My Level 10 Game Strategy

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!