(If you’ve just started reading, the first post can be found right over here.)

And we’re back! Thanks to these fine folks I’ve got SC4 running happily in a window, so it’s time to get back to building. But before I do, I think it’s important to assign a representative in this district of the city, someone who can act as my eyes and ears in the pixellated world below. There could only really have been one man for the job, and I assigned him a shitty little run-down shack near the crater’s edge. How’s it going, Garrosh?

Same shit, different day.

Socketrape is expanding nicely; added protection from the fine folks at the Firestarters, Inc. fire station and Dr. Zed’s Vivisectorium should keep these miserable fuckers alive at least long enough for this cesspit to flourish. Road, power and water connections have been made to the nearby ether, the residential and industrial districts suffered aggressive expansion, and the citizens are predictably complaining about every little fucking thing they can think of, the ungrateful mongrels. They’ve even been asking for trees and parks long after my inclusion of the local community garden, This Is Where You Bury The Bodies. It’s a hard life being mayor, but someone has to do it. Somehow, despite the constant bitching, these parasites love me all the same.

Island of Dr. Moreau

Things have taken a turn for the worse, though — while I was constructing my little island paradise home and wasting far too many taxpayer dollars (yes, it needs a moat!), the rest of the city was dying of thirst due to the water towers conveniently located in the heart of the industrial district being shut down because of — wait for it — water pollution. The inclusion of a costly yet pleasantly industrial water treatment plant did little to stop the powers that be opening and re-closing the adjacent water towers, so the city’s water supply has been moved elsewhere, amidst constant complaints about pollution, garbage, and requests to build a fucking church.

I mostly just ignored their pleas, and continued to build a ridiculously elaborate park/recreation area near my house and the city hall, in an attempt to raise the land value to a ludicrous level. Meanwhile, the city is going to hell — there’s a massive cloud of pollution around the industrial district (no thanks to the new oil power plant), barely any interest in commercial development, hundreds of jobless residents, and the city advisers yelling at me constantly about education, pollution, water supply, hospital funding, all while my cash supply goes slowly down the drain, the city unable to maintain its maintenance costs.

What began as a pipe-dream is quickly becoming a logistical hell, as New Gomorrah is collapsing under the weight of its own decadence; the irony of the situation certainly hasn’t escaped me. Even Garrosh is joining in with the picketers; he wants better education, is infuriated by the terrible health-care, and complaints about city-wide traffic problems are coming in from all sides. Even the prisons are overflowing, crime rates hitting new highs as there simply isn’t any way to contain the legions of convicts.

Could this be the ill-fated end for Socketrape and New Gomorrah? Not if I can help it, that’s for damn sure.

There must always be a Lich King Grease Pit.

It’s been a long time since I last played a SimCity game; I remember as a kid I used to be obsessed with the series, back to its humble beginnings, and one of my favourite ways to play the game was to load one of the pre-built cities — SimCity 1‘s Boston was a great choice — and then impact the populace with a veritable Pandora’s box of disasters, starting with a few nuclear meltdowns and following up with earthquakes and fires, enough to level the city and leave barely scraps of polluted, wrecked, burning wasteland behind. From there, I’d build up a new civilization upon the ashes of the old, Mad Max-esque nightmare world.

The other thing I used to love doing started with SimCity 2000, where it became the goal of myself and a friend to build the ‘perfect’ city, which generally meant cramming as many arcologies together as was physically possible, not to mention building a ridiculously elaborate and fancy garden around ‘my’ house in the game. Skip forward to SimCity 4 and, with the help of a custom region file I hacked together years ago (which provides a region several times larger than what the game would normally allow), it’s time to combine those two goals into what is bound to be a logistics nightmare: an attempt to create the biggest city I’ve ever made, while simultaneously ruling with unparalleled levels of sadism and cruelty. Welcome to the freshly-founded hell of New Gomorrah.

The first day — which is to say, the last few hours before I haul myself off to sleep — has been short, but eventful. New Gomorrah and its first sub-city, the capital of Socketrape were founded, a substantial and obligatory industrial zone was formed, Bob’s Grease Pit (the first commercial venture to rear its ugly head) was made into a historic building to ensure that there will always be a Bob’s Grease Pit, and I dropped a sizeable chunk of burning cosmic rock into the middle of the freshly-populated residential zone, partly because it seemed appropriate, and partly because I just felt like being an asshole. What better way to drive the fear of god into these people (metaphorically speaking; it’s more like a fear of angry nerd) than to crush their puny homes with the unstoppable might of a fucking meteor, and watch the fire spread like… well, like wildfire. It didn’t take long for the wretched leeches to rebuild upon the ruined terrain, anyway, though I think I’ll leave the meteor crater as-is, something for those peons to remember me by.

But alas, the hour is late, so the city must remain further unscathed for the moment. Next time, things are really going to get ugly.

Next: Rise and Fall