AusQB

I just wanted to confirm my understanding of the differences between producing fuel and plastic. Fuel is more profitable than plastic, but I believe that's just in the short term. Fuel is simply sold to the global market at a high price and you earn Simoleans. Plastic however, while making less direct profit, will enable you to produce processors and contribute towards Great Works, so it has much more long term value. I guess it just makes sense for me to produce fuel until such time that I decide to expand.

I've been playing for 27 hours, so I'm still fairly new, but I feel like I'm doing some things wrong. Every city I start invariably ends up with the same issues; worker shortage, no money, no shoppers. What I find peculiar is that even a couple blocks of commercial zone seems to fulfill all the commercial demand and I never really have to add more. However, I am constantly pestered to add residential and industrial, even though my city is roughly, on average, 60% residential, 30% industrial and 10% commercial. I try to micro-manage the blocks to squeeze in as many high density buildings as possible to increase my population, and it works for the most part, but it never seems enough. It could also be that I'm giving my self too much of a challenge by choose very mountainous cities, making space optimization a nightmare. Regarding zones, using for example a simple grid layout, is it fine to just set one type of zone for each block? I usually have a few sections of industrial downwind so the pollution doesn't go over the town, then a few blocks of commercial typically along the main avenue near the middle of the city and the rest residential. Or is it more effective to put small patches of commercial throughout the city for a more even distribution? I imagine you'd want a commercial area for each wealth level, but the game never tells me there's any demand, even though the shops keep complaining that there are no shoppers. I also seem to have an issue with education. In a couple of my more developed cities, I'm constantly demolishing buildings that have closed because there are no skilled workers. In those cities I have at least one of each school building (grade school, high school, community college, university) plus a few libraries, yet my citizens are still too dumb to operate a factory. If anyone could provide any little bit of advice I would really appreciate it.

Does anyone else get stuck on cheetah speed after a while? I've been playing for a few hours, and while waiting for my cities to send resources to a great work I just left it on cheetah speed. I usually use cheetah anyway just when there's nothing going on, and I typically don't have any issues throughout the session. However, after a few hours real time the game will simply run on cheetah no matter what. Pressing the number keys or even clicking the UI has no effect. The only solution is the restart the game, which makes me nervous because I'm not certain it syncs properly in this case.

I have an education city, which I was able to miraculously resurrect from the depths of processing, with just a university and a few libraries, as well as a processor manufacturing operation. I have about 170k residents, which shot up when I lowered taxes, but I have over 610k visitors and they are causing major gridlock in my brick-style street layout, resulting in very slow trade. Daily there are about 20k medium wealth workers commuting in, 54k shoppers (mostly medium wealth, some low) and 2k tourists. Is there any way I can lower the amount of people coming into the city without hurting the city itself? There is a tourist city right next door and I plan on making a gambling city on the other side, should that help alleviate some of the load?

Not sure. I never usually have to place more than one depot, but given the expanse of your avenues, I would say two depots is probably warranted. In the city I'm playing currently, my streetcar network is essentially just two adjacent rectangles covering about 3/4 of the city. I have one depot (8 cars) and about two dozen stops. I get about 80k riders a day and my average wait time is just over half an hour. So it really varies on the city's layout and demographics. Do they still clump up like that after a few days? How long have you left them to spread out?

Having the same sort of issue. I have a city with mostly educated residents, so there's a lot of recycling; about 10,000 bins daily (it was actually quite a bit higher but I may or may not have crushed their spirits once or twice trying to expand my electronics operation). Even with five recycling centers with a total of 80 trucks (I figured more would yield me more recyclables hence more plastic and alloy), I barely manage to collect 85%. Does having more centers increase the amount of bins picked up, or does it more or less just spread out the distribution? Or does it have more to do with my traffic, meaning they can't get to all the bins before their shift ends? EDIT: I got rid of three centers so I just had the two running. I got exactly the same collection rate, so building more centers doesn't result in more collection.

I believe this is one of the issues they're currently working on. In their "Currently in Developement" thread, they posted this among the other fixes: Hopefully this distributes them a bit more evenly. Full list of upcoming updates: http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9437292.page

Your depot needs to be set to local.

I recently filled up the alloy portion of the space center, but the trucks keep stealing the alloy from my depot and taking it to the site anyway. I'm trying to stock it up to send to another city so I have it set to local, but the game still thinks it's meant to be used. I tried bulldozing and replacing the depot, but it does nothing. The issue is at the site, the "send resources" state is locked in and doesn't get disabled when it's full. I had to resort to setting to export and quickly gifting the alloy ten tons at a time whenever I could. Is there any possible way around this?

First, just double check that your depot(s) is/are set to use locally. Then, go to the great works site, disable sending resources and re-enable it. This won't reset the already sent resources, it'll just make them remember what they were meant to be doing. Lastly, if it appears that they're driving to the site but the numbers aren't going up, just be patient, it takes some time for the servers to update the resource levels. I sat waiting on cheetah speed for a good two hours while one bar filled up.

Is there any way to effectively reset specialization HQ buildings? I built a metals HQ and plopped the commerce division as my first upgrade. However, for the next upgrade, I stupidly thought the engineering division provided an advanced mine for both metals (coal and ore), but it was only coal. As my city was purely ore, it was obviously a complete waste. The infuriating thing is you can't bulldoze one division to place another, you have to plop that same building. In my current state, with seven full ore mines, a trade port and a recycling center producing metals and alloys, altogether generating $691k/day, I don't see any way to reach the $2M profit target.

I appreciate that this could just be a server side issue, but I approved a great work from one city and then switched to another city to start sending resources over. However, that city doesn't see the great work as approved. In fact, I can only see the great work in development from the city that paid for it. Should I just wait a little longer for it to process for the other cities? EDIT: It seems they are slowly catching up one by one. You just need to have a bit of patience.

Hmm, maybe I could improve my tourist city somehow? Are you saying that if it can accommodate more visitors then less will go to neighbouring cities? Last time I played it, things were pretty slow. I could turn a profit from events at the expo center, but I couldn't get enough people to the pro stadium to cover the costs. I think that is due in large part to the concentric circle layout, for which I used avenues for the circles rather than normal roads, which I read is a very bad idea.

So I hit the target and immediately plopped two smelting factories to make metal. I'm finding that exporting metal is just not as profitable as the ore. Perhaps it's because I stopped exporting the alloy, which I was holding onto to go towards the space center. However, one of my cities is currently processing. I don't think I'll be seeing that one again. This game is so much fun, but one little hiccup can render your hours of work completely wasted.

Basically, plopping an extension building to an HQ is essentially approving (unlocking) the building permanently. I can plop one extension, and it becomes approved. If I then bulldoze it, I can only choose from approved extensions to place in its stead.

Ugh, so close. I set up two more trade ports, one on a rail and one by the water, for a total of three. Two had six ore lots, and the third had four ore lots and two alloy lots. I spent a whole day letting them fill up (I only had about 20 tons of alloy) and then come midnight I let them rip. It was actually very exciting and nerve-wracking, but just before midnight I hit $1.92M. If I had just a bit more alloy it would have easily topped off. I'm just going to let the alloy accumulate a bit more while I continue to export the ore to make even more money. This little attempt obviously netted me quite a lump sum.

Is it possible to create a culture specialization city with strictly only residential and commercial zones, and only basic services such as fire, police, health and mass transit (power, water, sewerage, garbage and education all provided from the region)? I'm working on one right now, but people are protesting about having no schools. Should I just ignore them? Is it just a reminder of the happiness I could be gaining, or do they slowly lose happiness without it? I don't actually have much education in the region yet, both my first two cities were heavily industrial (coal and oil respectively) to provide the basic necessities for the region, but both have grade schools. I'm planning to set up an education hub next with at least two universities (just for shits and giggles). EDIT: They are actually protesting that "there was no education". They are now leaving their wealthy modern city to attend crummy grade schools in polluted industrial towns. EDIT 2: Now there are some people threatening to leave if they don't get education. I guess it can't hurt to put down one school. However, if I only had to choose one, which would I go for? A university is just far too large for this city, but are there any factors that differ between the other three besides their capacities? I don't suppose a few libraries would suffice as a substitute for schools? EDIT 3: It obviously makes sense to have a high school as the gymnasium boosts tourism. I don't suppose it matters if I have two high schools and no grade school.

I'm having issues creating high wealth land. I placed down amphitheaters and they provided a bit of high wealth spots, but I needed the coverage to spread to residential which was just out of reach. However, I had to close them because I was running out of money (keeping a purely culture-driven city running is tough) and replaced them with small fountain parks. While they are still high wealth parks, there are literally no high wealth pockets anywhere around them. Only when I placed two directly next to each other did a few pockets appear. It seems stupid that only the overlap results in high wealth. Is there any trick to maximizing high wealth land value coverage while minimizing operating costs?

So I have education sorted now, even though it caused quite a stir with the locals as I kept bulldozing buildings and moving the schools. Now however, I've run into a worker shortage/no money problem yet again. I have a population of just over 71k, with roughly 114k tourists. There are 6.5k unfilled low wealth jobs of a total 8.8k, and all 1.4k high wealth jobs are unfilled (all 4k medium wealth jobs filled). So what wealth level should I focus in order to fill all these jobs and provide money to my residents? Apparently if I make it all my commercial high wealth then I will only need medium wealth jobs? But then where will the medium wealth residents shop?

Yeah I was able to simply switch out the storage lots and all my dozens of trucks jumped to life and the cash came rolling in. Sitting at $1M/day right now. I absolutely hate when that happens. I might plop a building on the corner of an intersection, but the building's service road is right on the corner, so it creates the tiniest section of road that I will take me forever to notice. It's silly that those buildings create pseudo-intersections, I wish they would rethink how buildings interact with the roads.

So I have a large oil operation. Eight full oil wells, five trade depots dedicated to crude oil and three refineries all producing fuel. Now I did have two more trade depots for fuel, but then I upgraded and plopped a trade port by the water and got rid of the depots. I couldn't figure out why my depots were always topped up and the refineries had stopped production because local storage was full. Then I realized. I had put six crude oil storage lots on the trade port.

I switch between all three rather gratuitously, depending on the current situation. When planning layouts and such, where I need some time to think, I'll either pause it or put it on turtle. I usually pause when I first claim the city because there's no income, but if I have a few buildings and people are still coming in I'll just leave it on turtle so it can develop a bit more. Typically once I have most things set up I'll leave it on llama. If there's really nothing going on or I need to generate money quicker, I'll bump it to cheetah temporarily. If there's ever something that needs attention, I'll put on the brakes and go to turtle so I can assess it carefully.

Also, make sure your commercial zones are dotted throughout your residential zones, you can't just have a commercial section in the corner of the city or your residents won't be able to get to them. For example, if you use a grid layout, place a commercial zone surrounded by eight residential zones so they all have equal proximity to shops. The same doesn't really apply for industrial, but it helps to have residential fairly close to all industrial zones, but keeping in mind the wind direction for air pollution. Industrial zones don't really have high traffic, so it's usually easy for workers to get to their jobs. If you still need more jobs, add services like fire, police, health and education.

What exactly do you mean by the school buses "locked on"? What kind of street layout are you using? I used to just use a basic grid layout, but people have said that a brick layout is more efficient, as it makes all intersections three-way instead of four-way, meaning less traffic is held up. I've started using it and it seems to work, though I usually still just use a sparse grid for industrial. It's also apparently bad to have zones and a lot of intersections on avenues. To optimize traffic, I've found it's best to have a few avenues throughout the city with minimal intersections, providing a way for a lot of vehicles to get across or in and out of the city quickly. Bottom line is too many intersections leads to congestion.

Now I know there are/have been many server-related issues, but I was just wondering if or how different servers provide more stable connections. If I choose a server closer to my region, i.e., Oceania, will I have a better experience than if I choose one on the other side of the world? I live in Australia, but I just decided to leave the server on Pacific 1 (is this the default for everyone?) for the time being. However, I've experienced many issues such as cities not processing properly, sometimes while playing, and the game disconnecting from the server after an extended period of being minimized. Are these the same issues everyone has to deal with, or would choosing a closer server help alleviate some of the stress?