Specializations / Region design help

[Branoic 0]

Hi guys,

 

So I’ve come back to SimCity after a long absence and have downloaded the CoT expansion.

 

I’ve been doing a lot of reading up and watching videos etc in the last couple of days to get up to speed and learn the awesome tricks the community has come up with RE road spacing, layouts etc etc. I’ve also looked at a few of the mods. Mods are traditionally something that scares me and which I have no experience with, so I think initially I’m just going to stick to the basic utility mods like the multi-plopper and the worker information. The most complicated mod I get will be Udon – I have to have one way streets! I’ll be steering clear of stuff like Project Orion that requires a lot of tinkering until its issues are ironed out.

 

However, what I want help with today is an awful lot more simple than all that. I’ve taken in so much information in the last day or two that I’ve kind of overloaded, and I don’t know where to start in relation to city focus and specialization.

 

I’ve decided to play on the verdant jungle map, and I’m wondering the following –

 

When combing specialisations, what are the most common partnerships? Like, is an Omega HQ combined with oil and ore mining within the one city, with other dirty industry, so generally low wealth / education? And if so do you also put the oil or ore HQ buildings in the same city or put them elsewhere? Alternatively, would you just place an Omega factory in an oil / ore town and put the Omega HQ in a different city, maybe with high-tech industry?

 

At the moment I've started work in the Kingfisher plot. Because the oil and ore areas overlap, I decided to focus heavily on oil and will build an oil HQ. I've also got an Omega factory so I have to import the ore from the global market for that at the moment until I start up another city that can produce the ore. Should I built an Omega HQ here too or should that go elsewhere?

 

What other good combinations are there? In particular, what works well in the different plots in the verdant jungle region? I’m thinking of the following city flavours – [university + High Tech Industry], [Academy + Culture Tourism], [Trade capital + Electronics], [Omega HQ + High Density Dirty Industry with Gambling], [Various resource HQs all in the one city with smelting etc].

 

Thanks for any suggestions. I guess I just need some guidance on the overall region plan before diving into the individual cities and making a mess with specialisations which will be too difficult to rectify later.

[CapTon 592]

Omega Factories need ore and oil in order to function, as you already know, so those specializations are common partnerships, whether you would be using the local oil and ore (in your city plot or in the entire region) or importing those two things from the global market.

 

Coal and ore is another common partnership since they both could form another thing (I forget whether it's metal or alloy or whatever) through smelting.

 

Honestly, that's the best I can come up with. I would say casinos and landmarks/attractions would be a common partnership, but I'm not entirely sure if many people have landmarks/attractions in their cities when they are building a casino-based city.

 

I hope I helped in some way, although I don't know if I answered your question very well.

[reReticulated Spline 69]

The best tip for specializations is that when you start a city and go to the specializations menu and select a specialization, you'll see a "Guide Me" button next to your advisor. This activates ingame missions that help you set up your specialization and pay you cash for completing them. Play around with these missions a bit and you'll be fine.

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

Mining your own ore and oil for Omega is rough - you'll never have enough - factories chew through the stuff. (Points for rhyming?)

 

It may be possible to mine it for yourself with a lot of mining and oil fields, but of course with the small maps and placement of the ores/oil on the maps its hard to put together a coherent city.  Build yourself up some money and buy it off the global market - that's the best bet.  (The game makers would save us a ton of trouble if they just put the oil/ore all over the map and let us build the mines/fields where we wanted to.)

 

The extraction pods, I've found, can only supplement shipments.  I find I still run out because the pods can't pull it from the ground fast enough.

[Cob92 360]

Mining your own ore and oil for Omega is rough - you'll never have enough - factories chew through the stuff. (Points for rhyming?)

 

It may be possible to mine it for yourself with a lot of mining and oil fields, but of course with the small maps and placement of the ores/oil on the maps its hard to put together a coherent city.  Build yourself up some money and buy it off the global market - that's the best bet.  (The game makers would save us a ton of trouble if they just put the oil/ore all over the map and let us build the mines/fields where we wanted to.)

 

The extraction pods, I've found, can only supplement shipments.  I find I still run out because the pods can't pull it from the ground fast enough.

 

They can do the job, but you need an ungodly number of them to keep your factories full. I usually use them as an intermediary to keep my Omega operation growing while I transition from traditional extraction methods to VTOL shipments. If you're playing online, having extraction infrastructure that you don't actually use could help serve as a hedge against fluctuations in oil and ore prices. You can keep your reserves ready to go and simply flip the switch if the cost of importing gets too high.

[phyzx 0]

Personally, I'm a big fan of going Tourism, but using Casinos as basically glorified hotels.