macallen

Hal, if you're still offering to test things, I'd like you to try something for me, please. I posted this at great length over in Reddit but am curious if it works in the live game. Here's the post from Reddit: Picture 2 cities, Paradise and Nimby. Nimby contains nothing but 6 water towers, 6 sewage plants, a garbage dump with lots of trucks, and an expanded coal plant. It can afford it because I "gifted" it cash (or it uses bonds, whatever). I never play Nimby more than the 30 sec at llama speed it takes to plop all that down. Paradise has no water, no sewage, no garbage, and no power infrastructure. It relies solely upon Nimby for these things. As my needs grow, I toss money to Nimby, hop over, quickly slap stuff down, then come back. Eventually Paradise will have its own clean power, recycling, etc and no longer need Nimby. You might ask "If Nimby has no residential section, who's working all the stuff?" We know already that the low wealth folks from Paradise will drive over and do it. Nimby doesn't have to have a single zone for anything, folks will drive there to work. I then log into Nimby, bulldoze everything. Nimby has virtually no pollution and purchased no coal, nor consumed any water. The sewage and garbage simply vanished between the cities, even though the trucks and pipes between the cities worked for hours...on one end. Now granted, Paradise paid for these services, including power, and Nimby never got that money, but Paradise used 1000's of units of coal that no one purchased, so that was effectively "free". So I get all the benefits of dirty solutions without having to pay for any of them. Does that seem exploity to anyone else? Edit: Granted, I may need a city hall in Nimby to be able to share, but that's cake, just drop a few residential areas before I put the infrastructure in, let folks in to the point where I can build a city hall, then plop down the messy stuff and immediately log out. It nets the same result, I feel. Edit2: Another thought...I use bonds in Nimby to buy everything, and I'll never have to pay them back. In Paradise, I never have to waste the money to build the early versions of water, sewage, power, or garbage and then bulldoze them later. So not only do I not pay the consequences (pollution) but I also don't have to pay the startup costs.

Education has a great many effects in the game: 1. Your sims pollute less, overall 2. They recycle more, polluting even less 3. They build solar panels on top of their houses, reducing your power draw during the day 4. They increase the tech level of your commerce and industry, causing them to pollute less and produce more 5. It opens up various building expansions that require certain amounts of education 6. The Nuclear reactor specifically states that the chance of an accident is in inverse proportion to the education of the operators 7. Educated sims do less/different crimes, more white collar, less violent The more educated your sims are, the better your city runs, overall.

Is that the blue lines that radiate away from the hotel when they're placed? I only know of business and luxury hotels, and the relative sizes...are there more categories? My businesses only need business hotels. I have a hotel that's on the main road leaving town, but it's a LONG way from out of town...it's more in the center of the map. What do you mean by strong trade routes? What am I looking for in placing a hotel in regards to keeping it alive? Edit: Thanks for the replies, btw. I just extended an avenue all the way across the map and to an intercity boundry. I then plopped the hotel on it, near the city. A light blue and a dark brown line extend off into the city a good distance, but I can't tell what they represent. None of them go down the avenue leaving town. The hotel was 0% profitable, being built, then was 52% profitable. It's in trouble and in 3 months will be bankrupt.

You misunderstand...I have ONE HOTEL. One. It dies, then I have zero. I build a new one. It dies because it's unprofitable. I bulldoze it the empty lot and make a new one. One.

75k folks, every hotel I put in dies within 3 months, no matter where I put it, but I have to keep replacing them or my businesses go belly up. All I can see is the hotel is not profitable. From the smallest to the largest, business or luxury, I can't keep it alive. Any ideas? Are they bugged? "Not profitable" is not enough information for me to properly understand.