100K Population

[bjl707 4]

My city topped 100K Sims last night.  This is my first city, and I did make some mistakes so far as planning out where things would go, but the city looks decent and the sims are happy.  I'm starting to get a few skyscrapers too.  One thing that I don't like is how many water towers and sewage outlets I've had to build.  They are all over the place.  I don't have the department of utilities yet, so I can't build the water pump station or the sewage treatment plant yet.  Hopefully, they will eliminate the need to have so many sewage outlets and water towers.  I built a second city just to supply water and to dump sewage, but even that seems to not be enough.  My fire department is maxed out, but I do get the occasional complaint about fire.  I'm letting that ride for now.  I may volunteer some trucks from my second city if I need to.  Most of my streets are high density, but I haven't installed street car avenues yet.  Mostly because I don't have the money right now.  I've been slowly upgrading the high school instead.  I'm pretty much out of room, so I'm going to have to start rezoning and redrawing some roads. 

 

What's the most population everyone else has gotten so far?  Any tips or things to keep in mind as my city continues to grow? 

[nhgriffith 179]

My highest population city is to 120k. I've reached this population without even using the entire map. About 1/4th of the map has oil underneath it, and I marked a square off so I wouldn't build residential over it. I haven't developed this square at all (nothing built on it yet) and my population is 120k. My water, sewage, and power are all handled by a neighboring city (which is handling that for 2 other cities also). Additionally, my education is handled by a neighboring city. Once a neighboring city has placed a school, all you have to do is place down the bus stops and their buses will come pick up your kids.

I do take care of my own fire, police, and health. I have a regular fire department that I can still add another garage to, but I have the police precinct. I can still expand the precinct a lot--so far I've only added 2 extra car lots. The civic I've invested the most in in this city is health. Given that my city has the largest population of the quad, and the lowest education (designed this city intending to have low/medium wealth, with mediocre education), I figured they'd all be factory workers. Well... commuting doesn't seem to be entirely working... as my neighboring industry town will have several thousand unfilled low wealth jobs, and I'll have several thousand unemployed low wealth workers... but regardless, the idea was that this city would most likely have the biggest health issues... so I plopped the hospital, and I've expanded it several times in order to help cover other cities in the region.

Traffic was a MAJOR issue, but was easily handled with shuttle buses and streetcars.

[McLaren3465 0]

I'm working on my second city now and it just broke 100K. My first one (after learning how the game works in its entirety) topped out at 145K and eventually my specialty of oil  and tourism stopped providing enough cash flow and the servers would not let me back in so I moved onto a new city. I have found that a dept. of utilities should be the first or second add-on to city hall as the sewage treatment and water (purification) pumps are essential. My second city is a mining/trade city, the ore and coal mines + smelting factory use a lot of water and I needed a full water treatment plant (all addon pumps) at around 70K population. Also, I put the sewage treatment plant and water purification pumps (not standard pumps) next to each other as the sewage plant provides treated sewage to the ground water, and the purification pumps keep that water  clean and it provides a continuous refill to the water table (discussed in other threads). 

 

Short version, a dept. of utilities is essential for keeping a city of 100K+ running because the outflow pumps and water towers only have so much capacity. If you are going to outsource your water sewage then make sure you neighbor has a big hole for sewage and a large water supply far away from that hole, or a similar (or larger) setup to what I noted above. 

[bjl707 4]

Does mass transit work the same as schools?  Meaning that, if you place bus stops in your second city would it help with commuting to your main city?

[itspreach 0]

You shouldn't be putting outflow pipes and water towers all over,  those are meant to be temporary.

 

You need to get the sewage treatment plants and water pumps asap!

[McLaren3465 0]

Does mass transit work the same as schools?  Meaning that, if you place bus stops in your second city would it help with commuting to your main city?

 

I'm not 100% sure but I think you need a Bus Terminal for travel between the region, this requires a dept. of transportation add-on to at least one city hall in the region. 

[fretz- 1]

I have been trying to see how far I can push a single city in isolation in its region, got up to 290K and everyone was happy on the whole. Was so close to getting the level 6 City Hall upgrade and then there was a Zombie invasion and all of a sudden population starting collapsing dropping to 246K in the sapce of 1 evening (simcity time).

Whole tower blocks 'devoured by zombies'..... 45,000 sims eaten by Zombies in a single evening. Harrowing.

 

 

[bjl707 4]

You shouldn't be putting outflow pipes and water towers all over,  those are meant to be temporary.

 

You need to get the sewage treatment plants and water pumps asap!

As soon as I can build the department of utilities upgrade I plan on doing just that.  For now however, it's my only option for adequate water and sewage for my city.

[Spatzimaus 77]

As soon as I can build the department of utilities upgrade I plan on doing just that.  For now however, it's my only option for adequate water and sewage for my city.

 

The point is that this is something you should have taken care of long before you reached 100k.  If you can't afford it in your primary city, well, you've got a second city; put that department on its city hall ASAP (or found a third city to do that), since the unlocks are region-wide.  In general, the first thing I've done in private regions is found half a dozen cities and had each place a different city hall department.

 

The basic water towers are extremely inefficient, cost-wise, while the outflow pipes pollute your groundwater badly.  In both cases, the upgraded versions are essential for the long term, since you'll have a problem with water supply once you get a really huge city.  Some people use the upgraded water pumps (with the filtered pump upgrade) near old-fashioned sewer outflow pipes, but I prefer putting the Sewer Treatment Plant right next to your pumping station.  When it treats sewage, it creates water, so you'll have a small circular area around it that has huge amount of clean water, and I've yet to find a limit.

 

Now, to answer the original question, my latest city (a public region on the Antarctica server) went just over 100k last night, but I've since backed it off to ~80k to avoid traffic problems that were interfering with my trade deliveries.  At this point, the amount of taxes I get from people is far less than what I make selling things, so I only need enough population to fill every job.  Now, part of this is that I'm in a 16-city region but my 3 neighbors are all low-population, so I'm not getting a whole lot of commuters yet...

[McLaren3465 0]

Now, to answer the original question, my latest city (a public region on the Antarctica server) went just over 100k last night, but I've since backed it off to ~80k to avoid traffic problems that were interfering with my trade deliveries.  

 

As far as traffic impeding trade, I was experimenting with the Large Trade depot (trade center, don't remember the exact name) and I ended up using that with a freight rail connection that exports alloy and stores factory freight. It is working out very well for me. In addition I set up two regular trade depots, one for ore, another for coal (maxed out both) and to supply my coal power plants and smelting factory  If I ever fill up one of the small depots I have it stop accepting local deliveries until their is space, and have all the excess sent to the large trade depot where it also gets exported by train. Requires a bit of more management but it ends up being worth it. 

[infoman96 27]

My highest population city is to 120k. I've reached this population without even using the entire map. About 1/4th of the map has oil underneath it, and I marked a square off so I wouldn't build residential over it. I haven't developed this square at all (nothing built on it yet) and my population is 120k. My water, sewage, and power are all handled by a neighboring city (which is handling that for 2 other cities also). Additionally, my education is handled by a neighboring city. Once a neighboring city has placed a school, all you have to do is place down the bus stops and their buses will come pick up your kids.

I do take care of my own fire, police, and health. I have a regular fire department that I can still add another garage to, but I have the police precinct. I can still expand the precinct a lot--so far I've only added 2 extra car lots. The civic I've invested the most in in this city is health. Given that my city has the largest population of the quad, and the lowest education (designed this city intending to have low/medium wealth, with mediocre education), I figured they'd all be factory workers. Well... commuting doesn't seem to be entirely working... as my neighboring industry town will have several thousand unfilled low wealth jobs, and I'll have several thousand unemployed low wealth workers... but regardless, the idea was that this city would most likely have the biggest health issues... so I plopped the hospital, and I've expanded it several times in order to help cover other cities in the region.

Traffic was a MAJOR issue, but was easily handled with shuttle buses and streetcars.

  

Man, maybe I'm not a good neighbor but I absolutely hate when my neighboring city's pupils come to my schools without giving me any cash for it. It cost me to build these school buildings and they are using them for free and fill them up. I don't mind helping with giving a few garbage trucks, a ambulance or two, and a fire truck, but putting children into my schools is what I hate; universities are a different story though, I want people regionally to go to my university and I don't mind paying for extra dorm space without any assistance from my neighbors. I remember when I first built my business school, my neighbor put up the $40k for it and I eventually reimbursed their gift with a $10k bonus. 

 

In regards to unemployment, my city has no employed but as of now it has 22,137 total jobs and 15,090 unfilled jobs and because my city is the hub of the four city part block of the region (although its the least populated) I don't have enough people to fill them although my neighbors cities have 99k, 100k, and one space is available; I've literally been begging them to upgrade their cities so I can fill my jobs. I've taken out three $100k bonds to pay for capital improvements in my city such as going Nuclear, building a recycle center, and building a extra trash dump, all in effort to improve their cities since they don't have enough cash to do it (its not like I do either, but my growth rate is pretty fine and I usually make about $2-5k an hour) but they are still refusing (yes, I've talked to one of the people and he just doesn't want to change his city, the other guy hasn't played in a day). I want to sweeten the offer and give them about $100k to pay to improve their cities but I don't want them to just take my money and do nothing with it.

 

Traffic is only a issue in one area of my city luckily, it now has streetcars and buses going but its still too busy. 

 

Here's my city skyline, most areas of my city is going through a construction boom at the moment with about 12 construction projects going on and 8 cranes in the sky right now.

 

 

Another view of the skyline:

 

 

 

BTW; my population is only 64k right now, the highest its been at is 66k so to hear you have 120k is what I aspire for.

[Spatzimaus 77]

As far as traffic impeding trade, I was experimenting with the Large Trade depot (trade center, don't remember the exact name) and I ended up using that with a freight rail connection that exports alloy and stores factory freight.

 

Yes, the Trade Port is the way to go, and I prefer the rail connection to the water one.  As of last night, my city has a nice rail freight depot that works beautifully for this, as it's much closer to the industrial areas.  Traffic's become a lot better now that I've done this, since the trucks don't have to cross my residential areas to get to the exit.

Problem is, to make a Trade Port, you need a Trade HQ in the region, and I didn't need it badly enough at the time to make one of my own.  (In the end, one of my neighbors did it for me.)  Then, you run into other problems; you can sell the Metal, Alloy, and Plastic that your recycling center produces at a standard Trade Depot, but to unlock the corresponding storage rooms at a Trade Port, you need someone in the region to build a Metals/Petroleum HQ and then build the right outbuilding.  Thankfully, someone did that this morning, although it's still buggy (the lots went back to being locked the next time I logged in).

(Also, I have no idea if it's just me, but I've never once seen a depot actually store factory freight.  Several of my industrial buildings complain about having nowehere to send their freight, and yet my depots are all still empty.)

 

Now, since everyone's still reading, I have a question.  As of last night, my city is now extremely profitable making electronics, has three cultural landmarks (Washington Monument, Sears/Willis Tower, and Empire State Building) to bring in tourists, has a university, and provides plenty of power, water, and sewage disposal for my neighbors.  Most of my city is wealthy, all of my industries are high-tech, and my traffic problems are now fixed.  Everything's going smoothly... except for my Commercial buildings.  For some reason, they're going through this really nasty cycle.  Many of my residential buildings say "where is the shopping?", and yet every commercial building quickly goes out of business from lack of shoppers.  I'll destroy the abandoned building, and a new one will be placed on the spot... but within a day it'll fail as well.  The only solution has been to change commercial zones to something else, and yet the few remaining shops still fail.  They're all on blocks facing avenues, so it's not like the shoppers can't reach them, and it doesn't matter whether they're near industry, residences, or tourists, they'll all still fail at the same rate.  (My taxes are a bit on the high side, at 10% across the board, but I won't drop lower until I finish my manufacturing infrastructure.)

 

I'd done two things right before this process started:

1> Shifted to a trade-based economy.  I'm now running a sizeable deficit (over 10,000 per hour) that's easily offset by my massive export profits, but it's possible that the calculation the game is doing for "should I go shopping?" is freaking out because of that deficit.  (I've only actually hit zero once, when a traffic jam stopped delivery trucks from reaching the depot.  That was when I downsized to ~80k.)

and

2> Started placing landmarks.  Specifically, the Sears Tower was placed right when this process started; besides just being a tourist draw, it counts as a commercial building with a pretty sizeable capacity, and I make a lot of money off it.

 

So, any ideas on what's causing it?

[nhgriffith 179]

infoman96, I imagine that education works the same way that commuters/jobs are supposed to work.

Say you have 100 potential residents living in your city and 100 potential jobs available in your city. Regardless of what is available outside your city or what commuters are available in the region, your local jobs will be filled first by local citizens. You can't have commuters from outside of the region filling your jobs and also have citizens in your city jobless and looking for work.

So I imagine education is supposed to work the same. If I plop down bus stops, my students will travel to your schools if you have available desks. However, if all your desks are filled locally, my students will stop traveling to your schools. And let's say you have 1000 total desks and 800 local students. Suppose I'm sending you 200 students to fill up all your extra desks. I imagine that if you grow your population and get 200 extra students, they'll take desks away from my commuting students.

The game tries to fill all of your local needs first, then worries about the region.