Sim Tower Guide and Media

By BlueZero
23 Mar 2009 03:36

Below are my strategy/tips that I follow for building world-class Sim Towers. I don't have access to my old saved games on my Mac. Here are some saved games to get people started and also see first-hand how I build towers. The guide is at the bottom of the page. The guide is designed for Sim Tower, but it is also great knowledge for Yoot Tower:

UPDATED: Sim Tower Elevator Guide/Settings at the bottom of the page.

Sim Tower Saved Games

Tower.tdt First save is a three star tower with two floors of offices and three floors of hotel rooms.
Express.tdt Second save is same tower as above but with express elevator, more hotels. It includes parking spaces, Recycling Center and Medical Center. (Around 1200 pop)
TERRORIST.TDT This is the second save with a failed search for the terrorists bomb. Strangely, the Housekeeping was saved from destruction. The Maids are angels! Pictures of the events below!

An Average Day in Sim Tower

It begins with a faithful call…

My security force searches floor-by-floor to diffuse the bomb!

Terrorists Win!

Floor 3 now has a great new window view. Housekeeping is somehow spared.

My Sim Tower Strategy Guide:

An elevator is the second structure I build after a lobby. Build lobby in the center of the map. I don’t use the 2 story lobby because I want the extra floor of offices/hotel income. Extend the elevator the max floors up to floor 30. Build a lot of office buildings in one day and hopefully the population goes over the star population limit by the next day. Each floor should have a dedicated building type (all offices, all hotels). On modern computers, the days fly by with “fast mode” selected. For the first few days, you want to deselect this option.

While you save a lot of expenses by having a smaller lobby base, it is a lot easier to max out offices spaces across the screen than to build thirty floors of one office space per floor. It is better to have a few floors with high density buildings than have it not spaced out with a few buildings on many floors. Therefore, build a lobby that can support 6 to 8 offices above and then build up. Once you reach level 30, then expand the lobby and add 2 more offices to each level and keep expanding out, not up. Build second elevator on either far left or right of lobby map area and extend to floor 30. This is important since there is a limit on the number of elevators and you want only 2 to 3 elevators shafts until you get the express elevator. You can always move elevators floors up and down for free so you could move it up to floors 30 through 60 in the future once you have express elevators.

Keep building offices until you can build hotels. Start out with hotel rooms dedicated to a few floors, so the service elevator can move maids to the different floors. Stop building offices once you have hotels and focus on the single hotel room. Build security room and restaurants on level B1 and put stairs there if you have buildings on floor 30. Ignore condos, they aren’t worth it because you make barely any money and give barely any population to your tower.

Don’t build anything underground yet until you get the security building. Build restaurants and food buildings on the floor B1. If you get a threat from the terrorist, pay him off if you have more than 20 floors and only one security center. Don’t pay him off if have like 3 or 4 security buildings spread out in a hundred floor tower.

Once you get the express elevator, make it the main elevator for basement floors. Express elevators are the most important elevator in the tower. Make sure that your simple elevators never stop on the express elevator floors to give you one more floor of elevator service (tweak simple elevator settings to deselect floor 30 for example). Once you get escalators, build them between elevators for basement floors and up to around floor 15ish. There is a limit on the number of stairs/escalators so don’t build them without a plan. Once you get restaurants and shops, build them on Express elevator floors because offices/hotel rooms would get too much foot traffic and will leave. For me, I try to only put shops and restaurants on the basement floors. Other support buildings such as power, waste facilities, security, movie theaters, ect. go in the basement.

Party Halls are your friends. Party Halls are a great way to make money and have extra population. Avoid movie theaters because they cost too much money to run and take too much space.

The game quickly turns into Hotel and Office Space Tower. You need a few suites to get VIPs which are required to get next stars. The manual says that suites require a parking space so it is to your advantage to specialize in 2 occupancy hotel rooms for most of the tower hotel spaces. Offices are still important; make sure there is a elevator close to the offices and there is not a lot of foot traffic or they will leave and you will be forced to lower rent to get them back.

Build a lot of parking spaces underground where you will not be putting a lot of buildings. Don’t build around floor B9 or B10 because the metro has to go there eventually. I personally don’t like the Metro because you have to pay for maintenance and it doesn’t seem to reduce parking space occupancy.

From this point, it is just building hotels and offices and managing your elevators to make sure your tower is covered. I would suggest your make most of the elevators express, with simple elevators from floors lobby to 30 (remove floor 15 and 30), 30 to 60, ect. Remove every fifteenth floor from simple elevators since those are lobby floors and express elevator can transport people there.

Things to keep in mind:

The game limits the TOTAL number of elevators to around 20, which means that other elevator types count for this limit.
The game also limits the TOTAL number of stair/escalators.
You can easily make enough money to pay off the terrorists. Don’t search for the bomb! Also, pay for firefighters because otherwise security personnel are too slow to respond and you may lose a lot of building spaces to damage.

A Simple Sim Tower Elevator Guide

Extend Standard Elevator to floor 30. Then have another Standard Elevator from 30 to 60. Then another Standard Elevator from 60 to 90. For 90 to 100, have a dedicated Standard Elevator. Sims will get off at these lobby floors and go to the next elevator going up. Optimally, they would have gotten on the Express Elevator to go to their highest lobby floor and then take a Standard Elevator to complete their travels.

Express Elevators stop at all lobby floors. The lobby floors are 1, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90. They are every 15 floors. The Express Elevator should also be used for basement levels (B1 through B9)

For elevator settings, make the "seconds to wait before departing" to 30 seconds if you have few elevator cars and a large tower early on (full 30 floors). For Express Elevators, you should have seconds to wait set to 30 as a default since the Express Elevator could be going up to floor 90.

Simple strategy of maxing out your elevator cars to 8 early on.

Spread out your elevator idle floor. Have most of the cars (maybe like 5 or 6) on the bottom lobby floor and have the rest waiting on higher lobby floors. You should idle your elevator cars on important floors like floor 1, floor B1, floor 15, floor 30, ect. I also use a lot of escalators for the basement floors since I put shops and Halls there.

Secrets:

• You have to hold the control button (on PC) while building a lobby to get the secret two story lobby. To get the third story lobby, hold control and shift (on PC) to get a three story lobby which looks similar to the one in Yoot Tower.

• You can also build lobbies on floors where the express elevators stops (30 for example).