japerson

I would love to see the "RH Plopmodd Final" expanded. Or maybe just the two lots I was hoping were in there. I love to build huge industry zones with either tons of 1x1 Steel Shed or Chemical Tank lots. But it takes forever (and lots of money) to bulldoze all unwanted built lots. Then making the lots historical once they are finally built. I was hoping the RH Plopmodd Final would finally solve my problem, but it only has these two lots as 1x2 lots which cuts the workforce in half. I also did not see any of the various 1x1 (DI) Yard lots which I love using as well in that set either.

Dude! Where's the door?

I was just browsing when I came upon this thread and found it very interesting. I am one of those players that have played forever, but still don't get it. And yes, I have read all the tutoring posts, but they too don't help. When it comes to slums, I can build some real nice ones, profitable ones too. In fact, that is all I seem to be able to build. As soon as I educate my slummies, they build these big fancy houses and stuff, only to abondon them, leaving my city even slummier than before, but with a dropping population and a now dropping budget. It sounds from what I need to do here is to leave my first city a slum, maybe even my first few as slums, and then I should have better success with my higher educated cities. Is this correct?

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.

Aurthor: jglei701 Have you tried it with more dense zones? What's the farthest distance (number of tiles) that it will work? And how about from one city to the next?quote> OK, I finally tried this city-to-city. Here are my results: On a 256x256 map, I placed a small factory on the edge of the map. I then ran a street 256 tiles and made a connection to the next city. In the other city, I placed a house right along the edge where the street connection came in. Here were the results: Two pedestrains leave the house and head off to work, but they never arrive in the next city. I am shown a freight truck leaving the factory and going to the next city (256 tiles away), but I got the message about freight not moving. So I build a second factory right along the edge going into the next city. Here are those results: Two pedestrains leave the house and head off to work, but this time, they do make it to work. So now I put in residential lots 23 tiles away from the border. Here are the results: With only 14 jobs available, I have 77 pedestrains leaving their houses and headed off to work. 44 on lower road and 33 on upper road. Only 8 show up going to work in the factory sitting on the near border. I then place two factories on this 256 tile long street. One is 22 tiles away from the border, the other is 23 tiles away from the border. Here are the results: Without going back to the residential city, 8 pedestrains show up to work at the factory 22 tiles away, none show up in the other. So I have concluded that when it comes to city-to-city walking, you can take advantage of this bug and put your jobs as far away from the border you like. However, the Sim walking to work must be no more than 22 tiles away from the border. If you insist on seeing your Sims walking to work in your industry city, then you must place the jobs within 22 tiles. However, this is only needed for the visual effect.

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.

Most likely the issue is R$$ & R$$$ not being able to find jobs. You have to deteremind what wealth of the residents that are moving out and try to address their needs. Education raises the demand for jobs that pay more. You can also raise taxes on R$$ and R$$$ to control their growth some.

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.

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.

I have a question, what brings in the money? I thought population did, but I see it doesn't. I have several small cities which most do very well, financially. But my latest is turning out to be a disaster. City #1: Entire population is made up of 1x3 LDR$ Population = 9,625. Income = $4,105 from R$ @ 9.0% City #2: Entire population is made up of 1x2 LDR$ Population = 11,002. Income = $4,870 from R$ @ 9.0% City #3: Entire population is made up of 1x1 LDR$ Population = 15,575. Income = $7,290 from R$ @ 9.0% City #4: Entire population is made up of 1x3 MDR$ Population = 25,109. Income = $3,514 from R$ @ 9.0% City #5: Entire population is made up of 3x3 HDR$ Population = 18,856. Income = $1,801 from R$ @9.0% When I zone for Medium and High density, I get more people, but make less. Not only that, but I saw where large buildings developing would cause expenses to rise sharply as well. Where is the money supposed to come from to support cities with large buildings? And if the large buildings give me less and cost more, why desire them?

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.

Oh my! Who would have thought that industry could be so..., um, pretty? Not I. Far from pretty, this is my low density dirty industry area built one tile at a time. Pretty intense looking. See how I snuck the word pretty into that?

I just finished going through this whole thread. While there are some good ideas, most of what I saw, even though eye-catching, seemed to have no practical use. So if I may, I'd like to add something useful to this thread, not to say there isn't anything useful here already. While boring to look at, it may give others some ideas on how to handle their traffic problems. Now the original thread said no grid networks. While at first glance this may appear to look grid like, I don't believe it is. If you all think it is, I'll remove it. This transportation network is for those who build suburbs, which I happened to love to build. It uses subdivisions, maximizing the limitations of streets, roads and avenues. It is designed to work like roots of a tree. The smaller streets are used to collect the Sims from their homes. Roads are used to connect the streets, forming a simple subdivision, which is then connected to an avenue which carries the brunt of the Sims to work. These images were from my first experiment with this system. This is the avenues by themselves. This is a typical subdivision. This is the entire suburb area. The rest of these images are from a modified second attempt after seeing mistakes made with the first. Here is the entire section after developement. No major problems. Here I used a one-way road to act as an access road to the industry section. This helped to take a lot of traffic off my avenue that runs in front of my industry section. A near perfect fit for my school zone. And while I am at it, from all the round abouts I saw, I don't remember seeing any for trains. So I quickly threw this together. Hope you all found something useful with all of that.

If the only mode of transportation is walking, a R$ Sim will walk up to 23 tiles to get to work. With your technique, they seem to walk further. But they aren't. Actually, they are walking half way and riding the subway the other half. You just have in broken up in segments of two's which makes it look like they are walking almost twice the distance. This is possible because riding a subway is faster than walking. So your Sims are willing to travel farther.

Author: jglei701 Have you tried to run the game normally, WITHOUT taxing the richer Sims early on? And perhaps giving them the services they need?quote> Yes, I did. It was worse because R$$ & R$$$ moved in before I had developed jobs to support them. From what I have learned from building small cities over and over again, you must educate your Sims first, so that they will demand I-M. Once I have a few I-M's built, I then allow R$$ to be built. Once thet happens, I get demand for CS$$ and CO$$. Like I said, I suck at building big cities, but with this technique, I seem to be getting better and better at it. Now that I have solved my traffic problem, my small city seems to be developing pretty nicely. I have it up to 18,000+ Sims.