Since we seem to be having a few postings about cheats and not using them, I thought I'd give my own opinions on this subject.

Generally, I go through 4 stages playing a game.

Stage 1 is is starting out, learning, and and finding out the hard way what doesn't work as cities and farms go bankrupt, towers empty, and your eco-systems die out.

Stage 2 is when I obtain the cheats, and can now practice and experiment without having to go back to square one when things go wrong.

Stage 3 is playing the game honestly. I have learned from the cheats what does and does not work, and can now go for the honest mega-city, mega-farm, 20,000 population SimTower, and so on.

Stage 4 is when I get bored with that, PARTICULARLY SimTower and that endless waiting for the elevators to go up and down until the start of the next quarter. Cheats speed things up, and you can build very unusual and/or oddball cities, farms, towers etc etc that you could not do honestly. This is when the games truely becaome what Maxis says they are...Software TOYS.