borgisme5

I've found the x4 industry mod very help. It makes it so that industrial buildings create x4 jobs and x2 the money. That way you don't need need to have a medium sized city of pure industry to support an equal sized residential city. Basically makes it so that they support the right number of jobs, as huge factories do have several hundred workers unless it's automated. But if anything, you must get the Network Addon Mod, as it fixes pathfind quite a bit and makes the game more like what it should be.

1.) Build slowly Whether you are on hard, medium, or easy difficulty, don't spend everything you have right away. It's better to have a good amount of cash in the bank in case your city starts to lose money, which it will sometimes, that way you won't have to worry about going in the negative or take out loan. 2.) Don't build schools, hospitals and police stations Well, you should build them, but not right right away. You should only have fire stations, as you don't want the city to ignite into flames. When you start your education, just use a single large elementary school. It doesn't matter at this point to have a fully educated city, and the small elementary schools don't have much capacity. If you can't build a large elementary school, you don't need education yet. Don't bother putting in any high schools of any capacity until your city is at least ten years old, then won't get used much otherwise. And don't forget to use the query tool and fund each building for optimal spending. (And don't use the health clinic, their patient cap. is super small) 3.)Zones Remember that zoning only restricts how big of buildings can be build there, not if rich people can live there or not. IE, low density residential can only have low density housing, but it have $, $$ or $$$ Sim, but in can only have houses and small apartments built on it. Also, zones can support all the lower ones, but can not support anything higher. If an area is zoned high residential, it can potentially have low density, medium density and high density buildings. A medium density zoning area can have low density and medium density buildings, but not high, while low density can only have low density. Density basically controls how many people can live in your city, but not whether or not they are rich Sims. Generally speaking, until you get the hang of how to make a cash making city, I would say to stick with medium zoning, as it will allow you to have some bigger buildings to fill up with Sims to make you a good deal of money, but the zones cost half as much as dense. I personally only build in dense in my big cities, but that's because I know how to get a good profit pretty fast :3 3.) Mass Transit Don't forgo mass transit, even when a city is young. Use bus stations, and use 'em lots everywhere. Try to have one bus stop every 6-10 tiles in every direction. You want to Sims to take the bus, as it keeps less crowded and lowers air pollution. Also, bus stations only cost $5 a month to maintain, and bus stations make good money once a bunch of people start taking them. As for highways, I personally wouldn't build the whole network right away, and instead I'd leave areas clear for where you want to place the highways. Be sure to leave extra room for where you want your on and off ramps and the cloverleafs. You should use elevated highways when you can, as it's much easier to make on/off ramps. If you do a ground highways, you have to first transition it to elevated, make the underpass, and then transition it back to ground. Long range highways should be ground, while any highway in the city should be elevated generally speaking. And never, ever use toll booths, they will make the traffic much, much worse. Making sure people get to work is more important that making a little extra money. Trains are another good way to get people around, but they are a little harder to lay out and take up ground space. If you have the money, later add in an elevated train/subway network. Don't bother with monorail, despite it's faster, it's not nearly as flexible as the other rail options. And don't delete the bus stations, just like a real city, a Sim City benefits from a diverse metro network. 4.) As for power, water, garbage, etc Build your dirty power plants farrrr away from your city and connect it with a road and power lines to the city. You want it so far away because you want ample room for the city to grow without worrying about getting close to the air pollution and NIMBY that power plants are. This is a good area to build a garbage dump. A good trick with garbage is to also build a waste to energy plant and reduce the funding to $0. It won't produce any power, but will still burn garbage, thus keeping your landfills really low. Build a small fire station next to the power plants so it has fire protection, don't worry about water. Water pumps should be built as the no water zots appear. Stick with the small pumps and don't build a large water pump until it's monthly cost lower than the combined amount of the small ones. Then build one and delete all but two or three of the small ones. Then repeat. As to when to build your first pump, build it once all your zones stop developing. Remember the basic houses don't need water, so things will still develop with or with out 'em. 5.) Region Play The best way to play, however, is region play. Have one city with only residential and commercial zone in it, and in adjacent city, only industrial. Connect them with a road, pipes and power lines. In the R/C city, build extra water pumps. In the I city, build all the land fills and power plants. Have the R/C sell water to the I city, while the I city imports the R/C trash and sells them power. This is a good way for both cities to make some extra cash, especially the selling of water. The Sims in the R/C will work in the I city if you have the connections, and they will use the mass transit options if you have stops in the other city as well. Pollution doesn't travel between cities, so despite the cities are right next to each other, none of it will move into the city with all the people. Be sure to have ample connections however, as you don't want all your sims cramming through one road. Streets can't have neighbor connections remember. 6.) Parks Don't skimp out on parks. They soak up air pollution and increase land value in the area, thus allowing for bigger buildings to be built. Build 'em where ever you have extra room, like near highways, or behind plopables, etc.

How many bus stations do you have? Sims don't don't like walk very far to the bus station. Try setting up your roads like something in the following diagram. By setting up the roads and stations like this, you assure the bus stations are close to their homes in residential, and not far to walk at their jobs once they get off. Also, try to not have the rail station right next to a bus station, as that seems to sometimes cause problems from what I've heard. R : Road B : Bus Station # : Zone = : Rail S : Passenger Station RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR (Run your pipes under this road, with full water, it will water all the zones on each side) RB###########RB###########R R############R############R R############R############R ============================ RSSS#########RSSS#########R RSSS#########RSSS#########R RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RB###########RB###########R R############R############R R############R############R R############R############R R############R############R R############R############R RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR (Run your pipes under this road, with full water, it will water all the zones on each side) RB###########RB###########R R############R############R R############R############R R############R############R R############R############R R############R############R RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR The zones are 6x12 with a road surrounding each, and a bus station at each corner. Lots of stations as they don't cost much and you don't want a particular station to go over cap. And you might want to make sure the industrial zones don't touch the tracks. If an industry is adjacent to rail, they can export on it, using up rail capacity, but it usually isn't a problem since all the trails are going out of the city. I've never had problems with this even with a huge city with 30000 trail commuters, heh. Had to start upgrading to subways as all the rich sims that started to move in started to drive everwhere and caused mass congestion.

Well, I don't feel like putting up another picture, heh. But basically, will this basic road layout create efficient commute times and jobs for commercial businesses.

To go into zone density a little more; Using Residential as an example. All zoning supports all wealth levels. Regardless if you zone low density, medium or high density residential, they can each support the $, $$ and $$$ wealth Sims. Each density zone can support it's level and all levels below it. A high density residential zone can support high, medium and low density. A medium density zone can support low and medium density buildings, but not high. And a low density zone can only support low density buildings. Zoning high density zones right from the beginning will be cheaper in the long run compared to starting out your zones in low density, which will be cheaper in the beginning. I say things because when it comes time that you want to start adding bigger apartments to the city, you'll have to rezone the old zone, costing more money and then again to go the high density. ~~~ If you zone your whole city in high density zoning residential zones, they will develop into what ever happens to be in demand. If education, health, land value, etc, fluctuates a lot in your city, you might end up having a neighborhood of 2000+ people apartments next to a house with ten people in it.

Alright, so don't replace buses, add subways to 'em. When I get to the point where I can afford to add a subway system, would it be better to add the stations across the street from the bus stops, or right next to them? I've heard that if you put certain things next to each other, Sims won't use them because they have to walk at least one tile to get to it; transferring from bus to sub, not just walking to the sub and taking that. I do have the NAM, so I'm not sure if that fixed it, or is still a problem, or simply not true. I've rarely gotten a city that could truly support a subway system, so when I get around to building it, does having the subway tunnels intersect a lot like my roads cause subway congestion? Note that I will only have them cross each other at subway stations. As for the bus thing, that is why for any given commute route on bus, the bus route will go between many different bus stops then? And the highway is for speedy buses, as when the city gets really big, the buses will be able to drive far across town. And not everyone will take the bus, and I'm sure the bus stations will eventually get to capacity. I'll zone up another area to illustrate.

Suppose I'm a tad new here, eh? Anyways: I am not a newb to the game per say, as I've made several successful cities that make good money and have lots of people, good jobs, well developed, etc. I generally start out with having a central, scuzzy "New Jersey" city as I call 'em, the one city that I put all the garbage, coal plants and dirty industry into, and have the Sims in the next city commute to and from. I am trying to make a efficient city in terms of the ground work. Here is what what the general plans of an upcoming city will be, albeit a smaller section. The red lines on the roads represent where my water pipes will be. As few pipes as possible to reduce wasted money on odd pipes. And yes, they will all be connected =p Each of the zones between the roads in this picture are 6 x 13 ( if you split in half, you'll have two 6x6 areas. I don't know if you can tell, but the small buildings are bus stations. Is it worthwhile to add in a subway system later on, or to replace the buses with subways? I plan to have a beach cover the south end of the city, so I showed it here. Note that I plan to have another residential zone in that area. This will become the "rich" side of town and it is where the private schools will be located, along with the country club and other things that boost land value like the mayor house and statue. What I am concered with is that I might have too many road intersection and traffic could become a problem with it backing up, but I hoping with a full bus system in, this won't happen. In addition to this, I don't know how I should add in highways, as they aren't as convient at avenues, but can move a whole bunch of sims at a time and works really well with the bus fleet. I am thinking that if continue this patterner, I should go down three avenues, and then a highway. The avenue that is between the other two would have a 6x13 commerical strip, while all the others would have 3x13. Meanwhile, every other avenue going to the right is a highway instead? Man, I hate having OCD! Makes trying to not build by grids very hard to do. If this is wayyy to much, I can cut it down and try to summerize, i just want to be thoural. ~Thank You!~