I suck so much as at it and only get anywhere by using the $999,999 glitch, but god damned have I sunk hours into that game. The music until you get to I think around 100,000 population is super soothing and addicting.
Last month I randomly got back into this for whatever reason decided I was going to make the best effort I could to learn what the fuck I was doing and if not get a megalopolis, at least get past my old high of ~200,000 citizens. I would read up a bunch on strategy and how the game works, one piece would stick so I'd start a new town and try that, fail everywhere else and give up. Rinse repeat. Eventually though I got the hang of it and pushed into the 400,000s, and eventually, thanks to using the money cheat and the gift dupe glitch I was able to get my first megalopolis. Was super excited to finally get there, and as I hoped the music goes back to being something good.
Should have stopped there but I figured everyone uses the money cheat but needing the gift dupe glitch probably made this a non achievement so I started over. I'll keep this short, but I managed to get a megalopolis with just the money cheat. Then though hey just for shits and giggles let's try without the money cheat, even though I've never been able to play without the money cheat. First try amazingly I got to a pop of ~485k but don't think it was going higher without massive re-work. Second try, megalopolis. Woot I'm on a role, so I tried the scenarios for the first real time and got through all of those (fuck that UFO one).
Was excited to try the all land one thinking I'd get a super high population, until I realized because it's a scenario you don't get gifts. So it took several tries before I was able to get Megalopolis. Then because why not I tried medium difficulty. Money cheat - Megalopolis. No money cheat - Megalopolis. Hard difficulty? No money cheat - JESUS CHRIST HOW DOES ANYONE DO THIS I got my pop to 50K, though it would cycle between ~35k and ~50k, but it was in the either the late 22nd century or early 23rd century and I was still struggling with cash so I just said no fuck this I don't need this in my life. But hard difficulty WITH the money cheat?
I'm done. FIN. THE END. The 600K message is neat but I'm happy with mega.