------------------------------- SimTower FAQ/Walkthrough for PC ------------------------------- Author: Kiwizoid First Print Date: 2/25/04 Latest Update Date: 3/4/05 You are reading Version 2.02 This FAQ should only be on: Gamefaqs.com (most recent version always available here) DLH.net neoseeker.com If you see this FAQ on any other website than the ones listed above, please notify me at kiwizoid-san@japan.com. Contents*: 1) Intro(SNES) 2) Version History(DMCT) 3) Getting Started(NINT) 4) Transportation(WIDW) 5) Buildings(PSX) 6) Events(ATRI) 7) Walkthrough(FEB) 7a) 1 Star(MAR) 7b) 2 Star(APR) 7c) 3 Star(JUN) 7d) 4 Star(JUL) 73) 5 Star(AUG) 8) Semi-Cheats(PS2) 9) FAQ(JAN) 10) Credits(SEGA) 11) Copyright(SONY) *The words in parentheses are shortcuts to the section before it. For example, SNES is the shortcut to Intro. To get there, hit Ctrl-F on your keyboard and type in SNES. Hit Enter, and it should lead you straight to the Intro section. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Intro SNES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wow, my first FAQ, and I have NO idea what to say. SimTower is probably the best Sim game I have played in a long time. It has a sort of...nostalgic value to it. It is the game you play when you have one of those days where you want to play a game from your past (Super Mario RPG for me) that you loved but don't have the old system anymore. It's a game that has a simple foundation, but gives you the most difficult time trying to achieve the goals. You start playing and can't get off of it. The game gets to you through pure addiction. Starting at the beginning is simple and people underestimate the game. "No problem. At this rate, Tower rating will be mine by the end of the day!" By the end of the day, however, you're at a three star rating and are close to pulling out your hair trying to keep your tenants happy. You're either going to love this game for that difficulty or you're going to hate it. Any questions, comments, or suggestions can be sent to kiwizoid-san@japan.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Version History DMCT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 2.02 - 3/4/05 ------------- I couldn't figure out the new log-in system for GameFAQs for a little bit, but I finally upgraded my account, so I can submit the files again. That's really all this update is to say. Version 2.01 - 2/3/05 ------------ Well, it would seem I should never say never. I received an e-mail a couple of weeks ago with a person asking a question about SimTower. What does this mean? I have a question for the FAQ! Hurray! I've added the question in there. This also means that there is no section left blank in the guide, so I'm very pleased about that as well. I also received an e-mail from another person who mentioned a "Yoot Tower", a simulator similar to SimTower and, as a matter of fact, is also made by the same guy (The title screen to SimTower has a poster to the right of the glass doors stating that the game was created by Yoot Saito; Yoot Tower is named after him), so I suppose it is more of a sequel. Anyways, he suggested that I should play it and give a comparison of the two. I believe that being able to try many games of the same genre would be a very enticing addition to this guide. The only problem is that the source given to me by the e-mail was through Home of the Underdogs, a website that archives old games. Yoot Tower was around 50 MB in size. I, unfortunately, appear to be one of the last people in the world with dial-up. Until I have a broadband connection, I doubt I will have the time or patience to download this file. However, I will try to look for other possible ways of obtaining it. The one year anniversary of this document is coming in a couple of weeks. I might write another update soon to make a reflection or something. But I guess that's it for now. Version 2.00 - 11/23/04 ------------ There. It's finally over. I have acheived TOWER status for the second time in my life. The walkthrough is done, the FAQ will probably never come in, and everything is finally at peace. Second guide? Probably San Andreas. However, this guide is by all intensive purposes complete. I'm still going to accept all e-mails, but whether or not I put it into the guide will be judged by importance. I want this chapter of my life to be over. Nostalgia is such an addictive bliss. See you around. Version 1.50 - 11/18/04 ------------ I'm about 1000 people away from finishing Star 4. My arm hurts from all of the clicking to lower the prices. After I get 5 Star, I'm probably going to be resting for a week, but I've decided that when I complete the walkthrough, I'm going to declare it version 2.00. Then that will probably the end of my guide. I'll still accept e-mails and stuff, but I won't be making regular updates. My second guide will probably involve something with less clicking. I'll have a decision by 2.00. Version 1.49 - 11/17/04 ------------ OK, I've added in a lot of stuff. First, I want to ask if anyone else has noticed how differently my writing style was before and after my five month "break". My update notifications before the break are straight to the point, but my ones afterwards are bigger and more conversational. Well, anyways, I realized how annoying it will be to scroll through the walkthrough section when I finish Star 3 and move to Star 4. So, I've acted upon it now. There are now shortcuts to the start of each star walkthrough in the contents section which, by my own guide version rules, gives this update a .1 upgrade. Speaking of walkthrough, I've made more progress on Star 3 and am so close to finishing it and moving to Star 4. Next update will probably be when I finish Star 3, which actually is this one. I wrote this update before I continued on, but I ended up exceeding my target point. So, I've got the Star 4 shortcut up, and I've started on the Star 4 walkthrough. Quoting the fast food info box, "Business is good." Wow, this really constitutes a .1 updrage now, eh? Version 1.39 - 11/13/04 ------------ My devotion and my brother never giving me a turn on the PS2 after we bought GTA: San Andreas has lead to the return of my walkthrough file. The five people who've read this guide can now rejoice. I've continued the walkthrough and added on a little bit to Star 3 and I hopefully will be finishing it by '05. But for now, progress is good. Say... my second guide could be San Andreas. I'll have to ponder over whether or not to do it, because it's a BIG game. IF I make a decision, you folks will be the first to know. Version 1.38 - 11/3/04 ------------ The slow, painful death of my computer has become an inevitability. I highly doubt I will be able to finish this guide before my computer dies on me. As a matter of fact, I seem to have misplaced or just possibly lost my SimTower accompanying file, so I get to be the first to try my guide. Fun. I'm also adding a contribution from James Bond about the super-duper event that I forgot about: the buried treasure. I've added it in the Events section. Don't worry, I'm progressing on the walkthrough, but like I said, my current file is corrupted and I can't find my backup. So... it'll have to wait. The day I re-complete my file is the day the walkthrough continues. Stay tuned. Also, upon a further read-through of my guide brought to my attention several conflicting statements. I fixed those as best as I could and also... it's funny to see what you write like when you're unconfident in your guide writing skills. But now, I might even consider a second guide, but something bigger. If I get an idea on what game I might do, I'll post it in updates. Now, I need to start redoing my guide. Oh, by the way, I'd like to wish GameFAQs a happy ninth birthday. I don't really know what else to say. Fun statistic: this little guide I started seven months ago has become: 721 lines long! Version 1.37 - 9/19/04 ------------ When did this margin rule occur? Arrgh... i'm going to be spending some time fixing all these errors and making sure it doesn't go over the required 80 characters. Version 1.36 - 9/19/04 ------------ No, I did NOT forget about this guide...I just never got around to writing it. With the addition of school homework on my regular schedule comes the annoucement that I have received two e-mails since my last update 5 months ago. These two e-mails alone have reminded me that there are people around the world are reading this guide and it is my sole duty to finish it. So, I'm pleased to say that this guide will be finished soon enough! Hopefully. This update is really just to add in that I'm not dead and that I'm adding in the two comments which are pretty awesome. Big thanks to David Zhong and John Kao (I hope I spelled those right...) for re inspiring me to finish this guide. You may have noticed that this is Version 1.36. So, where's 1.35? I skipped it. I felt that this wasn't too big of an update to receive a full .1 upgrade, but it was too big to receive only a .01 upgrade. So it receives a .02 upgrade. Version 1.34 - 4/12/04 ------------ Started 3 Star Walkthrough. Still no e-mails... :( Version 1.24 - 3/5/04 ------------ Changed 2 star requirements to needing only 1 Security Office, not two. Version 1.23 - 3/4/04 ------------ Started the walkthrough section. Version 1.13 - 3/3/04 ------------ I feel so popular... added neoseeker.com to my accepted sites list. Version 1.12 - 3/1/04 ------------ Added DLH.net to the accepted sites list. Version 1.11 - 2/28/04 ------------ I won't be working on it every day, but I still have a lot of stuff I forgot about. -Added in FAQ section(coming soon). -Added Rain in events. -Added in Walkthrough(coming soon). Version 1.01 - 2/27/04 ------------ -Added something in semi-cheats from GameWinners. Version 1.00 - 2/26/04 ------------ There. I think that's everything. There's still a lot of stuff missing that I can't remember, but it can be added in later. Here's to finishing my first FAQ, I guess. Version 0.50 - 2/26/04 ------------ The morning after... Mainly got through Buildings and finished up the Transportation section. Going online soon, hopefully. Version 0.00 - 2/25/04 ------------ After writing the Intro, I can see how much work this will be. Expect a lot of changes as I get submissions (if any =P). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Getting Started NINT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Every game has a goal to reach and rules to set. The section here is going to explain those goals and give personal advice. Clicking on New Tower gives you a mini-map, an info bar (with a clock), and a tool window. Looking on your mini-map shows blue skies, moving clouds, and a gray box showing what you are looking at. By the time you've become experienced at the game, the blue skies will be replaced by a giant gray shape that is your tower. The mini-map in detail will show many things eventually, but for right now has four buttons on top: Edit, Eval, Pricing, and Hotel, currently grayed out. You should currently be in Edit mode; if not, click on it. See how the clouds are moving in it? Edit mode is the only mode where time will pass in the game. Eval mode will automatically pause the game. The gray in here will either turn blue, yellow, or red. These represent your buildings. As described just below the buttons, blue means an excellent evaluation of the building. Don't change a thing. They're happy, so leave them. Yellow is the cautionary status of a building; this is still nothing to worry about. However, if you ever see a red building, this is where you worry. At the beginning of each quarter, some red tenants will move out, and you lose the profit of the rent. This is bad for condos, because after the current tenants move out, more might move in almost instantly. Condos are the only building that you *cannot* change the rent for after purchasing. All other buildings are OK. Each rentable building has four price levels, which vary. The next button, Pricing, shows the price level for each building by a color, again explained underneath the buttons. Red colors mean the price is at the highest rent price. Yellow signals the average price (second from top in drop list), green coloring is sort of low (second from bottom), where as blue is the lowest rent available. My personal strategy has been to set all the prices to blue. This generates the lowest income, but a blue price also gives an indefinite blue Eval as well. In other words, the tenants never move out when they're given the lowest price of the bunch. I find it handy, even though I lose most of my 2.1 million income to a 2 million maintenance cost. The hotel buildings are a building that become useable starting with the single room at the two star level. The minimap will show rooms that are dirty in red. In order to clean them, you need a housekeeping staff, also available at star two. However, note two things about housekeeping: a) They CANNOT be bulldozed. Once you place them, they sit there until the end of your tower, good or bad. Therefore, plan carefully as to what you will do before you place items like housekeeping. b) The maids will not use a regular elevator to move between floors. Instead, you need a service elevator to transport maids. This may be confusing, but all will be explained. With the mini-map finished with, go ahead and close it with the little square in the top-left corner of the mini-map, not the whole application. You can open it later in the windows menu. The next focus is on the info bar with the clock. The clock is... well, a clock. If you can't read analog, it's OK. The clock is sort of unimportant in the whole scheme of things, unless you like watching people on their lunch break or something. You'll have more important stuff to do anyways. The star is your rating. As you can see, there are four hollow slots for you to fill with more stars. So, how do you get the stars? The little chart here will try to help. Stars Requirements ----- ------------ 1 None; you start here. 2 Population of 300 3 Population of 1,000 & 1 Sec. Office 4 Pop. of 5,000, more than one Hotel Suite, Recycle & Medical demands met, and a favorable VIP rating (see Events about it) 5 Pop. of 10,000 and a Metro Station underground TOWER Pop. of 15,000 and a Cathedral. (VERY hard! Been here once) To the right of those stars is a chart e.g. 1st WD/1Q/1st Year. This means: First Weekday of the first quarter of the first year. In each quarter, there are 2 weekdays and 1 weekend. Office workers show up on the weekdays, while most shopping profits can be made on the weekend. After the weekend, it's the first weekday of the next quarter. After the fourth quarter, it's a new year. Offices fork over the rent at the beginning of each quarter, so be sure to make the tenants happy before then, or you'll lose money. Fund and Pop are your funds and your tower population. Pretty self-explanatory. The little white box at the bottom of the info bar is very, very, important. That box tells you the important things in your tower: when your buildings are sold, transportation problems, when your recycling centers are full, etc. Pay attention to it. Some messages go too fast to read, but they will be repeated most of the time. Some advice for your starting tower: don't make your tower lobby too big. You won't be able to jump all hurdles in a single bound. Instead, try something simple and use offices. Offices have a good population with low risks if you try a variation of my low-price policy. This game isn't linear at all, so experiment a little! Half of this game is trial and error; the other half is frustration. I personally believe condos can be good, but have caused too many of my towers to fall in later years. Just try to use offices, since you can change rent whenever you want. When you get into later stars, try adding a hotel division to your tower. Oh, right. Something I forgot... offices are loud and busy, and will annoy buildings like hotels and condos, but don't mind being next to each other. So, If you do build hotels, use the magnifying glass to make sure there's no note that says "Office neighbor is too noisy". If it does, move it further away. That about does it, I think. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Transportation WIDW ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transportation is no joke in this game. Long elevator waits will stress outside visitors and might discourage them from suggesting the tower to friends and family. This can then lead to those people not coming back and causing less customers in shops and fast food stores, effectivly killing $5,000 from your funds and in the long run, assuming you do not recognise the problem at hand, kill your tower expansion. If you are foolish enough to try and raise money by raising rent, which you hopefully aren't, it then encourages the office tenants to move and kill another $3-4,000 of your funds until you're stuck with an empty tower. But, that's a worst case sceneario. In reality, it won't get that bad, but it helps not to get all of your customers angry at your one elevator. Sims will only take two methods of transportation to their destination. For example, let's say you have two elevator shafts. One shaft goes from floors 1-30 and the other goes from 30-59. Elevators can only span a maximum of 30 floors, so this would be neccesary to reach something like floor 58. The Sim enters the tower on floor 1 and needs to get to his office on floor 58. There is only one elevator car running the 30 floor shaft. The Sim was late to work and showed up during the lunch hour. Assuming 2 Sims were on every floor except 1, the elevator would pick up the first 21 people and rush to floor B1. It rushes back up to the next floor and so on and so on. The Sim finally gets to his office with a lot of stress, which brings down the eval of the office. There are two solutions I've found to remove most stress on floors. You can add more cars in an elevator shaft, or you can only have the shafts go up 15 floors to the first skylobby instead of a full 30. If the elevator car has less floors , it can move faster and it helps a lot IMO. The most effective technique is a combination of both, but try not to over-produce your cars. Sims can handle a little stress. The elevator example may bring up a good observation to the keen-eyed. If elevators are 30 floors max, your elevators can't go above the 60th floor. However, you need the Cathedral on the very top height of your tower, floor 100. This is where the express elevator comes in. The express elevator stops every 15 floors, which is where you can place skylobbies. The express elevator has no length limit, so it can go to floor 90 and an elevator can go from 90 to 100. Problem solved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Buildings PSX ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm going to try to make a chart for the buildings, but if you don't like it, tell me. Name Cost Available Removable ---- ---- --------- --------- Lobby 22,000 Star 1 No Floor 500 Star 1 No Stairs 5,000 Star 1 Yes Elevator 200,000/Shaft, 80,000/Car Star 1 Yes Office 40,000 Star 1 Yes Condo 80,000 Star 1 Yes Fast Food 100,000 Star 1 Yes Service E 100,000/Shaft, 50,000/Car Star 2 Yes Single Ho 20,000 Star 2 Yes Security 100,000 Star 2 No Park Ramp 50,000 Star 3 Yes Park Spot 3,000 Star 3 Yes Recycle C 500,000 Star 3 Yes Escalator 20,000 Star 3 Yes Express E 400,000/Shaft,150,000/Car Star 3 Yes Twin Hote 50,000 Star 3 Yes Hotel Sui 100,000 Star 3 Yes Restauran 200,000 Star 3 Yes Retail Sh 100,000 Star 3 Yes Movie The 500,000 Star 3 Yes Party Hal 100,000 Star 3 Yes Medical C 500,000 Star 3 Yes Metro Sta 1,000,000 Star 4 No Cathedral 3,000,000 Star 5 No There. Some items have special requirements, so let's tackle those. First, the Lobby can only be placed on Floor 1 and on every increment of 15 floors. Sims on elevators will only change floors at a skylobby, so it is crucial for your tower to have nothing but lobbies every 15 floors. Before I get an e-mail on how the lobby tool is only 5,000, let me explain why mine says 22,000. The 5,000 you see on your screen is for one tile length. However, the lobby tool spans four tile lengths. That makes 5,000 * 4, 20,000. The extra 2,000 comes from the 500 cost of the floor space, again set at one tile length. Since there are four tiles to place flooring on, that makes a 2,000 cost. Adding the costs together gives 22,000. The read-me file included on the disc explains this better than I can, and I should probably thank the read-me file for its explaination, since I got the explaination from it. The floor tool is to even out your building. You are not allowed to have a floor be wider than the floor below it. This tool widens the floor so you can place the really big stuff without having to lose a building. Anytime you build a building, the floor cost is automatically included. Open floor is gray. Also, you can click and drag along the area to put the flooring in without constant clicking of the mouse. When you get to Star 2, you recieve the Security office. Security is used to sniff out the bombs your tower has when you get the terrorist event (see Events). Security only uses outside stairs on the side of your tower. You need at least one Security office as a requirement to advance to Star 3. Parking ramps are demanded by office workers at Star 3. The first ramp must be below the lobby, and the next down must be vertically aligned with the first parking ramp. Parking spots must be touching the parking ramp or another parking space in order to function. If you bulldoze one the cuts the chain, all of the broken parking spaces have a big red X on them. A fun trick I learned while making the walkthrough was that you can use parking spots like you do the floor tool mentioned above. If you click and drag, you can create chains of parking spots connected to the ramp. The Recycle Center is a requirement to Star 4. The garbage fills up and is emptied the next morning. The instruction manual says you need a service elevator for them to work properly, but I have found this to be wrong. Tell me if I'm wrong. If the garbage centers fill up, the truck cannot get in and the center is effectively useless; bulldoze it and make another with an extra one touching it to spread the junk. Recycle Centers must be connected to each other or you can't build one. The escalator can only be used in commercial spaces like shops and theaters. In other words, you can't have an escalator in an office complex. The express elevator will only stop every 15 floors if they are sky lobbies; this is why you want to place the sky lobbies where you get to. An express elevator is needed if you ever want your tower to go above the 60th floor (see Transportation). Hotel suites are a must for your tower. You need a parking space for each suite and the VIP will only stay in a hotel suite (see Events). Not only do you need a good VIP eval to advance to Star 4, you also need more than one Hotel Suite. I also find them good money makers, since hotels have customers daily. The Movie Theater is a good way to make income, but it costs 150,000 for an average movie and 300,000 for the new blockbuster, and they can't generate that much money. They span two floors and are really useful for attracting Sims to your shops, so place shops near your theater if you choose to have one. Party halls are used by your hotel visitors to mingle. If you have a lot of hotels, place one of these near them and you'll get some good income. The Medical station is a requirement for advancement to Star 4. Place one near your lobby. Does this even do anything? Apart from the requirement to Star 4, this indestrucible item seems to just take up space and I seldom see people in this place. The Metro Station is the coolest item IMO. You need it to advance to Star 5. The Station brings in outside visitors and they will shop in your underground facilities only. You can't build anything under them and can't be removed. They span three floors, so you shoud place it on B8,9,and 10. The read-me file mentions that some versions allow you to build on B10. Do not even think of doing that. If you even move the elevator down to B10 it creates a floor tile that can't be removed, and your metro station is impossible to build. The station's tunnel goes through all of B10, so the floor tile blocks the tunnel from being built. I repeat: DO NOT BUILD ON FLOOR B10! Also, you can only have one metro station per tower. The Cathedral is where it will end. It is only available in Star 5 and is the only requirement, besides population, to get the all-mighty TOWER rating. The Cathedral can only be placed on floor 100, and in order to get the rating, you need a wedding to occur there. The wedding will only occur on a weekend. If the wedding occurs, then congratulations! You have accomplished SimTower's main goal. Try setting your own goals and start over or something. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. Events ATRI ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are plenty of events in SimTower. Here they are: Rain: While this isn't an event of importance, it is once in a while and has an effect on your tower, so I classified it as one. When it rains, people don't come to your tower as much, since no one wants to be drenched (where's their SimUmbrella?). It effects the fast food business mostly, and the rain usually stops before hotel check-in, so your hotels don't go to waste. In speculation, the rain shouldn't matter as much when you have a metro station, since it's underground, but I haven't looked into my theory. Fire: Basic. One of your buildings catches fire and spreads to other buildings. You are offered fire rescue for $500,000, but it may be too expensive at the beginning. It's probably best to let nature run its course. Afterwards, just bulldoze the burned buildings and build them again. Terrorist: I like this event even though it's bad. The adrenaline of it is sort of cool. Terrorists call up and blackmail you for $300,000 or they detonate a bomb in the tower. If you have the money, pay them. If you don't have it or want to save $300,000, click on find the bomb. Your Security forces quickly scan the building, with one of the six units from each office covering a floor. If you find it, that's good. If you don't, it literally blows up about 5 floors of your tower. One FAQ writer said that you should always click on find the bomb, because if it blows up, it's still cheaper than the blackmail. I found this untrue. My bomb blew up in a section of hotel suites, costing me 2 million instead of 300,000. The decision is yours to make. Actually, my bomb, which should have detonated at 3:00, detonated at 1:00 instead. Don't trust terrorists... VIP: This event is important, since you need a good evaluation to advance to Star 4. VIPs only stay in Hotel Suites, and after they check out, you will be told if they liked it or not. Some people have suggested things like cutting off transportation services to all floors but the one the VIP will stay in. This works, but I find it defeating the difficulty. The VIP is supposed to tell you how the tower was, and if the VIP doesn't experience a little stress, it sort of seems like cheating. If they aren't happy, don't worry. You'll have another chance to please them. The VIP is almost like constructive criticism in a way, except without any criticism and just complaints. Use it to your advantage. Santa: Jolly old Saint Nick drops by on WE/4Q/whatever year. At night, look for a red dot across the screen and click on it to see him. No presents, sorry. Buried Treasure (contributed by James Bond): How could I forget this wonderful event? The buried treasure is an event that occurs while you make buildings on the underground floors. Eventually, your workers will find a chest of treasure that is worth about a half-million. Very, VERY cool. If you wanted, you could keep building fast food places underground until you find this treasure, but you shouldn't. You'll lose more money than you'll earn. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Walkthrough FEB ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Star MAR ------ So, you have a lot of open space, $2 million, and all these items in a tool bar. What now? Well, for starters, click on the left side of the mini-map. Build a lobby and stretch it one screen length; if the screen scrolls, you can stop. You want it to be all visible so you can manage stuff on a small scale. Once you get the hang of it we'll be expanding. Build as many offices as you can above it. On my screen, it perfectly fits 11 offices with no leftover space. Results may vary from screen to screen. Before building any transportation to your new offices, if you want to follow my low rent suggestion in Getting Started, lower the prices now. They may seem low, but over time they pay themselves off and make profits. After you've lowered the prices (if you chose to; this is in no way a linear game), it's time to make some transportation up to those offices. Since you're starting out, do not build an elevator yet. You only have one floor, so it's useless at this point of the game AND they cost 10,000 in maintenance every quarter. That can really cut into your profits. Oh, right; there's also the fact that they cost 200,000 per shaft! However, stairs don't have a maintenance cost and are only 5,000. I'd say that's pretty good for your limited funds. Don't overload your tower with stairs. It's just being over-effecient. If your tower holds 11 offices as well, then you should have a population of 66 people. Yay. Since you need 300 people to the 2 star level, let's do some math. 66 people per floor means about 5 floors to get 300 people. Build 4 more floors of offices. Lower the prices again before you make some transportation up there. If you can't afford all of the buildings to go in yet, just minimize the game and let it run without you. Once you can make all of the buildings, change the rents to your liking. Then, build an elevator up to floor 6 and let the buildings be sold. If all goes well, you should be at a 2 star rating. Addmitedly, this strategy can take a long time in your tower e.g. 15 years until 2 star. If you're not worried about time then you should be fine. If you are, then you might want to find another guide. 2 Star APR ------ With this star comes the addition of one of my favorite items, the hotel rooms. Anyways, after your offices sell, you should have enough for a new elevator car. Buy one and put it in your elevator shaft. You can afford the maintenance now and also there's going to be long lines at the elevator stop and people will get agitated. Once again, wait a couple of years and build up some money for some stuff. Once you have about 150,000, build your elevator into the B1 floor and make a fast food place on the far left of the floor. The fast food makes some good money on weekends once it becomes popular among your office workers. My fast food right now can get 225 people on weekdays but only about 25 people on weekends. However, 5,000 twice followed by -3,000 is still a 7,000 profit. It will have more visitors on weekends, but you'll have to wait. To get to 3 star, you are allowed to count hotel people towards your population. However, once you do get to star 3, you cannot count the hotel people towards your population. You can add hotel rooms if you want for money, but you won't need one until 3 star, so I'm skipping them until later. For now, follow the same rules you did on 1 Star: keep building offices in a line until you hit the target population. My tower needed to go up to floor 17. Remember to make a sky lobby every 15 floors. After you hit the 1,000 mark, you still have another task: make a security office. I reccomend placing it on its own floor, so one floor above the end of your offices. This is a good idea since you want to get rid of bombs in the building or put out a fire. They cost maintenance, but they're worth it. If you place two stations next to each other, it's only effective in one area. You want to spread your stations for total coverage of the tower and work in harmony with each other. When you make a bigger building later on, don't forget about security offices to cover higher floors. Otherwise, your floor 11 men will have a hard time finding the bomb on floor 56. After you get the security office put in, you should get a notification that you've made it to star 3. 3 Star JUN ------ After you build the Sec. Office, put offices to fill in the rest of the floor. You're going to be bombarded with a bunch of messages about recycling and medical requirements. The first thing you should do is place a medical center near your Fast Food facility on B1 (the medical center can be found in a sub-menu of the security office). The medical demands will be cleared immediately. After this, build an express elevator on the opposite end of your tower from your first one (if you placed the first standard elevator shaft on the left side of your tower, place the express elevator's shaft on the right side of your tower, and vice versa). Stretch it up to floor 15. Now, in order to settle the Recycle Center demands, access the sub-menu of the Fast Food icon. Look at all those new toys :). We'll deal with those later. I felt like getting you hyped about them. In order to really get a recycle center, hold down the new button next to the security office. The recycle center button is the one at the bottom with the picture of the... trash cans! Whoa! Who would've guessed? The recycle center is two floors, and can only be placed underground. Place the first one next to your medical center so that it takes up some of B1 and B2. Place a second one next to that one (hotels use them a lot and they're useless full). This should clear all demands except for one: Parking. Your tower as is doesn't have enough room for a parking ramp or any spaces, so it's time for an expansion. The expansion will not only help you for parking, but also will allow you the room to build your hotels and suites. Click on your lobby tool and set the view so the emergency stairs on the right side of the tower are barely on the left side of the screen. You can use the scroll bar to fine tune the view. Extend the lobby another screen length. It's safe to go a little over just in case. Build the parking ramp right next to the recycle center. Access the sub-menu of the ramp after that and select the P (Parking Space). Click on the area to the right of the ramp. You should get a parking spot created. If there's an X over the spot, it's not touching the ramp. Bulldoze it and place it so it touches it this time. All parking spots must be in a chain touching the parking ramp. Here's a little trick I learned: You can build parking spots like a lobby. Click, hold, and make a long chain to the end of the lobby. Make a second parking ramp directly under the first one; it won't work any other way. Of course, make more parking spots. Click on the one bed hotel room. Build rooms starting on the right side of the tower until you're touching the offices on floor two. Pause the game and look at the rooms near the offices and go right until you find one that does NOT say, "Office neighbor is too noisy". Bulldoze that one. This will act as a marker. Bulldoze the rooms to the left of that (not the offices, though). Place a housekeeping unit next to the hotel rooms. Also, build an elevator in the middle of the hotel rooms. Because of Suites taking up parking spaces, it will be necessary to stretch them down to the parking levels, even if they're only used by offices so far. Your housekeeping (for some reason) will only send out one worker per floor. Your hotel length is too big for one unit to clean; this will lead to an unused room and, if un-attended for a long time, a cockroach infested room. The cockroaches spread to other rooms and will eventually infest the entire chain. The only solution to this problem, apart from removing some rooms, is to build a second housekeeping. Since your hotel area will have more rooms on higher floors, I recommend building a second housekeeping a floor above the first one. After that, build a service elevator (in the elevator sub-menu; it has an S on it) and connect floor 2 and 3. Go ahead and make more hotel roooms on floor 3 (two workers per floor easily get the job done). Don't forget to drop prices to the bare minimum. Build six more floors of offices on top of the other offices, lower the prices, and stretch the elevator up. You should have about 1500 people; you need 5000 to advance. However, the offices will balance your maintenance costs from the new elevators and housekeeping (I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but if you're ever curious about what your maintenance costs or profits are, you can click the magnifying glass on the lobby or any skylobby). Take the hotel service and standard elevators and stretch them another floor up. Yes, we're building more hotel rooms. This time, however, they're going to be two bedroom spaces. They cost a bit more, but they're worth it. Access the sub-menu of the hotels and select the button with a 2 on it. You should align these rooms with the one-bed rooms below it. Look at the leftmost one-bed room on floor 3. Place the two-bed room above it so that the left ends of each are lined up. Keep building to the right until you hit the end of the lobby. Lower the prices and repeat for floor 5. It is not necessary to have a housekeeping building on every floor. As you recall, I stated that there is one housekeeping person sent out for a floor. This means that one building can take care of six floors. For hotel floor 6, we're going to add on some suites. The suites are in the hotel sub menu and have an S marked on them. The VIP guest, who must give a good rating of their stay in order to advance to Star 4, will only stay in suites. I don't think I've ever failed the VIP visit before, but if you do, they'll come back eventually to give you a second chance. Obviously, the VIP will like low prices to stay in a hotel suite for one night, so, like everything else, drop the prices of the suites to bare minimum. I made an interesting observation regarding hotels today: You know that little space left over from the 2 bedroom hotels? A one bedroom fits in there. The space left over from the suites on the right side of the tower fits a two bedroom. This could just be for my tower, but if you followed my guide like I did, then this is a nice way to make a little more money. Anyways, eventually the VIP will come to the tower. Mine already has, and they enjoyed it. Since the suites are on floor 6, you shouldn't need to add on a second elevator to please them. After the VIP has checked out, add in more offices up to floor 29. Lower the prices, bring the elevators up, you should know the drill by now. Add a sky lobby on floor 30 and make a Security office on the left end of floor 31. But wait, your elevator shaft can only cover 30 floors! B1 to floor 29 is 30 floors. So, you need a new elevator shaft. As a personal preference I like the elevator shafts to start at a sky lobby, so place the elevator shaft at floor 30 and bring it down to floor 29 so that your Sims can transfer by express or normal. Speaking of express, bring your express elevator up to floor 30. After that, place the security office on the left side or floor 31 and fill in the rest of the floor with offices like you did with the other one. This brings you to slightly under 2000 people in your tower. Only 3000 more to go. Add another elevator car to your B1-29 elevator; you might have noticed all of the Sims glowing red with anger waiting for a car. This should help a little bit. Actually, since you probably have the money from all of those offices lying around, fill up your B1-29 shaft with cars until it says you can't anymore. Another quick note: if you haven't already, bring the Express shaft down to B2. Offices on floor 30 and above won't be able to get to their offices if you don't. By now, you probably have over 10 million dollars. It's time to go into office overdrive. Build offices up until floor 44 and lower all of the prices. After you've finished that, make a sky lobby on 45 and place a security office in the left side of floor 46. This is probably going to notify you that you need more parking spaces. It's time to move down into B3. Drop the express elevator down to B3 and make a third parking ramp and add in parking spots. The office expansion probably added in roughly 1000 more people to your population. This tower's going up to floor 75, also known as the 3/4ths point, to leave 3 Star for good. Make offices up to floor 59; however, the elevator shaft will only stretch up to 58. Make another shaft at floor 58 next and bring it up to 60. Place a skylobby at 60 and bring the express up to 60 as well. Place a security office on the left side of 61 and fill the rest of the floor up with offices and make sure you remember to add on that little last bit of flooring. After that, make offices up to floor 74 and put a skylobby on 75. Lower all of the prices and bring both elevators up to 75. If you are still a bit under the 5000 mark, make as many more offices on 76 and up as needed. Once you've accomplished that, you probably still won't get that golden fourth star. Why? Because you need more parking. Also, your recycling centers have probably filled up. They're now useless; bulldoze them and replace them and add in a third center on B2-B3. It must be touching the other two centers. If you have extra space on the left side of it, throw in two more fast food places just for money. If you have extra space on the right that can be connected to the parking ramp, add in parking spots. Star at the ramp and go left. If you haven't gotten the fourth star from those extra spots, go ahead and place another ramp on B4. However, I didn't need the fourth ramp, and this means only one thing: Star 3 is finally over with. Pat yourself on the back; I myself have made it to 4 star very few times. 4 Star JUL ------ Welcome to Star 4! This is exactly like star 3, but you get one more item: the metro station. You can only have one in your station, and it spans THREE floors. It's only underground, and nothing can go beneath it, so place your metro station on B8, B9, and B10. Yes, there is going to be a lot of dirt between your metro station and your other B-floor items, but oh well. Remember how Star 3 required 5,000 people? You've got to double it. Thankfully, that is the only requirement because you've already put your metro station in. However, even if you build offices up to floor 100, you won't hit the target point. This means the tower is having another expansion. However, this is a major expansion: the tower is going all the way to the right side of the entire game board. Do this now. However, you're not using it until you make your current office zone up to floor 100. Just keep building offices to 100 and then just lower all of the prices, bring the elevators up to 100, and let the offices sell themselves. Remember to place a skylobby at 90. Also, your elevator is going to stop at 87 due to the 30 floor rule. Make a new shaft at 87 and bring it up to 100. Congratulations, you've reached the top floor. Your recycling centers are reaching the top again; we're going to move them right now for good. bulldoze the three centers and make new ones on the FAR right side of your tower. In other words, place them in the field of dirt you received when you expanded your lobby. Place five of them side by side. As for the space that used to occupy your recycling centers, make parking spaces. Now, give EVERY office elevator shaft 8 cars. Also put 8 in the express elevator to speed up the picking up of Sims. We now need to start a second set of offices and they're going to go to the right of your hotels. Remember in Star 3, when we kept making hotel rooms until we had one that didn't say "Office neighbors are too noisy"? WE're doing that again. Place an office on the right side of the hotels, but remember to give space. Measure the space on the left side between the left side HOTEL, not housekeeping, room and the office. Estimate by buliding size, e.g. one housekeeping and one unit short of an office. Place your first office after that and keep going to the right end of the screen. Also, make a new elevator and express elevator shaft over near your new offices. A problem with making a new office facility is that people will automatically move in because they can access the offices from the far left elevator. Therefore, you have to move fast and lower the prices quickly after you make the offices. Fill up your new elevator shafts with 8 cars for later. Also, stretch the B1 and B2 parking over to the recycling centers. Raise the offices to floor 14 and place a skylobby at 15. Once you hit 15, put 8 cars in the express shaft. Connect the skylobby from the first office sector to the second office sector. Next, bring your elevators up to floor 30 and build offices up to there. Do it in portions; if you do it for too long at standard prices, the tenants will move out and you'll lose money. Lower the prices. You are probably about 1000 or so short of 10,000. 10-15 more floors of offices should do it, then you'll be at the 5 star rating. The only tough part of this game is the 3 Star level, after that it's all hard work to the top. This tower is going to be HUGE. Make sure your new express elevator is stretched down to B3 for the parking spaces. The emppty space you have between your elevator and your last parking space should be filled with, surprise, more parking spots! Since you've reached floor 30, your standard elevator has reached its limit. Place a new elevator at floor 30. Build more offices up to floor 45 and, as usual, lower the prices, put in a skylobby at 45, and bring the elevators up to 45. Actually, stop at 40 and lower the prices up to there. This will probably bring your tower rating to a five star. However, a problem has come to my attention: the offices on the opposite side of your elevator will say that it's either far away or too far away. So, your new office block will require two elevators. Whatever side your current elevator is on, place another elevator shaft on 30 on the other side of the block. Place another elevator on 1 as well on the opposite side of the elevator. Now, even if you have reached 5 star, in which case congratulations, build offices up to floor 45. Place the skylobby on floor 45, bring all three elevators up, lower the prices, and pat yourself on the back. You've reached star 5 and already 500 or so into the next 5000 people you need. 5 Star AUG ------ WHOO!!! Come on, try it. Just once: WHOOOO!!!!!! There are only 5000 people, a cathedral, and a wedding between you and the top! Let's get that cathedral over with right now. You need 3,000,000 dollars, which you should have much more than by now, and it can only be on floor 100. You have two choices: 1) Tear down some offices on floor 100 and place the cathedral there. 2) Build a BUNCH of offices up to floor 100 and place the cathedral in the empty space between the two office blocks. Since you need about 4500 more people to finish up the tower to even consider getting the wedding, it would appear that we're not going to be building the cathedral yet. Sorry for the false alarm. For now, build offices up to floor 60 and do the usual. Your elevators will stop at 59, place two new ones at 60 and bring them down one floor. Add more offices up to 75, lower the prices, place a skylobby at 75, etc. and bring the elevators up. I apologize if this part if this part of the walkthrough seems blunt, but come on, you can't say you don't want to reach tower right now. After you've done all of this, take a rest for about 5 to 10 minutes. You've probably spent most of your money, and your arm is probably tired. Now you can take a breaak and make money. Just make sure you have put the mode back on Eval. You are now only about 2000 people and a wedding away from Tower status. Think about that as you take a break. AH! Holy crap! Forget the break for a minute, your recycle centers are full! Place new ones touching the old ones on lower floors; if you have parking spots taking up that space, get rid of them and we'll put them on floor B4. You've
been long overdue for more parking spots anyways. Since your recycle centers
stretch down to B4 anyways, you might as well fill in the space there.
Actually, those centers are probably coming pretty close to filling again.
Place a couple more directly below the new two ones. This means the new ones
will be on B5-B6. Heck, you have the money; make a third B5-B6 center touching
the other two. Stretch your elevator shafts up to floor 90. Arrgh, your
shafts will stop at 88. Place new ones on 88 as usual and bring those up to
90. You're probably REALLY running out of funds now, so that 10 minute break
might not be such a bad idea. The only hard thing about Star 5 using this
strategy is that the maintenance starts catching up with all of the offices.
It's also probably because of all of the recycling centers you've added.
Anyways, once you have all of your money back, build offices up to 90
and lower all of the prices. Place the skylobby and smile at the fact that
you are less than 500 people away from the 15000 point. Build your last 10
floors of offices. As soon as you finish these, the game is virtually complete.
Oh, one last thing: your wedding to tower status will only occur on a weekend,
so don't be agitated if you don't immediately get the wedding notification.
Bring your elevators up to floor 100. After you finish your last 10 floors of
offices, lower all of the prices and cross your fingers that it'll break
15000. And you know what? It will. If you have over 3,000,000 dollars to spend,
build a cathedral in between your two offices blocks on floor 100 and build an
express elevator going up to 90 and then a standard elevator reaching for the
top. I suppose I will use this time to remind you to save often. It may be a
bit late for simple advice, but my game just had an error so I have to finish
the floor 100 block again. Anyways, after you've built the cathedral and the
elevator up to it, just wait. Oh, also, in case you haven't found out yet, the
cathedral is under the parking row. You probably noticed it when you were
adding in spaces earlier. Oh, it would appear you don't get a reservation for
the wedding. Anyways, you'll watch the wedding, you'll see the little Cupid
people holding the banners saying "Welcome to Tower", your stars will be gone,
replaced with the word TOWER, one letter in each star slot, and then you know
it's finally all over. The cathedral looks like the cherry topping on a cake,
or maybe those little toothpicks that stick out of sandwiches. No matter what,
my job here is done. What you do with your tower is now up to you. Will you
add in more offices? Will you expand the small hotel block we added in Star 3?
The choice is up to you. Have fun in TOWER status.
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                                   8. Semi-Cheats PS2
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There aren't any real cheats for SimTower, but I can tell you some things that
could be semi-cheats.

"Cannot place on top of other items" override: For a quick way to place in
something new over something old, instead of clicking on bulldoze and then
clicking on the new item, hold down shift and click on what you want to get
rid of. It will destroy the old item and place in the new. Thanks to 
GameWinners.com for this tip. Word of warning: if you do not line up your
click, you could accidentally end up taking out two things. Be careful.

Doubling Funds: Start a new tower. Before you do anything, click on the 
mini-map's bottom left area. Click on the lobby tool and click on the very
bottom left area of the editing screen. The lobby will not build, but your
funds should go from 2,000,000 to 4,000,000. That's the only money cheat.

2/3 Story Lobby: When building your lobby, hold Ctrl for a 2 Story lobby and
Ctrl+Shift for a 3 story lobby. This only works on the ground lobby. Also,
if you want to use the doubling funds cheat and build a 2/3 story lobby, you
need to hold down the buttons when clicking on the bottom left area.

Super Money (contributed by John Kao): I'm quoting this from an e-mail received
by John Kao: 
	There are times when you need money, but you have to wait till the next day to
	get it. 
	1. Double your money 
	2. Make a lobby, 2-3 floors, doesn't matter. 
	3. Make a number of floors, just offices. 3 floors at least. 
	4. Make a number of floors, just condos. 3 floors at least. 
	5. Have a few shops underground. 
	6. Make sure theres an elevator going to each floor to reduce stress. 
	7. Put evaluation and make sure its always in blue. 
	8. Run a simulation of it for a few days to see how things go. 
	9. Get 2 Stars. 
	10. Make a number of floors, just hotels with service. 
	11. Make sure that there are elevators that start on the floors with hotels. 
	12. Make sure that there are elevators that start on the floors with offices. 
	13. Make sure that there is at least 1 elevator going to the middle of the
	    floors with condos. 
	14. Put Stairs, 1 on each floor. 
	15. Run a simulation of the tower to see how things go. 
	16. Make sure everything is evaluated in blue. 
	17. Make sure you have no security offices yet. 
	18. Make sure you are making a profit. 
		If everything is running just fine and theres no stress or complaints, leave
	your game on fast animation (under options) and let it sit overnight. When you
	return, you should be on your 100th year or so, with 100+ million dollars,
	giving you ample time to build without pause.
 
The nifty little escalator trick (contributed by David Zhong): The other e-mail
	I got that re inspired me to do this guide again:
	Quote from 
	  The escalator can only be used in commercial spaces like shops and theaters.
	  In other words, you can't have an escalator in an office complex.
	
	Actually, if you demolish your office, build the escalator, then rebuild the
	office, you will have built an escalator where your offices are!

See? Isn't that nifty? Now if someone can tell me how to fix the font from
e-mail to Notepad this section would be perfect.


Right then, that's all I have. If you know of any new, tell me and I'll credit
you fully.

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                                9. FAQ JAN
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Do I need to put Housekeeping units next to my offices and condos? When
I check them, they say that "conditions are terrible".

A: No. The "conditions are terrible" message means that the price is too high,
as far as I know. Offices and condos do not have to be cleaned or taken care
of in any way, unlike the hotel rooms, which is what the Housekeeping units
are for.

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                                10. Credits SEGA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Extra thanks to:

James Bond for the contribution of the buried treasure event.

David Zhong for the nifty little escalator trick.

John Kao for the money trick (in the Semi-Cheats section), even if it is pretty
obvious. Still a contribution nonetheless, and for that I thank you.

GameFAQs for being my only source of info for games and for accepting my guide.
It really is better than the strategy guides out there. Excellent place.

All you other websites that make me feel popular by asking for this lame little
file...

You for showing up and reading this. If no one read this, I'd be useless.

My computer for putting up with all of this.

NotePad+, which helped me get past the little memory problem with NotePad.

GameWinners.com for the little override trick in Semi-Cheats.

Maxis for making one of the best Sims out there.

CJayC, because every other FAQ writer seems to thank him for making GameFAQs.
Also, happy ninth birthday GameFAQS!

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                             11. Copyright SONY
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright Kyle McDonald 2004

This FAQ is the sole property of Kyle McDonald (That's me, Kiwizoid). I allow 
this FAQ to only be shown at the web sites listed above at the top. If you see 
this FAQ anywhere else, please tell me. I don't care if you keep a copy at home 
to print out as a guide,  but if you want it on your site, just be sure to ask 
before doing so. Failure to ask may result in legal action being taken against 
you. I'm more than happy to have my FAQ distributed, but only in its entirety 
with no modifications and if I am identified as the owner and with my
permission as well. 

------------------------End Of File-----------I've always wanted to say that...