Documentation related to the implementation of SimCity 2000
I spent a lot of time investigating SC2K.<p>I came to the conclusion the game was fundamentally flawed, due to limitations in the transport simulation.<p>The game simulates "trips" emerging from each zone type, and a sufficient number of those trips need to reach particular other types of zone, for the origination zone to be successful.<p>However, at each junction, the trip <i>randomly</i> selection one of the routes.<p>So if you build, say, a round-about, or a subway system which is a loop with branches, it's death and ruin; trips have no idea where they <i>should</i> get off (this branch leads to industry, for example), and some trips just keep going round and round until they reach their max travel distance and fail.<p>You could show this issue clearly by building a square block of road tiles - each tile then having four junctions.  Traffic would go into this, and never emerge.<p>In other words, the transport simulation is too different to real life to be playable.  You had to build your transport system to fit the simulation method, if you wanted a viable city.