There are many differences between this game and previous versions, the largest difference being that cities are now located in regions that are divided into segments, each of which can be developed.
Neighbour cities played a large role in the previous version of the game, SimCity 3000. For example, "neighbor deals" could be established, where one city pays a bordering city for water, electricity, and/or garbage capacity. In this version, the player may develop several dependent cities at the same time, eventually populating the entire region. Additionally, the simulated city can now be seen at nighttime as well as during daytime. SC4 can be used in conjunction with Maxis' popular game The Sims. Sims can be imported into the city where they will report what they think of the area they are living in. SC4 comes with some default Sims, for those without a copy of the game.
Of note is the exceptionally high system requirements[?] of this game, with users with 2GHz CPUs and 1.5GB of ram reporting that their systems are too slow to effectively run the program. Many of the first to purchase the game found an abundance of bugs; this was mainly due to the fact that the game had not been beta tested.
Maxis and Electronic Arts have released a patch that deals with many (but not all) of the issues discovered during SC4's inaugration. A new patch is currently works which deals with lowering the exceptionally high requirements, when designing major metropolises.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump