"Neighborhood Deals" - do you do it?

[ali20152015 0]

Hi,

 

Do you engage in "Neighborhood deals" with your neighborhood city like selling power, water and garbage?

 

Personally, I normally have 1 city which trades water, power and garbage to all neighborhood cities. However, I am planning to change this mwthod soon and here what I am going to do:

 

1/ I decided to sell only power to 2 neighborhood cities. In each group of 3 cities, 1 only will provide power to the two others, trying my best to go green the more the city grows.

 

2/ Concerning water, it is better each city has their own water system because with just 2 water towers plus a large pump, you can provide water in exess to a city with above 100K population, including the connection of pipes everywhere. The income you get by selling water is useless. It is too low. It does not have a big advantage if you have excess revenues.

 

3/ Now for garbage, I find it better for each city to have their own landfills with a recycle plant. It is more realisitc. Again here, the income you get by selling garbage is too low. Not valuable at all. If you manage your garbade properly, you can have a good environment. You do not need to sell it. Just place one large landfill on 24 tiles, and put 2 recycle plants around it, the job will be done, respecting your environment.

 

Of course, not everyone will agree with me but these are my opinions. I would be happy if you tell me how you trade and what do you think on it.

 

Thank!

[.anonyman 28]

According to the game's manual and tutorials, neighbor deals are designed to be beneficial. The financial benefit is questionable, unless you exploit the fact that different city tiles run at different time scales and that while you're playing one city the others are paused. There isn't much benefit to growth either IMO, except that pollution can be reduced wherever you export garbage from. The main benefit is added realism; since city tiles are much smaller areas than what we would consider a city or a metropolitan area, it wouldn't make much sense to have water towers and landfills in and between every district or town. In that respect, landfills aren't realistic enough. IRL, garbage can be exported huge distances, but in the game this isn't so easy.

 

Still, I use neighbor deals for power, water, and garbage. Like you, I think it's best to have 1-2 customer cities buying services from one provider city. It's a huge pain to manage a long chain of neighbor deals and many times I've been stuck going back and forth from city to city trying to convince the game to set up a much-needed deal.

 

It's not worth the headache IMO, but for realism I try to limit the number of landfills and power plants. That's why I prefer modded civic utilities which have much higher capacities (and higher costs, of course). 

[ali20152015 0]

Thank you for sharing.

Can I know which civic mods you use? I use the maxis only.

[cogeo 960]

As .anonyman said, neighbor deals are quite tricky, and allow for various cheats, due to the asynchronous simulation for each city. The most obvious one is that you can build some "Utiliville" in a small tile at the edge of your region (the original SC4 maps have a lot) and put your utilities (with all their undesirable effects) there, to supply your region; your utilities won't be getting older, neither your landfills full, if you don't really "run" those cities (just build them and then forget them). But let's see deal types one by one:

- Power: Power plants should only be operated at about 75-80% of their capacity, otherwise they wear out fast. This makes it almost impossible for the city that operates them to make a profit, as the default profit margin for neighbor deals is 10%. So if you operate them at say 80% of the capacity, you will be covering only 88% - 80x(1+10%) - of the cost, ie actually at a loss. And there is also the capital cost (the money you need to build them, often having to take loans) and all those pollution and low desirability effects (wasting a lot of your land area), not to mention that you may need those expensive water treatment plants to clean up your water.

- Water: Water deals can indeed make you some money, but only if you operate them almost at capacity (don't worry, these ones don't wear from high utilization). Not much money, just some money. Pumps are affected by pollution though, so you should put them in cities without industry and power or garbage utilities. There aren't any special requirements, like in SC3, and water towers and pumps can be placed anywhere - all they need is a pollution-free site, not any real aquifer or water body nearby. I think there is a bug affecting cities importing water from more than one neighbors, causing the city to need yet more water (looks like the smaller deal quantity is subtracted from, rather than added to the bigger one, but I may be wrong), so import water from one neighbor only!

- Garbage: Don't use the ingame recycling centres, they're just a joke, doing nothing but wasting your money. They cost you $350/mo, for eliminating some 18 tons of garbage, ie some $20/ton, which is insane. Maybe consider using them if you radically mod them: cost still $350/mo, but for reducing the garbage produced by 50,000 (not 25,000) people, by 30% (not 20%) - these were the settings in SC3K. This would lower the cost to some $6/ton, still the most expensive utility type, but an option a "green" mayor could consider. Landfills are actually very expensive too. They eventually cost some $3.3/ton disposed. However, there's a bug in cost calculation which will cause the deals manager to charge your neighbor just pennies, if the landfill is completely or half empty; rates any close to the actual cost will only be charged when the landfill gets almost full. So my advice here is don't sign deals that cause your landfills to receive garbage - you will never be compensated enough, to even cover the additional cost. Just get (or produce) enough trash to feed your W2E plants. Btw W2E plants aren't just the cheapest way to dispose your garbage, they are the only utility type that can really turn a profit, and this only because you are payed for both the trash you import and the electricity (while the cost is incurred only once). The bug with landfills cost calculation can be exploited though, just export your trash to cities with enough spare landfill capacity, and of course cancel the deals when you really "run" these cities (so the landfills don't get full).

 

So in general, utilities aren't really "profitable" in SC4, and they cause undesirable effects, so build them only when you absolutely need them, and your needs can't be met with deals. I would also recommend against playing with the sliders, as this results in higher per production unit cost. Instead, try setting funding to 100% and sell the excess production to neighbors (even if they don't really need all of it), and if this is not possible, then and only then reduce funding.

 

I have posted quite a few utilities and mods on the STEX, even a deals mod, so take a look.

[APSMS 1,893]

I remember reading about someone (City Journal?) that used modded neighbor deals, played on the default San Francisco map, and took the realism up to 11 by having specific areas for power, water, and garbage, and created neighbor deals that crossed the entire map.

 

It was an impressive read, even if I'm never masochistic enough to try it out. I mean, literally all the regions power was from 3 or 4 power producing centers, and subsequently piped 4 or 5 tiles across the map to the proper city. I can't even imagine coordinating that in-game, but he did it, so kudos.

 

Usually, though, I don't ever look at the neighbor deals unless I'm turning off the notifications for them.

[ali20152015 0]

Thank you for sharing Cogeo.

I will see the mods.

[Prophet42 1,503]

I do neighbor deals quite extensively.  I have one city that supplies power and garbage for the whole region (75 cities in all) and one city that supplies water for the region.  I use no cheats, except for garbage, I do use a lot called 'The Black Hole Management Company' that allows me to take in the region's garbage without having massive landfills.

[ali20152015 0]

Prophet, I never tried connecting power to more than 4 cities surrounded.

Do you mean you connect power from 1 city to 75? If yes, suppose you have power in City A. You connect City A to City B. Then, you connect City B to City C, which is not a neighbor to City A, will it work? And it's City B which gets the money or City A?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I have done that.  It becomes a major burden keeping up the initial deals until things settle down.  I find it works best for garbage, then for water.  Power is tricky in that you pretty much have to make the first power deal when you start a new city.  Once you have established a city, new power deals are difficult if not impossible (probably a rather arcane bug).

[Prophet42 1,503]

Prophet, I never tried connecting power to more than 4 cities surrounded.

Do you mean you connect power from 1 city to 75? If yes, suppose you have power in City A. You connect City A to City B. Then, you connect City B to City C, which is not a neighbor to City A, will it work? And it's City B which gets the money or City A?

Yes, I connect power from 1 city to 75.  I have several long chains such as City A (source), to City B, City B to City C, City C to City D etc.  The secret is to start the neighbor deals right away when you start the source city.  Place the utility that you want to sell in the source city and make the neighbor connections right away, before your build anything eles.  When you first open the neighbor city, run the utility to the neighbors and establish the neighbor deals.

 

You have to establish the deals in the new cities right away before you build anything (basically using the deal) otherwise, as A Nonny Moose stated, it becomes almost impossible to establish a neighbor deal.  You have to make sure your utility has enough extra capacity to supply the region.  Of course you don't need to have all the capacity right away, you just need to be diligent and build up the capacity as the region grows.