A mere 1,000 month surplus turns into 12,000 simoleons in a year, which flys by in about 1.5 minutes. If you keep your budget earning money, you'll find out how quickly you get money. Keep zoning low density until a substantial amount of your initial available space is used up (1/2 the map max). These should be placed when begged for, and once you've rezoned, preferably. Avoid colleges, museums, and high schools until your city is large and obviously has high populations of teenagers and artists. And remember, a new city doesn't need or afford a college! Come on people. It saves time and effort later when you rezone high densities.
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It's a lot easier on your wallet and your infrastructure if you wait and place buildings when you can afford thier full costs. The game's budget tool allows you to check this easily.
Place buildings only when you can handle the intial cost and the FULL NORMAL monthly fee. Don't burden yourself with even the slightest monthly costs early on with diminished local budgets-live with the complaints. Instead, first zone an area the size of a police station's radius, then let it develop, then when the time (and $) is right, place the station. You can always place a police station early in the game and lower its funding so that it only covers zoned parts of the city, but then you risk forgetting about it. Be sure you get the most bang for you buck too. Place service buildings when they're begged, and I mean begged for. Now that you've zone low density, prepare to expand.
You'll face more crime and more stations would solve the problem, but the benefit does not outweight the cost of overlapping stations, except in extreme situations, like getting those ultra-modern towers of crime-less joy. Police, fire and parks are just as effectual in high density area. Luckily this only applies to boring civil cervices, like health and education (jk about boring). As always watch your funds and available space. Do not let a strike happen or the time lost in increasing funding and placing more schools (or clinics, etc.) will be devastating to the desiribality. Therefore, that school that covered those nice grids of low density houses may not be enough to cover those redeveloped and rezoned grids of apartment complexes. You can always zone high later.īut be careful! When re-zoning residential and commercial, keep in mind that the amount of Sim's per zoned space increases.
Its low cost allows you to plan out your grid and infrastructure for everything (buses, parks, civil services, rewards, your statue, etc.) It's like laying out everything but zones when your city starts, but then putting in cheap-o zones while you're at it. If the city is a new one, however, low density is cheap and easy. So if its houses they want, zone them some projects on the double. If your city is connected (transportation wise), it will feel the demand for houses, whatever, from that neighboring city. When starting a city, it is important, in fact vital, that if the city is not connected to another large and prospering city with its own developed RCI demands, you should zone low density. Then again, modern scientists haven't perfected the power of hydrogen fusion anyways. Whereas in SC3K come 2050 one with money could plop efficient fusion plants and forget about them and their electricity worries, in SC4 a fusion plant demands a hefty 10K a month fee, and is rewarded only to those cities technologically adept and in need of massive power. This apparent new maintenance charge was accounted for in your overall Utilities budget, which, consequently, was lower than it ever will be in SimCity 4. To be brief, this new change consists of having to pay for more things more often, and the addition of a local funding meter on various city service buildings.įor instance, in SimCity 3000, you did not have to pay a monthly charge on power plants and water pumps. The first thing one may notice when playing SimCity 4 is that the budget is extremely different from that of previous versions.