Simcity 4 Released?!!

[yin26]

LOL! Excellent advice!

--Good to see you guys, by the way--

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Grumbold
You can be nice to your sims immediately but it will harm your ability to expand since it definitely cripples your budget

It makes it more diffecult, to get a city running

[Grumbold]

Yes its a bit of a black hole effect. If you're on the wrong side of the expenditure curve you're going to get sucked in to your destruction. I like teetering on the edge adjusting all my outgoings to trim another $100 off the budget somehow just knowing that if I can survive a few years suddenly a new generation of happy, healthy well educated and increasingly well paid sims will be living in my city and paying taxes. It appeals to me more than running hicktown. All slums must be eradicated!

[yin26]

I also enjoy the fact that money is hard to come by in the early game. Adding to the effect is the need to make sure you've zoned for where your sims' abilities are NOW. You've got to raise up sims who are educated enough to land jobs in the white collar world. And until that point, the white collar jobs never even bother visiting your town.

So you really do feel a sense of accomplishment as you guide the town through this careful balancing act.

[ZargonX]

I think there is a also a point at which you need to sit back and just let your city coast for a while. I got up around 25,000 pop, making about $1000 a month, and felt I was in pretty good shape. Foolishly, though, I tried to make my city better immediately, and blew my money on new neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, etc. Suddenly my $1000 went down to $200, and new demands were cropping up.

In retrospect, I think that once you reach a stable point with a high income, you should just let the game run for a good stretch and build up your treasury before trying to expand. Anyone else tried this?

[vovan]

I only have done this once... I resolve to do this every time I get a sizeable income, but never have any patience and try to squeeze every simoleon out of that budget surplus. That results in a sudden jump in the population, and when I happily sit back and see that there is still +100 a month left, the people start rushing in, use up all the electricity, and water supplies, flood schools and hospitals, and wreck havoc on the streets. Thus, I see he advisors pulling their hair out, and the doctors and teachers demonstrating on the streets instead of working. Sure enough, I raise their pay, import more electricty and build that water pump. But at the next glance at the budget, I go

Yeah, that's what rushing will do for you.

But yeah, I was able to sit back and watch the stuff once. I was building up a neighborhood, and noticed that there was tremendous demand for high-tech industries, and high-wealth commerce (the sims in the neighboring city were complaining that their heads were swelling due to the overabundance of brains ). So, I switched away from the budget tab, and built up a nice big block of high-tech, and dense commerce. As I'd never seen either of those before, I was pretty pre-occupied watching the new buildings crop up for several years apparently. (Time flies on maximimum zoom-in. ) When I switched back to the budget tab, I saw a nice profit of 2.5K a month, and 121K in reserve. Then as I looked over the rest of the city it was in pretty good shape, too. The absense of the mayor did not hurt it any.

[Grumbold]

Yes I think you only hit problems if you go sightseeing after setting up something that can expand itself into imbalance. If you've zoned medium residential and have lowrise towers on the land, zoning a new bit of industrial and then watching it grow won't hurt. If you've zoned high density then the game can suddenly pop 3 huge towers on that land and your demand for schools and services in that area mushrooms. The first I knew about that problem was when the teachers and doctors went on strike simultaneously. They were perfectly well funded last time I looked

[yin26]

Controlled growth is exactly the point. Not only controlled, but targeted growth. As you note, too much growth in the wrong sectors will kill your economy in a matter of minutes.

This is the strategy required of the game, and this is what makes it far more than an interactive Photoshop session!

[Adagio]

Does anyone know why I can't make deals with my neighbour anymore? In my present region, I have two cities: City #1 is the residental/commercial city while city #2 is the industry city... until now, I have had a good deal with city #2, where city #1 sells water... lots of water, but suddenly the deal is off, and I'm not able to make it again, because of this, both my cities are in trouble: None of the cities has any cash, because of the lost deal, city #1 is now running towards red, while city #2 has no water (and without water, the industry is killed)

I have checked everything, the water-connections are still ok (and I have a garbage deal running), and city #1 has now very much water... unused water, while city #2 doesn't have a single drop of water...

Does anyone know what could be wrong here?


I have tried to run my city #1 for many months by now, but still no chance to make the deal

[Grumbold]

Not sure ADG. There have been posts on the official player-help forums but I've no expertise myself. I do know you have to be careful to make sure city A has a positive income to create the deal at first and city B has a lot of surplus power/water. It may be that with both going negative you cant re-establish it.

You could try cutting services to give yourself a positive income, then delete the connection on both maps then reconnect again. That may trigger the deal option.

[yin26]

Working from memory on this answer:

First, the buying city needs to have an entire year's worth of cash to cover the deal at the time of signing. Also, both the buying and selling cities need to have X-amount of need/surplus.

[yin26]

[...found this answer on the BBS...]

There seems to be an enormous amount of people who have trouble initiating Neighbour Deals, so here's the requirements, plain and simple...
1. There must be appropriate Neighbour Connections (Power Lines for power, Water Pipes for water, Roads or Highways for garbage), these connections must be linked within BOTH cities.

2. The selling party must have a surplus of the resource greater than the minimum deal amount of 1,000 units. ***!!!

3. The buying party must have enough money in the treasury at the deal's inception to cover ONE YEAR, not Month, YEAR, of the deal. It also appears that negative monthly income (no matter the amount) also negates the initiation of a new deal. I'm not sure on this one, however.

4. The buying party must have less of the resource than his projected need (120 percent of current usage).

**!!! - minimum deal amount of 1,000 units
This is a frequently forgotten/unknown requirement. The buying city must be in NEED of at least 1,000 MWh/month of extra power - 1,000 cu m/month of extra water - or 10 tons of garbage disposal. So for power and water deals, you're not gonna get 'em with a little town of 100 people, the city needs to be short at least 1,000 units or 120% of what it's currently producing on it's own.

[Adagio]

Thx Yin... I believe the problem is the money, since city #2 has less than $1,000...

[Traianvs]

Hmm I am trying to build a this double town...

1 area with commercial/housing
1 area with heavy industry

(I all zoned it to $50 a tile, had plenty of money anyway, one hundred mill/area)


Thing I was hoping to have those cities function simultaneously, so my housing increases, and so more factories in the heavy industrial zone..

Now apprently they don't evolve at the same time, I have to leave the region and go to another area allt he time... now my question is, how the hell am I supposed to make a good economy then, if I have to switch over every time to get some new factories when my population becomes unemployed, and when I need some more workers for my factories!!!!!!


I just think it isn't practical, also, because one zone only has industry tax, and the other one only has pop tax (the commercial tax is negligable, lol, i have some medium shops but mainly small ****, so there goes my expensive zoning ) I can't make any decent money, also my population doesn't seem to ever use the train to work! so no revenues there, and another thing, i thought goods from factories have to be carried to the commercial district to be able to sell them.. or how the hell do you export goods then? in any case, my train isn't used for transport of goods either!!!)

anyhow I am now in a position I can't do nothing, my house city only makes 100 a month, and the industry loses 500 a month (i do have a ****load of cash left there though), but nothing in my house city actually grows, in other words: I don't get the point of the game... why does one half become stone mansions, and the others stay meager bungalows and they have the same education and stuff!

[Adagio]

Don't zone with the $50 zones at the beginning, since you need about 30,000 sims before they build in the height...

About the industry zoning, I have the same problem (~$500 too short)... does anyone have a solution to this?

And about cities now growing when playing an other city is good. How would you expect other cities to grow, while playing one city? You want the AI to build roads/zones?