Basics
In SimCity 4, it is possible to create a city that starts making money starting at the end of the second month. There are a few tricks to this.- Legalize gambling. It gives you an extra §100 per month.
- Don’t build too many streets/roads during the first few months. Their upkeep can make a difference between a loss and a profit for the city during these months.
- Start with a windmill instead of a big power plant. Windmills provide electricity at a lower cost than a natural gas power plant – up to the power provided by 4 windmills.
- Don’t add services until needed. Starting with a library and museum is fine. Together they cost less than §10 per month. Add an elementary school when you can afford the cost. Then add a high school, large medical center, and a water tower or two, in that order, as you can afford them. With the Smoke Detector Program, you can wait until there is a fire before building a small fire station – and still put out the fire. I usually end up adding a college before a fire department. Add a small police department or two when you have the money. Police and fire departments help attract business.
- Don’t be afraid of farmland. Farms are good employers for startup cities.
- Utilize neighbor cities. When Sims complain about garbage, build a connecting city, an industrial city, with a waste to energy plant. Set the energy production for the plant to zero, but accept garbage from the first city. Set the garbage import rate to maximum. When you return to the original city, set the garbage export rate to about half of the maximum. Later, have your original city export water to the industrial one.
- Do urban renewal. Dezone farmland that is no longer needed. Demolish buildings (like used car dealerships) that create a nuisance. Change or add streets to help traffic flow. Demolish buildings that have passed their prime, that no longer have any Sims in them -- provided you have the money to do so.
- Micromanage. Set the coverage area low for schools and medical centers but not fire or police departments. Check often whether you have enough desks (schools), beds (medical centers), books (libraries), tickets (museums), and cells (police departments). As a side note, if teachers or health care workers go on strike, it's cheaper to bulldoze the building and replace it with another than to pay the increased costs to end the strike.
The First Three Months
- Month 1: Pause. While in God Mode, use a smoothing or feathering tool to smooth out the terrain. If you want to add a beach or dock to your future city, be sure to smooth the beach area so that there are sections of beach that are aligned with the grid. Add forests. Go to Mayor Mode to start the city and give it a name.
- Keep the game paused. Lay out a minimal residential area. (For a first city, zone for moderate residential and commercial areas.) Add one windmill set at §50, a few streets, and small commercial areas at one or more corners. Leave an empty area at the center of the development for future services (such as education, health care, and safety). Add a farm set away from the town and connected to the town by a road or two and a power line. Lay out connections to two neighboring cities. Unpause.
- Month 2: Pause. Open the city ordinances box and choose to legalize gambling. Also, choose the Smoke Detector Program and Clean Air Act. Unpause.
- Month 3: Add more streets, residential areas, and/or farmland as needed. Add a library and museum. Set their funding low (less than §10 between the two).
At the right is a sample town plan:
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Utilities
Electricity- Start residential and commercial cities with 1 windmill. Add more windmills as the population grows. However, instead of adding a fifth windmill, build a natural gas power plant in a corner of the city and decrease the funding for the windmills to zero. There is no need to demolish them. (Note: Windmills produce no pollution. Natural gas power plants produce minimal water pollution.)
- Start industrial cities with 2 windmills at full power plus a waste to energy plant at zero power. When demand increases, build a coal plant in a corner of the city and decrease the funding for the windmills to zero. (Note: Coal plants produce a lot of air and water pollution, but they produce a lot of electricity at a cheap rate. It's best to keep them away from everything -- except the corner of the map.)
- Water is the main reason for choosing a system of streets or empty land every 7th square both lengthwise and crosswise. Pipes provide water for buildings up to 6 squares away. An optimal way of laying pipes would be to have one crosswise pipe (under a road or empty land) and then lengthwise pipes every 14th square. (The roads with no pipes under them would be unwatered.)
- Startup cities do not need water or water pipes. They just won't develop beyond the light development stage. Once you do add water, be prepared for a burst of activity. Whether it is better to start with water towers or water pumps depends on the size of the city at the time they are added. It's best to keep water funding near maximum to keep pipes from bursting.
- Four water towers at full capacity provide water for a lower cost than one water pump at the equivalent partial capacity. Note also that all water resources need to be run at the same capacity. So, water towers should be demolished before building the first water pump. Just as power plants need to be periodically replaced as they age, so do water towers and water pumps.
- Finally, industrial cities and cities in which you decide to keep farmland will eventually need a water treatment plant. Commercial areas and high-tech areas do not like water pollution. Plus, water pumps and towers will stop working if water pollution near them becomes too high.
- Garbage is best taken care of by a waste to energy plant (set at zero electricity production) in a completely industrial city. Since there is nobody living in the city, there is no one to complain about the pollution. However, for the health of the industry in the city, locate the plant a short distance away from the main industrial areas.
- For large residential cities, recycling centers are nice but not essential -- as long as garbage is taken care of in some way.
- If for some reason you like vultures (I think that's what they are), create a landfill.
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