Exporting power and water

[deanva 70]

Can I sell power or water to more than just adjacent cities like two or more from the source city? I use Darasouth thorium power plant and Black hole water works.

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

Yes, but not directly.

You'll need to sell a significant over supply to the adjacent neighbors and then those neighbors sell to the city tiles two removed from the source. You can cascade this as far out as you like.

Keep in mind you have to propagate the info back and forth between city tiles by opening them, running a few months on normal speed (or a few years if using high speed). The chain of supply can get broken for unapparent reasons too which becomes quite frustrating. Also, there's some crazy glitch (of which I've forgotten the exact details), but something like selling the same thing to the same neighbor twice causes weird negative supply (or something).

The concept of a massive plant supplying a large portion of the region is appealing. In practice it becomes the whole game in itself trying to keep it all going well.

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

I'm personally not an expert in this field, but in addition to the info Cori posted above, I found a couple of topics which might be useful for further reading.

As follows:

• Neighbor Deals
• Setting Up Deals

 

42 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Also, there's some crazy glitch (of which I've forgotten the exact details), but something like selling the same thing to the same neighbor twice causes weird negative supply (or something).

Found it!

Here is the one...

 

[Propfam 2,286]

12 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I'm personally not an expert in this field, but in addition to the info Cori posted above, I found a couple of topics which might be useful for further reading.

As follows:

• Neighbor Deals
• Setting Up Deals

 

Found it!

Here is the one...

 

Or, even more bizzare than that: unexpected ultra huge income. I had a topic about it few times ago.

[Joel_The_Jackle 16]

When I started out I was intrigued by the idea of a Utility City (I actually named it that on the map I was playing) which would just supply water, electricity and take in trash. The concept worked fine...it was a small tile so each corner was designated for something so pollution and such wouldn't get in the way. I just got tired of switching back and forth, forgetting to update the deal while building a current city and suddenly you are swarmed with warnings, outages, buildings turning black, garbage piling in the streets, etc. The other hassle is, unless you play on easy, cash going out to the neighbors can get real tight in the early game. Its a concept that I want to try out again, maybe I will on the current map I'm on as I have a well developed region already.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

11 hours ago, Joel_The_Jackle said:

unless you play on easy, cash going out to the neighbors can get real tight in the early game

Unless you play on easy, the capital expenditures for a city to generate its own everything will make money tight too. I find it's actually easier to do the deals: One city uses its grub-stake for utility construction while the other uses its money to build streets and zone something. Long term you save on maintenance too -- because the utility city never needs to run its clock, so your power plants and water pumps never age!

Just make sure that you keep water pollution away from pumps.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

12 hours ago, Joel_The_Jackle said:

When I started out I was intrigued by the idea of a Utility City (I actually named it that on the map I was playing) which would just supply water, electricity and take in trash. The concept worked fine...it was a small tile so each corner was designated for something so pollution and such wouldn't get in the way. I just got tired of switching back and forth, forgetting to update the deal while building a current city and suddenly you are swarmed with warnings, outages, buildings turning black, garbage piling in the streets, etc. The other hassle is, unless you play on easy, cash going out to the neighbors can get real tight in the early game. Its a concept that I want to try out again, maybe I will on the current map I'm on as I have a well developed region already.

I've done this before, and it works. I evenly quartered a small tile with a crossed road, lined the roads with large water towers, pumps, and pollution controls, along with power stations(of course, make sure to make intra-city connections with pipes and power lines). All the dead space on the corners I zoned landfill. You can make a version in all 3 tile sizes if you want, and make copies of them from your regions folder, to save time. When you want one,  copy and paste to a junk map and just import it into your map. You could checkerboard them all over. The four corners not being served I would zone as farms, with minimal service, as they don't need much,  and serve as jobs for your main cities.

[Joel_The_Jackle 16]

So I did this in the game I was in just to test out the concept. I learned two things so far:

1) Cheetah speed is a no-no. As soon as things take off and you don't have a the comfort of your own supply to fall back on things go south. I would advise not to touch it until your almost done with the city and are not really going to be pulling anymore utility or outputting anymore garbage.

2) Waste to energy in your Utility City are a sweet deal. I have nexus garbage mod but the vanilla ones work as well (just need more of them). Put them down, they make money by selling electricity and they make money burning the imported trash.  

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

11 hours ago, Joel_The_Jackle said:

So I did this in the game I was in just to test out the concept. 

Just so you know, you can do this with industry and commercial buildings too. Load up cities with either, make a bunch of road connections), plop a census repository(so you can see how many jobs you get and at what levels), run it for about 30 to 45 seconds in slow(until the mayor rating hits green), pause, save and leave, never to return. Build your city with nothing but Sims and civic and surround it with your C/I and Utility cities... and watch it grow.

[Joel_The_Jackle 16]

5 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Just so you know, you can do this with industry and commercial buildings too. Load up cities with either, make a bunch of road connections), plop a census repository(so you can see how many jobs you get and at what levels), run it for about 30 to 45 seconds in slow(until the mayor rating hits green), pause, save and leave, never to return. Build your city with nothing but Sims and civic and surround it with your C/I and Utility cities... and watch it grow.

I've never gone to the extreme of building a city around the concept but I have built up enough demand that I was able to use a small tile, completely fill it with HT-I and C$$$ and no residential. Kind of funny seeing a bustling city with a population of 0. It was rather accidental though. I just kept adding more to to see if I could drop the RCI, it was adjoining several built up cities and people kept showing up to work from outside so I kept putting the zones down as an experiment when I realized what was going on....

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

19 hours ago, Joel_The_Jackle said:

Kind of funny seeing a bustling city with a population of 0.

City services sure become simple though (no schools, no hospitals, no police, and no complaints). If you go a step further, cultivating only dirty and manufacturing, then pollution doesn't matter either. And with no residents to ejimacate, one need not run much time off the clock. Just run 6-12 months once in a while to absorb masses of job-seeking commuters pouring in from clean residential / commercial neighbors.