[Official] Simcity 4 Tips


Recommended Posts

I was looking over all the SimCity posts and everyone is littered with random information about the game. So I thought I would start this thread so that if you have some advice you can post it here for the entire community to see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

success without a trainer is all about making a "main" city and making shell communities for garbage or industry next to the main one. The shell cities do not lose money unless you're actually in them playing, so they are a great solution... plus they can be deleted and recreated at will.

Selling garbage is cheap, and making a city excusively for garbage is one way to go... you can always delete the city and start fresh if the landfill fills up, which it won't, because it doesn't fill up unless you're actually playing it.

You can then make a city dedicated to only industry and have them sell their garbage to you, then you can sell it to your garbage city, which will make you some good money depending on the situation. Plus, you'll never have to worry about garbage in your city. Similar things can be done with power and water, as well. The cost of buying these things, particularly power, is less then the cost of selling, so buying it and reselling it will make you money... to the point where you won't have to pay a cent for power if you do this correctly... and will probably make money as well.

To get neighbor deals, you must have connections via power, road, etc to the neighbor city and have a demand for the thing they supply.. so don't build garbage dumps or have full power plants, and bingo.. in your budget you'll see the deals pop up. As your city grows, you must adjust the values accordingly because if you forget, for example, your citie's health bar will go down as garbage collects in the streets.

Your main city will be strictly residential and commercial. You'll find that the commercial zones thrive in the center of your residential areas, and will also thrive on the side of the map closest to the shell town that has the industry in it... so the people have to drive through the commercial areas to get to the industry. Your commercial demand early on is minimal, but increases SIGNIFICANTLY as you start to exceed 30000 in population... make room for it.

Without industry in your main city, you won't have to worry about air or water pollution for a long time. I was able to destroy my 2 water treatment plants after getting rid of the industry and agricultural land, in particular, the Orange trees. One coal power plant away from the city and water pumps with trees strategically placed around it will provide enough power for at least 50000 sims and their commercial districts, as industry uses most of the power.

Keep in mind that as your city grows, you must go into your industrial shell city and play it until the industry starts to grow and the demand for industry is below the flatline. This will decrease your industrial demand in your main city. If you don't do this, the shell city is useless. The industry must have power, water, and good transportation to the main city as expected. Encouraging high tech industry by raising taxes on polluting low quality industry also encourages wealth in your main city.. but may not work if your main city isn't wealthy... I don't know personally. Go ahead and take out a loan if you can, you'll need the money for building but not much for monthly costs.

Make sure to plan for the future... meaning FREEWAYS... if you can afford it, a tic tac toe pattern crossing your city really helps with traffic. Make sure to provide plenty of options for the residents as they commute to your industry town for work.

If you can sit and get money from neighbor deals before even starting anything major on the town, good for you. You'll eventually want police stations, hospitals, and education too. I've never had a fire in my city when i wiped out the industry, but the "health" bar will suffer without them...

taxes? 7 - 8.5% is fine... I have the taxes less for wealthy development to encourage it, and still manage a balanced budget with lots of wealthy development. Wealthy development is good because they will eventually offer you things such as private schools at no cost to you because "they are unsatisfied with the other schools"

When building hospitals and schools, the only thing constant is the cost of the busses and ambulances... it may say it has a high monthly cost, but you only need to fund it to the number of people using it.

Trees and parks give your residents something to do. Without them, your residential demand will cap over time... don't forget those token parks scattered about! They are cheap and accomplish so much!

Beware of deals that will lower your popularity rating while increasing crime and using up lots of space, like army or air force bases/airports. With no industry, I have not found an airports or seaports useful nor necessary at all for a high rating on all services as of yet, with my 46000 population city.

and have fun.. it's a game!

Edited by stockwiz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Start with some medium density industrial, all the necessary utilities and some medium density residential. (Just so that the utilities cover the area)

Leave taxes at around 10% and only fund schools and hospitals to their demand. You will have more expenses than income, but if your funds run low, take out a loan or two and keep adding to the city and your income will outrun your expenses (hopefully :D).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Urm, could any of you guys post some screenshots of your cities? Would be interested in having a look at them to see your city built as you described in this thread. Thanks ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Since no one post about the tips for playing Simcity 4 I decided to create the thread dedicated to it. I know there are many Simcity forums posted the same tips as well but I thought posting tips on Neowin would come in handy so you don't have to browse other sites for tips.

This is my own tips because I discovered it when playing the game. You can correct me if you find my tips to be not correct. Any other tips you have are welcomed to be posted here too ;)

Here are some of my tips:

- Utilities. Build Natural Gas Powerplant (instead of Wind Power Plant) for generating electricity when you're starting up building your city. It will save you lots of running costs later in the game when the city becomes bigger. The same goes to water, place Water Pump (instead of Water Tower). This will also save your running cost in long term. Place the pipes underneath the zones when they needed it.

- Zoning. Start your game with building each of corresponding square blocks of land. 4 x 4 square for Low Density Residential; 4 x 4 square for Low Density Commercial; 4 x 4 square for Agricultural Zone. You can go bigger square zoning if you want to. It is best if you place both Residential and Commercial zone next to each other (separated by street) and place the Industrial zone little bit away from those Commercial and Residential. This will come handy when you start developing Medium and High Dense Industrial later in the game as both of them produces air pollution in which can cause your city to have air pollution...but at least that's away from Residential area. Air pollution makes your city health rating decreasing. Your city's environment rating also went down.

- Education. Start by building Elementary School and City Library. Adjust the school funding to suit the number of students in the school so you won't spend much. You can adjust later when your city gets bigger (so as more students will come to school). As your population reaches 1000 start building High School, and again adjust the school funding. Take a note on Local Bus Funding as it covers the cost of picking up students from residential area.

- Landfill. When your city get bigger, they will produce garbage. First solution is to build Landfill. Don't build any other sanitation facility yet. Make sure you have to put landfill far away from city. When your landfill full, this is where the problem starts. The city news headline will say something like to do with smell. When you see that message, head to landfill area immediately. First thing you want to do is to dezone the landfill area. You just can't dezone it because the landfill not empty. Somebody trying to create disasters on the landfill area but it won't work. The first right thing to do is cut the roads (and rails) that connects to landfill area so there will be no transportation to landfill. Let it alone afterwards and after something like 15-20 years or more the garbage in your landfill will decompose by itself. Then you can start dezone it. For effective garbage recycling, place Recycling Center or if you have big cash then place Waste to Energy Plant.

- Budget relief. When your city running low on budget and couldn't generate income, your Financial advisor will suggest you to put Army Base. Do it so. Later in the game if you have further budget difficulty, there will be suggestion to put Missile Base. Don't place it as it may cause accidents later. You can take a loan if you wish to but plan to take loan bit by bit (like 5,000 or 10,000 simoleons) at a time. Note on the interest, the higher the loan the higher the interest repayments. There's also cheat in the game but I don't recommend it for anyone to use it...anyway it's up to you. Raise taxes (but not too much) on Residential and Industrial. Leave the Commercial taxes untouched first, you can adjust it when your population reaches 1000. Cut the spending if necessary, but don't cut spending on Utilities, Public Safety Department, and Transporation Department. They will have big impact on your city. If you cut your spending too high, there will be strikes.

- RCI (Residential Commercial Industrial) Graphic Demand. Always take a look on RCI before zoning your area. High demand means you can zone more area that highly demanded. Don't zone area if the demand below zero on the graph.

That's all my tips for now. I'll post more later. Feel free if you want to correct me (if I make some mistakes) ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Seems like quite a few posts were deleted when you merged these.. anyway, as I said before, does anyone want me to type up the tips from PC Gamer that they had in their magazine? They are very helpful. :cool:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I just played this game again, after a huge break.

Now I'm in a bad mood...

SC has always annoyed me for its stupid fire alert things, I have no idea why the fire engines cant just work out how to get there themselfs, but I'm sitting here happily upgrading all my roads to highways, and every few minutes a fire breaks out. This seems to shoot the cursor right across the map, laying a road with it. I accidently tore down SO many buildings like this, had to spend ages patching up the mess it made. The final time p*ssed me off too much though. Cant see myself playing sc4 for a while, not only does it run like crap, but it bugs the hell out of me. The fires almost p*ss me off as much as Final Fantasies completely random fights that would just pop up all over the sodding place.

/me grrrs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I started playing this a few days ago. I am having trouble using the railroads. Basically I lay down rail tracks and ensure that turns are all smooth. I also put down 2 stations at opposite ends of the railroad. However no trains ever appear and the station usage is zero. I have never played any of the Sim games before :blink:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

make sure the train stations are touching the proper zones. If you have freight stations, make sure they touch industrial zones and if you have passenger stations, make sure they touch residential and commerical zones.

i have trouble with the railroads too, so just give it some time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.