New Player Looking for Extra Advice

[Guns and Giblets 0]

Hi everyone, great site here.  I've been enjoying the resources and materials on these forums and similar sites.  I've spent time searching the forums, but I still had some questions about gameplay (and I thought it would be fun to interact with the community).

 

By way of background: I just purchased SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition through the Steam sale (I've been waiting for one for a while!) and I can't believe I missed this game when it came out!  I was a huge fan of SimCity 2000 way back when (although I was terrible at the game...).

 

Anyway, I've been playing on easy for now to get a hang of the game.  (I've installed several plugins, including NAM, an industry doubler, a services radius doubler, and some other minor ones.)  I'll outline how I've been playing a particular city (see attached image) and I'd love your thoughts to see what I could improve on:

 

 

1.  I'm on my fourth or fifth city and I think I have a handle on making money.  I micromanage educational and health buildings, giving enough funding to have about 5-10% over current capacity, along with using the budget to broadly manage and reduce other services so that they are providing just enough to cover the needs of the populace.  Is this the best way to do it?  I've read that you can forgo some services partially or even entirely for some cities.

 

2.  I started by spending the majority of my money on the transportation system, setting down the main highways and avenues, along with a port and four main rail lines, three for passengers and one for freight.  I started by zoning dense residential in the north, dense industrial in the south and some dense commercial toward the residential areas.  I then placed most services (minus utilities) in the center of town and then took out loans (!) for about 200,000 and used these to increase various zoning to increase tax revenues.

 

I assume taking out the loans was a mistake.  There was a rough patch of about 8 years where I had to let my city suffer with mediocre to downright awful services in order to pay off the loans, combined with taxes around 10-11%; the budget sat at ~$1,000 for the entire time.  I assume the better route is to just plan ahead where you want to build transportation and other money hogs and build piecemeal?

 

3. I centralized my services into one main area to get maximum coverage for the city.  Is this generally a good idea?  (Again, I have the radius doubler.)  Or does effectiveness reduce the further away something is from a building?

 

(And why does the military base have crime, even when I have a police kiosk next to it?)

 

4.  Why are my power plants reduced in efficiency?  Do they actually decay over time?  (I hated in SimCity 2000 that your power plants would need replacement every 50 years.)

 

Are there other buildings that decay like this?

 

5.  I recently replaced the airport (which was originally located on the west side of the city) with an international airport, which entailed raising the small island out of the ground.  Is this the right idea, to keep the airport away from the mainland to reduce pollution?  Also, I don't think I'll ever use the maximum capacity for the international airport.  Is it possible to reach the cap?

 

6.  The city has about 150,000 people.  How do I get the population above 150,000?  Is this even a good goal?

 

7.  I had a spat where I wasn't paying attention and a neighbor deal drained my city of water for a couple months; this resulted in a lot of abandoned buildings.  Is there a way to highlight abandoned buildings, or do you have to just find and demolish them one by one?

 

8.  Looking at the picture, any thoughts on what you see or anything else that would be helpful to know?

 

Thanks much for any and all advice!

[.anonyman 28]

That's a nice-looking city, especially for a relatively new player. I'm no expert, but I'll take a stab at answering half of your questions.

 

1) Yes, that's the best way - even recommended by the in-game tutorial. Of course, you may want a particular city to be mostly low-wealth workers, so you wouldn't need any services. Or you may find that to create a peaceful rural area, anything more than an elementary school and some parks is too expensive and spoils it. It sounds like you know what you're doing when it comes to money, except...

 

2) Yes, taking out loans is probably a mistake. If you build only what's necessary at each stage, having enough money to expand shouldn't be a problem.

 

3) The radius doubler really frees you up to place civic buildings where you want. But it does seem that coverage is not completely even; sometimes it's better to have multiple smaller buildings. (A kiosk can't compete with the massive crime of a base or airport - try a proper station.)

 

4) Of course power plants degrade! It gives you a chance to upgrade to a better technology when you need to replace it.

[Bdub01 201]

I gotta give you props, for just starting the game.  Your city looks nothing like mine when I first started but that was before I found ST!  Anyway to answer some questions, here we go:

     1. I would say you are spot on, on managing the services.  It's good way to save simoleans, to provide the bare minimun of what is needed.

 

     2. Okay it's not a bad idea to zone high density industrial, however to save more simoleans, it's better to zone low density C and R, also zoning high desity just throws money away till the pop reaches certain levels anyway.  Putting down road systems are fine, hoowever I would have waited a few years to put a port, at least till the industrial zones start filling out.  As for loans, there are times to take out loans and still make money.  It's not the best idea to take out loans in one is already losing money it makes thing sthat much harder to deal with (as you saw firsthand).  I prefer to take out loans only if, I'm making a good profit, at leat 2000+ simoleans, and only if I'm in the process of building or making an area and need extra to finish it. Unlike the American Government, if I don't have the money, I don't build it.  If you are losing money, you can do little things, like reduce funing to your parks and government buildings.  If need be reduce school bus services and make the little sims walk to school.

     3. I don't have the radius doubler so I can't say anything about it.  I just put stations to cover all areas, I hate to be in the middle of mayoring and having to dispatch stupid fire trucks!  Oh, the military base, and airports are notorious for having crime, I just put a police statio near them and move on.  Also, as anonyman said, the kiosk doesn't do much.  I only use it if, i have a small odd area that isn't covered by the other police stations.

    4.  Power plants and water plants do decay over time.  It is fun to have a nuclear power plant and watch it decay til it grows critical and blows up!  Of course there are so meany cool new plants on the STEX you can have all sorts of fun!

     5.  For the airports, it's a good idea to put them on an island like that, however you don't have to start with the international airport.  Some peeps don't use the airports at all, they say it's a waste of space.  I like them as eye candy myself.  But for a smaller pop, use the landing strip, your advisors will let you know when it's time to bump up to the next level.  And yes it is possible to have the highest level airport, but it takes a lot.  I have a city with a pop of 350k and still only on the second tier of the international airport, but it is close to bumping up to the final tier.

     6.It's easy to get higher populations.  Make sure you use all the cap busters and just keep zoning! 

     7.  Just look for black, dilapidated buildings and tear them down is all I know to do.

 

Otherwise your city looks good, keep it up!

[AcronShinra 60]

Don't forget to get: "Opera fix", "Space Port fix" and the most importantly "I-HT bug fix" from STEX, if you haven't gotten them yet. Devs left few bugs in game, but community was able to fix every(?)one that wasn't hardcoded.

 

If you have a lot of problems with R$$$ citizens(high wealth) building dilapidation, even with NAM, good transportation system and lot of workplaces in city, don't be afraid to tax them up to 1% higher than R$/R$$. Only 8-15% of jobs in Commercial/Industrial buildings belongs to high class.

[Ro-Bo 183]

Regarding crimes: Big lots such as military base, airports, university, ect. have problem with police penetration, causing high crime rate in those lots. You might want to put more than one police station near this big lots if it gets all red. It also helps if you surround the lots with roads for better police access. Or just use "Crime Doesnt Pay" mod.

[larryparadise 10]

Don't forget to get: "Opera fix", "Space Port fix" and the most importantly "I-HT bug fix" from STEX, if you haven't gotten them yet. Devs left few bugs in game, but community was able to fix every(?)one that wasn't hardcoded.

 

do you remember what the I-HT bug fix was called when you found it here?  i tried looking for it but couldn't find it...i found the other 2 though, had no idea those 2 weren't working.  thanks.

[AcronShinra 60]

 

Catch it!

 

And tut for correct install: 

[larryparadise 10]

 

Catch it!

 

And tut for correct install: 

 

big time...thanks, much appreciated.

[Guns and Giblets 0]

Thanks for all the answers and advice!  I decided to have another go with a new city, and things have gone very smoothly!  Got a million+ in the bank and a solid 5k monthly with high approval and good services.  It has let me place a lot of cool landmark buildings.  City photo attached.

 

I'd like to get over 250,000 people.  Currently, a lot of space is taken up by high-tech industrial.  If you make cities in neighboring regions with industrial or other jobs, can you zone more residential and have the residents commute to the neighboring cities instead of internally?  (If that question makes sense.)  Or is there a way to make your entire city commercial and residential?

[Bdub01 201]

Oh I encourage having just industrial cities. I even have just one HTI city, one Mi city and one DI city also the small tiles make perfect farming communities. That way your "main" cities can have just R and C if you want or only a small industrial zone in your city.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Looks like you have the hang of it.  Now you should consider expanding into regional play.  Just keep it balanced and go for it.

[yayaya1 22]

One thing if you want to continue the city. If you, for some reason, decide you want MORE money, i think you should bulldoze a few landmarks. If you want good land value, you should go with the cheaper alternative of parks.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

To each his own.  If one wants to squander money on landmarks, fine.

[jeffabes 10]

Or, you could use an editor to change the landmark into a growable with jobs.  Someone has already done this with the Empire State Building, for example:

 

 

That way instead of costing you money, the building would actually make tax money for you.  You'd lose the landmark effect, though.

[kratos_q8 9]

thats a great city for a beginner mate and i like the airport island my advice is download as much plugins as you can it will realy make your city looks 10000000x better