SIM City 5 - Actual Strategy Discussion

[paperfist]

The instability is a real problem, you can get to the point where a city just outright fails. Unlike in the previous Sim City games its really easy to get a city started and profitable, but very hard to keep it positive budget wise in the late game (which is of course a lot closer in Sim City).

I could never get gambling to work but tourism with an expo centre and some additional attractions did work out reasonably profitable (half million a day or so) and could be run with a positive budget so long as the expo centre was near a train station and had dedicated roads to it that didn't intersect the workers and shoppers.

Vanilla Simcity 4 was a nightmare to make any money with and very unstable as far as economics go. The Rush Hour expansion helped that out a lot.

The thing I don't like about this game is without going into direct manufacturing it seems impossible to keep you city making money per hour with the services they demand.

 

[MrSquished]

The thing I don't like about this game is without going into direct manufacturing it seems impossible to keep you city making money per hour with the services they demand.

that's why i'm bored with it. their are really no options for making money besides getting up to procs and tv's and puters. once i did that in like 6 cities it's boring. it's fun to look at all the cool stuff you can build with that money, i think the game has some neat stuff in it, and it's fun to see your city rise - so i will go back to it sometimes - but really would prefer some other options to create successful economies, including other things to manufacture, like how about clothing, but also completely other kinds of economies like service based, etc...

 

[KentState]

Once the Arcology starts building up population wise (over 1 million) there is non-stop traffic in the city because they all drive. When I first built the Arcology and it was at 300k population everything was perfect, it gets to 1,000,000 and it just destroys your city.

That's what happened to my region. Like I said earlier, it took a few days to build it up and then was wrecked in a few minutes.

 

[Mixolydian]

Processors are barely keeping my city afloat. Right now I'm averaging -$27,000/hour. Sims want all these services like schools and police, but when you slightly increase taxes they freak out and leave. What a bunch of assholes.

 

[paperfist]

Processors are barely keeping my city afloat. Right now I'm averaging -$27,000/hour. Sims want all these services like schools and police, but when you slightly increase taxes they freak out and leave. What a bunch of assholes.

Yepp the game needs to be balanced out. It's too easy to get in a hole if you try to run a simcity the 'right way'.

 

[datalink7]

Processors are barely keeping my city afloat. Right now I'm averaging -$27,000/hour. Sims want all these services like schools and police, but when you slightly increase taxes they freak out and leave. What a bunch of assholes.

Shut down your extra stuff and tech up to TV's and Computers. Once there you make boatloads. I'm at about -$40,000 an hour and I have over $7 million in the bank.

 

[Mixolydian]

HAHAHAHAHA! Can't even play the frickin game today. Every time I launch the game and open my city it gives me an error "Unable to load city at this time".

Oh boy...

 

[Wyndru]

HAHAHAHAHA! Can't even play the frickin game today. Every time I launch the game and open my city it gives me an error "Unable to load city at this time".

Oh boy...

Strange, it's working fine for me today, I just updated some highways on one of my main intersections.

Oh wait, wrong thread, sorry about that! :twisted:

 

[bonkers325]

Processors are barely keeping my city afloat. Right now I'm averaging -$27,000/hour. Sims want all these services like schools and police, but when you slightly increase taxes they freak out and leave. What a bunch of assholes.

I am at -130k per hour and make 5 mil per day. I run 4 TV factories and 6 processor factories.

 

[Mixolydian]

Sigh. Another day, unable to play.

"Unable to load the city at this time. Please try again."

 

[paperfist]

Sigh. Another day, unable to play.

"Unable to load the city at this time. Please try again."

For what it's worth I had to actually reboot the computer to clear that gem.

 

[Mixolydian]

For what it's worth I had to actually reboot the computer to clear that gem.

Yep, tried that and it didn't help. :\

 

[Mixolydian]

Day 4, still unable to play. Way-to-fucking-go, EA!

 

[SimCity5]

I started my first city not too long ago and I decided to specialize in drilling. I have developed quite the empire and I now have 5 oil depots (or whatever they are called) and it says I am making over 112,000$ profit, but this profit isn't affecting my budget panel and I'm losing money instead of making money for my specialization, even though it says I'm making over 100,000$. If anyone knows anything about this it would help me tremendously. Thanks in advance.

 

[sswingle]

I started my first city not too long ago and I decided to specialize in drilling. I have developed quite the empire and I now have 5 oil depots (or whatever they are called) and it says I am making over 112,000$ profit, but this profit isn't affecting my budget panel and I'm losing money instead of making money for my specialization, even though it says I'm making over 100,000$. If anyone knows anything about this it would help me tremendously. Thanks in advance.

The only specialization that goes green on your budget panel is Gambling from what I have seen. Income from mining, drilling, CPUs, TVs, etc all go into your transactions on the right hand side. Then those transactions are added to your monthly budget at the bottom to show your actual profit or loss.

I have a city that shows -$50,000 hourly but makes a couple million a day.

 

[KentState]

Only taxes, public services and tourism affect your budget panel. The rest of the profits occur as pure income or expense. Overall, it's silly because that means the government in this game is pretty much running all but the industrial/commercial zone businesses.

 

[Redinit]

Yep, tried that and it didn't help. :\

What happened, I haven't been on in a while?

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I also couldn't play last weekend or last night.

I disputed the charge on my amex, for "lack of product delivery". It's the best SimCity strategy I've found yet.

 

[mizzou]

based on everyones experiences, I will not pick this game up until its 29.99 or 39.99

 

[maevinj]

based on everyones experiences, I will not pick this game up until its 29.99 or 39.99

I'm not trying to sound like an Ass, but I'm waiting until it's it's under 20. Too many bugs and the fact you can't play offline, just makes it the equivalent of a souped up Facebook game.

 

[ultimatebob]

I don't know about you guys, but it's hard to focus on game strategy when my saved games keep magically disappearing or getting rolled back to an earlier version of my city.

How this crap passed QA testing is beyond me.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I wonder how long it will be until they ban my origin account..



"Thank you for your recent inquiry concerning your account. We are pleased to inform you that we have credited your account for $79.99. The credit(s) will appear on your upcoming billing statement. Any interest charges and any American Express fees associated with the charge(s) have been adjusted."

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I'm not trying to sound like an Ass, but I'm waiting until it's it's under 20. Too many bugs and the fact you can't play offline, just makes it the equivalent of a souped up Facebook game.

That is an excellent comment, and extremely accurate.

 

[Wyndru]

I think this version of SimCity will be the nail in the coffin for this franchise. The last 2 releases of it have been horrible (SCS and this one). I bet they drop support for it before long.

Oh well, SC4 is still alive and well thanks to the modders.

 

[bonkers325]

for shits and giggles i started a new city in a public region. i have *horrible* traffic jams and half of my city is filled with ambulances, fire trucks, and police officers trying to get... somewhere.

i wonder if i destroy all my tourist attractions, will this problem go away?