Okay, yesterday I had build a coal mine and an oil well which quickly filled to capacity and shut down, even though I had maxed out on trucks for both of them. I couldn’t figure out why. I had a trading post and everything! Finally, after a few hours, I realized I had to add oil & coal storage facilities to my trade posts. Now I’m actually making some money on the global market.
Here are some more newbie questions off the top of my head:
I’ve got all these extra fire trucks, ambulances, garbage trucks and police cars that I’ve been sending to Moss Yell and Wolf Island because that’s all I can do with them. They seem to bring in a little revenue but do they really help those other cities?
I can’t build residential and industrial zones fast enough, but my commercial zones are languishing and I’m not sure why.
I know I can’t upgrade streets to avenues, but how do I upgrade (for example) a medium density avenue to a high-density one? I tried just dragging the new road over the old one but that doesn’t work apparently.
It looks like your abandonment took and Spooner Plains is once again available. Thanks!
Those mini-tutorials can be helpful, except when they force you to do things. They seem to popup in reaction to certain events in your city. I had one that popped up that asked whether I wanted to learn how to decrease traffic coming from the region highway (or something to that effect). It was a very brief popup, though. I couldn’t get my mouse over to click “Yes” fast enough before it went away. I guess I’m doing something right, though my Sims stuck in traffic might disagree with that.
Oh, that’s right. I’ll send you an invitation when able. EA/Maxis must be very slowly learning something. When I checked, Europe East had 3 servers and Europe West had 4.
Darned if I know. I’ve been sending my police cars over to my neighbors in the hopes that they’ll catch the criminals there, but they still keep coming over the border and setting fires in my city.
That’s because they’re all coming over to Terminus Wetlands to shop.
In the roads menu, look under the advisor. There’s a little button that will allow you to upgrade roads and avenues.
Here’s the state of the region as of this morning. The only change is Eliahna has claimed Sawyer’s Crossing in Cluster B, renaming it to Cecilia. Clusters A and B are now full up, but Athena is still off by herself in Cluster D.
Rising Sun Valley
Stackolee Ravine
Mount Olympia - Bryllyn [Athena]
Cotton Bend - ???
sandra_nz is still waiting to get on. When she does, there will be only two slots left (or three if we can ever recover Cotton Bend). I still haven’t heard back from Silophant or Lips Obsession, so I’m giving their slots away.
even sven, I sent you a friend request on Origin. You need to accept it before I can send you an invitation.
RandMcnally wanted to join but couldn’t even get into a server (any server). If he hasn’t given up in disgust, he’s still got a slot. If not, I’ll give to LonelyFatKid (I think he’s the same name here on SDMB).
By the way, I’ve been trying to send out friend requests to everyone in our region. I don’t think they’re getting through (server troubles), but check for friend invites occasionally.
I got my rail and ferry terminals up and going, too.
You only have highway links within your cluster. But rail, ferry and air links connect to anywhere in the region. I highly encourage every mayor to build rail and ferry terminals, if you can. It lets your Sims go to any other city with a rail or ferry terminal.
I’m not sure how airports work.
The same thing happened to me. I had to claim a new city. And then the client crashed. But I managed to get back in and quickly abandon it.
That’s good advice.
Yes, they help a lot! It gives the other city some slack before they have to upgrade their services. It’s definitely noticeable. Do it! At the region screen, you can see who’s sharing what to who. Give your bonus trucks to someone needs them.
In previous SimCity games, commercial development always lagged behind. I think it does here too. Also, commerce needs shoppers, so be sure it’s easy for Sims to get to your commercial areas.
Go to the road tool. On the left side of the bar, there’s a little arrow-circle button below the road shape selection. That’s the upgrade tool. Push the button, then click on a segment of road. You can both upgrade and downgrade, so be careful. (One of the mini-tutorials covered this. Do them. )
Quick tip, watch your land values carefully. I sent my city on shit spiral with one accidental park much earlier.
I place one $$ park in stead of a $ park in the middle of dense residential. All the peons in the skyscrapers around there got all uppity, and thought they were middle class. So then they refused to work in the factories anymore. And Middle class jobs are damn hard to create. So my people got made cause the had no jobs, and my factories collapsed because they had no workers.
I blew up the park, and their fancy-scmancy $$skyscrapers and put them back in there place in the skums they deserve, and have recovered as a city, but it was a tense time with high bonds and collapse a hair away.
Ha, I don’t think so. I tried sending you some services but it said that our cities aren’t connected. They’re probably all over at Wolf Island.
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Will you people please stop sending me your arsonists and murderers? I know that Bravasia is a shining beacon of light in an otherwise grey world, but COME ON.
In other news, I think I’m fairly close to complete economic collapse. I reached too far, too quickly.
I’m not going to get the game until the Mac version comes out in the spring, but I’m loving your stories of triumph and economic collapse, so please keep up the entertainment! It’s like reading Boatmurdered again.
I wish there was a way to undo. One misclick almost ruined me last night. I inadvertently bulldozed the hotel my tourists were staying at. With all the tax revenue gone, I started to run a deficit and had to turn off services like sewage and garbage collection while the zone got rebuilt. My Sims did not like that one bit.
I’m puzzled by Sim behavior at times. One apartment building will say that shopping’s great, while the house across the street says that it can’t find the mall. There’s a [del]Starbucks[/del] generic coffee house that says business is great, while another around the corner says it can’t find any customers. The data view shows hordes of eager shoppers milling about downtown, but a lot of them never seem to go into the shops.
One drawback to having a lavish mayoral mansion: it gives the protesters a second site at which to bitch and complain day and night.
WHERE is the National Guard when you need it?
So, the Globe Theatre. An interesting game element is that you can schedule events, which can (hopefully) generate a significant profit. I assume the pro stadium and opera houses work similarly? Can anyone verify that?
Anyway, I’ve scheduled and ran two plays so far; both successfully generated simoleons. I think several more and I’ll have paid for my initial investment!
My city struggled with commercial collapse as well. I solved the problem three ways: 1) It seemed like I had overzoned high density commercial compared to residential so I rezoned some blocks of abandoned commercials buildings with residential zones. 2) It seemed like part of the problem was access to the commercial zone, so I build a streetcar system to relieve some of the overcrowding on buses and street gridlock. 3) It seemed like the third and worst problem was with low property values (just listen to those protesters bitch and complain!), so I added some more public spaces, plazas and parks and the like. They need to be nice and expensive, as wolfman noticed earlier. You cannot sustain high rises in the commercial zone without high wealth in your city. Also high wealth needs high education, so build that university!
Frankly, I zoned high density too fast, too soon.
I only got through the crisis with the strong sales at my trade depot, which sells oil, alloys, plastics, and metal on the global market. That recycling center has more than paid for itself!
OMG yes. I was trying to rotate the map so that my new oil rig would be in the right location and I accidentally planted it where there was no oil.:smack: That was a $30,000 mistake (or something like that, I forget the exact cost of an oil well). On the plus side, the animation of an oil well being bulldozed is kinda cool.
God I’m stupid. I finally realized you can bulldoze each individual dumpsite, you don’t have to trash(hehe) the whole dump complex and buy it and the trucks again.
you can bulldoze each of the 8 little dump site individually.
It does add to ground pollution every time you do bulldoze, but there aren’t a whole lot of options.
You can bulldoze a dump but any trash that was stored there will be spread around the immediate area, presenting a fire risk. This may not be what you want to happen. The new dump is going to have to pick it all back up anyway. Better to just expand the dumpsite by adding more lots.
Incidentally, can bulldoze any of the individual upgrade ploppables by going through the appropriate edit menu. Don’t like where that windmill is? Click edit on the windfarm then bulldoze the individual windmill. Don’t need that Education Department? Click edit on City Hall then bulldoze the department. There’s no need to bulldoze the entire building just to rebuild it.
You will run out very fast. I’ve probably go through 100+ 70 ton dump sites. You eventually have to burn it, or pile and bulldoze. unless someone wants to start Trashland.
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