SimCity 3000: 1 million population (Hard) in 1:10:28

Game: SimCity 3000 Unlimited (goes also by the name of SimCity 3000 World Edition, among others)
Goal: 1 million population as fast as possible, RTA (Real Time Attack)

Mandatory options:
Difficulty: Hard ($ 10,000 Loan)
[✓] Disasters
Free options:
Start date: 1900
City size: Large

I've played SimCity 3000 quite a lot in the past. When I realized that people had speedran both SC2K and SC4, but not SC3K, I knew this game would be fun to try. There have not been any previous attempts at playing this game fast (as far as I'm aware), so I had the joy of discovering the game mechanics and inventing ways to exploit them myself for this purpose. Still, the game is very complex and I think I have a lot more to understand about it.

This particular run itself was very successful, I think. My strategy was to go with the minimal loan and rush Maximum Security Prison that comes with a juicy $ 3,000 revenue annually - with minimal downsides in exchange. Then I increased the residential tax to the maximum; in the beginning of the game the residential interest is very high despite the astronomical taxation. It seems the residents don't even mind this later on - I think I'd need to investigate this phenomenon further, if I'm to improve the run later on. My road network was based on 7x7 blocks - an argument could be made for different sized blocks as well. Advantages of 7x7 include minimal wasted space and easiness to build. Commercial zones can't build in the middle square initially, but that isn't a big deal in my opinion.

I didn't spend much time on population cap, and zone shortage, power / water / trash problems were minimal. The disasters were quite lucky as well. Toxic clouds usually form in places where the air pollution is high, but they completely fail to form near the edges of the map. Since my coal plants produce most of the air pollution and they are placed next to the edge of the map, the toxic clouds tried to form there. That is why you can sometimes see the game go to "disaster mode" for only a brief second during the run. Having no earthquakes saved some time. An earthquake is always preceded with 2 warning (non damaging) earthquakes - I'd have saved the game after the latter warning and loaded it after having the damaging earthquake hit my city. Loading the game would glitch the earthquake to only damage tiles in the very upper corner of the map. Since this maneuver loses some time, I was lucky to not have to demonstrate it. Riots could have also formed before I had a decent police coverage; fortunately that didn't happen either.

I requested speedrun.com to add this game there, so I'd be able to post the run to the "official" leaderboard. However, they rejected the game since they are "not accepting endless games with arbitrary goals". This decision was very disappointing, since:
1) SimCity 2000, SimCity 4 and other titles such as Cities: Skylines, games that are just as "endless games with arbitrary goals", already exist in the site, so this is highly inconsistent.
2) As I pointed out in my request, there actually are 10 official scenarios in this game, with concrete goals and automatic termination of the game upon completition, that could be ran as well.
I requested this game to be added again, stressing these points. However, they still declined with the message: "Both games [SimCity 2000 and SimCity 4] were added before rules had gotten stricter. If they had been requested now, they would not have been accepted. We are still not accepting endless games with arbitrary goals", completely overlooking my second point. I guess some things can't be changed.

I'm happy to answer any questions about this run. Any competition is also certainly welcome, even without a proper leaderboard!

Видео SimCity 3000: 1 million population (Hard) in 1:10:28 канала habbis_speedrun