Hey everyone,

Since (like many of you) I haven't played this game in ages, I figured it would be a good idea to put together a "tips and tricks" section based on small things we noticed during playing the game all those years ago. I know that I am rusty and could use a refresher, so I'll post what knowledge I've been able to dredge up from the bottom of my brain to make SimCity more fun.

Tips & Tricks

Tip 1: Your Sims are Jerks.
What do I mean by that? They're never satisfied! No matter what you do, they'll find something to complain about. You can never lower taxes enough that some percentage won't complain about taxes. I was playing last night and saw my approval rating was in the 80s. When I was younger, I probably would have thought "Wow, I'm doing a great job!"; now all I can think is "Wow, they have it too good! I have to raise taxes or something because these jerks are on easy street!".

Tip 2: Hydroelectric power is the best power!
An old standby is to fire up the terrain editor and create Niagra Falls before you start your game. Hydro power is among the cheapest ($20/MW) power options available, you never have to replace it, and it's 100% pollution free. Even if you have to add the water post-start, it's still cheap at $25/MW. I have taken to try to play the game without cheats this time around, so I've been supplementing my initial coal plant with Hydro as I come across areas of hills as my city expands.

Tip 3: Highways are awful!
I never use highways. Way back in the day I remember reading that they caused more traffic than they alleviated, as well as causing more pollution. I don't have any evidence to back this up, but they're expensive and take up a lot of space, so that's enough for me to avoid them altogether.

Tip 4: Keep 'em close!
Sims don't like to drive far for work. I've found that if I expand my residental zones too far from the jobs, there's a "dead zone" in the middle where the Sims won't be able to get to work. In general, I make my zones 6x6. I will have on the edge Industrial, a buffer of Commercial, and then 2 of Residential. You can back them onto each other so your residents stay safe and clean (i.e. I C R R R R C I ), or stagger them. Additionally, if commercial demand is low I will make a "Residental/Commercial split zone, so I have 1 full industrial zone, a C/R split zone, and a full residential zone.

Tip 5: Jobs!
This should be obvious, but try to maintain 1 residential zone for each commercial/industrial zone.

Tip 6: Pollution!
Reduce traffic by putting in bus stops or subway. You can put in a rail system, but I've never really bothered. Here's a general question someone may have the answer to: To make a rail depot work, does it need to be adjacent to both a road tile and a rail tile? Does the rail tile have to be continuous, or can it "run into" the depot? I guess what Im asking is that does my rail have to be a non-broken line from where I want to start it to where I want to finish it (effectively taking up a space 3 wide, because the depot needs a place to go), or can I run the rail "into" the depot, so it's only 2 wide (with the rail coming in and out of both sides of the depot).
One great way to reduce pollution is to tax out the industries that produce a lot of it. As far as I know, Mining, Textiles, Automotive and Construction are the big offenders. My guess would be Petrochemicals are probably bad too. If anyone has any information on how clean each industry is relative to each other, that would be great information to share.

Tip 7: Put 'em anywhere!
Certain buildings don't require you to put them in any particular place. So long as you have 'em, they count towards the total and your Sims are pleased as punch. An example would be hospitals and schools. So long as you have them, the Sims don't mind shipping their children and sickly as far out into the boonies as you desire to shove 'em. I believe the ones where placement is not important include Hospitals, Schools, Libraries, Museums, Colleges, and (potentially) Fire Stations. Since (if you have disasters on) you can place the Fire Icon almost instantaneously, where the stations are actually located shouldn't matter. However, it's possible that certain buildings are more likely to catch on fire without a nearby fire station, I've just never tested it since I always play with "No Disasters On". Speaking of...

Tip 8: F the Fireman!
Your Sims Demand Fire Protection! But what if you knew they'd never have to worry about a fire? What I like to do is build the Fire stations to make their demands go away, but put their funding to 0 So I don't have to pay the upkeep.

Tip 9: Put airports on hills
This is a newer idea I've been working with; since it's a pain when a plane runs into a building, I've found I'm able to avoid it by putting my airport on raised terrain. Additionally, I circle the island of a hill with hydro plants, so it's actually a very effective system.

That's all I can think of for now; if I come up with more I'll be sure to post them. What are your tips and tricks that you want to share with your fellow Mayors?

-DrZ

Airport zones are picky. A 3x3 airport zone is unlikely to do anything at all. 5 tiles long and 2 or 3 wide seems to be the minimum. Not only that, but the whole zone should be powered when trying to get it started. Even if it is 10x10 large, if you just have one of its tiles touching a power line it is unlikely anything will ever be built.

All other zones, including seaports, don't seem to have this problem.

Getting 1 million plus dollars every year!

Having money problems? Try this trick to get 1 million a year.

Start up a new city (dunno if this works on a already existing city)
Type fund, click yes, type fund again, click yes.
Now go to the windows drop down menu, and then click on budget, go to bond payments and click on the open book.
In this menu. click on issue bond, yes, repay bond, yes, issue bond, yes, repay bond, yes, issue bond, yes, repay bond, yes, and finally, repay bond, yes.
Now leave it alone and watch your money skyrocket year after year. Now you don't have to worry about not having enough money!

Yeah, Hydro is so good I ultimately decided not to use it at all. Only 25% pricier than Coal, no pollution, never breaks down, takes up less space and in terrain you couldn't use anyway, and you can build exactly as much as you need. There was never any reason to use anything else, and the game was weaker for it.

IIRC, wind is similarly priced, but less reliable. It might still be a good supplement, though, particularly if you just need a bit of power to quash brownouts, but can't afford a full-sized plant.

10. Place commercial zones in high-traffic areas.
I may just be imagining things, but commercial zones seem most successful when you put them in places that already have very heavy traffic. It used to be that I never got 3x3 commercial buildings, except the occasional drive-in, but now that I have started doing this, 3x3 commercial buildings of all sorts pop up frequently.

11. Spend faster!
Bonds are quite useful if you spend them all on development immediately after taking them out. At low rates, you can gain substantially more in yearly income from development than you lose in interest payments. This permits very fast (in actual game years!) and sustainable expansion.

I might be crazy, but for whatever reason airports have always grown faster when I just powered the edge, not actually put lines within the zone. This isn't the case with any other zone, so I'm not sure if there's a reason for it, or if I'm just insane.

-DrZ

Thanks! :D

In the past I had never really used Bonds, since all the guides I read say they're terrible. I played a game last night where I bought them, and *wow* do they make a huge difference. Just for reference, spending smart and growing slowly I managed to get 50k population by 2050 or so. Most expansion had to stop for 5-10 years before my power plant blew up because I had to save.

For comparison purposes, I had a city with 50k population in 1913, buying bonds and then immediately expanding. 1913! I wanted to build an airport, but *flight hadn't been invented yet*!

I think my current plan going forward is this:
Buy bonds when I need to expand, until I'm approximately 10k/year in debt. Then, get 2k or so in positive gain per year. Let it cook for a few years, and then start paying off bonds. The first bond paid off will lower my debt to ~8k/year and my income to 4k, and so on so the last bond will get paid off within 1 year while the first took 5. From there, I imagine 10k/year is more than enough to keep me busy and my city growing rapidly.

EDIT: Just to be clear, the thinking behind buying these bonds is this: if I get a loan of 10k at 4%, I'll owe $400/year in interest. However, if I spend that 10k on stuff that produces $600/year in income, I'll net $200/year, making the bond worthwhile.

The rails have to be contiguous, and I've found that if I try to use a rail depot and convert it into a subway that the train ends up getting stuck at the entrance to the tunnel, not sure why.

Trains in SC2k work exactly like they did in the original except for the addition of the depot. AFAIK you only need one depot per set of tracks. I added a second one the first time and ended up with a second train.

And, you can apparently crash the helicopter just like you could in the original.

In case anyone was curious, the "buy bonds while expanding" plan worked like a charm. I had 5-6 bonds out by 1920, and approximately 70,000 citizens. From there (since I had 5 coal-fire power plants) I started buying back my debt slowly, until my city was debt-free around 1940. Now I can generate approximately 5k/year, which will let me buy new power plants when my old ones blow up and then expand quickly over the rest of the map.

These are some very helpful tips. You get a +1 from me.

The golden ratio of SimCity (at least, 1 and 2000):

3 Residential / 2 Industrial / 1 Commercial

That's what your Sims want, ideally.

12. A very efficient way to make more money is to use 12x12 squared road with parks in the middle. Don't bother with raising industry land value with parks though.

13. On hard difficulty, here is one way you can pay off the bond:
* If you don't satisfy commerce demand, the demand won't drop and you can tax at a very high every year.
* Residents will stay for the most part if they have a job to go to, so keep industry tax low and tax residents a lot.
* Keep residents a little away from industry, because people don't want to live in polluted areas.
* Don't pick any ordinances and don't build any buildings. The military will help against disasters.

I finally re-paid the bond at 1961 in the attached example pictures.

Good stuff guys!

I'm going to go try that trick with bonds...