are calculated it has some errors in the simulation, with airports notably having a crime problem). But this isn't 2003 anymore and we could have larger cities. What if we let our city stretch out, where space wasn't a problem (by default, anyway?). Cities are big places. There's parking lots (which some people of this hobby would go into conniptions seeing--but not every place has to be some sort of cramped third-world slum or Manhattan), there's usually wide highways or railway corridors, there's waterways, and much more. I mentioned universities and airports (especially the latter) as being their own "games" because a large airport would take up a small city tile in SC4 for itself and likewise for a large sprawling university (if not more) like Stanford or Texas A&M University. In SimCity 4 universities and military bases take up larger-than-normal tile sizes but are enormous in real life. Fort Hood near Killeen is a massive facility even when you don't have the acres of inhospitable ranchland for combat training. Cities are built around things like military bases or college campuses or state governments or industrial complexes--not added onto an existing generic metropolis.
There would also need to be much more housing than what SimCity allows. Even in SimCity 2000 the rule was "R = C + I" but even later adjustments to that leave much to be desired. Still, there should be an option for SC6 to require less housing just for city-building purposes.
While SC6 would be compatible with whole new products that would be games in their own right, SC6 would have potential for expansion packs of its own, which would focus on aspects of other types of cities, like how a tourist-oriented city would be different than one focused on traditional industry. A good idea would be to focus one expansion pack on more rural aspects beyond the city, with not just farms but other things that you wouldn't normally see in larger cities—campgrounds, grain mills, truck stops, tourist information centers, and so on.
As someone who likes to travel and saw a bunch of weigh stations on Interstate 10 (and never in the populated areas), my idea is that they would be implemented in the game as a way to lower road maintenance fees (heavier load = more wear and tear on the roads) as well as lowering the chance that a chemical spill disaster could happen in your city (due to them also checking if hazardous loads are handled properly). It's an abstraction, sure, but all of these things are and I would love to see these quirky features of the world around me be implemented. It's what I wanted to see originally in SimCity 4 at least.
As I've mentioned I'm quite put off by recent efforts by other companies to claim the "city simulator" crown. Especially discouraging is the people who think SimCity and its California mindset is how cities operate, or should be, including the push for density and non-vehicular transportation. As it is attempted to be pushed in real life, I imagine it would be an enormous push in a new SimCity game, which would ruin it.
- 8/28/25