Casinos! NEED HELP!

[SovietDarkness 1]

I have been having an extremely hard time with casinos. First of all, the measurements of profits/loss go up and down like a roller coaster and with a city of 200K people my sc-fi casino has been loosing $14K a day... I have a municipal airport with a bunch of medium/wealthy tourists arriving daily, relatively OK traffic issues, and my city is operating fine otherwise (no major crime/health/fire problems). For anyone who has successfully built up a casino city, what factors go into making sure casino's churn a profit (and even break even in most cases). What strategy do you use for them? 

[SirChick 184]

I too noticed this in the BETA. Am unsure on what is needed to increase profits, at first they made profit then they made huge losses once i added trains and airports and seaport.... it was very odd....

 

Maybe add more tourism buildings? Either that or theres a flaw with how they programmed it.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

The tourism industry is one of the hardest ways to make money in SimCity 2013. You need to have plenty of entertainment, passenger capacity, commercial areas, and regional population. The international airport doesn't hurt either. Middle wealth stadium events also help.

--Ocram

[Xenocity 343]

Also you need a decent transportation grid.

Ferries and airports help.

 

But most of all you need a buses with low wait times.

[SovietDarkness 1]

I've kind of come to the conclusion from reading/looking at other people's experiences that all the casino's are bugged and will have to be fixed with a patch. Rather pathetic in my opinion that EA couldn't even have gotten an entire branch of city specialization even somewhat ready for launch... I guess that's what happens with EA games... *sigh*

[PeterLloyd 11]

I've kind of come to the conclusion from reading/looking at other people's experiences that all the casino's are bugged and will have to be fixed with a patch. Rather pathetic in my opinion that EA couldn't even have gotten an entire branch of city specialization even somewhat ready for launch... I guess that's what happens with EA games... *sigh*

Just because somebody can't play the specialization  it doesn't mean EA didn't make it correctly. I am guessing by the way you wrote it that you have yet to play the game or play with the gambling mechanic. If so, how the hell can you have an opinion on something you have yet to experience? 

[Zpike 79]

The casinos actually pull turists from other cities in your region.  If you don't have any other cities in your region then you wont make any money with your casinos.

 

At least, that's what I'v found so far.   I could be wrong of course, but that almost never happens.

 

I tried an experiment and made one city in a region with no neighbors.  I built it up to where I had lots of high end residential and hi tech business.  I planted a casino and never made a dime.  I added some ladmarks and never got any tourists to come to the city.

 

So I built another city and connected it via boat, train, and the regional bus.  Guess what.... All the sudden my casino was making money and I had some tourists.

 

Note: I did find a bug.  When I placed my casino on the beach by a road I noticed that it sat away from the road a bit.  Also, when I placed the plopables they could not figure out where the casino was and would not "snap" to the side of it when I was placing them.  That casino never made a dime at all.... Ever.  I think they have some routing and placement issues still to be fixed.

[SovietDarkness 1]

@Peter, I'm a huge fan of the game but still have my frustrations with it... I have a city of 200K with everything going well (read my original post) and for some reason after TREMENDOUS effort I'm unable to come up with any sort of profit with Casinos (so has everyone according to this post). I've shelled out $400K trying to go down the casino city specialization route and have had no luch whatsoever with this or past cities. Just trying to ask the community for help/thoughts  - don't type up aggressive posts without even reading the thread

 

@ Zpike Thanks! - I'll be sure to try that!

[Zpike 79]

Just so you know... I am making money with my casino city now.  Last I looked it was making about 8k a month.

 

Four casinos and all are profitable.

 

Three other cities in the region all connected to the grid via boat, regional bus, and train,.  I also have two other cities with airports and my casino city has an airport.  I had just put the airports down when I went to bed last night though so I don't know how thats going to work yet...

 

Oooo.... just had a thought... (scary I know)  I wonder if airports from other cities in the same region but outside the four connected cities will bring in tourists?

[Trooth 22]

I started a city and got it to 125k and had no room for an airport so I started a second city and decided to the casino route.  With less than 5k pop, I had no problem getting tourists for the casinos.  I had 3 casinos but the SciFi one was still losing money last I played.  I think zpike is right.  You may want to go and build a few large cities first and then seed money to a casino city to get it going quickly.  I am still inn the experimentation stage so I don't know for sure.

[MINIggy03 227]

When you're just starting out, focus on the wealth levels in your city.  No point in plopping middle class hotels and attractions if there are hardly any in your city or in the region.  I find placing a lot of cheap hotels/attractions brings in more business early on and then expanding as your cities and regions wealth develops.  

[tkjones01 0]

     LOL!! These posts bragging about their casino city is working just fine bla bla bla are talking about those cheap little ones with couple stacked rooms. They generate 20K perday each at most. Which means NOTHING! I had those working with a population of 5k. THAT IS NOT A CASINO CITY! I'm talking about multiple slik casinos decked to the top floor and multiple "elegant casinos" that are suppose to generate 300K per day each if not more.

     Here is why the casino city is bugged. Most (95%) tourists skip casinos that are specifically targeted t      owards their wealth. I have no transportation problems or population problems. I have had around 45,000 tourists perday. The casinos are not filling up. or have radical jumps to full and nothing within hours(game time). Lodgers in Casinos also acting radically, tourists lodged in a casino is not suppose to be in and out within hours. I have casinos right outside of stadiums and tourists traps and thousands of tourists walk right pass a casino entrance without giving a glance.

     On the other hand I have one city with 4 slik casinos making 70K per hour 12 horus a day. I get tourist with two pro stadiums and they fill up the casinos at night (which is when u make money) They all leave by 2 airports that I have, VIA taxi. Again very radical jumps in attendence but works. So at best the Casino city is highly unstable to build which is the same as BUGGED!! So unless you have got multiple elegant casinos running with full profit shut your trap nubs.

[Lxxseven 0]

OK, READ ALL THAT IS HERE, AND NOW I WANT TO ADD SO STATS AND SEE WHAT YOU ALL THINK:
My Regional population is 300k with a Great Works Arcology that is maxed out with 1,000,000 ppl.+
My gambling city has 29k ppl. because only about 30% is res. and about 50% is com. the rest is ind. I have about 450,000 tourist! I know it seems crazy, but I can’t make a dime on gambling. I have 2 small ones going that pull a little profit but won’t max out, and I have built and rebuild all the other ones. I gave this city 10 million to start it off and it's tanking hard.

My transportation is great and land value is great, because most of my overheads are those two at about $10k. Daily bus riders 46k. Daily street car riders 43k. (Have no water on this land) Only 220 plane riders daily. I don’t understand why my tourist don’t gamble more, because I have about 1160 max available ppl I can have in my casinos, I have only 350… How is that with 29k ppl living in my place, and 431,478 tourist in the month of March.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

 

[perafilozof 143]

Your tourist court must be bugged. 

 

Press F5, then C and screenshot the city, post it here.

[TuPhat 27]

450,000 tourists or visitors?   Where are getting this number from?

[Lxxseven 0]

Your tourist court must be bugged. 

 

Press F5, then C and screenshot the city, post it here.

It is bugged, The city is now gone, and can't be loaded into... In region view when you click on it now, now mayor window appears, so there is no load button to get into it... now my region only has 3 areas I guess... Time to start over I guess. Hard to enjoy the game EA, even when I really want to.

[Lxxseven 0]

450,000 tourists or visitors?   Where are getting this number from?

Clicked on population, and checked out the numbers by month. The daily was smaller indeed, but I did more trouble shooting before I lost the city, so here is what I saw. I got 2 large casinos up and running (the medium class and high class) and the only people visiting them were high wealth.  They would be about 50%-75% full on those people only. Medium and low wealth was not going to them, and the overhead was too high to pull profits. Now my university was booming with lots of visiting people @ 1900ppl when my city pop had less than 25k. Again 50% of my town was commercial and booming with high wealth and they were happy. Great hotels and such… tourism would seem it was working just fine…

Can’t do much more to look at the data any more seeming as it bugged out on me now.  

[perafilozof 143]

 

450,000 tourists or visitors?   Where are getting this number from?

Clicked on population, and checked out the numbers by month. .  

 

 

That shows visitors in total, not tourists.

[TuPhat 27]

 

 

450,000 tourists or visitors?   Where are getting this number from?

Clicked on population, and checked out the numbers by month. .  

 

 

That shows visitors in total, not tourists.

 

 

This ^^

 

Lxxseven, this is reason why I asked where you were getting the numbers from.    The population tab shows vistiors, which includes workers, shoppers and students, not tourists.   The massive number of 450,000 is no doubt from the Arcology, but doesn't help fund your casinos.   To get tourism numbers, click on the Culture tab from the City Specialization menu.   This may partially explain why things didn't make sense for you.

 

I'm sorry you lost your city.   It sucks.

[Midyin 0]

The little casinos allways seem to pan out eventually and start making money. I have a city with two roads coming in, one train, one boat, and one airport. I've put a casino as close to each one of those enterences as I could I corently have 6 little casinos in my city making money, but still can't get the Sci-fi casino to make me a dime... lol

[Xenocity 343]

The little casinos allways seem to pan out eventually and start making money. I have a city with two roads coming in, one train, one boat, and one airport. I've put a casino as close to each one of those enterences as I could I corently have 6 little casinos in my city making money, but still can't get the Sci-fi casino to make me a dime... lol

I have a ScI-FI Casino, and two sleek Casinos all swimming in money.

 

My Sci-Fi casino and first Sleek Casino are both getting over 100k per hour

My second sleek one is only getting 50k and growing at the moment

I already got the first upgrade to Casino HQ and over half way to the second HQ (about 300k per hour out of 400k needed)

 

These things help alot:

1. High Traffice area next to the Casinos
2. Land marks
3. Expo Center and/or Stadium events
4. Mass Transit connections
5. Street Cars stops and bus stops in front of the casinos
6. Good mass transit system
7. Hotels/motels
8. Decent city and region population

My casino city is over 100k+ in size with the neighboring city as big.

[Cob92 360]

The Sci-Fi Casino is useless except as a magnet to draw more tourists into the city through entertainment addons. It will never make a profit without a steady stream of medium wealth gamblers, which seems to be easier said than done. Might be that I need to increase the region population, because the main city with the casinos only has about 130K pop, and I noticed a jump in income when I built some suburbs up the highway. Going to build an international airport soon and see if that helps bring more people.

[perafilozof 143]

The Sci-Fi Casino is useless except as a magnet to draw more tourists into the city through entertainment addons. 

 

Those mods don't actually work. They don't bring in more tourists. I have tested it, and even recorded on my casino tutorial video. Total waste of money.