cubercaleb

I have been every single era including the post global warming era, pretty easy once you got a set strategy in mind. They key is plan ahead for the global warming era and make room to just add in things like parks and what not everywhere. I follow this pattern RRRRRRRRRR RZZZEEEZZZR RZZZEEEZZZR RZZZEEEZZZR RZZZEEEZZZR RZZZEEEZZZR RZZZEEEZZZR RRRRRRRRRR R = road Z = zoning (residential and commercial can be mixed here) E = farms/trees in first few eras, then ponds, parks, large parks, and all the other stuff in the modern era Occasionally use these boxes for utilities and and services, they can fit a lot of stuff and are quite useful. This grid system allows for decent traffic flow and doesn't waste too many blocks on things like roads. After a while you will start to see high density buildings near the center of the map. It will take forever but it will happen after enough time. If you play on an emulator just speed up the emulation. You do need some industry near the corner or edge of the map to boom the economy first. This create problems because of the pollution, although it is needed to push the population beyond 100k or so. Just make sure you have a very thick line of large parks surrounding the whole area, eventually this will take up a about 1/4 of the map, but do not worry, because you will get buildings that will allow for you to remove massive amounts of pollution from an area (they are like pollution vacuums). I believe you get 2-4 of these so space them out decently and don't put them in the corners of your industry zones or closer to the residential area, just right in the middle of the industrial zones. Anyways you will probably fill up the map before you end up getting your first 2x2 or 3x3 HD buildings, don't worry. Just keep demolitioning a few residential buildings near the center and replacing them with zones again. Eventually they will develop HD buildings and this is where stuff gets fun. HD buildings tend to have this wild fire of contagious like effect and once you have a few its easier to get more, and more, and more, until every building is HD. Work from the center out, and in very small sections. Use the rezoning and waiting method that I described before. Eventually you will have the whole map covered with 3x3 HD buildings however that won't be enough to get 100%, not even close, especially if you have no industry. As counterintuitive as it might sound you will need to destroy the parks that you have placed (slowly) and lets HD residential buildings pop up. Since HD buildings tend raise land values as long as you do this part slowly you will maintain high land values and the ability to build HD buildings. Just keep doing this until you get the whole map as HD buildings. This next part I'm not so sure on as I have not played the game in a long time, but it might work, save before. What I recall doing at this point was cutting back on anything that wasn't commercial or residential, taking away forests, parks, factories, etc. Continue adding residential to the map to push the population up. You no longer need the 1/4 industrial past this point, so begin to skim on it, replacing them with residential (the pollution should be low in this area if you placed the right buildings). Lower taxes and wait for that 100% to roll in. Ok so now you have beaten the game you want to get to post-global warming. Ok, thats pretty easy, all you need is a lot, and I mean a lot of money in the bank, otherwise you will run out before you can finish this process, and for the future era. Also make sure you have the tree thing (stay in the ancient era until 6k pop to get the dump) and also make sure that if Maxis or whoever asks you to replace it in the modern era that you say no and keep it, you need it to get to the future as it will become the futures symbol of time (or whatever its called). Anyways, with that out the way you need to start what I like to call "project stop giving a rats behind". This project involves a few simple steps. 1. Pollute the whole map, not a bit of white to be seen. 2. Use coal power plants mixed in with industrial, all over the map. 3. Absolutely no green stuff. As you can see, my plan involves a lot of demolition of stuff thats already in place, plus the expenses of placing down all the power plants to create the pollution. You will need a lot of money, enough to place 100-500 power plants, yes I'm serious about that. After a while Maxis will talk to you telling you how messed up the environment is and says there is nothing you can do to fix it. He then asks you if you would like to go into the future to see how things turn out, say yes and you got yourself to the future. Once you get to the future you will notice two things. 1. the music is awesome 2. Stuff is super expensive. I haven't played this era in a long time so I will need to replay it before i write about it. Btw, as mysterious and cool as the post-global warming era may seem, it seems like maxis did not spend a lot of time on it, and its gameplay is about as deep as the ancient era. I guess they figured not many people would make it that far in the game. It doesn't explore cool tech or super awesome stuff like cities of tomorrow does for the new simcity game, no its just a high tech ancient era with the addition of placing super expensive trees to combat pollution.

you won't see specialization profit in your hourly report for things that get exported. My tv and computer factories make me 4 million a day but I lose 20k an hour. It is something I can live with lol. That is odd, why would they not show that?

Well I plopped down three more oil refinery's to "keep up with demand" and demolished the industry. Power and water consumption went way up, sewage and garbage output went way up, and so did health problems, at this point my oil was getting refined and sold however I was only pulling in $500 an hour, even tough my petroleum hq said the profit was way up (2x what it was before). At this point I demolished my refineries, replaced them with industry and set my depots to export, turned off the unneeded utility add ons, and all of the sudden I'm pulling in 10k again.... I stand by my statement, Oil refineries are broken and useless. Looked some stuff up, apparently plastic isn't profitable... So if I plop down the oil to fuel add ons and i export that instead will i make money?

Assuming cubercaleb turned off the import global market switch, because he mentions that he set oil imports to "local use only". It does sound buggy. I have similar city, where my wells started to dry up so I shut down exports to reserve them for my own fuel and plastic production. Of course, my profits decreased because, I now had a surplus of crude, that could have been sold on the global market. That's what i did, the intent was that the oil would go to the oil refinery, get refined and sold at 3x the price, yet the oil refinery just imports oil (its set to use local oil) which backs up oil production and costs me 5k/hour. note that there is little traffic from the oil drills and depots to the refinery.

I was referring to my oil refinery, not my oil power plant.

I'm not saying i was expecting to have infinite oil, but having my profits go down after I plop down a oil refinery, and for the oil to not be used locally but imported is what pisses me off, it just fills up the oil trade depots and never gets used, then oil gets imported from nowhere to my oil refinery. also I DO NOT have a worker shortage, what did I say, I said 2/3 my city was residential, the rest was utilities, commercial and industrial. Go re-read my post carefully, it's not my fault, its the buggy state of the game.

So yesterday I started up a new city that had quite a bit of oil, got a decent city going, 50k sims, no real traffic problems, 12k/hour profit with about 4 maxed oil drilling factories or whatever they are called, about 1-2 dozen factories, no garbage problems, education for everyone, no crime, health, or fire problems, plenty of water, sewage, and power, etc. It was all going good up until my oil started drying up (3 month supply). I noticed that the amount of oil that my oil drills were drilling was going down, still making a decent profit but I realized it was a problem, so I waited on the oil hq upgrade to get an oil refinery. Plopped my oil refinery down, maxed it out on plastic which exports for 12k/1k units, as opposed to 4.5k/1k units of oil, hopefully it would make me more money before my oil dried up. Plopped down a trade depot for plastic, set it to export, also set all my oil trade depots to local use. At this point my income drastically dropped down to 7k/hour, all my oil trade depots got filled up, and wouldn't budge, oil production stopped. I noticed a bunch of oil trucks coming into he city dropping off oil to the oil refinery.... That's when I got livid. Instead of the oil refinery using the oil from my city, which it should have been, it was importing oil. This caused a chain reaction in my city as far as my specialization is concerned, loss in profit, even when I should be making much more. It also annoyed the heck out of me that all my factories kept going up in density, then b'ed and whined that they had no workers, even though 2/3 of my city was low wealth med density residential... and I had maybe half a dozen to a dozen med/high density factories tops, they were all low tech so its not like the workers were unskilled. Wonderful, Oil refineries are broken and you can't drill oil for more than an hour of gameplay for it dries up and your profits go down the toilet. Wonderful... just wonderful... Also fix the part where factories whine that they have no workers, oh wait, that's a problem with all the sims filling up the first factory they see. Then go make the sims more intelligent and spread themselves out evenly through the factories, and not clog the same road and factory.

I got email saying they won't do the price match.... Darn it. Edit: can't i just get the game refunded through amazon returns or something? then rebuy it?

I bought the game a week ago on amazon for $59.99, just the other day they lowered the price to $39.99, if I contact amazon (how would i do this, preferably email) can I get the $20 difference put back in my amazon account?

The suggestions are great, I'll edit the list later when there are some more suggestions, seems like you guys want more mass transit options, like certain things you can do in nam. Two of you mentioned seasons. there were also suggestions on tourism, economics, utilities, etc.

I think they are fixing that

So one way roads essentially?

I'm going to list some DLC or rather content that I would like to see in this game and wouldn't mind paying a couple dollars for. I want you guys to do the same. Really name anything, if you want it suggest it. Together we can come up with a list of DLC that we as SimCity players would actually pay for and enjoy. The hope is that someone over at Maxis sees this and puts the creation of such content into motion. I'll start up the main list, as you guys suggest things I'll add it to this list and give credit where credit is due. List of DLC I would like to see Futuristic City Set - Contains high wealth, high density skyscrapers with a futuristic look to them. Mass Transit Expansion - Mass Transit options such as High Density Elevated Streetcar Avenues, allowing you to have streetcars without them interfering with everything else. Underground Light Rail (streetcars) to replace the subways, as you build these two new types of streetcar rails they would auto create ramps to get from one level to another,. High wealth Train, Ferry, Streetcar and Bus Stations for high wealth sims, and in the case you don't have high wealth sims they will transport more sims total. The ability to edit the highway on off ramp, adding more lanes to relief congestion, and the ability to add you own highway lines through the region (pre selected by game devs so you can't go overboard). Utiliy Expansion - Adds large garbage dumb which contains more trucks and has cleaner incinerators. Also adds a Regional Utility Great Work, provides water along with garbage and sewage treatment for the connected cities. Feel free to come up with some of your own ideas, leave them below, I'll create a master list once the topic gets going, which will be below. (I'll add my stuff if you agree with it). The great list (will make fancy later, just getting everyones ideas together) Mass transit options, including above and underground rail based off of streetcars, or just subways, maybe both. Overpasses for roads and rail, larger and fancier transportation stations for high wealth. Highway editing at a cost with some restrictions An official mod tool kit that allows people to easily create and share content such as plop-ables, zones, the ability to create our own regions via terraforming. In the case of plop-ables that function then Maxis will have to approve so they don't become overpowering. Larger regions with more connections, perhaps larger cities as the servers and our pc's become better and better. More city sets, such as a futuristic city set, or a medieval city set.

$$$ buildings look nice though, $ and $$ have ugly brick buildings.... And don't you only need a community college for high tech?

Large fountain parks, reflecting pool parks along the center block, everything else is medium path parks.