making money

[Chris544 0]

My main problem in any of the sim city games is making money. I start off just fine making a little at a time but what always happens is as soon as I start improving my city I lose money and cannot seem to catch up.  I mean if I only have say an extra $60.00  extra each month in my budget and I build a police station or a fire station or a med center ect that cost several hundred dollars monthly I lost that money.  How do I make that up and still build my city?  I have tried raising taxes, building very slow.  Trying to use wind power because it's cheap.  I just cant seem to make money. Any help would be great!  Thanks. Btw Im new to this forum and I like it.

[Streetwise 3]

Welcome544!

Maybe you're adding your fire stations, police stations, ect. before they are really needed. Usually your city advisors will let you know when you need them. I used to add schools too soon, and that's when things would begin to go awry.

Two things to be careful of here:

1. Raising taxes: Raising taxes is a double-edged sword, because while it will give you more money, raising them too high will deter future sims from moving into your city.

2. Wind power: Windmills may be cheap, but in the long-term, when you need plenty of them, you'll be better off to just build a more traditional power plant. Search the STEX for geothermal plants. One is a small, inexpensive one, perfect for starting cities with, and there is a larger one with the same attributes as the coal power plant (except without the pollution). Also, too many windmills will take up valuable real estate which could be used to zone for RCI and be taxed.

Also, maybe you could post a picture of your city. Perhaps part of the problem could be in your layout.

I hope this helps 

[jerbod 0]

I don't place schools until my pop is at least 3000 people. Schools and Hospitals are the most expensive buildings in the game along with utilities.

Also in the beginning make sure you aren't overbudgetting your buildings.

Jerbod

[fuman612 0]

add toll booths on roads with heavy traffic it will make some extra money and re-route heavy traffic

[borgisme5 0]

1.) Build slowly

Whether you are on hard, medium, or easy difficulty, don't spend everything you have right away. It's better to have a good amount of cash in the bank in case your city starts to lose money, which it will sometimes, that way you won't have to worry about going in the negative or take out loan.

2.) Don't build schools, hospitals and police stations

Well, you should build them, but not right right away. You should only have fire stations, as you don't want the city to ignite into flames. When you start your education, just use a single large elementary school. It doesn't matter at this point to have a fully educated city, and the small elementary schools don't have much capacity. If you can't build a large elementary school, you don't need education yet. Don't bother putting in any high schools of any capacity until your city is at least ten years old, then won't get used much otherwise. And don't forget to use the query tool and fund each building for optimal spending. (And don't use the health clinic, their patient cap. is super small)

3.)Zones

Remember that zoning only restricts how big of buildings can be build there, not if rich people can live there or not. IE, low density residential can only have low density housing, but it have $, $$ or $$$ Sim, but in can only have houses and small apartments built on it.

Also, zones can support all the lower ones, but can not support anything higher. If an area is zoned high residential, it can potentially have low density, medium density and high density buildings. A medium density zoning area can have low density and medium density buildings, but not high, while low density can only have low density.

Density basically controls how many people can live in your city, but not whether or not they are rich Sims. Generally speaking, until you get the hang of how to make a cash making city, I would say to stick with medium zoning, as it will allow you to have some bigger buildings to fill up with Sims to make you a good deal of money, but the zones cost half as much as dense. I personally only build in dense in my big cities, but that's because I know how to get a good profit pretty fast :3

3.) Mass Transit

Don't forgo mass transit, even when a city is young. Use bus stations, and use 'em lots everywhere. Try to have one bus stop every 6-10 tiles in every direction. You want to Sims to take the bus, as it keeps less crowded and lowers air pollution. Also, bus stations only cost $5 a month to maintain, and bus stations make good money once a bunch of people start taking them.

As for highways, I personally wouldn't build the whole network right away, and instead I'd leave areas clear for where you want to place the highways. Be sure to leave extra room for where you want your on and off ramps and the cloverleafs. You should use elevated highways when you can, as it's much easier to make on/off ramps. If you do a ground highways, you have to first transition it to elevated, make the underpass, and then transition it back to ground. Long range highways should be ground, while any highway in the city should be elevated generally speaking. And never, ever use toll booths, they will make the traffic much, much worse. Making sure people get to work is more important that making a little extra money.

Trains are another good way to get people around, but they are a little harder to lay out and take up ground space. If you have the money, later add in an elevated train/subway network. Don't bother with monorail, despite it's faster, it's not nearly as flexible as the other rail options. And don't delete the bus stations, just like a real city, a Sim City benefits from a diverse metro network.

4.) As for power, water, garbage, etc

Build your dirty power plants farrrr away from your city and connect it with a road and power lines to the city. You want it so far away because you want ample room for the city to grow without worrying about getting close to the air pollution and NIMBY that power plants are. This is a good area to build a garbage dump. A good trick with garbage is to also build a waste to energy plant and reduce the funding to $0. It won't produce any power, but will still burn garbage, thus keeping your landfills really low. Build a small fire station next to the power plants so it has fire protection, don't worry about water.

Water pumps should be built as the no water zots appear. Stick with the small pumps and don't build a large water pump until it's monthly cost lower than the combined amount of the small ones. Then build one and delete all but two or three of the small ones. Then repeat. As to when to build your first pump, build it once all your zones stop developing. Remember the basic houses don't need water, so things will still develop with or with out 'em.

5.) Region Play

The best way to play, however, is region play. Have one city with only residential and commercial zone in it, and in adjacent city, only industrial. Connect them with a road, pipes and power lines. In the R/C city, build extra water pumps. In the I city, build all the land fills and power plants. Have the R/C sell water to the I city, while the I city imports the R/C trash and sells them power. This is a good way for both cities to make some extra cash, especially the selling of water. The Sims in the R/C will work in the I city if you have the connections, and they will use the mass transit options if you have stops in the other city as well. Pollution doesn't travel between cities, so despite the cities are right next to each other, none of it will move into the city with all the people. Be sure to have ample connections however, as you don't want all your sims cramming through one road. Streets can't have neighbor connections remember.

6.) Parks

Don't skimp out on parks. They soak up air pollution and increase land value in the area, thus allowing for bigger buildings to be built. Build 'em where ever you have extra room, like near highways, or behind plopables, etc.

[north country dude 202]

Originally posted by: Chris544

My main problem in any of the sim city games is making money. I start off just fine making a little at a time but what always happens is as soon as I start improving my city I lose money and cannot seem to catch up.  I mean if I only have say an extra $60.00  extra each month in my budget and I build a police station or a fire station or a med center ect that cost several hundred dollars monthly I lost that money.  How do I make that up and still build my city?  I have tried raising taxes, building very slow.  Trying to use wind power because it's cheap.  I just cant seem to make money. Any help would be great!  Thanks. Btw Im new to this forum and I like it.

quote>

Consider that while taxes may not be the problem, the budget amounts assigned to your Civics, such as, Fire, Police, Health, and Education, may be set too high. They can all be adjusted, but be careful, set them too low and the Sims will begin to strike. But that is just a simple answer.

If you really want your city to grow and prosper, a more in-depth answer can be found here:

MAKING MONEY THE EASY WAY (WITHOUT CHEATS!)

Also, the Omnibus contains many more articles that will help you get more out of your Sim City experience.

[Raxter 1]

There's a lot of excellent advice on this page, but a very good rule of thumb is very pertinent to the world of making money:

You should spend just as much money on things that generate income as things that generate expenses. My personal strategy is that for every new municipal building you add, there should be some kinda of new zone or upgrade to an old zone so that there's more taxpayers around to support your new building.

[Randomtaskk 1]

Take out a 200,000 loan.

Zone in the entire city.

Dont bother funding hosp/school/fire etc until you can afford.

Build up the funding in each sector as you go, more sims will move in due to the better services and allow you to fund another service etc.