Education strategy

[brianc1327 161]

For background of my question, I suppose I need to briefly describe the basic strategy I use.  I have used various variations of this basic strategy, that I probably can't even remember them all.  First, I make a "starter city" that is 1/4 of a medium grid or 1/16 of a large grid.  The starter city gets just the basic utilities of water, power, and garbage collection (that is actually the most expensive because of the upfront cost of the incinerator or whatever I put in for garbage collection).  I also put in a fire station, but that has more to do, I think, with "game mechanics" rather than  "providing services" to the sims.  This "starter city" costs about $300,000, so what I usually do, at least currently, is start the game on "medium" difficulty and take out a loan of ~$100,000.  Since this takes me down to almost $0 in my treasury, I almost always get offered the "desperation awards," and I recommend taking the army base and the prison, but turning down the missile base and the toxic waste dump. In a previous message, I discussed why, so I won't here, but even without them the "starter city" usually starts making money before it gets to the losing condition of -50k or -100k (I can't remember which) and makes you run for senator.  Once the loan is paid off, I then start putting in my parks, and since this attracts more people, and more R$$$ people, the more the city makes, then when I get to $1,000,000, I start putting in the city services such as the schools, hospitals, police stations, etc, using what I described in a previous post as "maximal/minimal funding."  Even though I am now paying for the schools and hospitals, having the city services expands to city enough to be netting as much as before they were put in, well anyway, when I get back up to $1,000,000, I start developing the next quadrant in the same way, until my city is "finished."  That is a very long-winded "brief" description of my basic strategy.

Well, anyway, I decided to try a city on "easy mode" and max out the loan to $200,000, so that I started with 700,000 and develop 2 quadrants as my "starter city."  This was plenty of money, I never got offered the "desperation awards," and don't think that I even dropped much below $100,000 before the city started making money, even though it had the very big expense of paying the loan (close to $2500, I think).  I started making the parks when the city started making money.  Since I had no schools yet, but the parks attracted enough R$$$ residents, I very quickly got offered the private school, and decided to place it immediately, then after I put down some more parks, I got offered the 2nd one, and again I plonked it down immediately, Very quickly I got offered the major university, even though I have schools that only about 10 percent of the residents and have not yet put in the city services(schools, hospitals, etc.) that raise the mayor rating.  Well any way, right now I have a city that has basic services, 2 schools that service only about 10% of the population, and the major universty.  The EQ right now is above 190, or it least appears to be from the data view.

I plan to put hospitals into my city, but should I put in the "regular schools" as well.  On one hand, putting them in would give the remaining 90%(the R$ and R$$) education services that they do not currently have.  On the other, it would be spending an awful lot of simulated money to raise the EQ very little if any.  So, I guess my ultimate question is whether I should put in the "regular" schools or not.

Brian Christiansen

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

Good evening Brian,

I must say I read your post with keen interest and find it very, well, educational and highly insightful. It is appealing mainly because it represents a completely different approach from mine.

The initial stage of your city building does seem quite standard - I also often start with necessities first and place schools, police or colleges only further into the game. I must say that I am a little surprised with the amount of money you spent on a starter city! 300 000 $ seems to be awfully lot! We are talking about a single tile, right? Not a collection of several of them?

Anyway, this is an interesting approach and come to think of it, it should give a young city some good income with the "desperation deals" in place.

If, like you say, you have maxed your EQ to 190, I would personally just dump the elementary schools. Do remember that education quotient does not rise only as a result of learning! According to the game mechanics, when new Sims are born, they actually inherit a fraction of EQ and health of their parents!

So, if you cared for the previous generations, the chances simply are that they will pass a quite high stats on to their children, even if there are no dedicated education facilities in your town. A great example for this situation has happened in one of my cities where construction of just a single library has resulted in EQ going from mere 4 to 65 in some years and kept climbing... Very slowly, it's true, but it climbs, precisely due to the mechanism I just mentioned.

So in other words, you don't always have to cover the entire acreage of your town with schools to achieve a well educated society. I like to think of it as an effective variant of home-schooling and word-of-the-mouth education.  Think of it this way - our grandparents, especially the WWII generation did not have the luxury of schools and universities. Yet, they turned out to be smarter than some of us will ever be!

[Lucario Boricua 7,026]

The cheapest way to get the most education out of your cities is with the local branch libraries, those have a huge educational services capacity for their size, and they raise the EQ of the population in a balanced way.

Secondly, unless your city is highly specialized in a type of employment, it's not wise to provide the full spectrum of education services to all the population, make sure to have some areas with more education for the high education jobs (I-HT, CO), areas with medium education for medium education jobs (I-M, wealthier CS) and areas with minimal/no education for low education jobs (I-D, I-Ag, poorer CS).

Third, don't try to over-supply utilities (power, garbage, water) in your starter cities, you can get into financial problems rather easily, as can be seen with how your strategy pushes so far into the red that you risk losing said cities.

[brianc1327 161]

3 things: first, I use a method that might be considered "cheating," an industry quadrupler, but I think my strategy would work, perhaps with slight tweaks, without it (perhaps I should temporarily remove it and build a "test city" to see what happens); second, I get my money down to 0 or almost 0, and even lose money for a very short time, currently I do not even get close to the losing condition of -$100,000 before my "starter" city starts making money, when I first started developing this strategy I would hit that losing condition quite frequently, and third, it will probably take a day or 2, but I am working on breakdown of what one of my "starter cities" costs.

Brian Christiansen

[monkeywater 910]

I just use universities and libraries.  You can get top eq, but slower this way without the crowding and cost issues of schools. 

[brianc1327 161]

The following is a picture of a quadrant zoned the same way I zone and lay out roads in one of my "starter cities."  The buildings (power plant, garbage incinerator, etc, are on a "side road," and not part of the "zoned area" in my starter city.

 

The following is a breakdown of the cost for zoning a region like this, and putting in the "minimal services buildings":

trash incinerator 25,000  I have used other trash collection methods, such as such as making a small plot of land and zoning it as landfill, but making this comparitively large investment relative to a $300,000 budget, has proven to be the most cost effective.
power 10,000 I have used other power plants, but the coal power plant is the one I most use
water 2 small pumps 2800, pipes, 3161
zoning: R, high density:61950  , C, high density: 25050 , M, medium density: 15930 when I started developing this strategy, I would start with low density and uprade to medium density, then upgrade again to high density, but it proved more cost effective to just start out with high density. 
highgways: 80,000  the region I am currently developing uses the Maxis elevated highways as the "interstate system".  The highway estimate includes the cost of the cloverleaf that connects the 2 highways.
roads: 100,000  when I started, I used streets, then upgraded them to roads, but putting in roads to start with, as with all the other expenses, just proved to be most cost effective. The cost of the roads includes the cost of the onramps to get on the "Interstate system.
Small fire station:  250 as I stated in my OP (or at least think I did), I put the fire station in because of "game mechanics" rather than becaue I consider fire protection to be a basic service.  Generally, the "destroy all buildings around the burning building" strategy works, but there are fires quite frequently without it, but placing a fire station prevents most of them.
Grand total: 300,000. That is the total of the above numbers rounded to the nearest 100,000.  The reason I rounded it is because some of the numbers that I used were estimates, and the buildings I put down are on a "side road," and not an actual part of the zoned area.

Brian Christiansen