My first attempt at SimCity came when my brother bought a pack containing SimCity 2000, Settlers 2 and Civilization 2, and having heard so much about SimCity I expected to play it a lot. However, I was really disappointed when I laid out my zones and all I got was coloured squares and couldn't figure out why nothing was being built. In the end I became a Civ junkie and didn't bother with SimCity any more.
Years later I saw SimCity 3000 on sale so I decided to give it a chance. That's how I learned about the "play" button.
My first time playing SC2K was similar, only I sat there wondering why my city had no power, despite all the power lines I'd put down.
Then I discovered the drop-down menu with power plants underneath power lines...
Sadly i always reach my ceiling somewhere after a few hours when my city reaches a certain size and transportation/clogged up streets become a problem.
For the life of me i can't figure out the subway system or establish working bus routes
If you're talking SC4, it's actually pretty easy to get nearly half your citizens riding the bus or subways. The first thing I recommend is to download a mod that lets you build on-street bus and subway stops. They make it much easier to build a transit system, and are a little more realistic, to boot. Oh, and if you don't have the NAM, you should probably get that, too, as it makes the game simulate transportation much more realistically.
With that done, all you really need to do is remember that Sims are lazy bastards and don't like to walk. In fact, if they have to walk any more than ten squares during their commute, they'll drive instead, regardless of how congested your roads are. So the solution is to blanket your city with stops, usually one every block or so will do the trick. With your subways, you'll want to put them under major roads, converging on your downtown (I usually don't do subways to industrial zones; Sims don't like to ride them there). Always make sure that your subways are joined to bus stops (some mods for on-street give you the option to have combined stations, too). That way, Sims won't have to walk straight to work from the subway station, and can instead take the bus part way to their destination. It's not perfect, but I've used this basic method to get my mass transit numbers to dominate over car transit:
Those are from one of the best cities I ever made, which sadly I lost when my registry got corrupted last year.
You can also get creative with mass transit, too, if you're bored. I spent way too much time fiddling around building grade-separated bus rapid transit once:
Signed,
A recovering SC4 addict
) would be awesome.
