Making a large profit

[LivingInThePast 364]

I had a city, I named it No Cheat, in which I would make a city without cheating (no easy-money mods, no extra cash cheats), and at first, I turned the roads budget low so as to not go bankrupt. But I eventually started to make a profit, and in a rush, zoned massive amounts of new land to make more money. But I soon got to a point where I was consistently losing thousands every month. After some painful cuts and tax hikes (the latter I didn't want to do, since I wanted to use conservative politics): the roads budget was slashed, business deals were brought in, loans were made, et cetera. Eventually, I was able to get the budgets high enough so the roads weren't potholed and the clinics weren't consistently striking. However, it's still not perfect. Nearly all of the income that IS profit is business deals (casino, toxic waste dump, max security prison, missle testing range, army base). I can't afford neat things like high capacity elementary schools or anything like that because I don't make enough money. Crime is medium throughout town, (the airport seems to create a rather disproportionate amount of crime), there's still major traffic jams (traffic is handled under NAM), and there's still not enough clinics or schools to go around. I don't want to tax everyone at 10% (that's too high, I'd like to cut them to pre-crisis levels). Next up on the budget is getting rid of the toxic waste dump, but let's face it: I need money! (right now, the population is about at 50,000).

  Edited September 3, 2011 by LivingInThePast  

[TekindusT 3,809]

Following the theory of slow but steady growth (A Nonny Moose is his theorist, you may take a look to his tutorial [link]), your first mistake, and something that has happened to me sometimes, is growing a lot too early in the game. Massive zoning leads to a huge necessity of services (power, water, hospitals, schools) that the covered districts aren't capable of sustaining by themselves because they're not yet densely populated.

When this situation comes, the solution (more or less painful depending on your political views) is increasing taxation until you're out of the hole and checking every expenditure. De-zoning districts and cutting services can be a tough decision for your sims, but they're sims after all... Have you remembered to lower the power plant funds? Power plants funding has to be tightly tied with your city size because power plants demand an awful lot of money since the first stages of your city.

  Edited September 3, 2011 by TekindusT  

[LivingInThePast 364]

Following the theory of slow but steady growth (A Nonny Moose is his theorist, you may take a look to his tutorial [link]), your first mistake, and something that has happened to me sometimes, is growing a lot too early in the game. Massive zoning leads to a huge necessity of services (power, water, hospitals, schools) that the covered districts aren't capable of sustaining by themselves because they're not yet densely populated.

When this situation comes, the solution (more or less painful depending on your political views) is increasing taxation until you're out of the hole and checking every expenditure. De-zoning districts and cutting services can be a tough decision for your sims, but they're sims after all... Have you remembered to lower the power plant funds? Power plants funding has to be tightly tied with your city size because power plants demand an awful lot of money since the first stages of your city.

Well, I probably should try to scale back on neighborhoods by demolishing them (and their costly services). The problem is I would want to break even: demolishing a school or two might save cash, but I need the tax money.

Power plant is more or less maxed out. I've had to place a few windmills to supplement the growing city.

I'm technically not in any deep trouble right now, but the business deals (except for maybe the casino) have got to go. I'm making profit and don't owe money, but it's still by a string.

Increasing taxes almost seems like a certainty. I wish they had added in more revenue-enhancing ordinances (like, say, Parking Fines) and there's not a lot of room for political experimentation anyway. I long for a city-building game where you can go so far as to make a libertarian empire where even the police is contracted out to private security companies.

I did a few costly mistakes: creating a long railroad to a freight station at an industrial zone (which nobody used), an RHW bypass (which helped a lot but was too expensive to maintain), and a few other things.

But with these tips, the city size will shrink down to a more manageable level, and I can make the quality of life better. Clinics and schools won't constantly go on strike, and hey, maybe I could pass a few ordinances!

[SamCity2 0]

Yah make sure you are not overpaying anyone, i would try to refrain from placing civics other than education until you have a steady income. Something i found out recently is you wont grow to higher wealth if you dont have water. If your residents grow, you make more money, which is how u make money.u will lose income if homes are abandoned due to low commute time and lack of demand, low wealth homes will not be abondoned due to lack of water, since they do not need it.

[LivingInThePast 364]

Great...right now, even though they get more than enough money and there are just enough clinics and hospitals to the city, hospitals and schools are still striking! I don't understand. I should just DEMOLISH every clinic and hospital to fire those whiny jerks: that's what I get for having socialized medicine, anyway...

[Evillions 552]

If you are using Easy difficulty, it would be pretty easy without cheating considering that you have patience. I never tried medium or hard difficulties, I have yet to try those.

[Ltw 401]

Great...right now, even though they get more than enough money and there are just enough clinics and hospitals to the city, hospitals and schools are still striking! I don't understand. I should just DEMOLISH every clinic and hospital to fire those whiny jerks: that's what I get for having socialized medicine, anyway...

Are all your hospitals/schools having a capacity which is too low? I experience that there are schools which have too much money and schools which have not enough money. Going through all my finances and cutting at some budgets and gaining the budget for other schools results in lower costs while every school has enough capacity. It may be time consuming and boring but it helps.

[UncleSim 2]

Do you have many (any?) tollbooths? Since adding these to my cities, I've had HUGE surpluses become the norm. I like to start a new city (on Hard setting, of course) in a corner between 2 developed cities, and just connect the avenues/roads, put toll booths on them, and watch the money roll in off the cross-traffic, until I have enough to build right, and residential is the last thing I add. I have added some higher-capacity tollbooths and subway stations to reduce congestion, but these are not necessary to make money - you can use the default units.

[Cob92 360]

Making profits is easy; just skimp on services. When I build a new city, the only thing I set up is an elementary school. No police, no fire department, no hospital, nothing else. Bulldoze the airport, you don't need it. Tear down every nonessential civic building. When you zone an area, don't put in anything except maybe a basic school and then power and water services. Don't spend money on hospitals and stuff like that until you have a FAT surplus to pay for it. I haven't had a city go bankrupt in years following this strategy.

[Wiecher 192]

My strategy was to have higher taxes for R$$$, medium for R$$ and low taxes for R$, because there are more poorer and middle class people than rich people. So to attract the masses, I set taxes for lower incomes to about 7% and tax for the rich to the default 9%. That way, a lot of citizens moved to the city, because of the low taxes, while you wouldn't scare the rich away, as their tax is still default.

More people generate more income, and the R$ demand less parks, universities and expensive stuff like that.

And then I set a minimum budget for myself, say, 100.000. I only built something when I would have at least 100.000 on the bank after it, for example, if I had 110.000 I could buy something that was 10.000, but not something that is 20.000. And when I made a lot of profit and hit the 200.000 mark, that would become the new minimum, and so on.

[Linoa06 1,374]

Eraze the city and begin again with less conservative policies

Build real slow, build up enough cash (I suggest 3x speed as soon as you get profits) - do not bother with zoning or schooling for a good 20 years..then build schools, expand slowly, x1 speed of course, more schools, then hospitals, micromanage their budget - and don't blame socialized medicine thank you, if it isn't sad to deny people basic health care - and when you get a 10k profit, you can certainly begin with higher density and defining a proper downtown with more density, and beginning with fire stations and police stuff only where and when needed.

And be patient, Rome wasn't built in a day.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Here are a couple of my illustrations that may give you some ideas.

http://www.ezlink.ca/~jwinterton/BasicTutorial/BasicTutorial.html

http://www.ezlink.ca/~jwinterton/Fisherman%27sBay/Welcome%20to%20Fisherman%27s%20Bay.html

These are pretty basic, but they make a point. You don't need to build a huge city off the mark. Little villages on a large tile can be allowed to grow together in a natural way. You just have to be careful, and take your time. Start in low gear, think each move through.

Generally, I run in hard mode and use the moolah command from extra cheats dll library to set my treasury to 500000. "Thou shalt no bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain." or it takes money to make money.

[cogeo 960]

Never had a problem balancing the budget, actually my cities have big surpluses, and I'm not using any "money-tree" stuff. Finding the game incredibly easy to play, I have made a mod that sets the start-up funds to zero, for the "hard" economic level, so that I can only start with a loan. I only take one loan of $1000, and develop the city with just this. If you are interested in this strategy, take a look at this post.

Not signing any business deal, providing a full-range education (elementary + high school, college, library, museum) and health, high (and improving) EQ & HQ, rising population and wealth, high demand and huge budget surpluses. Yes this is possible!

Now lets see how to make profits. First off, check the custom content you have installed. Many buildings are awfully modded, eg they produce enormous quantities of garbage, consume a lot of water, pay very few or too many taxes and so on. So we are talking about custom content modded similarly or proportionately to their Maxis counterparts. Many civic downloads (eg hospitals) are very cheap to run (cheaty), and I mod them to be proportional to the Maxis ones.

Then check if you can increase revenues:

- Set taxes to 9% (initially, and for a city of up to 150,000), or to the neutral rate for your city size. Do not expect that you will get big growth if you set your taxes lower, it will give you some few more buildings, but that's all.

- Zone for some more medium- and low-density development, not just hirises, especially for R. The bigger the buildings, the more the taxes paid of course, but the less the taxes per occupant! That is the same people will pay fewer taxes, if they are housed in a big building, instead of two smaller buildings. On the other hand, bigger buildings consume less power and produce less garbage per occupant too, however the difference in tax revenue is incredible.

- Check your utilities, ie try to fund and utilise them at about 100% capacity (except for power plants, which must be operated at 75-80%, otherwise they wear out fast); sell the excess production, and reduce funding only if this is impossible. NEVER import garbage, esp if you have a landfill, unless you have a W2E plant. Some suggest set funding of the W2E plants to 0 (it still burns garbage but generates no electricity), but this is clearly a cheat, plus you won't have power to sell.

- If your city has some areas of higher conentration of poulation and/or jobs, putting in some MT stations, even buses (did you check RTMT?), esp if this involves some medium-to-long commute, eg intercity, can be a BIG source of income. It will help development too.

Finally see how to reduce expenses:

- Health and Education: Set funding so that capacity equals (or slightly exceeds) patients/students. You can also save a lot from reducing ambulabce/bus funding. I set it to 0 and use large hospitals and schools - the covarage radius is still big enough.

- Fire & Police: These do not respond well to changes in funding, and they will strike even with a slight funding reduction. So place them carefully, and only if they are absolutely necessary and you have a strongly posirive budget.

- Power plants: These cannot be profitable in SC4, due to wrong cost calculation (you get only 10% margin, but you can operate them only at 75-80% of the capacity), so don't bother. Sell the excess production if you can, otherwise reduce funding as needed. If you need more power, check if you can import some, before building new plants.

- Water: You cannot play with funding here, because pipes wear fast. Again, examine all deal posibilities. If you have excess production which you can't sell, it simply goes waste.

- Garbage: Landfills are extremely costly to upkeep ($3.3/ton), and furthermore a bug in the game won't let you charge a rate any close to the real cost! So don't import garbage if you have a landfill, it will cost you dear in the mid-term. Recycling centres are the most expensive form of garbage disposal, costing you $350 a month for reducing your trash by 18 tons, ie some $20/ton, which is unjustifiable by any measure. Don't know, find another way to dispose your trash, eg a neighbour deal using the neighbour's landfill (not only will take your garbage on the cheap, in addition the landfil won't really get any trash, as long as you don't "run" that city) - but this, ie exploiting a bug is a "cheat" isn't it?

Hope this helps.

[lowbart 2]

A few years ago I decided to stop using cheat demand mods, and forced myself to learn how to run the cities legitimately. I sometimes end up running in the red for year or two here and there, but I haven't had a city blow through its whole budget when I was actually paying attention. Here are some things that worked for me:

- Residential taxes should be at least slightly progressive so that you get some benefit from building schools, hospitals, etc. When a block or a neighborhood turns over from R$ to R$$ it will be a relief and you can upgrade your services.

- You can skimp a lot on police and fire stations. Industrial areas should always have fire stations, but houses don't really catch fire that much. You don't need the whole city to be covered by police precincts either. If you're not getting messages complaining about crime, you're fine.

- Build plenty of parks and slash the parks & rec budget. I ran my most recent city with the parks budget at HALF until serious development started in the downtown and my revenue ballooned. Buildings like the mayor mansion, city hall, museums will give you nasty messages if the maintenance funding is cut, but statues, parks, and plazas won't.

- If you're on a large map, make several separate towns (with shared electricity and water) and put commercial in the middle.

- Force your freight trucks to pay tolls as they leave the map. This is a really useful source of revenue early on. Don't use the big seaport until your finances are stabilized.

- Pick a number like $100,000 and make that your "rainy day fund". That's your capital, cut services any time your net income is negative and you go below it so that you can recover.

- Water and power outages are MUCH more disruptive than education and medical strikes. Prioritize and give them each a buffer. Remember that power plants start wearing out after a few years. Remember that power outages can also cut off your water pumps!

- You don't -really- need to deal with garbage until you have medium density development. Waste-to-energy plants don't become cost-effective until that time either, because they have a high monthly cost and make more energy than you can probably use. Considering the amount of garbage they deal with, it's more like they are burning dollar bills for electricity. BUT, you can externalize all those problems by building it in a neighboring city. There's a conservative policy for you!

[rweather5 22]

I've had a problem where I had a huge profit, but suddenly, I was in the red. Eventually I found out my water pumps were old and costing a lot of money. If you destroy those a replace them, your expenses should go down a lot. This may also happen with power plants.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I've had a problem where I had a huge profit, but suddenly, I was in the red. Eventually I found out my water pumps were old and costing a lot of money. If you destroy those a replace them, your expenses should go down a lot. This may also happen with power plants.

"Here's a howdy do" - Sir William S. Gilbert

If you still have a couple of hundred grand in your treasury here is a solution. You need both of these lots.

Lotsa water

Tons of power

An expensive but permanent solution.

[goodyou 0]

I did a few costly mistakes: creating a long railroad to a freight station at an industrial zone (which nobody used), an RHW bypass (which helped a lot but was too expensive to maintain), and a few other things

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I did a few costly mistakes: creating a long railroad to a freight station at an industrial zone (which nobody used), an RHW bypass (which helped a lot but was too expensive to maintain), and a few other things

Rail is cheap if used right. Mostly I terminate my freight rail at a seaport (Pegasus CDK). I have found, however, that RHW is far too much civil engineering to be taken lightly. You really, really have to want a U.S. Interstate highway system to use RHW. I am far to casual a player to want all that work.

The clue with freight rail is to run the rails in spurs right through your industrial pods. Plants within four grid squares will load freight directly, and you can have a freight station in there somewhere to collect from the plants that are not close enough. You have the option of running the freight to a seaport (freight sink) or off the edge of the tile (another freight sink). All freight goes to the big bit bucket in the sky.

Don't be shy about placing passenger stations (on spurs as terminals) along your rail line. Rail is the cheapest mass transit there is. Caution and good planning is needed to avoid having the Sims and freight use roads by making the rail route shorter than the road route. In a residential situation, you can make jobs reachable only by rail.