SimCity

[Hubris]

Lets get our own [grrr]Land going! I have started a game on East Europe server 3 and will invite you guys as soon as you come online to it. I'm really keen to see how this goes and get a group of people working towards the great works sites!

Who's keen?

-Hubris
-Nomad
-Tyger
-Stu

There are 16 city sites and 4 great works site on the map I have chosen for us - lots of resources, rail and water networks. If the above guys play that's 4 cities and 1 great work each! Pretty naaaaice.

[TygerBS]

Yes super Keen. I am in!!

lets do it!

[Stu]

Yip! Amptedzaor ! trying to work out the best capital inflow for city's will play around a bit today

[Hubris]

My tips for playing are as follows:

- Pick a site that suits your ambitions, keep it's specialisation in mind and consider the surrounding region.
- Before anything else, check the: wind, water and resources maps to give you a general idea of where to do what.
- Draw out a city skeleton with dirt roads and add some basic zoning just to get people flowing into your city.
- Establish a water pump, a power station and a sewerage outflow pipe (this must be away from residential and the water table).

-- At this point you can sit back, upgrade a couple things and earn a lot of money. Use this time for forward planning and savings generation.

- Once you feel you have reached your growth limit, start relaying "core" medium density avenue to be the main arteries.
- Expand the medium density avenue network to cover your possible mining/drilling sites and the trade areas for rail or sea.
- Take out some big time loans and start putting up your mining/drilling operations - you will need to add a trade centre or two as well.
- Expand the dirt road network and rezone your areas as required to get further population and economic growth.

- Pay off your loans and take them out again to start laying down basic services like a firestation, school, clinic and police station.
- Start upgrading your dirt roads to low density streets and rezone as required for more growth to pay off your loans.
- Add the remaining services infrastructure, continue expanding roads and keep rezoning for more and more growth.
- From here it's up to you, you will have a bustling city ready to go in any direction you like!

Always remember you will need more space than you think for things like political buildings, trade buildings, utilities and services so leave nice big blocks open for those to come down in the future. Remember to lay them across avenues so everything "important" has a major road or is close to a major road. Managing traffic will be a pain but my tip is just watch where you are getting congested and ease the flow with less intersections or more as required.

[TygerBS]

Economic Tips:

You can make a lot of money from the resources in your city area.
Oil, and raw ore are the big buck earners, with coal being ok, but vital to get the huge bucks from selling Alloy.
Alloy = Coal + Raw ore.
You can also make big bucks from selling computer chips and electronics.

If you city has Large oil or ore or coal. Use them.
Place as many wells as you posible can on the black or dark grey areas for oil and coal, and the bright orange area's for ore.
The more wells you put up, the more trucks you can have, the more oil you can drill and deliver for export.
You need to use the rade depot located in the city specialization area.
There you need to put a storage bins for the coralating thing you are prodicing.
Oil products are OIL, fuel and plastic. Ore products are, raw ore, metal, alloy and coal.
Also when you put down a supply depot it gives youa frieght storgae bin. This key to keep your industry in your city going. This provides a storgae and shipping location.
You need to mange your supply depot. If you rae producing lots of OIL, then set your supplt depot to EXPORT oil.
Your goal with the raw materials is to produce the correct amount of profir per day so you can put down the next specialization building and earn even more profit. Prodcuing 160k of oil a day eans you can then unlock the refinary that gets you fuel and plastiuc production. Plastic and fuel generate more money than just oil. Same with ore, make enough money per day off it, then you can get the smelter to make alloy and metal. Alloy earns you big bucks. You can alos make alloy ,plastic and metal from a recycling center, but it is less profitable, as recycling is hard to get hold of all the time. You need a very advanced city to produce enough recycling.

If you have raw ore, but no coal, and you want to produce alloy, you will need to import coal. To do this simply set on your trade depot coal to import.

To make the initial enough per day for oil you need about 6 wells with 5 or more drill sights each and 2 supply depots.
Ore you need about 4 mines, with about 4 shafts each also with 2 supply depots.
Your roads need to be good so the movement between them is good and your supply and delivery trucks can be efficient.
I usually put my supply depots on the main road of my city, so they can get in and out easily.
Once you have the big supply depot that can store much more product, make sure you add a freight rail station. The trains are less frequent but make huge money with each export.

To make chips and electronics, you need to have high tech industry.
To make your industry high tech, you need to have some high end parks to up the area value, and you need to have a university in the town.

The biggest problems i have with the game are making sure there is enough space for all these special building and their addons.
The garbage dump, the city hall, oil well,s mines, smelters, refineries and the university all use huge areas.
Its not actually possible to have all things in one town. There is not enough space.
Rather decide on a few things for a city and go with that. Then make another city in the region that can have other things.

[Hubris]

Well I know Tyger did well but I seriously screwed up my economy... I tried to expand high tech trade too fast and my taxes were outstripped. I have been fiddling around a bit and came up with an idea for a challenge. We do Veridian Forest again, in the same 4 city groups (we each get our own great work), we do it on CLEAN power only. I have prepped a bunch of cities and am waiting to add Town Hall modules which will start carrying over to the region.

[TygerBS]

Yea i think i have cracked the economics code of the game. Will do a right up soonish.

[Stu]

I got the economics down, thanks to QB's advice, the only issue I have with the High tech route is the amount of pollution the TV/PC manufactures Chips plants make. This causes massive seeping and the Ground pollution pools and spreads the more your factories run. Further eroding any land value.

I have worked out a water supply strategy and pollution reduction by rotating industry in certain sectors. Costly but off sets pollution.

- Clean energy - Concentrated Solar provides huge amounts of power.
- Great Work got my solar station up and running - 1500 MKW for the region

So it's clear there are 2 ways to approach it, slow expansion with tourism, slower but sustainable re tax income, or high yield manufacturing unsustainable taxing but high income through trade.

I'm keen for a do over or whatever works best. Still working out Roadworks that eludes me!

[WondaWoman]

high education helps with pollution levels..the more educated your peeps, the less pollution is made

[TygerBS]

Yes and recycle center, is key too.

Aslo with the big money you make, you can slap down a large hospital with all the bells and whistles which keep citizens happy.

Also put your water plant near these places with a filter pump, and it cleans it up.

[Megageth]

Grow a moustache, throw away your flip flops and play XCOM.

[Stu]

Get out of Africa, the book....

- Check this street layout! I will do thin in my next build for sure!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZQLNpoDN1_Q