Environment

[n.alum 0]

I'm pretty good with SimCity 4. I only have one problem. KEEPING THE ENVIRONMENT STABLE

I try to build up a lot of buildings without necessarily expanding a great deal. I make sure everything is in order from police/fire cover to taxes and I even make sure my demands are being met. I start neighbor deals and everything! I have found one time that the more low income housing I make my environment tends to start dropping again. My problem being no matter what I do my environment meter just keeps going down if and when it comes back up. Can anyone please help me!!

[TV-VCR 14]

Hey n.alum,

I believe traffic can pose a problem. What are the levels of traffic in your cities?

[n.alum 0]

my traffic levels are great..lol and that is the weird thing...i make sure my traffic levels are in check and low. I'm going to get on and try to build more police stations and fire stations to keep the safety high..but i doubt that works any further help would be awesome!

[tungston 19]

n.alum Please be more patient with the replies, don't click the reply button repeatedly.

You can delete your duplicate post with the "delete" button, please.

thanks

[hawkpride147 1]

how many parks do you have?

[n.alum 0]

i have a lot of parks but i am gaining some answers through trial and error..i think its my traffic ..do you have any ideas on how to keep traffic low?

[TV-VCR 14]

Originally posted by: n.alum i have a lot of parks but i am gaining some answers through trial and error..i think its my traffic ..do you have any ideas on how to keep traffic low?

quote>

When looking at the overview, if the majority of the city's roads/avenue/highway/etc is green there should be no major concern.

[hawkpride147 1]

i line all my major highways with parks to help air quality...

[tungston 19]

Have you checked the air, and water pollution?

[n.alum 0]

Thank you guys for all the help! Yes I needed more parks! And I needed more police and fire stations and hospitals to make sure all my area was covered. The problems with parks for me is the fact that I don't know when I have enough on my plate to actually start making money all taxes..I am still in a bind with losing money rather than actually making back and making more money than I have spent. I really don't know who to tax more and who not to tax as much any help with this would be awesome. Thanks again

[n.alum 0]

no matter what i do i can't seem to keep a stable environment..it always goes green for a little bit then back down to red..i've literally down everything imaginable to try and keep it stable from parks to neighbor deals to avenues to minimize congestion..

i'm having trouble with taxation..who i should tax more ect..any further advice would be great

[Mistagnerd 0]

what are your current tax rates?

I find it is helpful to scare away dirty industry from the beginning of the city by raising my taxes to 20%. If they don't leave increase to a much higher number. I then build a bus station on every block and zone for manufactoring so my poor sims have a place to work. If you build bus stations everywhere. It tends to keep traffic away from going to main streets when they can work nearby. In my manufacturing areas I place large parks or community gardens nearby to keep pollution low. I know parks in a manufacturing area isn't realistic but every bit helps.

As for increasing revenue simply reduce your spending. I would bulldoze all your fire stations and only place them when you have a fire. Fires rarely happen. I've just finished going on 23 sim years in my newest city without any fires nor fire stations. My population is only 54,000.

[Boycey08 0]

what i do is i reduce the taxes for middle and high wealth residents to about 4.0% and increase low wealth to between 10.0 - 12% (or higher if you want to get rid of them)

this brings in alot more middle/high wealth residents and will require more middle/high wealth industry & commercial, then once you have these high paying jobs and high earning sims, you can put your taxes back up to profitable numbers, i find 9.0% for middle and 8.6% for high works, but i guess it depends on how desirable your city is because in one of my small city tiles, i put taxes up to 20.0% for all 3 wealth groups and simulated about 80 years while i cut the back lawn lol

suprisingly i had 0 abandonments and was left with about 3mill simoleons, so i bulldozed the city and started over with my improved bank balance

i dont recommend that but if you are desperate for cash and your city is desirable, it is worth a try to raise your taxes, so just save your game and try it for a short period, if it fails then exit to region without saving and reload the city

also i am quite sure environment is to do with parks/pollution, so try using the clean air ordinance and the bottom 3 ordinances, which i believe are reduce automobile emissions, tire recycling program and nuclear free zone

p.s. sorry for my essay type answer

edit: i also find that placing your bus stops in diamond shapes, so one on every other corner makes them use it more, not sure why but whenever i placed bus stops on every single corner my usage would be around 1%, but at the moment some of my stops are using more than 50% capacity and i make over 700 simoleons per month through bus fares

another thing i may have noticed is that low wealth sims use your hospitals and clinics far more than higher wealth sims do, which means you'll be funding them more or having to build more, so that may be worth looking in to when it comes to reducing your expenditure

[n.alum 0]

Boycey....your methods have actually worked the best for me!..im eager to ask more questions..not THAT many but using your method my environment was really stable..except that i found my demand for commerce and commercial were really low not a lot of people were moving in..what im still in the infant stages of my city..if i could send you my city and have you take a look at it that'd be cool!!

[Boycey08 0]

i could take a look at it, providing it works with sc4 vanilla, but there are thousands of people on this forum who are a hell of alot better and more experienced than me

but i have no problem looking for you, i like looking at other people's cities because i almost always take away atleast 1 idea that i can try in my own cities

a good way to make your commerce demand high is to have a main city for residents, preferably with empty space for future developments and make neighbour cities on all 4 sides if possible and use equal amounts of industry in each, then keep going between your residential and industrial cities jugging the demand for both

then eventually, when your sims really really want commerce, you can try giving it to them

you should consider reading through this tutorial on gridded cities, even if you dont make a grid city this tutorial is still very helpful for any city and it taught me most of what i know currently

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=23&threadid=68200&enterthread=y

[n.alum 0]

how can i send you my city via email? i'll be online for the next 8 hours so whenever lol