Moneywell

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose No question you should check your desirability displays. To keep commercial areas happy you need some open spaces. I like to have a plaza every couple of blocks or so, with a flower garden or a park in there occasionally. If you have small, irregular areas that can't be zoned for buildings, put open grass areas on them and lay on some trees. This usually gets a favorable hit from any near businesses or industries. The other thing that keeps the commerical buildings happy is high traffic levels. I like my traffic on commercial streets to show up in the new flow display heading towards the green (cyan is a nice color). The oldest trick is to place your industrials at one end of the business district and the residentials at the other in such a way that the Sims have to pass through the commercial area to get to work in the industrials. Try to keep the big buildings in the commercial area near the industrial end. I don't take IM out. Only ID, and I usually don't kid around with it. I set the tax to 20% right at the start unless I am starting a new region and need them. I generally keep my taxes at a level rate for all types of property. Differential rates are a pain to manage, and don't really seem to do much for you. The only thing I do at the beginning is to set I-Ag to 7%, and keep it there. I cut taxes if development goes into the doldrums, but only a few hundreds of basis points at a time. I suspect your real problem is lack of open/green space. Sims like this too, and they like playgrounds near schools including the skateboarding park. I have a policy with schools. An elementary gets a playground if there is room. A high school gets a soccer piech. A large elementary gets a softball diamond, and a large high school gets both a soccer field and a softball field. When I get the university, I try to keep some nearby space for the minor league stadium. Makes a good field house and field for the U. I also give private schools some kind of sports facility if at all possible. We don't have an available cricket pitch. Maybe I'll bat one later. I put my schools right in the middle of the Sims neighborhoods, even if I have to blot some lots. Schools are quite often a neighborhood thing. If you have to upgrade a school, you have to be quite sanquine about urban redevelopment and just plung it in where the old school was (bulldozed, of course). Police and Fire statons, likewise, along with clinics and hospitals. With hospitals, you can place them and build a neighborhood around them, or just drop them on some lots, built or not. If there are residual single zones after that, I convert them to commercial. About the university: Lately I've been putting down a college building and a small airport, and labelling them the aeronautics institute and the flying school respectively. Just a quirk of mine, but I like the idea. Causes a lot of commercial development if you zone it. quote> I've had SimCity 4 since it was released as a birthday gift. And since that time I have always believed the buildings advertised on the cover were simply that, advertisements. I had no clue you could actually get those aesthetically pleasing buildings because I could never get them when I played. Well that’s not completely true; I did get the “Grand Hotel” once or twice although its size is greatly exaggerated on the cover. So due to this recent discovery I decided to install the game yet again and give it another try . I could always get some CO$$$ but never enough and none of the "stage 8" buildings. That is my main objective this time around; to get the "stage 8's"...at least one of each. I’m presently following a SimCity 4 Tutorial on YouTube by “VBackseatRomeoV”. You might have seen his videos or hey, maybe you’re him/her. My biggest mistake since I had the game is that I would only really start one city and try to develop it and then move onto another one. I was ignorant to the fact that Maxis actually programmed some complex interactions between cities that influence development. Now that I am aware of it I am somewhat more capable of supporting my city and region. In the present city that prompted me to ask these questions, I decided to delete along with the entire region. The driving factor was my own fault. I was in the large city and I was focusing on one part of the city experiencing difficulties with employment. I decided to fast forward and many parts of the city, coincidently none where my view was fixed, lacked water due to my deteriorating water pumps. My utilities adviser did not bring this to my attention...By the time I realized this was occurring many residential, commercial, and high-tech sectors exited my city and my 10k profit turned into a 20k deficit. It forced me to demolish all my hydrogen plants and replace them with cheaper energy alternatives. The first thing that came to mind was quitting but I decided to stick it out and see if they would return. Some high-tech did but the vast majority that left did not. Once this occurred, the demand for residential, commercial, and high-tech trailed off. The few zones that were in demand were R$ and CS$ and CS$$. This, along with transit and population income issues, convinced me to delete the city after some time had passed with no results. The BackseatRomeo’s tutorial is what actually led me to delete the entire region. I realized that I took away a lot of the CO$$$ demand from my big city in my smaller cities while trying to increase high wealth in them to support the big city (in vain). Because I didn’t control taxes, I allowed CO$$$ to develop in all of them. So now I’m restricting development to CS and high-tech in my neighboring cities. I’m also restricting any CO$$ and CO$$$ development in my big city until the time is right. This is so that when I develop other cities there will be astronomically high demand for CO’s, increasing my chances of getting the stage 8’s in the big city. So I think my biggest problems now are transit and like you said; green space. I never like putting a lot of parks around because it would take up valuable space that could have been an office building. But now that I know the dimensions of the stage 8’s (4x4), I’m not as worried. However, a major determining factor in available park space is the civil services facilities. Hospitals, police stations, and schools take up a lot of space, especially when you need multiple ones in a single area. This is what happened to me; two to three hospitals taking up a block with two police stations and two large elementary schools a couple blocks from each other. But I guess a good way to avoid this is to zone residential better so that they aren’t intermixed with commercial. But when they are mixed together, commercial receives more traffic and subsequently more customers so… The other issue is transit. People say it’s best to put up highways before you create the city but that can be expensive so that’s why I never do it until I know I need it and can afford it. But then when the time comes it creates a mess of things. And I never use monorail or train because they take up too much space. So I resort to subways and even then there’s still congested streets. One last thing, the info on buildings in general is very limited on the net. I wish there was a buildings catalogue accompanied with pictures and details. I'm actually surprised there isn't one here or elsewhere on the web...unless there is one that I've overlooked.

Well I decided to group all of my questions together to hopefully increase the probability I will get some good responses and save the forum from multiple topics. So here it goes. My first question is in regards to the wealth of commercial buildings. What causes them to decrease and how can they be fixed? In one of my cities I have commercial buildings in parts of my city that have that dirty tint to them and when I click info they are missing one of the simoleon symbols for their wealth even though they have “high” customer volume (crime is low). My second question deals with the customer factor of commercial buildings. Do they really make a difference? Usually I will always hold back on zoning for a lot of commercial areas (especially commercial services) when they’re in high demand because they would usually have low amounts of customers. But I’ve observed having large buildings in areas that have "low" customer volume and this didn't make much sense to me. This has me question if this factor only affects how fast it will grow, not if it will stay in business (demand) or what building stage it will reach. Thus if there is enough CO jobs and a population to supply it, the commercial building could hit stage 8, even it has low customer volume. My next question deals with the high-tech sector. Demand for high-tech zones in my city is through the roof, but whenever I zone, it takes forever for the area to develop. I make sure it’s a desirable area (on the index) with a police station, fire station, and access to major transit. Yet I still get the same result. That is why I am wondering if population has something to do with it. With how high the demand is, one would think zoning would be full within a couple months—not the case. My final question is in regards to the income of the city population--what causes it to decrease? I have great education in my cities about 170, and my average income use to be at about 70k in both until it started fluctuating sporadically and is now settling at below 20k (image provided). My first guess is that it has to deal with the increase in population—since now the job ratios are different. My second guess would be raising taxes. Before I decided to start eliminating manufacturing and dirty zones altogether, I hiked their taxes to 15% to discourage development. I don’t know if raising taxes on industrials affect population income or not but it could be possible. My last guess is that it has to deal with eliminating my manufacturing and dirty sectors completely. I started out slowly by removing the manufacturing and dirty zones until they were completed eradicated. I didn’t have as many industrial jobs relative to commercial, so I don’t understand how removing a small industry would cause population income to decrease by 40k. (Resized image: exceeded 800x600 pixel limit - Astronelson)

All the suggestions in here are good but I'd like to emphasize something I've have learned from another. SC4 is about the interconnection and interdependence of cities and towns. You can't just start a city and concentrate on it alone, hoping it will eventually get the desirable skyscrapers. You must play the cities off one another. Start and create other adjacent cities in your region and raises taxes on zonings that you would prefer for one city and not the other. For instance, if you want CO$$$ raise the taxes to the max in other cities to discourage their development and then drop the taxes to 5% or even zero to encourage them to develop in the desired city. Raise taxes on dirty and manufacturing industries to cease demand in a desired city and lower them substantially in another to encourage development there instead. Just make sure when you create cities that have enough population to stimulate demand--develop them enough to have an impact.

This is first time I have installed SC4 and Rush Hour on Vista and I am having performance issues--its very sluggish. This never happend to me before on XP (with average computer specs) and I highly doubt it is my present computer hardware ( Intel Core @ Quad Q9300 @ 2.50GHz, 4GB of RAM and a GeForce 9800M GT). This of course, believe it or not, is the first time I have installed the patches so maybe there's a link...I doubt it. Anyways I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this on Vista and if theres a way to fix it, thanks. Moneywell

All you people having problems with the Financial Advisor, have you ever received the Bureau of Bureaucracy through the game, not cheating? Maybe you need to check your budget more carefully, every cent counts.

I would say the Health & Education Advisor. When I fast forward so my city can progress, she keeps pestering me every time there's a mass influx of citizens and my services aren't adequate. So then I correct them only to have a lot of the new population to leave and I spend in excess. Next would be the Safety Advisory because I sort of skimp on fire and focus more on police in residential and commercial areas. I must have only gotten a fire once or twice in those areas but frequently in the industrial zones. The Financial Advisor only bugs me usually once in the beginning of the game when I build many things and haven't corrected the excessive funding that's leading to my deficits. The Environmental Advisor can be a real pain in the beginning of your city. She'll shut down your water if its polluted enough by dirty industry. I like the City Planner Advisor because he kisses my butt all the time and gives me gifts. The Traffic and the Utilities Advisors can become a pain later on as well. I'm not good at constructing transportation systems because I believe they take up valuable real estate for dense zones to develop so that's what I have to work on. But because of this, the TA gets on me--giving me the "talk to the hand" treatment and displaying a pissy look. Also later in the game the city burns through water like its going our of style--even with an ordinance--so I have to keep an eye on that or he'll scold me as well. To sum it up, at least in my experience, the FA and EA get me at the beginning, the HEA and the SA annoy me throughout, and the UA and the TA bug me at the end.

Originally posted by: bigthing Well this is your first post Welcome to the Simtropolis forums!! Well, i believe that it is a good idea to zone 4x4, as this is the most common size. Although it is a good idea to zone a varying size all over the city, just for more variaty. For the bus stop problem you could try some RTMT (road top mass transit) These lots can be plopped onto a road surface and act as a bus stop/subway/both. There is one drawback, if it is in front of a zone then it will display the "no car zot". A way to combat this is to zone at least 2 tiles across so one is facing the regular road. For these just search "RTMT" on the STEX Enjoy!!!quote> Yea, I just realized it was my first post after I posted it and it said "1" nexts to Posts . So even though 4x4 is most common are there commercial office buildings that take up more space then that?

Hello everyone, I believe this is my first post maybe not . I can't remember, I created this account awhile ago and never really logged on. My experiences with SC4 created frustration that discouraged me from playing it and only now am I returning to it. After years of being idle, Cities XL reminded me of SC4 and got me back in the mood (mind you I probably wont purchase that game) of city planning and I searched on youtube for a SC4 tutorial so I could finally get gigantic commercial skyscrapers ( ). If you have any suggest or disagree with him please share. Anyways, I'm following his advice but I had some questions I believe would be best suited for a site such as this. My first question is how many tiles do the largest commercial buildings take up--4x4,5x5,6x6? The reason I'm asking is because I don't want bus stops and parks to take up valuable area that could potentially develop into the best of the best. My second question is if anyone knows if there is a list of all the building in SC4 accompanied by picture and tiles sizes. Thanks. Moneywell