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How do I start my cities?

Started by MyFlagshipCity, February 23, 2017, 02:28:29 AM

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MyFlagshipCity

How do I start off a new city? I want to start by creating a small farm town or industrial city. But there is too many things to focus on in this game, and I can't see the big picture. How am I supposed to know when to build those services? I am also told to look at maps of actual cities, but how do I read and look at a map? How do I translate it into a Sim City?

I have a mental list of names for the town in my head. But I struggle with seeing a city population more than 1-5,000 people. I don't know how to maneuver this game. I want to achieve a medium-sized town of 30,000 or more people. But I can't execute the game strategy. Am I too focused on money when i start my city or something?

Andreas

#1
It's normal that you feel a little overwhelmed when you never played the game before, and now have to pick between all those possible options. The key is to start small, and not spend too much money. Most of your revenues will come from taxes, so you need to make sure to keep zoning residential and commercial/industrial zones. Leave out farms at first, since they need a lot of space, but don't offer enough jobs. In the first few years, you will have lots of poor sims, and dirty industry, this will change later, so don't rush it.

Start the game, pause it, look around the map, and find some relatively flat terrain. Then build some roads, zone low density residential areas, and add some industrial areas (not too close together, but not too far away either). Make sure both are connected by a road and power lines. Then build a coal power plant near the industrial zone, query it and lower the budget to 10-20% or so. Keep an eye on the power usage later and adjust the budget accordingly. Do this with all civic services, as it saves a lot of money. It's a bit of chore, but you get used to it. An absolute must is a fire station (preferrably near the industrial zone, but also covering the residential area), or your city will burn down eventually.

Then unpause the game and watch the first homes and factories growing. You should see some cash coming in from the taxes. Try to earn at least a tiny bit more than what you spend. If you need more money, simply set the highest speed, and wait until you have enough again. Watch the demand graph and add more zones (mostly residential and industrial at first, commercial demand will rise when the city gets larger). The advisors will pester you with all kinds of wishes, but don't fulfil everything right away. Naturally, schools, hospitals, police, water supply etc. will be necessary, but don't let your city grow too fast.

Leave some gaps between the development, so you can add civic services, bus stations and such later without needing to bulldoze anything. For schools and hospitals, use the coverage sliders to save money, too (but never touch the budget of fire stations, police stations, or water supply). Also, build the rewards that are offered, as they will attract more (and more wealthy) sims. Try to avoid shiny mansions at first, since §§§ sims are rather needy. If necessary, raise the R-§§§ tax a tiny bit to lower the demand. Following this basic guidelines should ensure that your budget stays positive, and that the city won't get unbalanced. Happy city building! :)
Andreas

Seaman

Quote from: Andreas on February 23, 2017, 06:22:55 AM
Then build a coal power plant near the industrial zone, query it and lower the budget to 10-20% or so. Keep an eye on the power usage later and adjust the budget accordingly. Do this with all civic services, as it saves a lot of money. It's a bit of chore, but you get used to it.

I think thats essential.

Additionally, keep an eye on the coverage of the services. For example, try to fill the circular coverage of your clinic(s) with residential before plopping the next one in order to have the fewest number of clinics per residential area as possible.

You might have noticed, that while water and energy are kind of essential to grow buildings, the other services aren't nessesarily. You might be able to run a small town without any police, that will save you some money.

It might be easy to have a certain pattern to build a city. Most common is the checkerboard-like city block. Fill in some service buildings every now and then and keep slowly expanding the pattern. It might not look very appealing, but it will bring you there. here's an example:


mgb204

Thought I recognised the name of that city... This tutorial is excellent. Assuming you've played the basic in-game tutorials first, it will help you to understand demands and region play.

MyFlagshipCity

I fail in the in-game making money tutorial, I don't see how it's possible to grow to 20,000 population from 1-2,000. The RCI graph does confuse me, it constantly shifts around every month.

Andreas

Better start with a fresh city instead one of the tutorial cities. They might look helpful, but all the hints and advices are kinda distracting. Do what I suggested above, build some stuff in pause mode, then use medium speed in order to see how things develop, and if the budget shows a monthly income, accelerate the speed for a while in order to gain more money, and let the city grow quicker. Don't hesitate to zone a few blocks at once, they will fill quickly.

If development stalls, check the RCI graph (click on it for the full graph) and check which bar is the tallest. If it says R-§ or R-§§, zone more residential areas etc. Rather than paying attention to the actual numbers, you should try to see the whole image. Don't worry if the first few cities go bankrupt; it might be a bit disappointing, but once you learned how to play the game "the hard way", you keep getting better for sure.
Andreas

MyFlagshipCity

And what are some more examples of layouts for cities. I'm just not that inspired or original.

Seaman

Quote from: MyFlagshipCity on February 24, 2017, 05:18:35 AM
And what are some more examples of layouts for cities. I'm just not that inspired or original.

The topic of city layouts is valid for serious scientific research. In fact, whole departments of universities are just focusing on the aspects of city planing, layout and the socioeconomic consequences. Here's a wikipedia category with some nice articles about different city models/layouts. I personally use google maps quite a lot just to look at other cities, trying to understand how they were built (and why they were built in this way).

But don't pressure yourself by trying to be "realistic". Most cities in the world weren't planned homogeniously and built in one day, so it's really hard to mimic this in Sim city. Try to focus on getting somehow a city up and running in the game first. Play the "game" and if you fail, try to analyze what happened. If this results in more specific questions, the people here are willing to help. Maybe you can ad a screenshot or two, this might help to solve problems.

Maybe you find a simcity 4 letsplay on youtube, where people are really "playing" the game. Haljackeys favourite "building a city from scratch" might not be ideal, because he uses a lot of mods and focuses more on "designing" the city and he's cheating with the money. I haven't seen this one, but it looks like he's doing basic stuff and tries to do a "normal" game.

Andreas

Right, don't worry about aesthetics all too much in the beginning; most likely, your first cities will be ugly 6x6 grids for the most part. That's how we all started, but once we learned the basics, we kept trying and picked up ideas here and there. Patience is a virtue more than anything else with this game. Just remember that Rome wasn't built in a day either. ;)
Andreas