Finally got a city with population over 300k, but...

[WiLL190398 0]

 

I'm glad that my latest city has got a population of over 300k, I left room equivalent to the height of two vertical tree line parks between each strip of road, allowing for two high density buildings backing off of each other. However, having a relatively high population has made certain issues with the game scream out at me.

1. Because each 'High School' ploppable limits the number of 'School Bus' upgrades to 4, potential students that live further away than others or behind denser layers of traffic will not get picked up which causes massive education problems. Why is there even a limit on the number of school buses for each school? It's not like, say, 5 or 6 is un-reasonable is it?
2. Due to not receiving a stable enough level of tax income (which I would consider to be 5k Simoleons min.), I will not try and place another 1 or 2 schools to try and get around this. This is a major flaw as you get to a point where you cannot continue to grow your city with enough schools, police or fire coverage because you simply cannot afford it.
3. Traffic AI, although better than it was before the update which was meant to fix it, is still a big issue. I have had to place an airport for police and fire helicopters as my emergency vehicles get stuck in traffic. I have also had to use tunnels across both sides of my city and 2 extra roads which I did not want to have to give up any space for. PS I do have a double-decker bus service, rail service and streetcar service too.

Here's hoping future updates will fix these issues...

[SAGGG 47]

...Like larger maps, perhaps?

[lew-3008 1]

Don't see why you even need school buses. Why can't the lazy students walk?

[Griffon 19]

Even before the expansion came out most of my cities were between 300k and 400k population.  Now they're mostly between 300k and 500k with megatowers.  This city is on the North America East 1 server in the Desert Paradise region and in the top 5% on the leaderboards.  I built every city in that region with the special purpose to make an all residential city like this one to get the 600k population to completely upgrade the City Hall for the achievement and the other cities in the region are supplying jobs and everything else it needs to sustain the population.

 

For my cities I use a 2x2 road grid on the smaller grid lines (the ones made by roads and not avenues).  I usually fill 1/4 or less of my cities up with industry.  The other 3/4 is residential with a little bit of commercial (ratio of 5:1:2 usually).  Also make the first two or three avenue intersections leading to the city entrances overpasses to make the avenue coming into the city longer.

 

I don't place any parks since the megatowers usually increase the land values now.  I add megatowers based on what I need in the city (either regular or elite megatowers).  I place more elite towers if it's an academy city and more regular towers if it's an Omega city.  I usually do a mix of both since I want drones and academy technology in every city.  The mostly high wealth cities are around 300k population and the mostly low wealth cities are around 500k population.  Also if you place your schools in the megatowers they come with school busses and the only service building you need is a hospital since the other services are taken care of with drones.  The only mass transit you'll need is MagLevs.

 

If you don't have the expansion I use the same grid system except I placed only one park.  It was a high wealth park with two of the biggest expansions on it.  It creates high wealth building around the center, medium wealth around the outside and everything else is low wealth.  I usually placed only one high school with no gym and all the classrooms stacked on top.  For the most part you won't need any of the large service buildings, the small ones should be enough.  I really liked the trams mass transit for cities before the expansion and it wouldn't hurt to put the rest of the mass transit in your city too.

 

And both strategies can be done with any specialization except tourism.  (Tourism requires more commercial and less industry.  Ratio of 3:4:1 usually.)  I hope what I said helps you build bigger cities.  There also is a topic all about megatowers if you need help with them.

[g5todd 5]

I don't use schools at all....I just use colleges let them find there own ways to school