Industrial City Power

[TrendyGuy 0]

Hello all,

I haven't played Simcity 4 in years and just started up again. I am trying to get a hang of region play. I have an industrial city next to my suburb type city. The industrial city keeps needing more and more power, but I can't make any of the more advanced power plants like Nuclear. Right now I am on my third coal powered plant. Is there something else I can do rather than keep placing coal plants?

Also does anyone know of a good guide for region play? Such as when I want to make a 3rd or 4th region connected to the 2 I currently have.

Thanks!

[xelanamyt 0]

If it is a dirty industrial city then just keep placing coal plants, they are the most cost effective, but also the most polluting, but if you have only dirty industry then it doesn't really matter.

If you are wanting manufacturing industry, then keep the coal plants away from your industry they don't like heavy pollution. As for high tech, I usually have that fairly near my residential as it has pretty much the same requirements as residential.

As for region play, there are several guides out there, look on the Omnibus. I would suggest a few things though:

Get the NAM mod, helps greatly in all aspects of the game relating to transportation, which is one of the main parts of the game.

For your first city, make it to have all different zones to get up demand in your region.

After that you can start specialising cities, generally I have most of my dirty and manufacturing industry in seperate cities, usually with low wealth residential, most of my cities will be a mix of medium/high residential and medium/high commerical with some high tech. I also have some rual type cities further out.

Hope that helps a bit! Ask more questions if you want.

[RandyDaytona 0]

Well, I hate seperating my cities into" industrial cities, commercial cities, residential cities"

I like everything to be self contained.

But there is some "cheats" on this site, where u get access to differnet more powerfull powerplants.

Just Search : Cheats.

[Eclipticalstorm 30]

You can do some of the U drive it missions and get better power plants. I think the monorail mission unlocks solar power and the evil ice cream mission unlocks nuclear power plants. To get the hydrogen power plant you need area 5.1 and you have to do the evil jet mission, but I have never really been able to unlock Area 5.1.

[SC4BOY 20]

You might take a look at the OMNIBUS (see top tabs) .. it has some excellent guides to all sorts of situations

[asd195 1]

randyDaytona said search cheats but that is to general. Search power

[MattShizzle 11]

You can also use the "you don't deserve it" cheat to unlock everything - hit ctrl-x to open the window and type it exactly as in the quotes.

[Shlarin 0]

Make a high tech industrial city nearby.. hopefully, you'll be offered the hydrogen plant in that city which is the most powerful plant. Build a bunch of them and sell power to the industrial city.

[jmusacha 2]

Just a caveat!  Hydrogen plants (brand new) produce energy at about 0.20 simoleans a MWh whereas Coal plants (brand new) produce the same amount of energy for 0.04 simoleans.  That means the cost of this power to a buying city will be about 4-5 times as expensive when buying power from a city using hydrogen power rather than coal.  It may be prohibitively expensive for some cities.

[cogeo 960]

Get my nuclear plant lots (link in my sig). Very expensive to build, but they generate a lot of power, at competitive cost. The pack also includes a mod that makes cities that run utilities to sell their excess production without losing money (check the readme for details).

[Magicman9363 1]

I have found that the Black Hole power plant is the best. It generates no pollution and provides ample power. Search "Black Hole power plant".

I usually connect all my cities in a region with roads/ave, highways, and subways.  I also do the industrial and res. on seperate tiles and connecting them like this seems to help.  What I do is switch back and forth to each city so each will grow.