Mr Tom's Trade Network

[mr-tom 2]

I'm going to use this thread to document my progress in creating a mini trade network.

The point of this is simple - trade with other players is short term, unreliable and can send your economy down the toilet.

Whilst I love the idea of developing the trade system into a stock market (which I think is the best way they could take it), MonteCristo have confirmed that for the time being, the status quo will continue.

As such, the only way to develop a stable economy will be to trade with myself.

So I'm on the planet offer, which will allow me 5 cities.

I'm going to need one for heavy industry.  May as well have that on a map with massive oil resources.  Sea links would be a plus for freight.  Also intend to stick waste and electricity here.  This place won't be ideal.  Rich people will refuse to live there.  The poor might, too.  I'll need to segregate the living and working zones and have a highway between the two.  Where richer people are required for higher density heavy industry and manufacturing, they may need to be transported into the city from others so I need to be prepared for this.

Having all the nasties in one place means that I can have 4 very clean cities.  I will have a single low density plot of each of heavy industry and manufacturing in each of the 4 clean cities in order to prevent the penalties that come from having nothing at all, but my production will be negligable.  I'm also going to have a holiday hotel in each - Matthew let on that you can do this even in cities with no holiday resources as long as they are clean and you have lots of parks.

To get the maximum resource multiplication bonusses, I'm going to focus my cities, so after the heavy industry, oil, waste and power city, the remaining 4 will be:

• holidays
• water
• food
• spare - I'll see how the overall resource balance goes and will use this city to make up shortfall.

I'm probably also going to need to work out relative production costs, consumption ratios etc although in reality unless I find a good resource, this will probably be trial and error, hence the "open" 5th city slot.

You'll notice that I've really only listed "map resources" rather than going into offices etc.  That's something I need to think more about and plan better but I suspect I may end up focussing these to some extent as well as I want to get the reward buildings that will again produce significant multipliers and benefit the cities.

I'll be trading resources between cities for one credit each as this will make everything affordable and ensure that deals are less likely to fail.  My only concern is that I could therefore be trading the resources at less than cost, but if all 5 cities are doing it synergically, then the net effect should balance.  I hope.

Once I've started setting things up, I'll post planet and city details.  I'll be keen to hear what you think and any tips that will prevent me aking huge mistakes.

And yes, this does kind of defeat the point of the planet offer, but that's the only way I can trade and frankly other deals just seem too unreliable to me, plus this will be an interesting experiment.

I also seem to have about a million megastructures available to build, so it will be interesting to see how my trade can make these work.

Finally, when the cities are mature, I'd like to be in the position of having a surplus which I can use to improve the planet.  This isn't as simple as giving stuff away as this will cause problems for players who rely on sales for income, so I need to work out what I can do without messing things up for other people.  Maybe I will supply resources for megastructures or something like that.

Just thoughts.

Looking forward to seeing what you all think.

Future posts will be shorter.  And have pictures.  Honest.

[mr-tom 2]

OK, so cities set up on Hyperion.

Foundry: Heavy Industry, Oil, Power, Waste, Manufacturing

Aquae: Water, Offices, Executives

Plenty: Food, will be Shakespeare pack

Citadel: Holidays, High Tech, Elites

The latter three are previous attempts, each has an economy which will grow no further without trade.

Foundry used to exist on the 3 valleys map, but I've bulldozed it and started again on the Rocky Desert, which gives space to build. I've had to give in on my desire to put a harbour here as there are no 3* Oil maps with enough water.

Citadel is nestled high in the mountains and generates some of its own electricity. The holidays are the variety that the Ski Gem will enhance

Plenty is situated in some highly fertile wetlands and almost all of the map will be turned over to food production. I'm still experimenting with silo layout and am wondering what proportion of a particular farm has to be within the radius of effect of the silo in order for it to get the production bonus. I'm thinking maybe of some sort of wheel effect with hubs at the centre.

Aquae is a city with some difficulties and isn't currently making money.

Yesterday I focussed on developing Foundry and it is now a good size, over 250k people. It is short of water, holidays, high tech and offices, so I'm not planning to do much until I've fixed some of the other cities. Whilst it's pumping out massive amounts of manufacturing, it's only holding its own with electricity, fuel, waste and heavy industry.

There will be a quick fix tonight - I'm going to visit Aquae and increase water production, whilst killing all manufacturing and half the heavy industry, which should help the city to recover. Once I've got heavy industry in Foundry back on track, Aquae will lose the rest of its heavy industry and will benefit from some trade deals. Likewise I'm going to increase the quota in Citadel, which will give me more to trade. At the same time, I will probably also boost Offices there and in Aquae as these are badly needed in Foundry.

Going forward, I'll be trying to balance city growth to minimise these problems.

I anticipate that eventually people will start to leave Foundry as Heavy Industry etc make the air black and I've installed a small airport in anticipation of the need to transport people to work. I expect that for elites, this will happen very soon.

My final problem is that of killer traffic. I'm trying to alleviate this by using Grand Avenues side by side, likewise expressways although these don't seem to be very customisable. Expect to hear more about this.

Pictures very soon, I promise!

- Changed my definitions to put high tech in Citadel and offices in Aquae - I love the idea of a high tech alpine holiday resort.  Also added executives and elites as export items as these won't stay in Foundry for long.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

You cannot import workers, they can only be used by megastructures unless this has been changed. My advice is to build low and medium density heavy industry and low density manufacturing industry. Small offices are OK, just make sure that you do not require executives or elites in any polluted cities. I would also recommend that you put in medium and large offices and high tech industry in Aquea so you can have elites there. I would also recommend a few medium offices in Citiadel.

[mr-tom 2]

Thanks Ilikeseattle.

I may come somewhat unstuck then as I've gone high density with both manufacturing and heavy industry.

What's odd is that you can certainly trade in people, so it seems strange not to be able to use them? So hoping it has been changed.

Will test that soon no doubt.

The good news is that I rescued Aquae last night. Mentioned previously that the economy was in the toilet. That's all now fixed with one exception. Despite demolishing everything that causes air pollution (except a couple of waste processing places) and having a city map which looks pretty much pollution free, I'm still getting the message that high tech industry is being affected by air pollution! Played it all evening and this didn't go away. Hoping I don't have to bulldoze the whole city and start again, although I'll probably end up doing that once mass transit is released as it's one of my earlier attempts and transport is a nightmare.

Tonight I'll be fixing one of the other cities but may have to drop into Foundry to increase power and waste output.

[mr-tom 2]

Further progress "fixing" economies:

Citadel now produces a surplus of holiday and high tech

Foundry now produces a surplus of manufacturing, heavy industry, power, fuel, waste

Next steps:

Traffic and proximity to pollution are major problems in Foundry, but the city has just got highways, so I anticipate a major restructure over the coming week

Traffic will become the biggest problem in Citadel as it was designed early on and there's no way the layout will cope, so this will likely have to be completely rebuilt. Waiting to grow a bit more first though as I'd prefer to make this coincide with a "density change". Citadel was always supposed to be beautiful and curvy, but I failed and it looks awkward and curvy. I will take the restructure as an opportunity to set out the final layout of the city.

Plenty will become more agrarian than it currently is and I'll start trying out my wheel farm idea (maximum farms per silo), I'll be adding in the Shakespeare buildings.

Aquae needs to massively boost its office and water output, likewise traffic is quite horrible and it is running into size issues, so a restructure is called for. I'm considering triangular zones.

That will probably keep me busy until the other side of next weekend!

Tom.

[mr-tom 2]

So Mayor Tom has been sick for a couple of weeks and looking after his cities has had to take a back seat.

During his recovery, he took a little time to study and as such has now achieved an expert status, meaning that he can place items in cities long before he would otherwise be able to. Whilst this isn't risk free, Tom always felt that kicking people out of their nice cottages a few weeks after they were built, in order to build high rises was somewhat inhumane and also showed a catalogue of failings in urban planning, so he is pleased to now be able to build cities the right way, first time. Although he makes no promises about traffic lights. They seem to please nobody.

Whilst Mayor Tom has a number of current commitments, he is busy masterminding his next stages of urban planning. He recently implemented a highway in Foundry and whilst he found this a painful process, fraught with demolition and rebuilding (and one stretch still isn't being used by his residents) he feels he has learned some important lessons. The next step is to chart out what Aquae will look like in the future. This plan will then be submitted for consent before building commences. He feels that to date, urban planning has been a little too haphazard.

Finally, Mayor Tom finds himself wondering about the city all-in-one stations. He can see the attraction but wonders how the costs stack up. Yet more research required, it would seem. He may have to talk to some of his counterparts. Mmmm, networking, fact finding missions in warm cities at the tax payers' expense. Ooops. Did he say that out loud?

[jochem100 0]

some screens would be great!!!!

I'm very interested if this will work. I'm not on Planet Offer yet because i will wait for some structural improvement over the solo game (more mass transit). After that i will go PO and i was planning to build an economy the same way you did.

Nice CJ keep up.. and dont go sick anymore.

[mr-tom 2]

Cool.

Mayor Tom has just been on an *ahem* fact finding trip to North Devon. Tax-payer's expense? Expenses scandals? Why, Mayor Tom is now considering flipping his home between all 5 of his cities, and he has no issues whatsoever with asking his citizens to stump up for city beautification in the form of duck islands, moat cleaning and bell towers. That's the way his cities ought to operate. If the people object, they shouldn't have moved in initially.

Any way, now he is back from North Devon, it's time for a quick update:

1 - Frustration - still nothing concrete on how the health, police, large multi's etc really work - see this thread for more info - https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=370&threadid=110186&STARTPAGE=7&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

2 - More frustration - whole city screenshots don't want to work, but he's going to have another go. In the meantime, some smaller shots will be posted

3 - Expert mode now irrevocably on. No more messing about with deleting and replacing the same zone a million times. Mayor Tom cares for his citizens.

4 - Mayor Tom has been thinking about mass transit. It will be necessary in foundry as nobody wants to live near to where they work, but how about the other cities? Why not live near to an office? So here's the concept: e.g. A big office requires 1 Qualified Worker, 3 Execs and 2 Elites. Each of the large apartment complexes holds 5 people of that type. So A block could be created from 5 high density office buildings, 1 qualified worker high density building, 3 exec high density buildings and 2 elite high density buildings. 11 Buildings total. Make that room for 6x2 and you have a spare lot for entertainment, policing, etc. This should drastically cut the need to travel and therefore remove the need for such large roads and for mass transit, which seems very pricey.

Aquae and Plenty will benefit from Mayor Tom's attention tomorrow. Screenshots will happen this time, even if the game doesn't do them well.

Quick Update - Mayor Tom has been offered the chance to host two "world class buildings" - the Rijksmuseum and St Patrick's Cathedral.  The cathedral will be added to Plenty and the Rijksmuseum has a natural synergy with Foundry, that hub of industrial excellence.

And St Pat's has vanished, so that's one less to worry about.

[mr-tom 2]

Mayor Tom has been enjoying his time on alien worlds, but on 8th May will be returning to Earth to try his skills more locally.

Watch this space.