I really can't say I hate much of anything. I think the UDI makes it WAY too easy, as I just got back into this after a few years and you simply build the small airfield and let funds deplete to get the military base. Every 20 minutes or so you can reselect the secret skywriter message and steal the tank and make 140K in two minutes. Not to mention the other ones such as get the story(helicopter) and organs for profit(medical heli), steal the train, ect. I made up three regional cities and have between 15-30k populations and run on a two to one debt to income ratio and can easily maintain cash with those missions. The first two regions I had by the time I was at 15k population were all secrets open such as spaceports(even with 5k pop), universities, solar power plants, fire strip(another $70k mission that takes 2 minutes), all news and radio towers, deluxe police centers, private schools, ect. You can have everything in 2 hours playing by using UDI. I have full education, build nothing but 80% hi-tech/20% manufacturing and my mayor rating is always within two of the top bars, even after the deductions from the free money missions in approval. I will have a budget of something like 12k in debt/5k in income and have $300k at any given time without making any effort to jump on the missions constantly. Simply use only the most profitable UDI missions, you can pull them up in the gift car menu, reject all the non-essential missions and just wait for ones like tank joyride to pop up periodically. I always put the military base on the edge of the map so often its pointed to the border about 12 tiles away on startup Its more or less the biggest 'cheat' in the game. Even running a $15K monthly deficit its a piece of cake to just keep building and building. Easy ones are: -Tank Joyride(military base) $70K the tank doesn't slow down on open terrain so just run for any border. The other tank missions are WAY too destructive and you can easily kill a powerplant or highly developed building with one click -Ignore the fire(fire landing strip) $70K -you don't even have to get all the squares -Secret skywriter message $70(small landing strip) -Zombie cropduster(small landing strip) $20K -Hijack the train(passenger train)$20 -Get the story(news chopper)$20k(usually two short stops) -Organs for profit(medical heli)$20k(only one short flight) So every hour or so of game play that's at least $290K if you need it(it actually cycles faster then that) Most other missions are too much of a headache, once you use them to earn an unlockable, then they are pretty pointless. Its worth building the most simple oval of monorail with a couple stations just to get the solar plant early. That and the nuclear free ordinance and you can do just about anything environmentally. Once you are in the education 'zone' for high tec, have stuff like the disease center and space port, and tweak the taxes against dirty industry, you can even get a boost in your environment bar by simply letting an occasional dirty building develop and just bulldozing it. If you just build 3x2 or 4x3 MDI zones they will hardly ever be dirty anyway. I end up being more of a wealthy philanthropist with some strange occasional stunts donating tons of money I have to spare rather then budgeting. Once it gets big enough you can go to tweaking for profit without staring at farmland for 40 hours. The worst UDI missions are the tank and heli missions that require destroying buildings(way to much room for error with the controls) and the Trash truck missions(way too easy to get caught and loose $20k). Try to earn as much as possible very early as missions like Pure Evil
