Here are some tips I've compiled for SimCity thus far. Several people have talked about getting it... just do it already. Vash and I are getting lonely.
Just some general things to remember before we get started:
- ROADS ARE EVERYTHING. Every building must be connected to a road. Your power, water, sewage are all distributed/collected by your roads (no more building power lines and pipes). There are two road types: Streets (from Low to High Density), and Avenues (from Medium to High Density). Streets are either 2 or 4 lane streets. Avenues are 4 or 6 lane divided streets with a median between each side, the highest level avenue also has trolley tracks.
- Cities are not self-sufficient. You can make self-contained cities in SimCity, but if you do, you aren't actually playing the game. You have to make use of your region.
Density is the first thing you need to make yourself aware of in SimCity. First off, Density is not wealth. Density comes in three levels: Low, Medium and High.
Low Density residential buildings would be single family homes, trailers, or duplexes. Low density commercial buildings are single business entities like shoppes and movie theaters. Medium Density residential buildings are things like apartment buildings or condos. Medium Density commercial buildings add things like large office buildings. High Density residential and commercial buildings are the skyscraper versions of the medium density buildings.
Its important to remember not to expand too fast. The power, water and sewage needs increase an order of magnitude every time you move up a density level. If you start making all medium density and high density streets or avenues, your city is going to grow much too fast, and the amount of micromanagement you'll find necessary will be difficult to over come. Take it slow. Fill out your landmass before you start upping the density.
Wealth
The first thing to remember is that density is not wealth. While density is determined by the type of road you put down, Wealth is determined by the desirability of the area. If the land value is low, the residential and commercial properties on that land will be low wealth. As the land value increases you will move up into medium wealth, and eventually high wealth.
Access to services increases desirability across the board, but it doesn't impact land value much. What impacts land value are mostly two things (unless you specialize for Culture/Tourism): The Mayor's Mansion, Parks. The Mayor's Mansion unlocks pretty early in your city life, and can be upgraded over time if you meet certain popularity requirements. The only high wealth areas in my cities directly surround my Major's Mansion (this is by design for me). Parks on the other hand, are a cheap, easy way to increase land value. Plop down a couple parks, and you'll go from low to medium in no time.
It is important to remember, that as your population gets more wealthy, it also takes up more space. Low wealth, low density homes, for example, tend to be very small, sometimes looking like a trailer park. The move to medium wealth makes the houses bigger, but it still a single family home. High wealth, low density homes, can look like mansions and take up quite a bit of space. This trend also continues through medium and high density.
So, if you're like me, and you have a little bit of low-wealth unemployment, and you have too few medium-wealth workers (since you can see the jobs available by wealth), and you plop down some parks to increase the land value of an area, you'll lose those low-wealth unemployed workers (yay), but the new buildings will have a lower overall population than what you lost, so you won't gain as many medium wealth workers to fill the empty jobs, and your overall population will drop slightly.
Utilities
Water. Water is a fickle bitch. Personally, I rate water and sewage as more important than making sure you have a good school system, and adequate police/fire/medical coverage. Every zone has a finite amount of water on its own. You can see your city's water table using the map options. That water WILL dry up if you over consume it. There are some things that will replenish the water table, such as rain, which is completely unreliable. If you are a coastal city, your water table will also naturally replenish over time.
If you are a land-locked city how do you replenish your water? Well, you can buy it from another city, which is what I did for a time in my second city. My first city was on the coast, so I bought its water. But there are better solutions. There are two forms of water runoff in SimCity. Industrial, and Sewage Treatment. Industrial runoff shows on your water table in grades of brown (instead of blue) from low water, to high water. Industrial runoff is very polluted, but you can treat it and use it as water. Sewage Treatment is the best answer. Your sewage treatment plant, treats all your sewage (obviously), and puts the runoff (ie: clean water) back into the ground. This water is free of pollution, but it can be a little germy (germs and pollution are tracked separately).
The best solution for long term water health in your city is to build your sewage treatment plant, and make sure that you ALWAYS maintain enough capacity that it never overflows and pours untreated sewage into your ground water. Then, place your water pump across the street. The pump will grab the cleaned runoff from the treatment plant. Give your pump a couple filter buildings, and you've got your own regenerating water supply.
For power, I like Solar. Solar and Wind are the only two options that don't pollute, but as such they take up a lot of space which is why I'm working on the solar farm great work. When that is complete, I can buy my power from that site, pollution free and requiring no space in my city.
Homeless
I'm about 30 hours in, and for the first 25 or so, I had NO IDEA how to handle the homeless. But I've figured it out, for the most part. The default tax rate in your city is 9% for all three sectors (residential, commercial, industrial). If you upgrade your city hall enough (or any city hall in your region) you can get a Department of Finance. This will allow you to tax each wealth group independently as well. So you get separate tax rates for low, medium and high wealth residential, commercial and industrial.
Homeless are a problem, because they congregate in your parks, they don't have jobs, and they lower land values. To get rid of them, lower the low wealth residential tax rate. I found that lowering it from 9% to 8% essentially cut my homeless problem in half. Another thing that cut it down was having adequate bus coverage in my city.
Then when your homeless numbers go down, and you get to 100% employment (or in my case under-employment, I have more jobs than people to staff them), you can raise the tax rate back up.
Industry
While industry follows the low-high density levels I outlined for residential and commercial zones, it doesn't care about wealth. Industry will produce mainly low-wealth jobs. There will be a few medium wealth jobs (management positions), but mostly it is low wealth jobs. The thing you need to manage for industry is technology level.
All industry wants skilled workers (meaning you need a good elementary school, and high school, and adequate bus coverage so that your entire city is enrolled). Skilled workers, however, do not increase the tech level of your industry. Only two things do that: Community College and University.
Unlike elementary and high schools, which should be placed in/near your residential areas. Your College/University should be placed in/near your industrial area, because they increase tech level first by proximity, then by pumping out students. You can increase your tech level enough with just a Community College, that you can get rid of 90% of your industrial pollution (water runoff is still polluted). Add in a University and pretty soon you'll have very high tech companies in town. Higher tech companies make more money, meaning more tax revenue for you.
Regions
NOR has a 16-city region. 4 of the cities are currently occupied (2 by Vashile, 2 by me). Look at the strengths and weaknesses of your zone before you decide what kind of city you want to make. If you have a zone with rich reserves of coal, ore, or oil, you don't want to turn that into a tourism hotspot, because then you're depriving your region of those resources.
Your city can connect to other cities in the region by four methods: Regional Highway, Regional Railway, Seaport, Airport.
The NOR region is essentially broken into 4 sub-regions. Each of the 4 sub-regions has its own regional highway. So you can connect by road to 3 other cities. Each sub-region also has its own Regional Railway (2 of the sub-regions are connected), so again, you can connected to a several cities, but not the whole region. Any city on the water can build a sea-port and connect to any of the cities with a sea-port as well, regardless of their sub-region. And any city can connect to any other city with a municipal airport.
City connections are very very important. The first cities Vashile and I made are pretty bad. We both expanded too fast, Vashile ended up with way too many medium wealth Sims, and not enough jobs. I ended up with way too many medium wealth jobs, and not enough Sims to fill them. The cities are connected by Sea-port, so now Vashile's medium wealth Sims commute to my city to work.
I mentioned City Halls earlier. City Halls upgrade has you hit certain population marks. Each time you upgrade your city hall, you can add-on a department. There are 6: Education, Finance, Safety, Tourism, Transportation, Utilities. I've never had a city big enough to install more than 4 add-ons to the city hall. But ANY add-on installed in the region counts for your city as well. So while Vashile and I only have 4 cities going, we have all 6 add-ons, so everything is unlocked. Here is a rundown of what they do: Education unlocks the Community College and University; Finance allows you to tax each wealth level independently; Safety unlocks advanced buildings for police, fire and medical; Tourism unlocks various parks and attractions; Transportation unlocks the sea-port and municipal airport, and Utilities unlocks the sewage treatment plant, recycling center, and water pumping station. They may not be sexy, but the first things I'd unlock in a fresh region are Utilities and Finance.
Great work!