Simcity 4 Released?!!

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune


I think I´ll really love this game. (Now all I need do is buy a new computer. )

Even without having the game, I think I have a solution to many difficulties, that is not cheesy:

-Develop 3-5 connected 'Specialist Cities' at the same time. At least one of those is your 'Cash Cow'. Cash Cow gets nothing but dirty industries, power stations, high security prison, military base, toxic waste processing etc...

Cash Cow will deliver cheap energy to your other cities, AND buy expensive water from them. It will also absorb all of everybody´s waste for free, and still produce a surplus.

Free energy and waste disposal and some extra money from Cash Cow should considerably help to get 2-3 neighbouring cities on their way... try this and tell me if I am right or if I am right.

Great tip!

[ZargonX]

Yeah, I think the "specialist city" concept is sort of the way they intended the game to be played. It may seem kind of cheap at first, but they even suggest it themselves at the simcity4 webpage. It's quite usefull for getting your city off the ground and running a profit, and then making the city self-sustaining.

[Grumbold]

I'm still low down on the learning curve but I don't think its that easy to build a cash cow immediately. All sims require a certain basic minimum standard of amenities in order to want to live and work somewhere. Its getting the economies of scale working in your favour that is the tough part. Whether you do this by having your dirty industry in one corner and the residential in another of the same map or split them over two maps seems incidental (although you'd get a second 100,000 to build the second city, giving you a much better initial fund.)

The residential will want police, fire, water, power, education, entertainment and amenities just the same. Your industry will settle for power, water, police, fire cover and good freight links. The downside is you'll have to start planning and paying for a comprehensive rail and bus network immediately or nobody will commute.

I've no doubt the strategy could work and there are definite advantages to keeping the dirty stuff on one map. If the simulation is robust you should still see pollution leakage to adjacent regions and the health of sims who work in smogville suffering badly even if they live in cleantown. Life would have been a lot easier for me had I created an adjacent region that was willing to buy my surplus power, for instance, since the coal plant was running at well under capacity for over thirty years. The problem becomes one of focus. I really don't want to start the game by hopping madly to and fro between several miniscule hamlets and setting up a deal to buy power for no reason goes against my gaming habits.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
Even without having the game, I think I have a solution to many difficulties, that is not cheesy:

That is about that, what they intended to do with the game... though there's one little thing you should know: You don't set the price of the export/import (to/from other cities), so you can't have one city that produces tons of electricity, and sells it for 10§ per month...

[Grumbold]

On the sim website someone is advocating a different strategy and one that seems very suited to the game - start poor.

Hike the taxes to 9% or even 10%. Don't start by laying the foundations of a city (although keep those in mind.) Just start out with slumville. Long streets with minimal intersections zoned as low density housing and a little low commercial. Chequerboard patterns of medium industrial and trees to soak the pollution (agricultural doesn't pay.) About the only thing these residents will insist upon is power. Even water is a luxury they can afford to do without.

Once you've got a good tax base of these underprivileged people, begin your climb to urban utopia on their backs.

[Kc7mxo]

ahhh capiralism at its finest. . .

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I'm still low down on the learning curve but I don't think its that easy to build a cash cow immediately. All sims require a certain basic minimum standard of amenities in order to want to live and work somewhere.

Ahh, but my idea is to get the cash from the Military Bases, High Sec Prisons, Toxic Waste Facilities,...

No one actually needs to LIVE there... (except for a few slums that are attracted by zero taxes).

And, as you mention, you get the starting money. So 5 x 5.ooo pop cities will still be way easier than 1 x 25.ooo.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
ahhh capiralism at its finest. . .

Whereas my method is planned economy at its best...

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
ahhh capiralism at its finest. . .

Btw, did you want to say 'Capiratism'?

[FrustratedPoet]

Hopefully I'll be installing this game in an hour - took me a couple of days longer than I expected to get it.

It had better be good .....

[Kc7mxo]

Btw, did you want to say 'Capiratism'?

Ohh! The woes of typing with one hand while putting one's shoes on before heading off to an evil morning class! Woe is me! I did, of course, intend to say capitalism.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Grumbold
What sort of problems are you having Joseph?

The entire game is hard coded. You cannot make changes.
There are no option, such as easy, medium, or hard. You cannot turn off disaster.
The taxes are so little you almost cannot build Hospital. Schools, etc. The cost of a School to build is not that much, but the rent is $400.00 a month per school. A fire station is 150.00 a month, police is 150.00 and Hospital. 125 or 150 a month.
As soon as you build a power house, you are 125 a month in the hole. And it takes until you have a pop of 1,000 or so before you break even on the budget. However somewhere around a thousand, you will have to build a firehouse or your city may just burn down. Every single tile in the game has a price.
Remember small parks in SC3, they were free after building, now they cost 5.00 a month per park. So if your city had 20 parks that will cost you 5 X 20 = 100 a month for parks. Road tile in SC3 had a monthly fee overall, now a monthly fee for every tile. Bus stops now 5.00 a month. And you can put it down in the middle of a housing square and still get no riders to off set the 5.00 a month fee per bus station. If you don't put each and every building just so, the city will not grow.
In one city, I had about 7,000 pop. with three police and fire, one hospital, and two schools and was only making 20.00 a month on the budget.
BTW, the police, fire, school and hospital building that I'm talking about are sub station and not full size station that cost a lot more.
That is enough for now.

[MosesPresley]

Joseph, I encountered the same problem, but I have come up with a good strategy.

You need to start small and slow. Zone some light res, light commercial, light & medium industry. Build 2 or 3 windmills, a water tower and lay some pipes. Build a clinic and lower the funding to whatever the sims are actually using. Now wait for the population to catch up to the outflow of money. Add more residential, pipes and commercial as necessary. Eventually you will start to make money. Since your city is so small, the early losses you will take will not come close to bankrupting your city and you will have time to build. To prevent fires, enact the smoke detector ordinance.

Don't build any schools, fire stations, hospitals or police stations until you absolutely need them. They are superfluous in the beginning.

Let me know what you think.

[FrustratedPoet]

I've been having a similar problems to Joseph. The problem really is that I've been using some SimCity3000 tactics to start up and money is a lot tighter in SimCity4. It just takes a slight change in mentality I think. Looking forward to trying again today.

[Adagio]

Always keep an eye on how many people visits the hospital/school/etc, and set the price at it (By changing the monthly cost, you can see that the max number of patients/etc changes...

Do not use SimCity 3000 (or earlier) tactics in SC4... it's much tougher now


Btw, sometime ago, someone around here started a SimCity 3000 PBEM game... anyone interested in playing a such game in SimCity 4?