Your population can be determined by examining the Neighbor window. The Graphs window also gives the population (City Size) but it is rounded to the nearest 1000th.

If you have Mac 1.1 or Windows 1.0, you can get populations exceeding 10 million. If you have Mac 1.0, Dos 1.0, Dos 1.1 or Windows 95 1.0, you will find it really hard to approach that 10 million ceiling.

All versions of SimCity 2000 have 150 Microsims. What is a Microsim? Think of it as the two words "micro sims" meaning small simulations. They are localized simulations that track local statistics. They are updated once a year in January and exist for the structures listed below. The information they keep can be accessed by using the query tool.

Unique structures like:

• the Mayor's House
• City Hall
• the Statue
• the Llama dome

Each instance of these buildings:

• hospital
• police department
• fire department
• school
• stadium
• prison
• college
• zoo
• treatment plant
• desalinization plant
• arcology
• power plant

There is one microsim for all combined:

• wind turbines
• hydroelectric plants
• bus stations
• rail stations
• subway stations
• parks
• museums
• libraries
• marinas

Examples of info gotten from queries:

• Llama Dome: Weddings, Visitors, Llama Sightings, Complaints, Bungee Jumps
• Arcology: Design Capacity, Residents, Built in, Conditions
• Stadium: Capacity, Attendance, Local Team, WLT Record
• Power Plant: Max Output, Running capacity, Age
• City Hall: analysis includes Acres and % of city for such things as Transportation, Power, Water and more.

Once you reach 150 microsims, the next structure you build will not get a microsim. You can build the structure and it will have a global effect but the simulator won't track or display local statistic. Arcologies are the exception. If you are out of microsims and you build an Arcology, it will steal the microsim from the first structure you built. It won't steal a microsim from the combo-microsims like hydroelectric power, wind turbines, subway stations, rail depots, etc. Those 10 are sacred. That leaves 140 for the Arcos to steal. Once all 140 spare microsims have been stolen by the Arcos, the 141st Arco doesn't get a microsim.

You can tell that a building no longer has a microsim when you query it and it displays the generic "Altitude, Land Value, Crime, Pollution, Power, Watered" info. What you are actually getting is info about that tile you clicked on.

Another way to tell that a building no longer has a microsim is when you can no longer rename it.

Why did MAXIS stop at 150 Microsims? Why not make it have 1000 or 10,000? Because it would take up too much memory. MAXIS wanted to have one simulation model for many different operating systems (Mac, Dos, Windows, Amiga) as well as many different types of machines (386, 486, Pentium, and various Mac hardware platforms) and beyond.

The newer versions of SimCity 2000 that allow populations of over 10 million still have only 150 microsims. So then how do they get higher populations? Every Arcology beyond 140 gets the average population of the first 140 Arcologies.

What is the largest population you can have? ClubOpolis had a contest to find out.

• Check out the results of the Highest Population Contest
• Check out the rules of the Highest Population Contest
• Check out the results of the Never Ending Contest for Population
• Check out other ClubOpolis contests