Only just purchased game and im already stuck!!

[LaurenUK 0]

Hey im sorry if this has been posted before but i am at a loss!! I carnt for the life of me figure out this problem which is that no matter what i do my expences always takes over my income!!  I end up bankrupt in no time what so ever.  I really want to enjoy this game but no matter how slow and safe i start i always end up with the same out come.

 

Could anyone please give me any tips on how to start succefully, ive seen screen caps of other peoples city and i just think they must have cheated to get city like that, which are so developed!!

 

Thanx!!

[EricPoehlsen 0]

Hi Lauren,
you have to understand first that SC4 is a really complex economic simulation which follows the mathematical models of regional- and citydevelopment closely. Therefor it is hard to be successful from the first try.

you can adjust the funding for every school, hospital, firestation ... this is crutial for getting the city sustainable.

How to start of a city that does not run into bankrupcy:
1.) build a powerplant (oil/coal) and fund it at 25 - 50 %
2.) build industrial, residential and commercial zones
3.) water everything
4.) add a primary school and a large hospital into the living area. and fund it for about 100 students/patients

expand your city slowly, do not build additional civic services at the moment
adjust the funding of the hospital, school, powerplant as needed.

this will lead to a surplus.
expand your city faster then your civil services.
if something catches fire set a small firestation directly next to it, this will over time giv you perfect fire coverage.

[Tropod 144]

First rule of any budget: never spend more than you make.

Obviously there needs to exist some flexibility with this. Short term losses are fine, but fundamentally this rule needs to be followed in the medium to long term. If the monthly cost of a proposed facility is (significantly) greater than the current monthly income though, even after lowering the funding on a given facility, then you should probably think twice about building it.

 

You can actually build quite a populated city without providing any services, except perhaps firestation, power & sanitation. I would suggest against building any health, police, water, education facilities. Raise taxes for R$$ & R$$$ to 12.5% & 15.0% at the start of the city & just focus on R$ sims. You can build a city to around 20,000 (R$) Sims before hitting a cap, & a lot more before really needing to build civic facilities.

Usually the first city is the hardest to get started. Once you build this up a little bit, it can often be better to start another new city in a neighbouring tile, as the city is able to feed off of the demand from the first city.

Neighbour cities will function & interact with each other, if they're connected properly, regardless of the date/year of the cities (i.e. they don't have to be on the same time frame).

Landfill zones are very cost inefficient compared to the Waste to Energy Plant. Landfill zones can also be a real nuisance to remove. Just make sure if/when you build a Waste to Energy plant, that you lower the funding directly via the plant itself to zero (it will still function & dispose of garbage).

Never ever lower funding to on any network departments. These should always be left at 100+%.

For a beginning city, Coal power plants are probably the best power source to go with. Just be sure to adjust funding on the plant so that supply > demand

 

You don't need to cheat to make money, it just takes a bit of time & perhaps trial n error .

[LaurenUK 0]

[LaurenUK 0]

Thanx guys i thought you needed schools and police just to start so thanx for that, now as soon as i figure out how to build bridges, highways and other high capacity roads im set!!  If anyone can answer that question for me i'll be grateful.

[LoneSnark 0]

No, not really. High capacity = high cost!

Often, traffic congestion can be alleviated sufficiently simply by building another road near by. If these roads become congested, consider upgrading them to one way roads (one each way). The point is, roads cost $0.1, highways cost $1, so you can get 10 tiles of road for every tile of highway used.

Sacrifice space to minimize expenses. Later on you can come back and replace them with cool looking expressways

Of course, this assumes you have the NAM installed with perfect path-finding, otherwise the sims are too stupid to avoid congestion.

[I-will-crush-u 1]

Heres a tip I use, ignore your advisors!

[Reno_Schrecklish 0]

Yeah don't go with high capacity anything yet. Start off small, I like to start off with regular streets, then when they are congested I upgrade them to roads. I don't normally go from Roads to Avenues until traffic gets REAL bad (and I mean 405 Freeway stop and go bad). Also be careful when building highways. You wont need them for a while, and when you DO need them them try to place them around high traffic areas.

[Compromise 1]

Welcome to Simtropolis. PM me or others if you need help.

Here are some tips that always help me...

• Look at the above and follow there advice.
• Look at the omnibus on the left menu and follow the advice there.
• Don't always listion to your advisior's.
• In general don't be afraid to lower the funding to whats required of anything apart from emergencey services.
• Start small, use low density and don't zone tomuch early on.
• Don't give your sims water and certain services such as police stations and landmarks at the beggining.
• Only upgrade your road network when congested or sims need to travel faster.
• Don't use advanced public transport early on such as subways. Start with buses.
• Look on the table's graphs to see where all the moneys going.
• Don't lower taxes below 9.0 unless nessasery especially at the beggining.
• If demand is high later on you can increase taxes above 9.0. This is especially true if you want to get rid of dirty industrey and bring in high tech.
• Keep practiceing.

[positivitly 0]

Hi i'm new to simcity 4 and i had your problems but i improved by taking the tutorials lots of times and now my first city even came out of bankrupsy. You shouldin't really start your city with water because it simply costs allot, however, you should constuct a elementary school and when all the other things become real problems construct them. Also, even if you want the nicesed looking buildings start with low resedential and don't be afraid to have the old, bad looking buildings built first because they usually carry the most people, and they are smaller. Another tip is to not create commercial before it is highly demanded, or unless people really need jobs.

[teksyn 0]

Here's what I do to always stay afloat in income/expenses.  Plan early.  Hook up the power  and zone clusters around space for hospitals and schools, with commercial around the perimeter and industrial far away.  Don't build those services at first.  Zone large farms far away and a couple of dirty industry lots on the outskirts of town.  Adjust funding sliders on all civic buildings by using the query tool to meet with demand (not fire or police when you can afford them).  You can add water pretty cheap at the beginning, but it's not required at first, until you need higher density zones).  Quickly build up a city so you stay above on your expenses/income.  Then switch to a neighboring town and build another cluster.  Keep hooking up towns with roads and power lines to promote trade. 

 

I did a mini-tutorial on making new towns at a thread on ST here:

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=65370&forumID=22&search=1&searchstring=

Keep practicing!  If you still are frustrated, you can download a money lot and never worry about income.

 

If you need help you can PM me. Good luck~!

[fasterny 0]

It seems that I think differently from everyone else.

 

I believe in using all the neighboring cities.

 

Instead of polluting your residential city, connect it to the next tile, and in it, develop an industrial zone.

When your sims will look for a job, they will build a factory or other industries in the neighboring city.

 

All the polution will be in the industrial town, which doesn't care much for pollution, and your city is free, and full of loving citizens.

 

about civil buildings, i dissagree again.

I have a nice city of 30K sims, that i built in a few hours.

Just now i started building civil buildings for them, such as schools and clinics.

 

Sure, i had only 3 bars of love from them, but now it's almost full!