I’ve been playing a good amount of Sim City 4 lately, and one thing that I really love is how easily you can experiment in that game. Through the region system, I can set up neighboring cities and try vastly different strategies on them and see what the results are. Right now, I have three cities, laid out as below:

• Winterfell – an extremely poor city with no government services. No schools, hospitals, police stations, or even water in most of the city. Since I have no water, I can’t get medium or high density buildings, but that is the strategy I’m taking. It is sprawling, polluted and nobody with any money wants to live there. Right now, I have a population of around 18,000 sims, a monthly income of around 5,200 and monthly expenses around 1,400. It’s a rich town… but the people aren’t.
• Storm’s End – a very rich, small town. The power plants are all wind turbines, it has good education and good health, crime and pollution stats. I’m trying to keep the place as nice as possible, but that’s pretty expensive. The population is around 6,000, with a monthly income of 1,600 and monthly expenses of 1,500. It is barely staying in the black, but the population is far wealthier.
• Vale – a medium range attempt at a fairly standard town. This was the first city of the three that I built, and it is my control – I’m not going for a super nice place, but I’m not trying to just rake up the cash and be miserly. The population is around 11,000, with monthly income of 4,500 and monthly expenses of 3,700.

One thing I noticed is that the income per sim is roughly the same across all three towns. Storm’s End being the wealthiest doesn’t give me an increased tax revenue per sim, the only advantage is that it is a nicer looking town. The Winterfell strategy may be a good way to start – get a large, sprawling city with no government services at all, and then start expanding the services by dropping a school and hospital in one area, and have the rich start moving over there. One thing to remember is that you don’t actually need water in your city, you just need water if you want high rise buildings. I have rich people in parts of Vale without water.