Environment + Industry + Civics = Headache

[n.alum 0]

So here is how I layout my roads 6x6. I am very into making a nice evenly built city. My goal is to have a huge Metropolis with high wealth residential and commercial along with high tech industry. It seems that no matter how many parks I put in BAM!!! goes my environment. So I try making a separate city with only industry. I never seemed to like this idea I want one huge mega city without going through the headache of building smaller cities. I don't know how to really set taxes at all. I don't know whether they should start out at nine or what. I try to keep my education and health capacity just above the number of patients and kids I have. I am really not sure if it is wise to make several police stations and firestations so that their radii are covering every inch of the land I have developed. I watch tutorial after tutorial unhappily (for one part because of how unneat the layout is but that is my own problem) I am unhappy with the many videos I watch because they are fuzzy and grainy and I can't see the exact way the taxes should be handled. Water pollution always seems to bite me in the ass along with air pollution hence ..but my environment seems to drop anyways. There are other things I worry about like should the school bus radii always be at its maximum (I want high education so I attract big business and high tech industry) 

Can anyone help me with these problems!?

[WiltonWarrior5 0]

dont zone for farms, and to start only use wind power. also the clean air act and automobiles emission ordinances help too

[Riot55 2]

thing is, when you have other sattelite or smaller cities they work together. The game play levels out, the mega city can support more jobs by shipping stuff out to other cities.

busses and mass transit are a must in large cities and they need to work well.

Also, having your school and hospitals just above patient capacity doesnt really allow for a 'good' education or health system, you're just covering the basics. i never go too far over, but it's good to be able to have that leeway to cut costs later if need be.

keep up with the different demands by looking at the RCI graph,

also, jack your dirty and manufacturing industry taxes WAY up and lower your high tech ones. i also give sometimes a 0.5% tax break to the rich.

[BowynAerrow 0]

If you want an all rich city then you are going to go regional and make poor and middle class cities. Poverty is usually relatively easy to accomplish. ;-)

Eat up the demand for $ and $$ in those other cities, then go back to your $$$ city and work on it until $ and $$ demands start to rise again.

Rich City Taxes:

Tax the poor about 9%, middle class about 8% and your rich 6%. For all three RCI

Farm Cities Taxes:

Poor Residential Taxes around 6%

Middle ® Class around 8%

Rich around 9.5%

Dirty industry 10%

Manufacturing 7%

Farms 4%

Middle Class 'suburbs':

Rich and Poor residential 8.5%

Middle class R 6%

Low income commercial 8%

Middle Class Commerce 6%

Rich 7.8%

Industry 8.5 if you are planning on having industry in the city itself 10% if you are going to make the sims travel to another city.

Water Pollution is mostly agricultural, however other RCI will have some. You will need to balance this out with water treatment facilities

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?p=results for water treatment facilities. I have actually seen a few really good ones that blend in with the city and have a lower price (reasonably so) with higher treatment abilities.

Air pollution comes in 2 forms.

Air pollution due to industry and structures and road pollution.

both are treated with trees. Parks do not appear to do much for road pollution. However there is the Clean Air act and various other ones that will reduce traffic pollution.

Another thing is to move away from road top traffic into the subway. This will lower traffic pollution.

Air purifying lots are on the Stex - mind these only address the pollution from industry. As far as I know there is no lot cleaning of traffic based air pollution.

There are also mods. I use the triple industry jobs mod, this triples the number of jobs that each industrial lot can hold, thus reducing the number of industrial zones/buildings by 2/3. There is or was a doubler and aquadrupler.

Schools. I have found it best  never ever tamper with the school bus radius size. I seem to never be able to set it back once I tamper with it.

When it comes to education I have found using the small school to give me my school bus radius to where the school itself is sitting on the green circle of surrounding schools spaces schools out close enough to keep the sims happy.

Do raise the global (Education and Health) for school and health services a little, this will improve the over all education of your sims.

Plan on having a couple of colleges set on opposite sides of your cities. My Sims will complain that there is not enough colleges even if you have three side by side.

[TekindusT 3,809]

@n.alum: Don't worry. My environment bar is always in the basement from the point my city goes past 10,000-20,000 sims; I usually think it must be a glitch or something weird from the game. This fact doesn't seem to matter because all my major cities are successful even when reaching 1 million inhabitants.

[n.alum 0]

I have another question...i am not making money..but using all the tips you guys have given..i should check out that industry mod..because i am getting lower and lower industry needs..my goal is obviously high tech but i only have about 15.000 ppl

[mattamillion 2]

I think you're trying to accomplish your visions of an all high wealth city too early in the game. I find that when I start a region from scratch that at the outset you have to have some I-D and I-M to create jobs in order to get people to move in and grow the region. Once you have some jobs to support Residential population, they'll likely start as R$. The effect that schools and hospitals have on Residential areas to raise the EQ level nearer to the max will take years of game time.

Improving your education system is key. Having an elementary school, HS, museum, and library with overlapping is important to help raise EQ. Also, the Opera House, Art Muesum, Main Library, Private Schools, University rewards help raise it higher more rapidly. By raising the EQ and making the city more desirable to high weath sims, it will entice R$$ and R$$$ to move in and displace the R$. You'll also get CO jobs and I-HT as well, eventually.

Ultimately, the reality is that as in real life, the truly rich are a much smaller portion of the population than R$$ or R$, so building a mega-metropolis of only R$$$ is going to be difficult. I find that mine are mostly comprised of R$$.

For pollution, I really like the "GooberGen Air Purification" lot, available on the LEX. Works on both traffic and industry.

[jcbauer34 0]

I don't remember ever having a city where the environment levels were not totally in the red and awful, I've always done everything to stop it though nothing ever seems to work.

[errantry 0]

I have been able to build 200K cities with near full environment bar. It's doable, though not necessary (or that useful).

- For air pollution, raise taxes on ID and IMT to 20% to push them out of the city. Have a good mass transit system. Enact clean air act and automobile emission act. Build powerplants in corners and box them with trees (or build/download a cleaner powerplant from STEX. FYI, the Maxis solarplant is stupid. No way you can gather that much energy in that small area.).

- For water pollution, connect your pipe system with the water purification plant. Also, water purification plant seems to have a radius limitation, so build them to cover all areas.

- Have proper garbage disposal. Have a recycling plant to cut down on amount of garbage zone needed, or build incinerators and box them with trees.

- Put trees in all empty places. Less important, but helpful.