How to control losing money?

[OilMike 0]

How do you figure out a good strategy to make more money then lose it. When you go into the screen showing expenses, I notice like $3000 / hr on transit, $3500 / hr region, police $3200 hr , etc, etc. How can you make more money and keep from going into the RED negative which then tells you to shut power down, or close stuff.

 

Any tips or help, please advise.

 

 

[perafilozof 143]

By not overstretching at the start, and by slowly and gradually expanding.

 

Start with a road network, wind powerplant and a water tower. Once you place your residential, commerce and industry just stop there and wait to get a positive balans. Use the first profits to expand the R and C zones, then the I zones (60/25/15).

 

Then use the first bond to make a school and a few extra school buses. Now just sit back, educate your sims and wait as you collect taxes. Once you have a person sick or injured make a clinic. Once you get the first fire make a firestation, once you get a first criminal make a police station.

 

Keep expanding up to 10k people, then just stockpile money untill you can get a mine or an oil extractor to get some extra profit. 

 

Then wait again. Once you have some more money in the bank, expand your RCI, and double it. Once you have used up 65-70% of the map check the happines of your sims. If they got up to 36 now you can go to medium density SLOWLY! Street by street.

 

(tips: taxes have to be around 7% for $ sims to go to medium density, C can be 8%, I can stay at 9-10%, always start with mix of medium density avenues and dirt roads)

[AshTym 31]

The above is good advice, except for the bit about dirt roads. Dirt roads leech sewage which creates/increases ground pollution. This in turn will decrease land value, happiness and health. Start with low-density roads instead.

[dan008 2]

i just start of with 9% for all and works fine and starts off with low density roads.

[perafilozof 143]

The above is good advice, except for the bit about dirt roads. Dirt roads leech sewage which creates/increases ground pollution. This in turn will decrease land value, happiness and health. Start with low-density roads instead.

 

Really? I didn't know about that. How did you come by this?

[AshTym 31]

The above is good advice, except for the bit about dirt roads. Dirt roads leech sewage which creates/increases ground pollution. This in turn will decrease land value, happiness and health. Start with low-density roads instead.

 

Really? I didn't know about that. How did you come by this?

 

I believe I came across it in an official (ie. Maxis) road "tips and tricks" video on Youtube. It may have even been the roads tutorial video currently linked to on the initial SimCity splash screen (the one with server selection and the update/play button). Either way, I've since tested it and it turns out to be correct.

[TuPhat 27]

How do you figure out a good strategy to make more money then lose it. When you go into the screen showing expenses, I notice like $3000 / hr on transit, $3500 / hr region, police $3200 hr , etc, etc. How can you make more money and keep from going into the RED negative which then tells you to shut power down, or close stuff.

 

Any tips or help, please advise.

Beyond what other people have said.   Its hard to determine the size of city you are talking about.  At smaller city size, you don't need to heavily invest in essential services, just have 'just enough' police fire ambulance.   When your city size population grows, you end up expanding those services.  Once your city is large, usually my per hour expenses is greater than my income, but other sources of income offset these.   Income from exporting natural resource goods such as oil/coal from your trade centers happen at certain periods of the day which doesn't factor into your hourly cash position.  Having a expo center creates an large influx of income once a day.  Casinos and tourist attractions generate income throughout the day.   With one or more of these in your city, it will offset a negative hourly balance and give you cash to work with.