My Level 10 Game Strategy

I wish I had read this sooner!  I'm at 15 should I stop!?

Can I wright to the developer's to restart my facebook city! That would be nice!

Or they could fix trade! What a joke!!!!!!¿

You can NOT reset your city to level zero, if you have logged into FB (etc). If you reinstall the game or reset its data, you can start again at level zero, but if you log back in once that feature unlocks, you'll have to load your old saved city to access your friends/neighbors again.

Level 15 is not so bad. But by the time you unlock nearly everything, around level 30 or so, there will be so much other stuff in the trade HQ it will become almost useless much of the time, considering the way that feature is currently set up to 'work'.

The main thing is to be prepared BEFORE each level up. You can make as much coin in a day from producing materials consistently and selling them as you can from upgrades, and you lose less value using materials for keys than you would with more expensive stuff unlocked too.

Thanks for this info. I had decided before seeing this guide that I'd stay at level 10 just because it should be easier to get keys and expansion items, even though I will probably be at this level for a few months. What I didn't realize until reading this guide was that tax per capita decreases as population increases. Now i know to not buy another bus terminal and just save keys for the heliport.

Thanks for the excellent tips.

Also, although it's annoying staying at 10, it's something I got used to. I can still advance my city by buying upgrades and I'm still making progress by slowly opening inventory and zone expansions, so it's not TOO bad sitting at 10 once you get used to it and realize it will make future levels less of a hassle.

Cheers!

My general advice to new players is to not get in any hurry to level up early on.

Purposefully stay at each level longer, build stuff with your factories and stores, and sell it on the market

Build up your bank account so you aren't strapped when you hit those key levels that require the police stations, health departments, etc.

Upgrade your factories as soon as possible.

When the time comes to grow fast, a bigger bank account lets you work the market to get upgrades done sooner.

My advise for new cities:

• power: build coal plants, keep them in the opposite corner from your residential zones.
• small fire/police/health are versatile.
• Ignore specializations until you're much higher level. Ignore mountain and beach too, it won't benefit you much in the beginning.
• UPGRADE YOUR STORAGE as high as possible (limit is 350). You can never have enough, trust me.
• ALWAYS sell items in the trade HQ at maximum price.
• ALWAYS check Daniels store every 24 hours. Buy everything he has, he sells stuff below maximum retail price.
• Unlock the cargo ship dock and do as many shipments as possible at lower levels, the keys are very easy to obtain!
• Spend all your SimCash on expanding commercial building slots.
• Upgrade your industrial buildings to increase the number of build slots. The more slots, the more money you can make.
• Upgrade your commercial buildings, in the long run it will turn a hefty profit.
• Upgrade your residential buildings to the maximum size before building more. The more residential buildings you have, the bigger the services demand!
• Ignore your city happiness, it won't affect you much. Your taxes will be slightly lower, but it's your smallest source of income.
• design your roads in long and winding pattern (1 continuous loop). INTERSECTIONS = TRAFFIC! I went for 4 blocks wide all the way across (road + 4 spaces + road + 4 spaces...)
• If the residential building upgrade isn't with cheap parts, then request new plans until it is.
• Use raw materials to produce more expensive items in your commercial buildings, then sell it in the global trade HQ.
• Produce long build items overnight to maximise your productivity.
• If you're online a lot, produce a lot of nails, they sell for a higher price than Metal.
• Keep land expansion parts and expand whenever possible. These parts are often hard to get, but the primary focus is storage parts.

The objective:

Save enough Simoleons for:

Wind/solar power plants

Deluxe Sewage Treatment plants

Recycling Center

Deluxe Fire/Police/Hospital

Specialization buildings

All Nano-tech Factories.

Keys for:

Specializations (ultimately 3 token buildings wherever possible). These boost population, but can also produce speed-up tokens.

My recommendation: Concentrate on 1 specialization at a time. Build 6 x 3 token buildings so you can start creating Epic Building projects easier.

The bulk of this game is about producing raw materials (industrial) to make commercial products. Buying/selling goods. Quite a good % of the game is about patience, most of the time you'll be maxing your commercial building queues faster than you can make raw materials. Selling them is easy, buying them is hard. So plan what you need wisely!

Here's a screenshot of my road layout, all single lane roads, maximum sized residential buildings!

Very good tips.  When your population gets to 1,000,000, the long roads are going to be extremely expensive to upgrade.  I advise sectioning off those long roads in the future. My roads are generally broken up by 1/3.  Most times, only part of the long road needs an upgrade, costing far less.  My last road upgrade cost 38500 simoleons .  The entire road would have cost 155,500 simoleons otherwise.

I'm 2.3 million and single lanes. If there's ever a complaint about traffic (sometimes happens from repairs after disasters), I just build 1 section of side street off the congested road, then delete the new section again. The traffic is gone like magic!

Couple things on Troy's list (which is a great list by the way). 

1. I would not ignore Specializations. I used Transportation and Education to get pop to 160K pretty easily without leveling up which unlocks London and France at the Airport so you can start shipments there and load up on those items you will need to build.

2. I would not spend money on small Fire/Police even thought they may be versatile. If you play it right, you only need one Fire and one Police and you wont need another for a long time so saving up for the Deluxe is worth it

3. Open Vu's tower as soon as you can and start disasters ASAP. It's and easy way to get keys which are used at higher levels.