castledoom.com

[DarkShinji250]

I just picked this game up Sunday on the cheap. I got the Deluxe version for only roughly $30. Not a bad deal in my opinion.

But I'm running into problems already. How do I stay in the black while not expanding my city out to all four corners with just light zoned areas? It seems that when I try to put in any services (i.e. schools and clinics) my expenses shoot through the roof. Let's not even mention a water system here (which is needed to make medium or dense zoning), that just kills my budget.

[Brf]

I never had SIm City 3 or 4, but I remember in Sim City-2, I never used light zones, only the dark ones. I always set the service levels at the minimum needed to barely satisify the advisors too.... School at 20%, college at 5%, fire dept at 10% and police at 25%.

[bannie]

yeah, in Sim City 4 you really need to take it slow and only add the services only when needed


or just do what I do and use the money cheat to get the city up and running :roll:

[Eddy]

One thing that will help development is to have neighboring cities. Start one, play as normal, save the game, then go to the square next to it and start a second city. Save that, go back to the first city and you'll see a small jump in productivity.

As was stated before, don't add any services until you absolutely must have them and even then, think twice. Personally I found this game to be much more frustrating than its predecessors because of the finances so I gave in and got a plugin that is called "Godfather Edict" that gives you ten grand a month just so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

[ExarKun]

It's good to be the Godfather aint it :wink:

[Eddy]

Yes, and best part is that you don't have to worry about a horse's head being next to you when you wake up.

There are a ton of cheats and plugins out there, including one that lets you build anything you want, i.e. it unlocks all the rewards.

[DarkShinji250]

I seem to have gotten into the black by about $300 even though I have a transit system, a grade school, high school, college, hospital, large fire and police station. Of course I have craploads of light residential to stare at and that's just plain ugly...

Also, are there any other regions and how do I get to them?

[Eddy]

I haven't played in a while, but I seem to recall that you can pick a new region on the main screen or possibly the map screen. Or did you mean to download a region made by users?

[DarkShinji250]

I seem to only be able to play in the region that you start in the first time.

As for my city, I'm glad I saved. I put in water pumps and started to expand my city. Then some environmentalist weirdo somehow shuts down my entire water system. Guess what happens then? All those people in the dense and medium residential areas packed up and moved away. It didn't help that I had just blown hundreds on updating all those zones. I was in debt faster than I could do anything. Green Peace must die!

[Eddy]

Ok when you open the game it puts you in the first region with all the tutorials. Up at the top of the screen you'll see some icons roughly above the Rush Hour tutorial. One looks like a computer with a globe behind it. To the left there is one that has a maplike look. Click it. A menu should open up with three options. One is create a region, one is load a region, one will be delete a region. You'll want to load. There are several to play from and you can probably download extras from the net as well.

See if this helps.

[ExarKun]

just bought the game for 20 dollars at wal-mart, thought I needed to blow some time before I get games liek Final Fantasy XII and Neverwinter Nights 2, havn't had the best luck with my cities... then I get frustrated, then lightinging strikes a lot in the same place it seems :twisted: