Learn to navigate and manage the Budget Window in SimCity 2000. Understand departmental finances, adjust spending, and check advisor comments to build a thriving city.
Alright, let's talk about one of the most crucial parts of running your city in SimCity 2000: the Budget Window. While the game has an 'Auto-Budget' feature, you'll definitely want to get comfortable tweaking things here yourself to really make your city shine. Don't worry, it's not as complicated as it sounds!
You can get to the Budget Window in a couple of ways. Either head up to the 'Windows' menu in the top bar and select it, or look for the green dollar sign button ($) on your city toolbar and give that a click. Once it's open, you'll see a few key pieces of info right away.
Up in the top left, you'll see your city's name, along with the current year and month. Below that, you'll find a list of all the different city departments you're in charge of financially. To the right of that, the game shows you some important numbers: how much each department has cost you so far, how much it's expected to cost by the end of the year, and any profits it might be making. It's all about keeping an eye on those figures!
Over on the far right, you'll notice two columns of icons for each department: little book icons and speech bubble icons. Clicking on a book icon is your gateway to really digging into a department's finances. You can 'open the books' to see detailed information or, more importantly, make changes to how much money is allocated to that department. The speech bubble icons let you see what the advisors for each department have to say. Most of them offer pretty sensible advice, though the TA advisor can be a bit... unique!
100% Human-Written. AI Fact-Checked. Community Verified. Learn how AntMag verifies content