Sim Tower
I installed this old game on my Vista computer and it runs! I decided to think about it rationally and build a winning Tower which I did. The goal is to get over 15,000 happy residents. At that point you get granted Tower status and are allowed to place a cathedral on top.
Sim Tower is different from Sim City and was introduced after it in 1994. I still have my old copy on CD but I see web sites that offer free downloads. I haven't tried them so have no idea how well they work.
You start the game with money. You build a lobby then can build floors and fill them with retail, offices, hotel rooms and condos. There are services the Sims require. Hotel rooms require housekeeping. Buildings need recycling centers. Offices and hotels need parking. Medical and security services are required. But above all the Sims must have transportation. In Sim Tower transportation is handled by elevators.
All the crucial resources are limited. The main limitation is in transport. You can only have 24 elevators. These can be high capacity elevators which only stop every 15 floors and local elevators. You need a lobby every 15 floors. There are stairs and escalators. You can have one subway station at the 10'th basement level.
To come up with my solution I realized the elevators are key. Since Sims that frequent one type of room are annoyed by other types nearby I decided to dedicate each floor to a single use. Since office and 2 person hotel rooms have the densest population we need a lot of them. Condos have the least density but raise cash when you sell them so are helpful in earlier stages of building when you are always running out of money. There are service elevators which housekeeping can use to change floors making them much more efficient. However I didn't want to waste any elevators that way and realized 4 housekeeping units keep one entire floor of hotel rooms clean. Somehow the recycling gets done without any elevator access.
Above is a screen shot of the bottom section of the tower. I put 3 local elevators spaced evenly across the building. I blocked off elevator access to the first 3 floors. This forces the Sims to use the escalator to access those floors. That keeps 3 floors worth of Sims off the elevators which they would otherwise use. They are happy to use escalators (no waiting!) so this works out well.
The local elevators only extend to the 11'th floor. Escalators provide access down to the 12'th through 14'th floors from the 15'th floor lobby. One express elevator provides dedicated service to the 15'th floor. The express elevators are set to wait 30 seconds before moving which allows enough time for the cars to fill up. Sims take the express to the 15'th and walk down.
You are forced to start with stairs. After you earn a few stars you can replace stairs with escalators which should be done as soon as possible. Once escalators are available you can use them. They say they are only available for commercial spaces but they can be used on empty floors too. You can destroy offices and stairs and replace with escalator and finally rebuild offices.
The first section is different from the others. I put two floors of retail below and above the 1'st floor lobby. I built the entire 1'st section to the 11'th floor and let it run for a few minutes so I could earn enough rent to build more. While you may be tempted to use lots of condos in a section, particularly to get started in the 1'st section it is a bad idea. Sims all arrive and leave offices at around the same time. The other types of rooms have wider schedules and all differ, but overlap, from the others. So you need a good mix of all types for each section so the elevators don't get overwhelmed by Sims going to one particular type of room.
The next 4 sections are all the same as below. They each have one express elevator servicing their lobby. They each have 3 local elevators serving all but the 3 highest floors. Since offices have the biggest clusters of people coming and going 3 floors are lumped at the bottom; they have the shortest elevator ride. Below the lobby are 2 floors of retail with halls at each end and 1 floor of office below that. So in total there are 4 floors of office, 3 of hotel, 2 of retail and 5 of condo in each section.
The Condos are located at the top of the local elevator access. They have the lowest population density and the most random arrival and departure times. So locating them farthest from the lobby puts the least demand on the elevators.
Early on you need to place security to advance to the next star. I put mine near the middle. You get a bomb threat not long after that. You can pay $300,000 or let security try to find the bomb. I pay if I have the money which I usually don't. When I don't pay security runs off searching for the bomb. Either they find the bomb or it explodes. If it explodes you have to destroy and rebuild the wreckage. That seems to be the only threat so I never build more than 1 security center.
Eventually you need parking. Two full floors is enough parking for this design. Leave space for parking ramps. You could go either far right or left. I chose right as shown below. Below that you can put recycling centers
After building several sections you get promoted (more stars!) and can add a subway. This is of course a good thing because you get more outsiders using your retail. Also you can hear subway sounds. :) The subway is on the bottom floor and cannot be placed higher. Nothing else can be placed on the bottom floor (B10). I allow the express elevators to access the parking and subway as well as the 1'st floor lobby and the one higher sky lobby they service. I deny express elevator access to any retail or other floors. A screen shot of all 6 express elevators is below.
At the 75'th floor you have 4 elevators left. So that leaves 1 express to service the 90'th floor (far right in the image above), 2 local for the floors between 75 and 90 and one local to service floors 90 to 100. Since there are fewer local elevators left the last section must be smaller. Elevator and tower layout is shown below. Local elevators are black lines while the expresses are blue.
To keep the Sims from complaining I put a clinic near each lobby. I use halls at each end of each pair of retail floors. I only use theater's on the 73'rd and 74'th floors. Movie theatres and meeting halls are limited and exchangeable but halls are consistently profitable while movies cost you money. However I wanted at least one movie.
So that's it. A good game. Once figured out and accomplished you feel good and you are finished. I'm sure there are several other ways to solve this game and hope you write me when you discover another.
Copyright © 11/6/2009 Carl Wohlforth
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