Just Need The Right Advice

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Well I've been playing the game for a while now but still haven't completed anything yet. I've tried numerous strategies to my liking but always end up with my sims not having enough jobs.

I've tried a multitude of strategies to my knowledge and somehow I get stymied. When it comes to neighbor cities, the land size somewhat throws me off. For instance, if I have a Medium sized city next to two small sized cities, then what should the purpose of the small cities be? Should they be the same purpose? Should I make the Medium sized city for Residential and Commercial, and the two small cities Industrial?

Sorry if it all doesn't seem clear. Basically, if a city is supposed to serve a purpose then how well could one accomplish that? And what is the best taxing system to use? Because once your Education go up, as well as health, R$$$ takes of the map and cause tons of trouble. I've even tried making a poor R$ city just with a few R$$ citizens and things still ended up bad.

Please help anyone

[Cottoncandy Cyanide 145]

Unfortunately, I don't really understand the problem all that much but, I'll try to be as helpful as possible.

PURPOSE

* Well, for anything really. If its just for the medium cities jobs then why not? If its just to manufacture goods then why not?

* Don't really know if this is true but, I heard if you make one R$ and R$$ city and repel the R$$$ and, in your other neighboring city do the exact opposite, you get fantastic results. Or so I heard.

Sorry if I didn't help.

[ShadeSigma 16]

No it does help. So are you saying if I want to make a R$ and R$$ city, still tax R$$$ very high? Then make one just for the R$$$ city? But what should go in the R$$$ city? High Tech and Office Jobs?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, I've been playing since the game came out in 2003 so for what it is worth:

1. City specialization does work, but it is like continuously pushing rocks up hill like Sisyphus. The game isn't designed to allow this easily.
   
   
2. The city tile size is irrelevant to getting a profitable city going.
   
   
3. Large population is only one goal, and it is not necessary as a goal at all.
   
   
4. The game is like a large canvas on which you paint your cities, towns, villages and farming communities. All can be on the same tile.
   
   
5. Go for balance. Once I have a city profitable, I try to keep a general population going such that C+I = R/2 approximately. The demographic model is middle America of the 2000s, with mama at home raising the kids.
   
   
6. Lately I've been starting at a pair of crossed streets with a power plant in one corner and a water plant in the other. Having water from the start gets you better buildings. I then lay down some 2 x 1 C single occupancy lots (about eight) then enough 2 x 1 low density R lots until there is employment in all the commercial businesses. While all this is going on, you might make enough profit to allow some public services like fire, police and health. Education can wait a bit. Expand as indicated. I add farms before industry, and usually industry doesn't come in until I am good and ready to fund the power and water to keep it happy. All cities grow from villages like this, eventually.
   
   
7. Play on Turtle, not Cheetah. It is more fun, and you get to see all the animation.
   
8. I always play on Hard difficulty. It keeps the advisors down.
   

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I'm so used to specialization myself. Like, for now, I'm starting a new region. I'm starting at the northeast corner of the map. City 1 is a small tile. Under City one is City 2 also a small tile. They are adjacent to a medium tile which is City 3. What I was planning to do is, make City 1 and 2 Industrial cities and use city 3 for R$ and R$$, with commercial jobs. I thought this could eventually propel me to have a decent R$$$-based town for my 4th city. Would all this be wrong?

Thanks a lot for the replies I appreciate them dearly.

[Meg 368]

Start by zoning a lot of small farms. Keep doing that until you get the Farmer's Market. It is a great cap buster and you will have a nice chunk of cash. Destroy the farms, one at a time, as needed to build your city.

[Next_rim 1]

There are few uses for adjacent tiles I found in the game:

1) Trash bins - put dirty coal powerplants and trash burning factories there to eat up your trash and supply you power. Pollution doesn't travel between tiles, so you export pollution. Use small tiles for this because you only need couple squares to fit those 4x4 plants, one road and a power line. This is kind of cheating though, and I dislike doing it despite it being very efficient.

2) Job hubs. Put a highway connection into an adjacent city and just zone it with tonnes of I/C zones.

3) It's easier to manage traffic if you specialize tiles. For a 3-tile play that I'm doing right now, I have 1x R-C-I tile (mainly R and C), 1x 100% I tile and 1x 100% C tile. Works very well so far. You can make a 100% C or 100% I zone completely self-sustainable, but it's very hard to make a 100% residential zone and make it self-sustainable in terms of money (poll booths, but it's so broken, I wouldn't do it personally to keep up the challenge).

[ShadeSigma 16]

Thanks a lot guys. I'm going to try to start my region back up again. Root for me because I'm going to try my best on these. Any more suggestions just keep telling me because I'll need them.