How do I make my city grow?

[ahmede19 0]

Hi.. what do i need to make this a cool city?

[briantwigley 0]

Define 'cool'?

[binobi 2]

hey ahmede19, welcome to simtropolis

this is a fairly common question and as such there is already an awful lot of stuff on this website about how best to begin a city. i just had a quick look in the general discussion thread and along with the omnibus, which is very useful, there is another thread about starting up minimal cities which you may well find useful.

i would suggest however that you are usually best starting cities near to the edge of the tile to allow easy connections to neighbouring cities, this does affect demand. and also, don't build too many services too soon. i see you have a high school, elementary school and a clinic already, and it's only year two, wait until you can afford these before building them.

similarly, learn to use your RDI demand graphs, if the sims want agricultural jobs give them farms not dirty industry. try to think how real cities developed over time and to some degree replicate that, only not over 2000 years!!!

finally, just experiment with the game and see what works for you.

have fun, it's great when you get a city looking just how you imagined.

[xxbydesign 1]

Ok, first thing to you need to know is how to read the demand meter; thank you for posting it for us, because its a big indicator of what's going wrong with your city.

The Demand indicator is broken up into Residential, Commercial, and Industrial, and each of those is broken up into subsequent catagories which correspond with wealth levels, such as R$ R$$ and R$$$. Now, for simplification's sake (altough it gets more complicated later down the road), a R$ resident wants to work for a C$ or a I$ job, that is either low-wealth commercial service job or either a Agriculture or Dirty Industry job. R$$ wants the next level up, either in Commercial office/medium welath services, or in Industrial manufacturing. See how this works?

Each section of the demand indicator directly influences the other to which it's connected. SO, if you have postive demand for R$ it means that there are avaliable jobs for R$ employees and not enough current workers. THis is the case in your city. You have I-Ag and I-D, which are R$ jobs, but you have A LOT of R$$ for such a young city (02 years!). My guess is you built the high school to give your citizens an education, but what happened was all of the R$ housing was demolished to make room for the R$$ residents that were attracted by the school. So, with a sudden drop in R$ population, there were too many jobs in I-D, which is why demand is so negative.

To remidy this, zone low density residential, let it grow into R$, and zone more as needed until R$ demand is met. I-D demand should recover. To make sure that you'r new residential zoning is not taken by R$$ you should raise the taxes on the R$$ housing (9.5 sounds nice) so the demand drops to near zero or negative; your city is too young for a significant number of R$$, therefore it is wasteful this early to have R$$. Once demand for R$$ is negative, buldoze the R$$ lots and rezone for R$ to move in. Also, buldoze the high school; again, its too early for this advanced building to be in your city, and it is wasting valuable taxes and attracting development that you currently cannot support. Also, the black roads may not be necessary in a city of only 200 people, but it would be a good idea to create a road to the edge of the city map and connect to the greater region; this will help your industrial demand return to postive as well.

This should get you on your way. Feel free to reply again with more questions or PM me directly for any more help. Good luck, and Welcome to Simptropolis!!

[ahmede19 0]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i left for 5 minutes when i come back everything has burned down!! why?!

any tips for a new city - where to start etc

[xxbydesign 1]

Well... the only disaster that happens on its own in SC4 is fire, but I can't imagine the WHOLE city caught fire in five min. Nonetheless, tip number one is use the Pause key when you step away.

Tip number two is along the same lines as binobi's post; try to start close to an edge of a city tile so network connections are easier to start with; this will help growth.

Just remember how demand works and experiment. You can get interesting ideas from a variety of different City Journals (CJs) in the City Journals section of the Forums here. Good luck!

[Dukat 2]

Don't start on an Island. You cannot connect this city with neighbour cities without terraforming. Bridges can only be build from land to land. You cannot let em end at the border of the map.

[xxbydesign 1]

If you have Rush Hour expansion, then the problem Dukat mentioned is solved with Ferrys, although this is not the case for Industry; they would need a Port. Ferrys are for Residential commuting. But this will solve most issues with settling an island, so it is possible and potentially rewarding. But building on an island raises many MANY design issues, because with such limited space you need to make sure everything is perfectly placed to maintan enough desireability; e.g. where do you put a landfill that services the island but does not take away so much desirablity so that no high wealth will later occupy the island (a very tough feat). You are relatively new to SC4, so I would advise working with a mainland city tile, but know that working on an island tile is possible, so long as you have the Rush Hour expansion pack, which comes with the SC4 Delux Edition (I'm not sure which version you purchased, but I can imagine they're selling the two games seperate anymore)

[thecross21 3]

Have you gone through the tutorials for the game? They help out a lot.

[ahmede19 0]

hi, i start one on the mainland now and i have made jobs but even the ghetto sims are not needed in my city... and it is year 6 but i still have farm houses and dirty industry... plz help

[Namesys 3]

you need some education and hospitals to get better people to get better jobs and such

[xxbydesign 1]

Pictures like the one you posted earlier are a big help when trying to understand issues you are having with your city. What do you mean that the 'ghetto' sims are not needed? Year 6 is not that far into the game; the game will continue indeffinitely as long as you want to play. I had a roomate who always kept the speed at cheetah, so hed be up to year 100 by the time he had a population of about 2,000. I use the pause key a lot, so I can get 2,000 people by year 3 (i dont like to make my cities grow that fast and try to tackle issues before they occur).

An early city does not need to be the biggest and best city ever. Cities take time to develop, and they need to develop out before they can develop up with appartments and skyscrapers and such. To start with dirtiy industry and farms is what the designers of the game intended. I normally dont even start to add schools until I have close to 5,000 sims, all R$ and C$ with Dirty industry. Don't get frustrated, you're doing fine. Just follow your demand meter to see what buildings your citizens want next and zone accordingly. Again, pictures would help in the future if youre having specific problems, and have fun with it. It is, after all, a game, and youll never know if a mistake you thought you made turns out to be a good idea that helps your city in the end; I cant tell you how many times thats happened for me!

[Muck308 55]

Remember that the first city built in a region will develope rather slowly. It's been said before a thousand times, but try building a few cities at once. You can go back and forth between them every decade or so. If you want big business to develope eventually, might I recommend the super demand mod? This will put your demand levels way up, which will lead to faster growth. Good luck.

[ahmede19 0]

hi,

please help me make this city better. i think it is coming together quite nicely.

PS - i am falled into love with this game.

[xxbydesign 1]

Thats Great!! I think its a great start with a lot of good bones, so to speak. It can really grow from here. You've done a really smart thing with your farms; You ahve the farm building which accepts the workers, but the farm grows inside the block while the residential lines the street. I do the same thing!

You've also used the demand indcator great. You can clearly see that there is a correlation with R$, C$, and I$. You have postivie demand for all areas, whereas your higher wealth demands are very low. This is obvious looking at the city too, as it is predominatly R$. Great start.

What I would do from here is decentralize where your citizens are working. You already have avenues because everyone in your nothern suburb is commuting to the dirty industry to work. Try making your next industrial zone on the norther edge of your city next to the residential you already have. This way, your residents will commute both directions instead of one; this will even out your traffic and you wont need to mantain expensive roads. Also, since you have commercial demand, I would place a few single commercial zones at the corners of some intersections in the residential areas. This will provide many local places for people to work, so more people will walk to work, further reducing traffic, and meeting demand requirements for commercial. Its win-win!

This is of course my playing style; you clearly already have your own. I say youre doing great at this game, and yes, I'm in love with this game too, so i understand completely! Good luck and I look foward to seeing more!

[ahmede19 0]

Hi,

Ok I followed your suggestions... New DI and Ag to the north, bunch of new r$ zones, ive put a elementary school, subway lines, bus stops.. Landfill to the east with an avenue connecting to the city...water lines. What do I do now??

[xxbydesign 1]

Your demand for dirty industry is down, so it needs more R$ workers, which is why R$ demand is high. Either zone for more residential near your new industrial sites, or selecte medium density residential and drag a box over your existing houses to upgrade the lots to allow for apartment buildings. You seem to be running out of relatively flat land anyway on your map, so you should start thinking about greater density soon anyway. Also, if you dont have a neighbor connection yet, you shoud set one up soon, and start a city the same way in the neighboring city tile. I can see your news feed at the bottom of the image is telling you the same thing.

Subways are expensive to maintain, so pay attention to your budget. Also, you have a lot of wind turbines - this is good for the enviornment, but they take up a lot of area to create the same amount of power as a regular plant. Since you have large industrial areas w/o nearby residential, it would be fine to build a Natural Gas or Coal plant in these areas, better near the edge of the map; the pollution created will affect residential zones minimally and allow you to demolish all the wind turbines and save money in the long run, plus the freed up space can be used for more zones and new road connections.

This is ultimately your city and you get to grow it the way you want. The rise and fall of demand should always give you a clue as to what to do next. Soon you will understand the pattern and be well on your way to making a great city. You already have a great start. Theres not much else I can help you with, but if there are any more big challenges, we are all here to offer our two cents. Good luck!

[Halo3001 0]

You shouldn't put subway lines in such a small city.

[ahmede19 0]

hi, hows my progress.. any tips..

[asd195 1]

for both of you guys you also should do better road planinng like let the zone go out more and don't upgrade streets tell the trafic turns orange or red on the traffic gauge

[ahmede19 0]

yeah ok u just hate me because u want to be me

[binobi 2]

hey ahmede19

looks like a good time to start developing one of the neighbouring cities that you have a road connection to. remember what sort of development is in demand in the original city and then zone some of that in your new city. once that has developed switch back to your original city and see how it grows. continue to do this for a while and soon you'll find all levels of demand growing in both cities.

most importantly though, take your time and allow the city to develop before you rush onto the next phase. pay great attention to your demand graphs and cater for whatever is wanted, which i not always what you would like to see develop next. as your cities and region grows you'll find you have more flexibility about what you can build and where you can build it.

don't forget you can always bulldoze an area later to make it more to your liking.

[xxbydesign 1]

The city is progressing quite nicely. Be careful planning on the mountains; letting the zones automatically change the terrain may make slopes so steep that you cannot physically alter them yourself or place any more zones. Your demand is almost non existant for farms now, and they are taking up a bit of space that could be better spent on more zones for industrial and commercal deveopment.

To asd195, I'd agree that, in all likelyhood, the roads in this city have been upgraded too soon. HOWEVER, there are many different ways of planning a city. I've seen cities planned around highways that are laid FIRST, not after a city is built; players may like to pre-determine where they want their major traffic arteries to be.

However, there is also no need to be confrontational. We're all here to support one another and share our ideas or ask for help when we want it, so lets keep it civil.

Other than that, yes, binobi, the next thing to do in this city is to develop a neigboring city; the city is currently hemmed in by the mountains and is already getting quite dense. Building another town will provide more space for expansion to replace the farms lost in this city and will increase demand in both towns, plus it's more fun trying to balance the needs of an entire region than just one city. Good luck!