Do bigger buildings create expense spikes?

[japerson 0]

I have not seen this issue addressed anywhere, so forgive me if I am posting a common question that has been answered elsewhere.

I had a pretty cool (for me) city developing when this hunk of concrete arose:



So I am getting all excited (yes, over just that) and decide I better check all my graphs for any problems this building may have caused when I come across this:



I did not add anything to cause this spike. It had to be the developement of this new apartment building.

Is it common knowledge that bigger buildings cost me, the mayor, more to maintain? And if so, where is the advantage of having bigger buildings? I thought the added population would bring in more money, not cost me more. I suddenly do not understand even the basics of how this game should be played.

[iquere 2]

I don't have a clue what it could be. I have never seen it or heard about it. So I have a question. Is the building downloaded from the internet? (I haven't seen it before ). It could be something with that building that is causing the problem. Otherwise, I don't have a clue.

[japerson 0]

The name of the building is Impeccable Tenements. It is a 3x3 R$ building. It houses up to 2680 Sims. I do not believe it is a download. I usually download plopables. This building looks too plain for me to ever bother downloading it. Anyway, here is another pic from a different angle.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

not a single growable building in the game costs money to maintain, they all make you money. It wouldn't make any sense for the buildings to hurt you.

You had to of done something else. Did you alter any funding setttings, take out any loans?

But one thing you can try, is you can save the game, bulldoze that building, look at the charts some more, and then if you need to you can exit without saving and then you can come back to it.

[cogeo 960]

You must figure out what cause this expenses hike, and for sure, it's not this building.

Maybe a landmark you just plopped, civil buildings, some transit station(s), a landfill that is getting full, aging utilities, a neighbour that raised the amount of a deal.... It can be anything.

[Nardo69 51]

As far as I can tell this is an EA ingame growable and they don't produce costs.

I agree with the others - something else must have been happened ... such a peak of 1000 simeoleons does not come from nothing! did you missadjusted any schools, police etc? a drop in income may be because form time to time sims seem to stop mt and therefor income can drop (even more than 1000 simeoleons if the town is big enough)

Check if the waste disposal is full. This is a good advice from cogeo. If not go to the money menu. In the details you can adjust the budget of every singel building without clicking on them. I would guess your reason might be there since such a big building will increase the usage of hospital and schools extremely if you olnly had lowres before.

Hope I could help you

Bernhard

[joeynymets 19]

Actually large buildings give you more money, not make your expenses go up.  The reason they give you more money is because more sim live in your city and they pay taxes so the income would go up.

[Thut 0]

Actually i have noticed such activities too.

 

When ever your city grows up for some reason your income AND expenses greatly rise, u can even do a test if you want. And the expenses got out of control unless u take it slow and constatly even it out. This is like the main reason i use a money cheat that gives me 999 billion.

[sendarrow 3]

I think that the more sims you pack in a building, the more will cost eventually to the city. I mean, more sims means more consumption of electricity, water, more trash, and on and on, but I do not believe that it will cause a spike so soon and so sharp.

like I say, the city eventually will need more money for new sims.

[Tolomar 5]

I've never noticed any sort of expence to a city going up using any sort of growables, actually i noticed an increace in revenue

 

plopables might cost you money, not sure...don't use them myself

 

the cost of running a city might increase with the spike of larger buildings...need more power...water, more room in schools, hospitials etc etc

 

did any of the cities utilities building start to degrade at the same time? once they start to go...the dergrade quite quickly and can increase costs quite rapidly

[Peorth 17]

First of all, the building in question is not an add-on, I've seen that appear several times in my cities.

Second, let's make it clear that bigger buildings do NOT by themselves create expenses. However, buildings like those in your picture hold a lot of Sims and naturally create a demand in utilities, especially health care and education. I know this because i micro-manage all my facilities. Whenever such buildings are built, I need to increase the funding sliders for health and education covering that area.

However, the Sims also pay taxes. In my experience, the revenue generated by additional Sims adequately offset the additional utilities they consume. Thus, the spike in your expenses is NOT caused by the building or even the additional utilities they consume. Most probably you plopped some revenue-consuming building (hospital, school, police, etc), or enacted an ordinance.

[pepsi71ocean 2]

i have had the same thing

in one of my colonies in asia i tried that plopable mode where you can plop buildings and such.

 

i ploped an entire large tile with equal ammoints of commerical industrial and residental.

 

my expenses were about 1,000 before i ploped it, after it was 143,699!

my income was about 1,200 before but after it skyricked to 101,434

 

The only things i noticed was that your utilities go wacky.but then again it didn't ammount to 144 though.

 

similar yet interesting.

 

Oh the pop was about 4.1 million

 

sorry i have no answer for this, but if you figure it out i would be glad to know.

[Peorth 17]

Date: 1/31/2006 5:56:01 PM
Author: Thut

Actually i have noticed such activities too.

When ever your city grows up for some reason your income AND expenses greatly rise, u can even do a test if you want. And the expenses got out of control unless u take it slow and constatly even it out. This is like the main reason i use a money cheat that gives me 999 billion.

quote>

Actually Thut you're just mismanaging your city. You can make perfectly fine cities without the use of any cheats, otherwise what would be the point of playing the game?

When a city grows, the expenditures for maintainance of roads, water pipes, education, health, police, recreational facilities, etc. all increase. However, the increasing population also pays taxes, thus revenue will also grow to offset your expenditures. There are two other important reasons why your revenue SHOULD grow:
1). As your city develops, more medium and high-wealth RCI's move in, which naturally pay more taxes.
2) As your population increases, you can access or are inclined to use the more advanced utilities (e.g. large high schools). These can serve more people per dollar (more bang-for-buck) and will save you on expenditures

Most people sink in the red early on simply because of overspending, and the quickest way to do this is to place utilities too early. Your residents might be happy but your coffer is empty. Don't be afraid to build a slum city first to generate demand, then grow a more optimal neighbor city. Once, this neighbor has grown, you can go back to the slum and improve it, e.g. by demolishing all the dirty industry.

[iquere 2]

I agree with Peorth. Large buildings shouldn't cause the city's expenses to rise like that. Something else must have happened. I had a city where the population was 103.000 residents, but the expenses were higher than the incomes (about 600

[japerson 0]

Thanks everyone for replying.

No, like I said in my original post, I had added nothing. The big jump before the larger jump was where I added the Jail. There is a tiny one in between where I added a subway station. I was zoning for industrial lots when I noticed this building to start to rise. It was my first 3x3 building, so I knew it was going to be a big one. So I stopped and watched it. When it was completed, I began checking everything expecting a greater demand for services. All was fine until I got to the Income/Expenses chart. If you look real close, you can see income rose too which kept me in the black. So I continued with the city. All I did was continue zoning industry due to the increase of Sims needing jobs and again, I took another smaller unexplained jump in expenses without me adding or adjusting anything. I saw no other building rise. This second increase put me in the red and I have yet to recover.

I did as it was recommended, I just started the game up and bulldozed the building in question. Income dropped, but expenses did not. The same building then rose again. Income rose to where it was and oddly enough, expenses dropped very slightly. Again, I didn't adjust or do anyhing else that should have caused expense to change.

I am going to continue with this city to see if I have any other experience like this. I have also started a similar city where I am building without drinking water in order to control the growth. I'll keep an eye on that one too to see if this happenes again.

Thanks all.

[Peorth 17]

japerson, I personally wouldn't use water deprivation to control growth. The only thing you'll end up with are slums. If you want to control growth, use either
1) Limited zoning - fewer R/C/I zones
2) Low-density zoning
3) High taxation

Second, what's the point of controlling growth in the first place? Your Sims are the ones that pay taxes. As I said earlier, more Sims means more expenditures but also more revenue. If you believe that a large Sim population is causing you to sink in the red, then that's plain wrong. The only reason anyone gets budget deficits in Simcity is when they're doing fiscal mismanagement, plain and simple.

[japerson 0]

Because I am afraid of getting more expense spikes. I can't afford anymore.

I also have a habit of zoning everything high density right out of the gate so I won't have to bother rezoning later. So I instead use water restriction to restrict growth.

I build great money making suburbs, but once I grow tall buildings, I get into trouble somewhere.

I don't mind the R$. In fact, I prefer them over the R$$ and R$$$ who are too darn pickey and abandon everything they build. Wretched creatures.

I just cannot build these huge cities with sky scrappers.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

check your utilities, if they start deteriorating, they'll get ultra expensive.

You did the test so you know it's not the building.

[Gridlock 9]

Hmm tricky one
As funding for schools ,Hospitals .police and utilities are ajustable to suit your needs,then a population increase or large building ,would not raise costs in these areas if funding isnt adequate ,the game doesnt adjust the slider ,they just strike.Maybe you had some ordinace that was population balanced ,clean air act ,,ect ,population increase would increase expences in line with the pop increase,say you had commuter shuttle service and reduced emmisions ,that would be 3 increases in expences for each new sim that lives in the city .But the demand for extra jobs,extra fares and taxes should easily cover the cost,I dont know if youve continued to play this city,but surely by now you must of had some raise in
income from the extra sims ect .Maybe you should of had a good look at the budjet screen to see where the extra expences were actualy going.Without seeing the region or the rest of the city it is very difficult to give advise hope that helps.

[Peorth 17]

japerson, no offense, but I think you have to know/learn more about the game . . First of all, zoning in high density outright is a bad idea. It's expensive and you will not utilize the need for density until the city is more mature. Second, expense spikes don't appear spontaneously (unless you have a weird bug); expenses are solely under your control. Third, the probable reason you're having trouble with upper-wealth sims is an imbalance in their their number and the jobs available to them, especially for R$$$'s. Fourth, I see no problem at with managing cities with skyscrapers. Traffic can become a nasty issue but you need advanced planning to handle it when your city becomes large.

[japerson 0]

Date: 2/4/2006 5:33:39 AM
Author: Peorth
japerson, no offense, but I think you have to know/learn more about the game . . First of all, zoning in high density outright is a bad idea. It's expensive and you will not utilize the need for density until the city is more mature. Second, expense spikes don't appear spontaneously (unless you have a weird bug); expenses are solely under your control. Third, the probable reason you're having trouble with upper-wealth sims is an imbalance in their their number and the jobs available to them, especially for R$$$'s. Fourth, I see no problem at with managing cities with skyscrapers. Traffic can become a nasty issue but you need advanced planning to handle it when your city becomes large.

quote>

My cities usually are in the black before the first year ends. So investing ahead of time seems wise as it should save me money in the long run. I mean, I am going to eventually zone high density anyway, so why not get a head start?

I agree with the imbalance with upper-wealth sims. That was one of the reasons I was using water restrictions to control their growth, but it would make more sense and be more realistic to control that by zoning low density at the begining. That way they can have their water and stay small at the same time. So maybe I'll change my stradegy on the next city and see how it goes.

I think I solved my traffic problems. Again, in an unrealistic way, but as I learn how to better build, I'll try to be more realistic about things.

As for growable buildings not causing expense hikes, I guess I have some sort of wierd bug or just completely forgot something.

[ravenlord 0]

One thing that might have happened but not sure. Did this city have neighbor deals selling electric or water to another city? If so maybe when the new building popped it lowered your supply enough to cancel the deal thus no more profit for you from it.