Big cities are easier then you think. I usually have 1 million people on a tile by year 100. There's only a few things you really need to do to make regions sky rocket. City stats right now (2-3 weeks old) - ~3 mil regional population - city with ~900k R$$$/R$$ and 600k Co$$$ (something like 30-40 ong towers already in region - 60-90k people using highways in some places -over 100% usage of all forms of transportation -only 6 tiles build in region My only goal was to make a full large tile almost completely full of R$$$ and CO$$$. The way I went about this is pretty simple. Here's what I did to get the region this size. 1) The biggest change from the way I used to play is restricting what I want to build to certain areas. I built a low wealth city, a medium/low wealth city and a high wealth city. Generally I try to keep R$, CS$ (sometimes CS$$) and dirty industry in my low wealth cities; R$$, some R$, CS$$, CS$$$, some CO$$, and manufacturing in my medium wealth cities; and R$$$, CO$$$ and high tech in my high wealth cities. 2) Elevated highways are the key to success. I build them very early on, have to take out loans for a while usually to start getting a region rolling initially. I only connect my elevated highways with avenues so that my traffic is focused. I ONLY build commercial on my avenues. 3) Once my elevated highways are positioned (if I don't have the money, I just keep an avenue as a place keeper until I have the money to finish it), and the avenues running off the highways, I build 8X_ blocks. I keep the other dimension blank because it doesnt really matter. All you need is 4x4 squares on each side on the street so that the largest buildings can move in. If the demand is not high enough for a large building to move in, then a smaller building will move in and usually put a yard or a parking lot as a place keeper. ******The trick is that you need to hold down ctrl when you pot land for getting the 4x4 squares********* if you try to destroy the autoformatting grey streets that sim city automatically puts in (when you try to zone a large square) and then zone some more so that the zots do not point at a road, sometimes they won't build in. 4) I hate how subways and buses screw up my blocks. But I managed to find a way to get around it. Just like how the game suggests to place one ways parrallel to eachother (like a avenue) to reduce traffic, I put two roads next to eachother, with a space between them. I then put my subway stops and bus stops between them or a monorail. With the stops between the two streets, commuters will still exit the stop on either side of the street, so the stops dont get in the way and allow you to have lots more space for skyscrapers, while keeping them organized! 5) The best way to get out of debt is to start building your industry first. Start your low wealth city, build a ton of industry near one of your highways and keep building until the demand tapers off. Industry doesn't really need anything else to grow, there is always more demand than you need (but you need to build it out or your demand for residential won't grow), it's just tricky finding places for the dirty and manufacturing because of the polution. 6) Focus your highways to the center tile of your region, make that your capital. I couldn't believe how much of an impact that had on my high wealth region. I had either 2-3 cities ( my low wealth and medium wealth region, which at that point only had 300k and 600k residents, respectively, and maybe 1 more small region) and I had 20,000 cars, 30,000 busses and 10k trucks coming into my high wealth city almost the second it started. The first two avenues that connected to the elevated highways had LOTS of traffic, and made CO$$$ POUR in. I used to always grid small like some people suggest here, but when I did this, my traffic wasn't focused. Now I have all the traffic where I want it, and no traffic where I don't want it (since my residential ONLY sits on one ways, have only avenues running perpendictular to those one ways, and elevated highways connected to those avenues) A lot of my high wealth region is distressed, despite having a full green major rating. The reason in my mind is that I still have a lot of medium wealth to move in outside and around the main city before I can make a whole large tile just high wealth. For the first time, I got an international airport to its largest setting, I have about 800,000 usage and only 900,000 capacity. For the first time, my commercial is getting HIGH customers, in the past they have almost all been low customers, even on the biggest CO buildings. Since there is so much high wealth in one region, the traffic naturally flows INTO the city, on almost every other region, the traffic goes OUT of the city. I'll post some screen shots soon.
