Alien Invasion: An alien ship descends upon the city, deploying many smaller flying saucers. Any buildings touched by the lava will catch fire and burn down or explode. Any buildings or infrastructure on the target area will be destroyed when the terrain changes shape. Volcano: A volcano will sprout from the landscape, spewing lava into the air. It will also cause the terrain to raise or lower sharply. Earthquakes cause the destruction of buildings and city infrastructure. The intensity of the quake depends on how long the mouse button is held down. Earthquake: The tectonic plates under the target area begin to shift. Depending on what the lightning hits, it can cause a fire. Lightning Strike: A bolt of lightning strikes the target area. If buildings or trees are located near the impact site, they may catch fire. Meteor: A meteor falls from space, causing a crater upon impact. Many of the other disasters will automatically cause fires. Some buildings will explode with such force that it will affect the terrain and infrastructure around it. Certain buildings will explode if the fire is allowed to destroy it, which will not only cause destruction of the doomed building, but will also cause the fire to spread beyond the normal radius if the building were simply to burn down. If not dealt with, fires can spread to surrounding structures. Fire: A fire ignites, causing damage and possible destruction of the structure it affects. Tornado: A tornado comes out of the sky and begins to destroy whatever it touches. In SimCity 4, the disasters are as follows. Although some disasters that were in the original SimCity still exist within the series, each new SimCity game will introduce new disasters. Natural disasters have been a SimCity staple since the beginning of the series. The remaining options are to obliterate the city, change between day and night or automatically cycle through day and night, and to cause a natural disaster. Notwithstanding, the God Mode panel, itself, is still accessible after the city has been started. However, after a city is established, the terraforming tools cannot be accessed again in that sector until, a: the city is deleted in Region View, or b: the "Obliterate City" option is selected. SimCity 4's God Mode separated the terraforming from city management, allowing the player to do whatever they desire with the terrain before establishing a city. Any further alterations to the landscape would cost money. Terraforming had been previously introduced in SimCity 3000, but it was only very general, inasmuch as the player would use sliders to decide the lay of the land before the city was established. If the player so desires, a terraform feature can be extended to multiple sectors via the "Reconcile Edges" option, which equalises the terrain height on the edge of the currently-viewed sector, allowing for a more realistic terrain when seen in Region View. Regions that are entirely water allow the user to create an archipelago instead of a metropolis.Īnother new feature was God Mode, which allows the player to alter the terrain of the individual sectors (called "terraforming). When one creates a new region, along with assigning a name to the region, one designates whether it is entirely land or entirely water. If enough cities are built up to the absolute edges of their individual sectors, the illusion of a gigantic metropolis is created in Region View. In this view, one may see a satellite image of the cities or a map that shows roads, highways, and rails, among other things. Akin to The Sims's Neighbourhood View, Region View allows one to see all of the cities one has developed in the region. A region is divided into many smaller sectors where cities can be built. SimCity 4 was made obsolete by SimCity Societies in 2007.Ī new feature to SimCity 4 was the region. Though other expansion packs were discussed, only the one was ever released. SimCity 4 had one expansion pack released for it, called Rush Hour. It also introduced a number of completely new features, such as urban decay, regions, and God Mode. Entitled, SimCity 4, the game improved on many features introduced by its predecessor, such as an elevated rail system that could connect to the subway, and varying types of airports. In 2003, the successor to SimCity 3000 was released.