In our open challenge to candidates in the 2008 ACT Election the Community Alliance’s Norvan Vogt was the first to man up and sit down in front of a rowdy audience in All Bar Nun to show off his city management skills.
Norvan kept his population happy and managed a major disaster well, but also ran up a ferocious debt.
More details below.
After an hour of play Norvan still hadn’t looked at his cash flow. But he had built an airport connected to his city by a monorail (yes! Monorail!), after persistent heckling from a crowd wanting to know when he’d build some real public transport infrastucture.
This prompted the people to award him a statue.
Immediately after that his starting money ran out and he turned to debt.
Schools and ambulances were hardest hit in the budget cutbacks and Norvan agreed to take garbage from neighbouring cities.
Following the cutbacks the power went out as the under-funded electrical utility collapsed.
Norvan responded by restoring funding where needed and bumping up his high density zoning in the inner city.
In year five his population reached 10,000 and he turned to god building the first house of worship.
Throughout all this his mayor rating stayed at a high seven.
And he persisted in building his monorail loop through the financial crisis.
While coming to terms with his finances Norvan jacked up taxes on dirty industry.
In the mean time his citizens suggested that lost cars could be found in the potholes developing in his roads.
The industrial areas also started pushing closer to residential development.
In a bind dubious interests offered to “help”.
Norvan took a supermax prison, a nuclear missile base, and an army base, but drew the line at accepting toxic waste.
He also bulldozed a residential neighborhood to build his council chambers.
Looking to his fourth year he declared “things are heading in the right direction”.
The hard work lead to more development, in year 7 he declared “come hell or high water I will finish this monorail”
While he was at the bar an earthquake struck the city. It conveniently knocked down his high density – low employment slums. But it played merry hell with his water supplies and previous redundant design saved the day.
Subsequent fires in the industrial city threatened to overwhelm his firefighting resources, but were eventually brought under control.
The power promptly went out until he was able to build more wind turbines to meet burgeoning demand.
Finally with a debt of 1,120,000 simoleons (borrowing capacity 2,000,000) time was up.
Three universities serviced a population of 15,000 and a radio broadcast tower had just become available.
His ratings according to the game:
Environment: Pure red. (despite a commitment to public transport and extensive park building)
Traffic: 90% green but falling fast.
Health: pure green
Education: pure green
Safety: 60% green but falling fast
Land value: 50% green
Mayor rating: 7
The Canberra Votes video of the action is below:
RiotACT SimCity ACT Election Candidate Challenge – 31 July 2008 from Jonathon Reynolds on Vimeo.
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