Strategy per difficulty

[brianc1327 161]

I make my cities using "easy" mode, and I generally use 2 different "strategies."  Sometimes I use money cheats such as the "moolah" cheat or the infinite money park, and in that instance I can budget my schools and other city services to 100% without any problem.  I also usually set my taxes to 0% when using a money cheat as well, since I don't need taxes to make money.  It also doesn't make much difference how "fast" I develop my cities either.  I can also put in public transit without worrying about how much it costs either, and can thus experiment with various types of public transport, though so far the only type of public transportation I have experimented with is buses and subways.  Subways seem to get used more, but buses seem to be the better money maker.  Perhaps if I were a bit more "strategic" in where I place subway lines and stations, the subway would make money as well.

When I don't use money cheats and have getting a city that is profitable as my goal, that is usually not all that difficult to do either.  I use as a "neighborhood design" a design I described in a post called "New neighborhood design", though I have changed it a bit since that original post.  The difference is that I cannot just set the city services, especially the schools and hospitals, to 100%, but what I do is build a "neighborhood unit," let it run for a short time, then fine tune the funding levels so that the student capacity (or patient capacity in the case of hospitals/clinics) is just barely above the number of students/patients served (or at least as close as I can get with the sliders), then increase it in the same manner when the school/hospital/clinic goes on strike. I generally make a "neighborhood unit," fine tune the funding, and at this point I usually am making money, and I just let it run until I have gotten back up to $500,000, then I make another neighborhood unit.  If it is not making money, I get the deals such as the military base and the federal prison when I get down to $0 in the treasuury and put them up near the power plant, and the extra money from these two things usually get me over "the hump" to a money making city.

I am considering trying either the hard or medium setting , but was wondering what the best strategy is.  I think I would have to cut back on city services, especially education. Usually I put all the educational facilities, high school, elementary school, branch library, museum and community college (at least in the first neigborhood unit that I build).  I think that if I used the hard or medium settings, I should leave out the library, the museum, and the community college, at least at first.  Also I think when I build a "neighborhood unit" I should put in the industrial and commercial zoning first and let it run for a while before putting in the residential.  I have done a little experimenting, and sometimes the city makes money with just this, and it seems to be somewhat correlated with whether it is the first "neighborhood unit" in a region or if several "neighborhood units" or even cities have been developed, and there is a "regionwide" demand that has been established.  Also, I have done some experimenting, and the only city service that is needed for zones that are just commercial/industrial is fire protection (schools, hospitals, etc. are not needed).

What I was wondering is if when I get around to putting in the residential, if I should first make the residential low or medium density so as to keep the cost of services to a minimum, then increase it to either medium or high density depending on what the RCI chart says.

Brian Christiansen

[CorinaMarie 29,923]

I've been playing on hard difficulty for about two years and there really isn't a significant difference in the SimDay to SimDay strategy. Mostly it's just the difference of starting funds. That's not to say there is no difference, but since you are already well aware of how to make your neighborhood units and keep the city profitable I'm sure you'll have no trouble playing on hard.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 5/9/2019 at 10:00 AM, brianc1327 said:

If it is not making money, I get the deals such as the military base and the federal prison

Have you ever taken out a bond to see if you can pay it off?

On 5/9/2019 at 10:00 AM, brianc1327 said:

What I was wondering is if when I get around to putting in the residential, if I should first make the residential low or medium density

Yes. Not only are they cheaper, but low-pop growth seems (to me) to get off the ground better. When I do zone high density, if it is even built at all early, it tends to build initially at low density and pop later.

My pattern is to zone all streets low density, roads at medium, and avenues at high. Since avenues are most likely to generate commercial-level traffic / noise, I leave them unzoned until emerging traffic patterns tell me where my blue zones should go. Unused avenues then get filled with high-density residential.

BTW, beware of farms: They generate easy revenue and low-wealth jobs fast, but they can soak up a LOT of water. I still like farms, but I have to keep reminding myself that their revenue is not all profit.

[CorinaMarie 29,923]

1 hour ago, jeffryfisher said:

BTW, beware of farms: They generate easy revenue and low-wealth jobs fast, but they can soak up a LOT of water. I still like farms, but I have to keep reminding myself that their revenue is not all profit.

Or just make sure you do not run water pipes to where the farms can drink from them.

(I personally modded all the Maxis farms to use no water so I don't worry about that.)

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

22 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I personally modded all the Maxis farms to use no water

That's too bad. I use CAM and SPAM whose farm stages are water-limited, so to get the most advanced and productive agriculture, I need water. I like getting something for something, so I would never defeat such a game dynamic. Instead, I plan adequate water supplies.

[CorinaMarie 29,923]

9 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

I use CAM and SPAM whose farm stages are water-limited, so to get the most advanced and productive agriculture, I need water.

Providing the water has an actual reward for having it present and allowing greater and better farms that does sound like an ideal situation. Silly me, I'm still using Maxis farms. (I even modded them so those two dirt fields can't grow that way all mine now have crops.)

[brianc1327 161]

I thought I would explain what I ended up doing.  First off, I did not use any money cheats,  I don't really have any "objection" to using cheats, but that would have defeated the whole point, I may say something more about cheats at the end of the post.

First I just tried making a "neighborhood" unit, giving it all the  services, the 3 basic ones: water, trash collection, and power, the "extras": schools, hospitals, etc, and my "sims recreation centers" (described in a post I made called "new neighborhood design") zoning it up, then letting it run until until it makes money, like I usually do.  Well doing this did not work because I ran out of money before I finished zoning it, and I hoped that it would start making money before I went bankrupt and got kicked out as mayor.  I didn't remember if I would get kicked out at -$50,000 or -$500,000.  If it is -$50,000 I am quite sure I would not have made it. If -$500,000, I might have, perhaps I should have let it run to see if I what would happen.

I also tried some other stuff, but I will talk a bit about what did work.  I think I am currently somewhere between game year 50 and 100, have $2.3 million, have the city about 1/3 buillt, currently have a profit of about $25k per month, and have city services running at a fairly high rate, so I think what I did was very successful.  What I did was build the roads of one of my "neighborhood units", give it the three basic services of power, water, and trash collection, did not give it any other services like schools, health care, etc. I also did not put in my "sims recreation centers."  At this point I  just let it run until it started making money, and that was less than a game year into it then I just let it run until it got to $500,000, then I put in the "sims recreation centers," let it run until it got to $1,000,000 simoleons before I started putting in the other services.  Then I just continued building more "neighborhood" units, power plants, and water pumps until I got to where I am, though I did run into a few glitches along the way.

To answer some questions that have come up in this thread:

On 5/10/2019 at 10:58 AM, jeffryfisher said:

Have you ever taken out a bond to see if you can pay it off?

I did try taking out a loan once, and it was good in the short run, but the interest payment was so big that in the long run I had to use a money cheat to get out from under it, and at the time the only money cheat I knew of was the "weakness pays" cheat (I guess I knew about the "moolah" cheat, but I did not know that you needed the "extra cheats.dll" to make it work).  I figured out how to use copy and paste to enter the "weakness pays" text a bunch of times, so I did not have to type it in however many times.  So, all in all, taking out a loan did not work for me.

 

On 5/10/2019 at 10:58 AM, jeffryfisher said:

BTW, beware of farms

When I started playing SC4, I had SC4 classic, and in that version farms could not be taxed to the best of my recollection, and since some types of farms produce a large amount of water pollution, and the "in game" water treatment plant takes a great deal of money and space, I developed an aversion to using farms.  In the deluxe version, the CAM can be installed which solves a lot of these problems, I still have an aversion to using farms.

I also said I would put in a bit of a rant about cheats.  How is one even defined in this game? On the one hand, one might define a cheat as any thing that does not appear in the original game, so the infinite park, the MCP water/air treatment plant, or perhaps any mod is a cheat.  On the other hand, since the game has the ability to use mods, using a mod, no matter what it does, is not a "cheat."

Or one might argue that any thing that does not appear in the real world is a "cheat."  For example, consider the MCP water/air treatment plant.  I know there are water treatment plant in the "real world," but I do not think they make the water pollution completely disappear like the MCP plant does.  I also do not think that there is any way to make air pollution just magically disappear like the MCP plant does.

In the game, the ways to deal with garbage are: setting up an incinerator (plopping a waste to energy plant, then setting its funding to 0), zoning a landfill, using a recycling plant, and some of the city ordinances, and all more or less are "real world" ways of dealing with trash.  There are mods that send the trash to either a black hole or hyper space.  In the game they are perfectly legitimate ways of dealing with trash, but in the "real world" such technology does not exist, at least not that I know of.

A power plant that I use quite often is the "cosmic neutrino power plant," that does not produce any pollution (or at least a very small amount compared to "in game" power plants, perhaps produces enough power and water to supply an entire region (provided you can manage neighbor deals better than I can), and the "business deal" version does not cost any thing, but produces $50K per month.  I don't know if there are any such "magical" utility plants in the "real world." I call it a utility plant since it produces water as well as power.

Even if you go with the definition that whatever is used has to have a real world analog, otherwise it is a cheat,  then even some things that are contained with the game are cheats.  For example, the water pumps take from an infinite aquifer, so by this definition, they are cheats.  The hydrogen power plant is, I think, a fusion (I hope I do not have fission and fusion mixed up) plant, and those are 10 to 15 years off in the future, and perhaps just a theory in 2003.

To sum up, I think it is very difficult to even define what a cheat is in this game.  Well, I think I have been typing long enough, so I will end my post here.

Brian Christiansen

[CorinaMarie 29,923]

12 minutes ago, brianc1327 said:

I think I am currently somewhere between game year 50 and 100, have $2.3 million, have the city about 1/3 buillt, currently have a profit of about $25k per month, and have city services running at a fairly high rate, so I think what I did was very successful.

Good to hear you devised a way to make it work. Can I presume this is playing on the hard difficulty? A benefit of hard is you can leave the Urgent Advice popups turned on and they only appear when it is actually something you'd prolly want to know about rather than every little whim that strikes them.

 

14 minutes ago, brianc1327 said:

To sum up, I think it is very difficult to even define what a cheat is in this game.

Since the game is played differently by each person I feel the only way to define something as a cheat is if using whatever it is makes you, the player, feel guilty.

[twalsh102 1,601]

On 5/11/2019 at 1:33 PM, brianc1327 said:

To sum up, I think it is very difficult to even define what a cheat is in this game. 

Several thoughts (this is my position on "cheats" / "cheating"; I'm sure there are others that might disagree):

1.  Like beauty being in the eye of the beholder, cheats are in the eye of the player.  What one player may consider "cheating", another player only considers using available tools to reach a desired goal.

2.  One of the definitions of cheating as it relates to gaming is gaining an unfair advantage over another player.  There is no other player in SC4.  There isn't even an AI to "play against."  There is only you.

3.  Another definition as it relates to gaming would be using unfair means to short circuit win / loss objectives.  There are no objectives for SC4 except for those one sets for one's self.  There is no way to "win". One can only meet one's self-decided goals / objectives, or not.  There are in fact two "lose" scenarios for SC4:  letting one's Nuclear power plant explode, or going so far in the red financially that the mayor is "invited" to run for senate.  Even then, that only means a loss for a particular city tile, not for any others.

4.  I choose to not play the money game and concentrate on the city-building and layout.

5.  I personally do not use any of what I consider "radical money cheats" like plopping a 1x1 park and instantly getting billions of simoleans.  But I do use the moolah "cheat" to set my initial treasury to something reasonable (usually 2 mil).  In real life, no one is going to start a new city on a shoestring.  If one doesn't provide ALL the services that most people expect a city to provide, neither businesses nor residents will move in.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

8 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

What one player may consider "cheating", another player only considers using available tools to reach a desired goal.

In my case, I see some "cheats" as tools to use judiciously to correct for the occasional bug or game-weakness. For instance, if slope rules force me to build and demolish a port or freeway interchange several times (terraforming in between) before I can connect networks to it, I don't feel bad at all about refunding the cost of the failures. I consider those to be rough drafts discarded during design, not as actual construction to be paid for.

[monkeywater 910]

On 5/11/2019 at 2:04 PM, jeffryfisher said:

That's too bad. I use CAM and SPAM whose farm stages are water-limited, so to get the most advanced and productive agriculture, I need water. I like getting something for something, so I would never defeat such a game dynamic. Instead, I plan adequate water supplies.

CAM and SPAM?  I thought they were incompatible?

[CorinaMarie 29,923]

1 hour ago, monkeywater said:

CAM and SPAM?  I thought they were incompatible?

Out of the box, yes. With tweaking, no.

[monkeywater 910]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Out of the box, yes. With tweaking, no.

Is there a guide somewhere?

[CorinaMarie 29,923]

10 hours ago, monkeywater said:

Is there a guide somewhere?

From topics I've read over the past few years I believe it's a matter removing a duplicated exemplar from one or the other (CAM or SPAM) and modifying the remaining one so there is only one set of growth stages defined. I've not experimented with this myself.

Hopefully @jeffryfisher can provide some guidance.

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I just load SPAM after CAM and live with fewer I-R stages. The upper I-R stages of CAM were set aside for some special-purpose rural lot categories (e.g. National Parks) that didn't exist at the time I installed my mods, and I doubt I'll ever miss them if any are ever made.

[drocca 173]

I typically start on easy difficulty and use a similar strategy of "residential districts" in most of my cities. The strategy varies based on map size. 

For cities designed to have a population of at least 6,000 (85% of the cities I build). This is a common strategy set I use, but I use others as well depending on what I want out of the city.

Small tile: I zone about half residential, a third commercial, and a sixth industrial. The residential is always focused near the center of the map and the industrial (for high tech) near one or more edges. I put taxes for dirty and manufacturing industry to 20% (I don't use dirty industries in small city tiles), and I forge a neighbor connection with somewhere that has power and garbage disposal (typically a neighboring medium or large tile). Small tiles are only used for power and garbage disposal and dirty industries if absolutely needed. Then I put down a large police station near the center of the map, a museum, a library or two, a city college, a large hospital, and maybe 10-15 parks scattered throughout the residential district. I leave room for the large elementary and high schools and put them in once population reaches the required levels (typically within the first in-game year). Depending on initial demand, the high tech zone may take up to a decade to fully develop. Typically, I am in the red for 1-3 years before the city becomes profitable. Later, once the city's been profitable for a few years, I sign the free clinic, pro-reading, and community CPR ordinances and institute partial fire coverage, near the most flammable areas. If something outside this area catches fire, I can just dispatch.

Midsize tile: I typically start out with one residential district (which can usually fit about 15,000-20,000 people in a mix of about half low density / half medium density), putting in the same stuff (police station, hospital, 1-3 libraries, museum) except the city college (I wait for the university, and allot space accordingly). I put commercial areas surrounding the residential district and industrial areas that are also adjacent to the residential district but closer to the map edge (dirty industrial cities typically start off with just dirty industries, and have a separate strategy altogether) I jack up the dirty/mfg industry tax to 20%. A fully developed midsize city may have 2-3 residential districts, with commercial and high-tech industry surrounding them. Again, the ordinances and partial fire coverage come later. Power and garbage may be provided by a neighbor or by the city itself.

Large tile: Scale up the midsize tile strategy. There will probably be 5-7 residential districts, and power and garbage is typically handled by the city itself.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 6/5/2019 at 6:25 PM, drocca said:

I put commercial areas surrounding the residential district

I never speculate on commercial. I wait for traffic to appear and then zone commercial where I know I'll get "customers high" (breathing the exhaust I guess).

[drocca 173]

6 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

I never speculate on commercial. I wait for traffic to appear and then zone commercial where I know I'll get "customers high" (breathing the exhaust I guess).

I do it the way I do because it seems to help unemployment. I always "over-zone" a bit for commercial and high-tech industry, it seems to keep unemployment very low which allows me to get my EQ in the 190s and the life expectancy to 96-98. Then again, I always have a good number of commercial zones with low traffic, although I try to minimize this by always keeping my commercial zones within maybe 20-25 tiles of the nearest residential zone (about 5-6 blocks), and if possible, put commercial zones between tracts of residential.

I speculate a lot in SC4. Most of my cities don't have any dirty or manufacturing industry (yes, I use the 20% tax trick), I zone high tech zones from the get go (although they are small relative to the size that they'll eventually need to be) and wait the 5-7 years or so until EQ gets high enough to require major high tech demand. I don't zone at any point for a low EQ city, because that would only be of benefit for the first few years, and I always try to think 10 Sim years ahead.

[CorinaMarie 29,923]

1 hour ago, drocca said:

I zone high tech zones from the get go

Technically, you can only zone medium or high density industrial.

But, I understand what you mean by setting Dirty and Manufacturing taxes to 20% that what you do zone will then only grow High Tech when the EQ and demand is there for them to sprout.

[twalsh102 1,601]

I hope you have the I-HT bug fix (IH_census_10_78_12_fixed) installed, or are using CAM!

[drocca 173]

4 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

I hope you have the I-HT bug fix (IH_census_10_78_12_fixed) installed, or are using CAM!

My copy is a Steam download from May 2018, so I'm sure the bug is fixed. Also I use dirty and manufacturing industries if I can tell there's an imbalance (unemployment, etc). Most of my cities have near-zero unemployment, some maybe 5%.

[rsc204 21,868]

16 hours ago, drocca said:

My copy is a Steam download from May 2018, so I'm sure the bug is fixed.

No, it won't be. No released version of SC4 has this fix, it needs to be applied manually.

With the exception of the EP1 and Nitelighting patches, there has been no further support for SC4. Neither EA or Maxis ever fixed a number of problems that were left behind, although most are relatively minor, they can cause big problems with demand/employment if left unchecked.

The major issues everyone should fix are as follows:

• Patching the I-HT fix into the original game files
  Its important this is done a specific way, see here.
• Preventing Windows from running the game on multiple CPU cores.
  SC4 is NOT multi-core compatible and therefore will be prone to CTDs on modern PCs, if you don't do something about it.
  • Find SC4 in your Steam library
  • Right click on the game and select "Set Launch Options"
  • Add the following command into the box that appears:
    -CPUCount:1
• Another major cause of CTDs, is a bug left in the game that causes a crash when a Puzzle Piece (or Starter Piece) is hovered over a TE lot. Installing this mod will prevent this from happening, between this and running in single-core mode, you should have a rock-solid and stable game.

There are a bunch of other fixes, for things that either don't work as intended or simply don't work at all. This includes the Opera House, Spaceport and some other things. But those are quite trivial by comparison to the main ones I've mentioned.

[Naomi57 2,985]

Hi @brianc1327, if you click on the links below for these three tutorial posts of mine, on SimCity 4 economic gameplay, they might give you ideas on how you can change up and tweak how you manage the economy in each of your cities.  I have similar views on "cheats", and prefer to work with vanilla Maxis SimCity 4 properties to get a profitable city.

Tutorial for Building Your First City in a Brand New Region

Last night I had to rebuild my first city tile in the region, Breezy Point, New York, and I realised that I build all my early gameplay for each city on a recipe.  This recipe also works for the first city in a brand new region, which has a more fragile economy because it has no Neighbour Connections. ...

Ten Silent Killers of SimCity 4 Commercial Growth

These are the ten silent killers of C$$$ commercial wealth in a nutshell ..
.

Neighbour Connection Strategy with a C$$$ Tourism Focus

Neighbour Connections are one of the keys to C$$ and C$$$ commercial wealth generation in SimCity 4, so ...

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On 12/05/2019 at 5:33 AM, brianc1327 said:

What I did was build the roads of one of my "neighborhood units", give it the three basic services of power, water, and trash collection, did not give it any other services like schools, health care, etc. I also did not put in my "sims recreation centers."  At this point I  just let it run until it started making money, and that was less than a game year into it then I just let it run until it got to $500,000, then I put in the "sims recreation centers," let it run until it got to $1,000,000 simoleons before I started putting in the other services.  Then I just continued building more "neighborhood" units, power plants, and water pumps until I got to where I am, though I did run into a few glitches along the way.

Yep, that works.  I'd also encourage you to zone commercial along the avenues (or highways) running between each of your neighbourhoods, because that's where the most profitable commercial opportunities are.  A similar growth technique works at a larger scale for region development, too, swapping game-time between one city tile and another, to benefit the economies of both cities.

On 12/05/2019 at 5:33 AM, brianc1327 said:

since some types of farms produce a large amount of water pollution, and the "in game" water treatment plant takes a great deal of money and space, I developed an aversion to using farms.

I tend to see agriculture as more of a decorative thing, though it's occasionally useful, especially on a large city tile.  For each city, I tend to do the economic gameplay with a slightly different focus, with the intention of creating neighbourhood character.

The one thing I do that is always the same, is using traffic volume to drive commercial growth.  Commercial lots LOVE traffic!  Neighbour connections are the most powerful tools in the game for generating traffic.