• Be polite to your fellow mayors. Do not grief play, use inappropriate language or be generally unpleasant to others.
• Do not spam your city all over the region.
• Do not post inappropriate or adult content in your city, Mayor’s Log or upon the BBS. Maxis reserves the right to delete content at anytime.
• Do not post in the Mayors Log or the BBS in ALL CAPS. This is considered shouting. Find a less “noisy” way to emphasize your ideas.
• A city can only be under your possession for up to 48 hours. If you are finished with your city in an earlier time frame or decide you no longer want to be mayor of a the city, please end your turn early by clicking the “end turn” button. This will allow others to join the city sooner.
• Once your turn has been ended, you will not be able to join that city again until someone else has had a chance to join it.
• SimCityscape™ is a multiplayer experience. Other mayors will alter your city and it will evolve into a different city then you initially designed. You can always download your original version of a city from the Mayor’s Log through the life of the region.
• When you are designing your city, try to take the neighboring cities and its borders under consideration.
• Maxis and EA reserve the right to delete any content at any time for any reason.

How long is my city available?
Once you are in possession of a city slot on the grid, you can make unlimited updates to it for the next 48 hours, or you have manually ended your turn. After the time has expired, you will be unable to make updates. The city you last uploaded prior to your turn expiring is the one that will remain in the Mayors Log entry. It will be available for download until Maxis™ removes it.

How many cities can I play at a time?
You may only play one city slot at a time on any given region.

Can I play a city slot twice?
You may play a city slot twice, but not consecutively.

Can I end my turn early?
Yes. Simply click on the X button to end your turn.

What if I forget to upload my city before my turn is up?
Unfortunately, when your turn has expired you may not upload to that city slot. However, it is possible for you to wait until someone else has possessed that city slot and then reclaim it. Or you can grab another city slot and upload it from there.

Can I create my own region?
No. You must play the regions that have been previously played. However, we strongly encourage a group of players to land grab sections of a region and essentially build that region out.

When I looked at City X's Mayor's Log, I noticed that there was a Turn 4 and a Turn 6, but no Turn 5. Where's Turn 5?
Turn 5 (or whatever sequential turn that is missing) has been deleted due to offensive or inappropriate content. Read more about what constitutes inappropriate or offensive content.

Will people from other countries be able to participate in SimCityscape™ ?
Yes! However, we cannot support any language other than English. Therefore, cities created in non-English language games are likely to display garbled text in Mayor's Logs here at the SimCityscape™ site and when cities are loaded into their SimCity™ 4 game. This will not adversely affect your game.

How long will a region live?
The life expectancy of a region is determined by Maxis, we will initially open our rounds for 10 plays per city slot, after which the city slot will close. The region will close once all cities on the game board have been played through.

What happens to my cities and Mayor's Logs when the region goes away?
When regions close, content that has surfaced as Hall of Fame material will be saved and accessible through the Hall of Fame. All other content will be deleted from our servers. If you find material that you'd like to keep, please save this to your hard drives.

I want to replicate a SimCityscape™ region in my game. How do I do this?
By downloading our premade region configuration folders into your C:\...\My Documents\SimCity 4\Regions\ folder, extracting the regions, and loading the region in your SimCity™ 4 game, you can create a region resembling the SimCityscape™ board. The region config files are entitled LargeCitiesRegion, MediumCitiesRegion, and SmallCitiesRegion.

When updating a city, the city thumbnail image doesn't change.
When a game is saved, it goes through an intensive process of generating an updated 'thumbnail' view of the city for use in the region view. The generation of this thumbnail is CPU-intensive because the game must switch to a low zoom level, take a snapshot of the city, and then return to the zoom level the user was originally playing. We have added the feature where by using the keyboard Alt key during game saves bypasses the thumbnail generation phase (and uses the old thumbnail), resulting in a faster game save.

When entering the game board, I receive an error message stating that Java Virtual Machine is not loaded.
SimCityscape requires that you have Java Virtual Machine installed in your browser. Get Java.

I try to view a region from the main page but the region window comes up w/ a different region inside.
The servers compile the region image every 15 minutes. Wait for it to update.

When I attempt to upload my city, the progress bar shows up but doesn't update, and the uploading process hangs.
You can try a couple things:

1. Make sure you are giving it sufficient time (could be several minutes on a slow connection) and that you are not clicking "OK" before getting a success or failure message.
2. Open your city in SimCity™ 4 and play it a little (i.e. make some changes). Save the city and exit the game. Upload the city again.

When I upload my city, it shows up as flat terrain inside a black square.
Open the city in SimCity4 and save it. Exit to region and make sure the thumbnail looks correct. Close the game and upload the city again.

You can choose your friends and your neighbors!
Want to make sure your cities borders match to its neighbors? Grab a few friends and embark on a land grab. Choose a few plots of neighboring empty land in a region and stake your claim

Make sure to log your entries in the Mayor’s Log.
The Mayor’s Log is a great way to express the direction you envision the city growing. Have you made neighbor deals or does your city have special needs? Provide care instructions and additional information that would be useful for future mayors of your city. Detailed Mayor's Logs complete with snapshots are highly encouraged.

Meet other players on the SimCityscape™ BBS.
The BBS is a great place to discuss issues about a certain region, meet Mayors to help you build your city or the neighboring cities, get help with a problem you have been having or brainstorm ideas.

Design your city with the region in mind
Look at the overall theme of the region that you choose to set your city in and design your city to mesh well with the land features and the other cities that already exist. If a region is composed of mostly water, you may want to add a chain of islands rather then a large square plot of land. Reconciling edges is not recommended.