Day 1: tips and tricks

[Mosey 1]

After 1 day, what are your early tips and tricks to pass on?

 

I will start with: bonds, use them for a train station and gambling hall (with add ons) and make the easy money fast and as soon as you can. The bigger casinos are nice but even the "basic" one makes about 10k per day.

 

Ores and mining, can be expensive but worth it if you have a nice field. Hurts like hell when the ore runs out though. Avoid the extra storage in the rading centers if the only reason you have them is to mine.

 

Coal downwind with extra stacks (clean or dirty) is far easier then wind power and the microupgrades every few MW of power.

 

Sewage areas in industrial parks. Never had anyone move their factory because it smelled like poo next door. Since you build industry downwind, that works out for both parties.

 

Upgrade your clinics to extra patient rooms as soon as you can. Once you are warned about over-crowding there are sick people everywhere and you need to destroy buildings (even high density) because of too much death. It takes months to irradicate disease and "germs" even after you have capacity and then dozens of open spots in your clinics. In fact, it never really goes away.  (BTW, getting rid of a 20 story building because of "too much death" because one guy got sick and died.... really?)

 

All I hae for now, what about you?

[Spark026 2]

From a total SImCity newb, so these should be good for new people:

 

- After power, water, and sewage build a Fire station first.  You don't want to run out of money and watch your city go up in flames in the first 30mins(Don't ask how I know...)

 

- Don't be overly proactive at solving potential crisis or you'll stagnant your income.

 

- Repeat from above post, industry and sewage downwind of everything else is a must.

 

- Add bus stops throughout your city, and your first school can serve your entire city for quite some time.

 

- To create homes for specific classes of citizens, build the appropriate lvl garden/park in the middle of that residential district.

 

- Build roads far enough from the edge of the map that the eventual high density/tech buildings can fit.  The game gives you like a "warning track" line, but depending on road type you'll want to build slightly further to the inside of it.

 

- The space needed for high density/tech buildings means you should unfortunately use curves and circles sparingly or not at all when it comes to shops and industry.  But my residentials will have curves damn it, darn the consequences!

 

- Buildings that you specifically place and are upgradable can eventually take up much more space with said upgrades. Keep this in mind before putting your eventual highest grossing businesses right next to them only to bulldoze them....

 

- If playing a solo game, you might want to start all the cities in your region close to the same time to prevent large discrepancies between the cities.  It's weird having one city in the space age, and one approaching the industrial revolution.  You can also specialize your cities much more with other cities picking up the slack in other areas.  People taking one city plot and focusing all there attention on it and ignoring the other region cities is not how this game is intended to be played, imo(for solo or multiplayer).

 

This gathered from my only two SimCity games ever.  In general, my only real gripe is that the game gives you a poor indicator of your needs for future spacing between buildings.  Something that can only be learned through experience.  

 

Other lesser gripes, that make things difficult:

 

- The road circle option would be cool, except making concentric circles is impossible, driving ocd people everywhere insane(yes....I'm one of them ).  You can almost do it if you lay two crossing perpendicular roads down first and then connect each fourth using basic "curve" roads with the "Shift" button held down aswell(but still not perfect to no avail )  Basically laying down a grid of dirt roads before you start placing your real roads is the best option for the truely ocd...lol. Bulldoze the dirt roads when your done, and you're left with almost concentric circles. Pentagonal, hexagonal, octagonal, etc. patterns are even harder to pull off with near perfect symmetry than circles.  A discussion for another day perhaps...(Creating any sort of symmetry in this game is like a mini-game within itself.  Not sure if the challenge is part of the fun or just infuriating at this point.)

 

- It also needs a cul-de-sac option for roads(unless I missed it), as roads just abruptly end(you can create a small circle but it looks dumb.  Just a small cul-de-sac that you can easily zone around.  

[Mosey 1]

Agree on Cul de Sac and circle road alignment (and placement). I went nuts because the circle road isn't cursur out in a radius but some off-center circle I had to guestimate over and over and over.

 

Also, I keep reading you can see how much each business makes but I can't seem to figure out how you do that. What do you click after you hightlight a business to see that number?

[Spark026 2]

Yeah, I'm at work so I don't remember the exact bar.  I don't think it'll show you an exact number, but I believe one of the map bar graphs will show you its wealth generated relative to all the other businesses(and also relative to whatever the game considers A LOT).

 

It'll be one of those bar graphs you select at the bottom-right of the screen though.  I don't think clicking the business gives you much of anything other than a statement of how they feel they're doing.

 

 

And back on the circle topic...It is very strange.  It seems like the game would have no problem, but once you lay your first circle, its like the game has some sorta weird magnetic/center-of-gravity to the highest density of roads already placed when trying to place the second.  Hence, the only work around is the one I described in my first post, and its not perfect.

[Baaz 0]

Trick: If you are just short of an upgrade on a building like the petrolium headquarters that takes 160,000 profit per day....  Wait till about noon and stop all exporting.  Let all your trade depots fill to the brim.  Turn trading back on at midnight.  Daily profit is midnight to midnight and those overflowing supply depots will help you push an extra 20-30 thousand out in a day.

[GoldenShadowGS 0]

I figured out how to make concentric circle roads. The trick is to use the circle tool to make one circle. Then use the curved roads(freeform) tool. Mouse over the circle road and circle guides will appear spaced apart for the perfect distance for a city block. The freeform road tool will snap to the guide, delivering a perfect concentric circle that is manually drawn.

[Towel 76]

Traffic Tip: Do not place bus stops willy nilly ... Buses actually cause traffic issues if they have to stop constantly, especially on avenues. Placing a bus stop on the right hand side close to your city entrance, when everyone wants to turn right, will cause endless traffic chaos.

 

Use bus stops sparingly, with park and rides. Focus on putting bus stops or park and rides near your residents with only a few stops along your main roads or at commercial / industrial areas. 

 

If possible, try to keep buses on the smaller roads, and not the main roads. You can do this by making the shortest distance between two bus stops on the back roads thus allowing cars to take the more efficient path on roads.

[XisBlue 3]

Good tip about the bus stops. I admit I went ballistic with mine (school and normal bus).

[GoldenShadowGS 0]

I think a better strategy is to build a square block of road that only has one connection to a main avenue. you should put your bus stops in the back of this block opposite of where the avenue connection is. This way, busses will have to go all the way in to pick up passengers, they won't be blocking traffic on your main arteries.

[Benzos4Breakfast 2]

Make sure to put your sewage outage pipe next door to your elementary school. This teaches the children early that sewage is a serious bummer and they will use the bathroom less throughout their adult lives.

[blindwaves 1]

Traffic Tip: Do not place bus stops willy nilly ... Buses actually cause traffic issues if they have to stop constantly, especially on avenues. Placing a bus stop on the right hand side close to your city entrance, when everyone wants to turn right, will cause endless traffic chaos.

 

Use bus stops sparingly, with park and rides. Focus on putting bus stops or park and rides near your residents with only a few stops along your main roads or at commercial / industrial areas. 

 

If possible, try to keep buses on the smaller roads, and not the main roads. You can do this by making the shortest distance between two bus stops on the back roads thus allowing cars to take the more efficient path on roads.

 

According to a developer, he recommends the opposite. Place on avenues and keep it off small streets. The entire thread has some useful information on streetcars. In short, don't create intersections when creating the streetcar lines.

[Towel 76]

Traffic Tip: Do not place bus stops willy nilly ... Buses actually cause traffic issues if they have to stop constantly, especially on avenues. Placing a bus stop on the right hand side close to your city entrance, when everyone wants to turn right, will cause endless traffic chaos.

 

Use bus stops sparingly, with park and rides. Focus on putting bus stops or park and rides near your residents with only a few stops along your main roads or at commercial / industrial areas. 

 

If possible, try to keep buses on the smaller roads, and not the main roads. You can do this by making the shortest distance between two bus stops on the back roads thus allowing cars to take the more efficient path on roads.

 

According to a developer, he recommends the opposite. Place on avenues and keep it off small streets. The entire thread has some useful information on streetcars. In short, don't create intersections when creating the streetcar lines.

 

So that people don't have to go digging: 

 

 

 

MaxisGuillaume 32 points

3 hours  ago

Keep buses on avenues and off smaller streets. Place bus stops on both sides of the road (so they're paired) to limit how many U-turns buses have to make.

 

 

 

Thinking about it ... I think both points are valid.

 

If you require good traffic flow on a main road, buses can cause massive congestion if you place the stop in the wrong location.

 

After the comment above however, posters still complain about traffic issues. So it's not the answer! Later on he suggests that if this happens, then you have to reduce the number of buses... We'll see!

[GoldenShadowGS 0]

Its all speculation until the game works again and we can try it out.