Help a newb to big cities out!

[Kaushad 3]

The Problem:

I have 3 cities, an industry city where I keep my dirty and manufacturing, a high tech city, where I keep most of my HT industry, and a big city where I keep most of my residents, commercial, and some of my ht. I have a surplus of no job zots, and little money, trying to keep up with the overwhelming demand for everything(seriously, 5000-6000 across the board, no cheats) I am having money troubles, and loads of NJZs. Should I build a separate city for commercial? Should I do all cities like this from now on? I am used to sub 50000 residents, but now I have nearing 100,000. I need help to ready myself for the big leagues of large realistic cities.

Thanks in advance

-Kaushad

[JohnTheMutt 3]

I built this city (4 million +) as an experiment quite a few years ago (2007)... it was on hard setting and no mods. I apologize for not having a screenshot of my region...it's actually pretty important and I can't understand why I don't have a picture of it...

This is the only tile which had residential. All others abutted it and created demand/supply. But if I recall, to help with the money problem I built quite a few toll booths (have to be careful with this as it slowed commute times and thats a critical factor I believe) to capitalize on the heavy traffic between cities and on the roads. The hard part was paying for all the expensive infrastructure and maintenance. You can also cut services and raise taxes for awhile to generate funds on fastest time setting. It's important to build a big city patiently and don't starve yourself of capital.

Can everyone get to work? That's usually a big tricky issue for an un-modded SC4 game, especially for region play across tiles...they are only willing to travel so far...

There's all kinds of oddities found when building large cities and populations.

Perhaps you could provide some screenshots and we can see how you are laying your region and cities out to get a better idea of what might be happening...

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Trying to balance the game across this situation is fraught with difficulties. The neighbour connections must be very high capacity or high in number in order to make the commute easier. There is a penalty in commute time for intercity passage. On a plugin-free, no cheating situation, I would be hard pressed to make this work initially.

You don't say whether you are playing on easy, medium or hard. I always play on hard because that's the way the original game was set up. In any case, you have to avoid outrunning your money in each city. If your industrial cities have no residents you may have trouble making ends meet. Try adding a few industrial tenements (high-density residential) next to your dirty industry. $ Sims will live anywhere and you need the revenue.

One of the most important things to learn here is that all cats are gray in the dark. The game is programmed for balance of zone types in one tile. By separating them you have an uphill battle.

[Cobra_nVidia 30]

Without a screenshot I don't know how much help I can be.

1. What are the populations of commercial you have?

(CS$ CS$$, CS$$$, CO$$, CO$$$) If you have all your commercial in one city the lower wealth (CS$, CS$$) will get replaced by higher wealth (CS$$$, CO$$, CO$$$) as your EQ or residents rises. There may be too little or no low wealth commercial left. New sims (who start off with 0 EQ) will have "no job zots" if they want to work at CS$ or CS$$ and it isn't there.

2. What are you spending money on?

When i first started the game, I had trouble balancing the budget because I was spending too much on education. You don't need full coverage for each type of building (elementary/high school, library) you just need to cover the residential zones with some combination (i.e. if you have an area covered by a high school, don't build an elementary school or library in that area) I've heard you can gain full EQ eventually even with just libraries, but I've never tried it and never had to.

  Edited August 4, 2012 by Cobra_nVidia  

[Kaushad 3]

I figued it out, but it was so late in the city that I would just start a new one.

My sims went to work in a city 2 tiles away(I have NAM) and that solved most of the issues. but it became very hectic verry fast so I figured that I'd just start over.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

The game involves an exercise in problem solving and therefore learning. Congratulations.