Too high upkeep cost

[cheuk18me94 0]

Too high upkeep cost

The upkeep cost of all buildings are too high. For example, $4000 for a little hospital! So can you lower all the upkeep cost of the buildings to 1/10 to the original upkeep cost at least?

[s_olah 87]

I'm guessing you are referring to a small establishment. Towns only need a medical center let's say when the population hits 2000-3000. I usually get a medical center, when i have a surplus of min. 300 simoleons, then after middle income citizens start moving in, my money comes in faster. Then I build a fire station, a police station, and most importantly a school. Try not to mix commercial with residential, and industrial, have three different locations for these three. Industrial only needs good transportation, so there is no need for schools, same with commercial.

And don't forget to always adjust the meter (click with the query on the school, clinic, power plant,) at every school, medical center, so that has only as many teachers/doctors which the city needs.

And adjust the meter for the electrical plants as well. No need for more power than you use.

Hope this helps...

P.S. You can always download different stuff from the STEX, which have a lower upkeep costs...

[raijala 0]

Originally posted by: s_olah

And don't forget to always adjust the meter (click with the query on the school, clinic, power plant,) at every school, medical center, so that has only as many teachers/doctors which the city needs.

And adjust the meter for the electrical plants as well. No need for more power than you use.

Hope this helps...

P.S. You can always download different stuff from the STEX, which have a lower upkeep costs...quote>

I think you are talking about the wrong game, this is the CitiesXL forum.

I agree with the OP, upkeep is a PITA to manage.  As soon as I have reasonable cash flow I realize my citizens are pissed and need more services which brings me back down to crap cashflow again.

[rismisner 0]

I agree the upkeep costs are too much vs. tax revenues. I find that I have to accept that residential satisfaction is always going to hover around 50%. The idea of turning everything green is not possible with the cost/benefit balance in the game design numbers/formulas, but also not necessary because it has zero effect until your citizens start moving out of the city below 50% satisfaction rates. So they will complain and complain that they want more of some service, but they will keep moving in anyway, and you can ignore the advisor popups and warnings like that. You have to become a "bad mayor" (IMO) and ignore their complaints in order to get anywhere, and let them be unsatisfied. There's no money to pay for enough services to make your citizens actually happy - you are lucky to be able to keep the economy going at all.

[cheuk18me94 0]

Originally posted by: rismisner

I agree the upkeep costs are too much vs. tax revenues. I find that I have to accept that residential satisfaction is always going to hover around 50%. The idea of turning everything green is not possible with the cost/benefit balance in the game design numbers/formulas, but also not necessary because it has zero effect until your citizens start moving out of the city below 50% satisfaction rates. So they will complain and complain that they want more of some service, but they will keep moving in anyway, and you can ignore the advisor popups and warnings like that. You have to become a "bad mayor" (IMO) and ignore their complaints in order to get anywhere, and let them be unsatisfied. There's no money to pay for enough services to make your citizens actually happy - you are lucky to be able to keep the economy going at all.quote>

I am playing with the unlimited money mod.

[Don Fonz 0]

Not been funny, but, what exactly does this have to do with Technical issues and the running of the game?, as this doesnt sound like that to me.

[rismisner 0]

Originally posted by: cheuk18me94

I am playing with the unlimited money mod.quote>

Last I heard, relatively recent posts on this forum say that mods don't work.  They were disabled to make the online play fair, but there's no system in place yet to support solo-only mods.  Has that been fixed?  Where can I get mods and how are they installed?

Originally posted by: Don Fonz

Not been funny, but, what exactly does this have to do with Technical issues and the running of the game?, as this doesnt sound like that to me.quote>

IMO the game balance is a technical issue that drastically impacts playability.  When you do 5 cities in a row that always suffer economic collapse around 500-750k population, because upkeep costs are too high, it makes the game feel broken like the economy is bugged.

Couple different ways I can spin this as more of a technical defect

1) advisor popups say every kind of satisfaction is low, but there's not enough cash to fix those problems - problem is not enough cash flow

2) advisor popups say every kind of satisfaction is low, but it doesn't make a difference unless it drops below 50% - problem is advisor popups are telling me things are a problem when they are actually not a problem yet.

[Don Fonz 0]

Well im sorry, but on my first city i reached over 2million population, your obviously not playing it right.

[rismisner 0]

Originally posted by: Don Fonz

Well im sorry, but on my first city i reached over 2million population, your obviously not playing it right.quote>

I can agree with that.  I realize I'm a newbie and I don't know how to play.

Like I mentioned above, one of the main tricks I've learned is to just not buy city services, and give up on the idea of making all my citizens turn green.  They all hover around 60% satisfaction.  That helps a lot.

But your first city of 2 million... was that online or offline?  I'm talking about the offline solo game when i say the economy is broken.  The online economy is much better - the existence of a multiplayer economy with some kind of real supply/demand mechanics fixes everything about the economy.  But the offline game economy feels broken.

All of my solo mode cities run into problems above 500k.  The biggest I've achieved offline is 850k, but that city suffered economic collapse and I gave up on it.  I overextended myself on services, and especially bridges are very expensive.

My current solo mode city just passed 600k last night, has a positive cash flow of +30k, and all the resource demands are balanced, so it looks like I should be able to go past a million or more.  This is the best I've ever done offline.  But cash flow is always tight, and I doubt I'll ever get my satisfaction levels into the green (81%+) and I expect to keep them around 60% forever.

My main online city during my free trial reached something like 600k population too, and on the last day of my free trial, that city was also pulling in +300k from water exports - ten times the surplus cash flow income as my offline solo mode city of the same size - because the economy is so much better online.  I have technical difficulties paying for the PO right now, but hopefully later this week I'll be able to get past that and get back into the online game.

[Palpatine001 57]

Errr Moderators can we move the thread to General Discussion please