I Actually Lost SimCity
I didn’t know it could be done. Sure, I knew you can really foul things up, but I didn’t know you could actually lose the game!
I was working on a city that I had started a while ago and found that I was importing my power from another city. Well, when I start to get ahead on my budget (making more than I’m spending), I tend to push the speed up as fast as I can get it to go so I can build up a money surplus as fast as I can. I was in that situation, letting my surplus go up, when I decided to zone some more land. While zoning, I zoned right over the power lines going to my neighboring city. Now, normally this isn’t a problem, but apparently zoning over a power line that connects you to another city breaks the connection.
Did I mention the game speed was maxed?
Well, it didn’t take long (a split second) for my power to go out. It didn’t take much more time for every resident to move out. That created quite a deficit in my budget (with no taxes coming in). It also didn’t take long (before I FINALLY paused the game) for my surplus to run out. I had just enough to build a power plant (since my neighboring city was now snubbing me for “dropping the power deal”). But after that… I had no money. I had to just wait for people to move back in. My deficit was about half closed when my bank account dropped below -$100,000.
Here’s the gist of the message I got:
“Due to the lack of funding, you’ve been removed from office. Press any key to run for senator.”
Game over, man! Game over!