Lockdown 2020: Lord of Dogtown

I expected a skateboarding game, but this is cool.

Glad to see a part 2 of this!

Love these SIM City videos.

Brad, you should play through the SIM City series, and rank 'em.

@brad Regarding Yamazaki - you can do far better for the money, unless you're trying to fill up a collection and have to have Yamazaki.

I bought my first bottle of Yamazaki 12 at $65 back in 2015 and never saw it at that price again. At $65, it's a monster. My favorite whisky. At $125, it hangs in there but I think is surpassed by some more aged options that start to creep into the price bracket.

Just $0.02 from someone who probably drinks more than he should.

Hey @brad, I am currently re-learning all the mechanics of SimCity. I'd like to answer some questions you asked during the stream (unfortunately, I can never catch these live due to time zone differences):

• There is no problem with rails and roads touching "awkwardly" like they do in your city. The Sims will hop from one method of transportation to another as long as they are in adjacent tiles. It is generally recommended to only use rails though since they create no pollution. They are more expensive than roads but in the long term it pays off to avoid using roads (pollution is really bad for residential zones).
• The naturally occurring forests do indeed have the same effect as parks: they raise land values. Contrary to popular belief, they don't actually reduce pollution. However, since pollution lowers land values, parks and forests counteract pollution indirectly in that way.
• Speaking of land value: Gifts (everything you can build from the question mark entry except for Land Fill) greatly raise land value and it is highly recommended to place them near residential and commercial zones (industrial zones don't depend on land values for growth so gifts are wasted on them). The true power of the donut block building method is that the center spot is perfect to place a gift as it will boost the growth of all surrounding zones.
• At one point you wondered if you perhaps had too many police stations, but you may not have had enough of them. A good way to check is to consult the public opinion menu. If crime is one of the issues listed, go check the map for high crime areas/low police force areas and place stations accordingly. Police stations are also a valid option to put into the center of a donut. However, a police station (and fire station, for that matter) that is connected to at least 1 piece of rail or road will be twice as effective as without access to transit.
• You also wondered if you were "overbuilding". I think it's generally a good idea to place at most one donut block worth (~8) of zones that are currently in demand and let them develop before building more.
• Lastly, in order to keep demand high, don't raise taxes too high. The default 7% is about as much as your citizens are willing to stomach. At some point, you had full negative demand bars for all zones because your taxes were too high.

Of course, keeping taxes low limits your budget, so here are some money-saving tips:

• Keep taxes at 7% at most and lower them as much as your budget allows. 0% will greatly raise zone demand but is usually not sustainable for long periods of time.
• Keep the amount of roads and railways to a minimum, since every placed tile of those will affect the transit budget. If you want to be truly minimalistic: Both commercial and industrial zones really only require to have a single piece of rail or road touching them. For residential zones, the rails or roads they touch must lead to a valid job destination (i.e. commercial, industrial, police and fire station, seaport, airport etc.).
• At some point, your citizens will demand you build a fire station. Build only one fire station in order to satisfy this demand but defund them in order to save money. Once a fire actually breaks out, you can place a fire station near the fire and raise their funding back too 100% temporarily.
• When given the option between casino and amusement park, always choose the casino. Casinos generate more revenue than amusement parks in exchange for raising the citywide crime value negligibly.
• Always get the bank loan whenever you can; it's a great deal. However, make sure you have enough money to pay the interest at the end of each year because you will literally lose the game if you can't pay them (banks are scary indeed).

There is much more to be said about the game mechanics but I'll stop here for now.

I hope to see more SimCity streams. Happy building!

Peegs! So good to see. Something about seeing animals on stream just makes my fucking day. Or just knowing they're around, like when Abby talks to tater on her streams. Animals are so good.

Nice!! Awesome video to come home to!

Hell is watching other people play SimCity.

Great video, 10/10.

Brad streams keep reminding me I need to hang up my posters.

Love the thumbnail.

Thrilled to see part two. This is probably my favorite stream currently running Brad.

Don't know why SimCity doesn't get more love for its music.

Japanese whiskies are so wildly priced. I've still yet to try one, I got into the game long after that price raise. Doesn't help that I'm in Australia which has crazy high excise on alcohol.

brad looking like hes part of a giantbomb e sports team =)