Re: Cannot access SimCity's Game Manual

Hi  - There is not much available from EA directly. You're right, the manual and tutorial are very basic. Most of the "help tips" are in-game and only become available when you reach a point where you "need" the information. Be sure to enable the mini-tutorials in your game settings; this will pop up the lessons you're used to seeing in other Sim games, like TS4. Unfortunately, I'm unaware of any way to directly access those without playing the game, so it does make it challenging if you're trying to figure out information before you begin playing.

You can get some basic info about the Great Works by hovering over the images of each, or over the advisor in the regional view. Here is a decent overview of the choices: https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Great_work

When you meet the requirements to build a Great Work, there are some tutorials out there that can take you through it. I do highly recommend Skye Storme's Let's Play videos for a fairly in-depth look at how to get ready and build an arcology. Episode 4 begins the process & shows how to optimize traffic and imports (starting around 10 minutes in if you're not interested in some of the recap of the previous episodes). Episode 5 shows the final building, and how to enable on the other cities.

By the time you have built your city up with all the unlocks and resources to unlock and build one of the Great Works, you will probably be more familiar with the game and the in-game tips can help a little. There are a few things to keep in mind:

1. A Great Work (GW) can only be built by cities directly connected to the site. In larger regions, you may have 4 cities connected to one site and another 3 or 4 cities connected to another site. The GW will only help the cities it's directly connected to, and can only be built by them.

2. Do NOT click the button to "Build It" on more than one city - you will forever bug the GW and have to abandon the region. This is a major bug that is caused by synchronization; if you choose to build an arcology from city 1, then transfer to city 2, it won't immediately show as being built and may be prompting you to build a GW. Let city 2 run until you see a message that city 1 has petitioned to build it. The absolute best, least bugged way to build any of them is to do it from one city from start to finish, then transfer to each of the other cities and wait until you get the message that the GW has been started. It will go through all the phases and finally get to the end where you get a celebration. Ignore any messages asking you to help or build from city 2, 3 or 4. It may take a couple of minutes, but it will eventually synch to finished. It will function properly from every connected city after that.

3. Trade port and depot global warehouses should be set to "Import" or "Use Locally" for the resources you're supplying to the GW. If you set them to "Export", they will sell to the global market instead of delivering to the GW construction.

I hope this helps a bit. When you get to the point that you are building a GW and have any specific questions, I'm happy to try to help more then, too. Happy Building!