I bought SC 4 2 years ago, but I had experience, a bit, playing SC 2 and played SC 1 once. I remember that I didn't enjoyed SC 1, and continued playing Transport Tycoon, which was more visual and we could control the vehicles more directly. SC 1 was something like only zoning and period.
SC 2 - I liked it more, because we could see the city growing and the mini-micro-black cars in there. SC 3 - I never played it, although I really wanted, but at that time, my computer wouldn't support the game demanding graphics engine. So, I rot on the spot longing for a new computer.
SC 4 - Awesome that we can now drive vehicles in the game and accomplish some missions to unlock buildings and services. I'm enjoying this game lately very much, trying to build a good city with effective transport services and balanced with environment (the latter subject I've been having a dreadful performance
). Sometimes it's a bit frustrating that you are covering all the demand but poor people and unemployed people appear nevertheless, as if you are not creating enough offices or indutriy. The far I could go until now was raising a city with 150 k inhabitants. Right now, since I'm using another computer, my biggest city has 70 k people, and it's quite a mess. To increase the fun, I'm gathering plugins, mods, buildings, skins to improve the game. A pity that it takes forever to load the game when you have 3.000 plugins. 
But I found some Brazilian buildings that I wasn't expecting to find, and other well-known places abroad.If someone knows, I have problems making a good underground urban-train network. They seem to never work when I place them. Other thing that I see no results are using parking lots. What should I do to make them work and decrease traffic? And I haven't figured out how to despolute water of rivers/sea.
To be able to build a train station over the city without breaking any building was a relief to me. I used to get upset when I went to a city and, in order to be able to have a good acceptance of passengers and mail/goods, I had to destroy this and that house and they wouldn't let me build anything. And there I go planting trees to get a way to build again.
