Remember to have enough fresh water sources to provide your Sims
drinkable water. Desaliniation plants, however, will make salt water
drinkable.
If a high population is your goal, adjust to have no rivers, hills, or
coasts. This will ensure the maximum building area possible. Just remember
to have a few lakes available as sources of fresh water.
Getting started...
Of course, start small. You don't want to drain your treasury in the first
year of your city. Just make your first zones dense and be sparing with roads.
Cut your city expenses temporarily until you can make enough money
to raise them back to their default levels. I must caution you not to
cut funding to your roads or else they will deteriorate.
Don't relax when you have stabilized your economy. You need to quickly
improve conditions so that your Sims won't move away. Your city also
needs to grow. As your city grows, you need to increase your city services
accordingly. You also need to zone a piece of land as a landfill, unless
you want the rest of your city to look like one.
All this, and you still have to make enough money to purchase your
next powerplant (all powerplants have a finite life--no more hydroelectrics that
last forever, in case you SC2000 devotees were wondering.) All this
can be done without raising taxes.
Money grubbing
Here are ways you can put money into your treasury should you get desperate
for money. There's always a tradeoff, though.
1. Raise taxes (this might make some Sims move out.)
2. Cut city services / ordinances you have to pay for (this will cause
city livability to deteriorate.)
3. Make a garbage deal with a neighbor allowing them to dispose
garbage into your city (use extreme caution with such a deal. Make sure
you have enough garbage handling space to allow the excess garbage.
If you make such a deal without enough capacity for extra garbage, garbage
will pile up in your streets, and this mistake could cost you dearly!)
4. Enact legalized gambling (this will reduce the aura in your city.
However, if money is tight, you can do this for a little while.)
5. Zone more land (if you can afford it.) Use your RCI indicator to see
what types of zones are in demand. This is the most effective means
of increasing your yearly income (of course, this is initially the most
expensive.)
Building bridges
Building bridges is tricky, especially if you're used to SimCity 2000. Ideally, the shores should be the same height and perpendicular to the roads. Bridges can only be built straight. Make sure that you allow five tiles of inward clearance on each shore, with a side clearance of at least two tiles on each side of the road. These areas of clearance should also be perfectly flat.
Once you have these conditions met, then you can build a bridge. Click where the bridge starts (five tiles inward on the first shore.) Then drag it five tile inward on the opposite shore. You should see your drag shadow turn red, then blue again. Once it turns blue, that means a bridge is possible. The engineers will give you their cost, and if you accept--they will build it for you.
Choosing a power plant
Unlike SimCity 2000, you don't have the luxury of building hydroelectric powerplants and forgetting about them. Each plant has a finite life. As the power plants begin to age, they lose some of their effectiveness in producing power. Also, the lifespan of each particular powerplant varies randomly within each type of power source. For example, you may build a nuclear plant now that will last sixty-eight years, and its nuclear successor may last only sixty-two years. As a result, I have found it impossible to accurately calculate (to two significant figures) the specific cost of each powerplant. [Specific cost is in Simoleans per MegaWatt-year. It is a measure of long term value. The lower the specific cost, the better the long term value.] However, I have found general rough trends in each kind.
For now, we will neglect the great polluters: coal, oil, and gas power. A winner in rough estimated specific cost seems to be wind power. Windmills are cheap, efficient, and durable. However, their low output makes it infeasible for anything larger than a miniature city.
Fusion power, though initially is the most expensive, is ultimately one of the cheaper power sources in the long run. It is extremely powerful, safe, and low polluting. However, its lifespan is probably the shortest of all powerplants (approx 50 to 60 years).
Nuclear Power is just about as good, if you have the disasters switched off.
If you can't afford fusion power, and you do have the disasters switched ON--then microwave power is a sound choice, but its specific cost is considerably higher.
Solar power has about the same specific cost as microwave, but it is less powerful. Consider this only if you want a clean power source that is durable.
What if you can't afford an expensive powerplant, but need some cheap cost-effective power fast? Coal plants have nearly as low of a specific cost as windmills, but they are the worst polluters. If you are at all pollution conscious, then choose oil or gas.
Why won't the sims come to my city?
Okay, you've built up your city, given it the proper city service funding, and stabilized the economy. You want to grow but your RCI indicator shows no demand for any type of zone. Why won't the sims move in?
There could be many reasons for this...
1. Taxes may be a bit to high. I have found that a large city ultimately runs best at 5% property tax. This is when your city is well advanced. Seven percent is fine when you just start the city.
2. Lack of recreational areas.
3. Lack of or insufficient seaports or airports. Seaports and airports boost industry and commerce.
4. Lack of road or rail connections to neighboring cities. Rail connections boost your industry. Road connections boost commerce and provide a way for sims to move in. Highway connections do that same trick much more effectively.
5. No stadium is built after your population reaches 150,000 sims. It's much harder to get people to move in beyond that point if there is no stadium.
6. Declining many of the rewards that could improve industry or commerce (such as a defense contractor or scientific research facility.)
7. General aura is low.
8. Inadequate utilities.
9. Poorly placed zones. For example, residential zones should be within a fairly short distance from the industry but not right next to it.
10. Failure to promote cleaner high-tech industries.
11. Failure to enact necessary ordinances.
