How to expand slowly without losing money?

[LadySieera 0]

After reading for a week straight on these forums and others like it I decided to round up some mods and start actually playing. I got NAM digger and some others. I layed out a city plan that looked promising ... and it is! My old average commute time was 100ish this one is between 40-50 most of the time.

As you can see i use one way streets in the commercial and underground highways to link residential and industry.

All using busses effectively i easily had double busses vs cars. By this time i had 12k people all low wealth and dirty jobs... Now i know how to keep going like this and fill the map with low wealth pops and just sit on my loot but i didnt want to.. I started building up at about 20k... As i knew at 35k i would start getting higher density and 4block lengths instead of just 3. (Im basically trying to test designs for commute times so i can mix these designs together to make a realistic city.) It all went ALOT better then before.. I was actually making money as i got wealthy sims.. so i changed the tax rates and sure enough HT came and took over. Well after a while i kept getting deadlocked they wanted HT but wouldnt build it.. so i decided to build some beautification and that worked... after a while (50k people) i need onther power plant or two... ALOT more water onther set of schools hospitals etc... thats when it all failed... i started losing LOTS of money 2-5k a month... (oh and i NEVER got rid of my trash..)

Any suggestions as to why it all failed? I expanded slowly just built upwards instead of out. As i spread out more just using low density i let them build to wealthy then built exceedingly higher densities.. yet it failed. (and yes i kept up with my bus stops my ending commute time was 40 mins)

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[Keiran Halcyon 0]

Imediately before you had to add more services (power, water, school, health, etc.) what were your income/expenses? It seems to me that you may have just added more than you could afford at the time. Also, does the history graph show a decrease in income, or just an increase in expenses? (A decrease in income would not be expected, but if present it would indicate that the were some other problems at work.)

Oh, and no one ever seems to ask this, but what skill level are you playing at?

[LadySieera 0]

Im playing on easy just to get use to it. It shows a gradual increase of both income and expense then the income stopp and expenses kept rising... then rose again when i was adding more.. but i had to add more to cover my area... OH my i didnt think of that.. Is it easier to leave an area un refined (no schools etc.) until people are living there then add them? If so i havent been doing that and that would be the problem.

[BlackJackal 0]

The best approach is to develop first with absolutely no services. No schools, hospitals, fire stations, police, or water. You will only get low wealth residents and commerce, and dirty industry. You can continue to expand like this (adding fire stations as necessary to stop fires in progress). Also, you should not have mass transit except for maybe rail and buses. I'd suggest downloading a road-top bus/subway station set from STEX so you don't have to demolish buildings later on to fit in a subway system. Anyway, ignore the advisors at first when they complain about a lack of services, but eventually you will want to add them. Water is required to get higher densities, as well as medium and high wealth residents, and it increases industrial options as well. Only when your city is large enough should you begin adding the major services, and only when you can afford them. Make sure to keep tabs on each school and hospital to make sure that you are only funding for what you need, and not the full capacity.  Usually by the time I start adding health/education, the large schools are available to me and I exclusively use them, and the large medical center.

[LadySieera 0]

Hun thats not my issue i can do that easily I can even have ALL services and all $$$ sims and still gain money... its when i start going upward my commute times go up and people leave.. thats what im having a problem with.. my commute times sky rocketing when i start building upward.. i need a good layout..

[Keiran Halcyon 0]

BlackJackal about summed it up. If you go on with developing without services, the advisors will start to complain, but only a bit. Later on they'll start to complain more vehemently. That's about the time I start adding services, as long as I can afford it. Also, once you're in the regime where you are providing services, when expanding outward, yes, build new buildings to cover the new area, but keep a close eye on the funding levels and ramp up capacity as people move in. Later, think about things like consolidating smaller service buildings into larger ones.

I'm curious about your design there. It looks like you've left open space for future mass transit? If that's the case, what form were you thinking of using?

[LadySieera 0]

Guys you missed my whole series of questions... I can do all that easily! My problem isnt growing the city i can easily get 150k and not have any issues my problem is EFFECTIVELY using roads and masstransit! I have only busses in my city they do well but are getting really expensive. The last issue im going to have is commute time when sky scrapers start to come... How do i plan out highways etc and actually have sims use them.

[Keiran Halcyon 0]

Well, having never really been up that high myself, I'd suggest adding subways & upgrading heavily-used roads to avenues. Yeah, you might have to bulldoze some buildings. It would also be interesting to see your traffic view.

[Tolomar 5]

setting up a working MT system can be diffucult in some of the more already established cities...sometimes it mean major reconstruction...unless you alloted space for them before hand.

grids work best for MT. though it promotes building repetion.

best to try a money cheat lot and sandbox with MT lots...experiment...though for the most part...the less "griddy" your city is...the less effective MT will be most of the time...just basic math

as for making money....zone large section of COM between your RES and IND areas at the start...low desity...to suck up all the CS demand...no water, min fire service....looks ugly as the CS$ and CS$$ buildings are all that grand, but they make money...and let the city run for a while...most times ppl lose money because of being impatient and add servies before the city is ready...cities need to grow 

com...specially CS makes the most money for me, and is the easiest to manage...with money from it...i fund the rest of the city basicly...)

when you do start add services...HQ EQ and police...micro manage each building...keep the capasity cost about 10-20% above capasity...as most of those lots are ment for large populations cities...wait til there a red alert to raise funding again...wait til the city needs it before paying for it

no scence paying for 200 doctors when theres only 10 patients...

[LadySieera 0]

Why do you guys keep posting on how to make money... I can get 50k Wealthy citizens and still be gaining money my problem was when i expanded to fast i know what i did wrong i added schools to an area that had no residents.. so i wasnt making any taxes from them... Its not about how to get money!!! 3 people in a row have posted about making money... Im looking for tips on PRE-PLANNING mass transit... you say a grid system. so where in this grid do i place my highways my subways etc.?

[BlackJackal 0]

There is no tried and true grid system you can really lay out. It depends on the terrain and where you plan to place certain parts of the city. Place the majority of your commercial zones in a central location with high capacity roads (alternating one-ways, avenues). You can build highways that stretch outward from this central business district into the residential areas surrounding it. Same with mass transit. Your network will be it's most dense in this core area and spread out like a web. Subway lines might be more sparse out in the residential areas but you may want to place parking garages near the stations so sims can park their cars and get on the subway. I'd suggest taking my earlier advice and getting some road-top bus/subway stations.

You also don't want huge numbers of wealthy sims because they always have trouble finding jobs. The overwhelming majority of your sims should be middle class. Keep the taxes for the middle class the lowest, the wealthy the highest, and the lower class somewhere in the middle. In order to provide jobs for the upper class, since they seem to have the hardest time finding work, make sure your high-wealth commercial and high-tech industrial tax rates are lower as well. This will help with abandonment issues.

Really though the game is about experimentation. It's not a linear game where we can tell you how to beat it. Try things and see what works and what doesn't.

[KoolSIM 2]

Z Z Z Z Z R Z Z Z Z Z

Z Z Z Z Z R Z Z Z Z Z

Z Z Z Z Z R Z Z Z Z Z

Z Z Z R R R R R Z Z Z

R R R R S G B R R R R

Z Z Z R R R R R Z Z Z

Z Z Z Z Z R Z Z Z Z Z

Z Z Z Z Z R Z Z Z Z Z

Z Z Z Z Z R Z Z Z Z Z

where Z = Residential Zone

      R = Road/Street

      S = Subway Station

      B = Bus Stop

      G = Open Grass Area/Park Green

Check out the above zone block. It has been quite effective for me when I am planning out a new section of my city. I usually keep the middle (S G B) area empty until it is required. You can repeat the above block as many times you want in your city. In my cities, such blocks are two-three blocks away from each other (meaning a few normal non-subway blocks in between). Creating a Mass-Transit system in an already well-established city will need a lot of bull-dozing and re-zoning.

Another excellent alternative is the one you have already used in your cities. The one with two one-way roads and a subway/el-rail in the middle. It is also an excellent option.

[LadySieera 0]

Wow thanks both BlackJackal and KoolSIM! Do you guys have any instant messangers? I would really love to chat more =) Maybe spread out ideas on cool things you've done that i can try. My last question has to do with intersections.. sims dont like intersections and as i FINAL got through my head on why i have such problems with commute is i try to keep all my sims wealthy as possible.. So as you can see all wealthy sims dont use mass transit THUS cause my commute problems.. Now KoolSIM if i make that grid i just duplicate it out right like but that same grid around it in all directions and all the roads connect to eachother? I had some cool experiments with realistic style citys with winding mountain roads and culdasacs etc. But i found besides busses mass transit is really hard to place.. yes even subways! so without a grid system you cant get too tall or commute has a problem. So my next 2 questions are:

How can i make realistic city with culdasacs slowly build into a grid system as it goes downtown? Its hard for me to visualize diaganol roads etc. when im gridding! So any tips would be greatly appreciated.

How do i make multiple cities truly 'link' together? I dont mean like highways roads etc. i mean without haveing one city ALL industry and the other commercial/residential i want self sustaining cities that interlink but people actually travel around to get to jobs etc. I see alot of people who have this and i wanna know how they make it work correctly and still keep good commute times.. (I guess 'good' commute times are matter of opinion, but you know what i mean.)

Yours truly!

The Lady.

Sieera.

PS: Hugs and kisses (on the cheek) to all that have replied!

[Peorth 17]

Just a tip: Use your Jobs and Population graph to keep track of your R§§§'s. When they're exceeding 20-25% of your total population, they start becoming a headache. If you keep them at around 15% or so, you should avoid major headaches like false long commute times and widespread dilapidation/abandonment.

In mass-transit planning, remember the golden rule: Sims follow the shortest path to their workplaces. It does not matter to them if the shortest path is 500% congested while the next shortest path is 12% congested. The simulator will force the sims to take the shortest path, not the path with the shortest commute time.

Subways are one of the easiest MT's to place. Since they go underground, just follow the path of your most heavily used roads/avenues  Furthermore, you can place the subway stops efficiently by locating your most heavily-used bus stops and placing the subway stops adjacent to these. This will relieve some of the overusage of the bus stops.

You can also reduce traffic by using distributed or mixed zoning. Commercial buildings in particular can hold a huge number of jobs (meaning a lot of commuters going to them). If you cluster a lot of C zones together without planning in advance, you can easily end up with monstrous traffic. If you distribute them around, you will also spread out the traffic.

[IronDogg 0]

Originally posted by: LadySieerayou say a grid system. so where in this grid do i place my highways my subways etc.?quote>

Here is how I do my grid systems. You can see by my finance info that it works well. Transit is on every top-right corner. Difficulty is on Hard. No cheats, or mods of any kind. City is only 62 years old so far.

http://doggpoundclan.com/images/simcity/rescom01-62.jpg

http://doggpoundclan.com/images/simcity/rescom02-62.jpg

(sorry for not being able to figure out how to post images properly here... )

[LadySieera 0]

Thanks Peorth and IronDogg! I found a really nice setup that allows me to build 4 types of mass transit and use all 5 types of roadings (Avenues, streets, roads, highways, and one ways) all together without causing a headache! It works great especially with subway/bus stops all on the same road tile! (mod) so i have CLR subway buses and a highway all right next to eachother! My city is arranged like a T so i just spread out the usage and have specific things go to specific places. CLR goes to industry. Subway to commercial. Highway to both. It works great! I have 200,000 people 1.7 million and im like 50 years into it! I did start on easy and its not really beautiful but the design worked. Funny because it must have been predestined. Why do I say that? I named the city Final Test! Even before i built the design! And yes it was the first design i built Ill post screens later when i refine it down and beautify it!