When do you add water to your cities?

[Zephyrus22 109]

In the past, I used to add water to my cities as soon as I received the popup prompting me to, usually around 15k residents. Because the game told me I should, I figured that doing so immediately was in my best interest.

However, lately I've been playing differently. Instead of adding water early on in my city's development, I purposefully delay adding it until I build out my entire city at low density development, then I add water when I'm ready to add higher density. I've noticed that my cities seem to grow better when played this way. Once I add water and higher density, I have a harder time with growing my city outward to fill the entire city tile, as the game seems to hit a wall at a certain point. But with this purposeful delay, I feel that I can control their development better, making the city feel more realistic.

So I'm curious, do you have a particular strategy to adding water to your city? Do you wait until you hit a particular milestone, or do you add it from the beginning? Have you noticed any particular benefits or drawbacks to your strategy?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

I micromanage mine:

So only the towns which need it get it. 

[Zephyrus22 109]

@CorinaMarie That's an interesting strategy. I've never considered that because I worried it would cause issues in the city tile to only have some of it watered. I might have to try it in my game and see how it works.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@Zephyrus22 The really big drawback to it is you have to check capacity in each area often if there's a chance of more growth or expansion. The water graph is for the whole city tile and it simply compares total production to total usage. If you have a little town that seems fine, but you happen to have some high density zoning it can suddenly change to a massive tower building and overwhelm the one little water tower which used to supply the whole town.  

[Lab Rat 13]

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