Stuck on a few things
I'm at level 17, had 60k population until a health care crisis (I gave them a clinic and they all hated it and my pop dropped to 47k / happiness from 94% to 64%, almost overnight!), constantly strugg...
Forum Discussion
First, I generally agree with the prior response. That said, here's my spin on your questions:
It's OK to demo residences, if you have overbuilt. The cost to you of having an unhappy populace is much higher than the cost of replacing any residences you demo. There is no penalty for doing the demo other than the populace of those buildings all move away. No worries though, they will come back when there is a place for them. There is no long-term downside to doing this.
When I was in a similar situation with the storage bars, I went ahead and sold ALL of the cameras and locks to free up storage. TRY to buy storage bars, if they are available to you, and only buy back the locks and cameras once you have enough storage bars for the next upgrade. NEVER EVER sell your storage bars until your storage capacity reaches 250 (the max).
USE the land expansion items, even if you don't need the land right now. You don't have to provide services to empty land, but those expansion items are harder to buy when you are at a higher level because of how the Global HQ currently works, and as you've noted, they take up precious space in the storage depot. If you decide to sell them, I suggest only selling to the marketplace at the maximum price it will allow you to sell them at. Someone will buy them and, in my opinion, I'd rather sell them to a player who needs them than back to the game. Resources that can be created by the player can be sold to players or the game, wherever you get the best price, but expansion items are controlled by the game, not players, so I won't let the game have them back except by using them for expansion. And yes, after you sell expansion items, the game will still give you more in the future.
If you logged in via Facebook, you would need a different Facebook account or the game will revert to the city already created and tied to that Facebook account. This is a Facebook problem and not a Sim City problem as I've seen people complain about this on other forums for other games as well.
Regarding sales of small items you've made in the game, if the game gives you a better price than the max price in Global HQ, then by all means sell to the game. There are, according to an official post elsewhere, about 8 million transactions per day in the Global HQ, so this means there is always a player looking for any and every item that can be sold. Until EA fixes the issues with Global HQ, sell your excess items at the maximum price the game will allow you to sell them at. If they don't sell within a couple of days, usually, "Daniel's City" will step in and buy them directly from your Trade Depot at the price you asked.
The most important thing, based on the level you are at, is to secure your town financially before you further expand residences. If happiness isn't above 95% (or probably 99%) then figure out why and correct that. If you have too many residences, demo some until everything fits within the footprint of your coverage area for police, fire, and medical. You do NOT have to cover them with education, transportation, etc. They will complain, sometimes, if these things are not available, but it doesn't affect their actual happiness, so those things can wait. Once your Sims' happiness is stabilized, work on your financial stability. Build stuff and sell it. Build the most time-consuming items you can build and sell them in the trade depot for the maximum price allowed. Advertise but don't spend SimCash for advertisements. Suggestion when making multiple listings is to advertise the last one first, that way people responding to your ad will see your other sales as well. After five minutes, advertise something that hasn't sold yet. I stopped growing my city when I was at about the same point you are at now. I built up my finances until I had a million simoleons, then started playing the game again. It made a huge difference.
Once you have financial stability, it's time to expand land and storage. The lower your level when you start this, the better your odds of finding what you are looking for. You need to buy (when you can afford it, but before you start expanding population again) the items needed to expand your land and your storage. As mentioned above, storage expansion items should be started with the storage bars first. Once acquired, buy the other related items. Due to their rarity, never pass up the chance to buy storage bars, but for the other expansion items, once you have enough of one item for the next expansion, get the other items for that expansion and complete it, before getting the rest. Use your judgement, however, if someone has 20 gears available, I wouldn't pass them up just because you only need nine more! There's no right or wrong order to expand land, just do what works for you.
There's no need to start over. 😕mileyhappy:
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Thank you so much for all this great advice. And for being so polite as to point out that not having discovered Global trading was very dumb of me!
This is what I did (in case anyone else has similar concerns):
a) Demolished the parts of the city that had cost me a minimal amount to build and then built nothing new for a few days. Moved and consolidated fire and police so that all remaining buildings were covered. Spread the skyscrapers out a bit to reduce traffic snarls. This stopped the rot and very slowly (over about 24 hours real time) the happiness level returned to 90 and then to 99/100 once I added health clinics everywhere.
b) Enlarged storage and expanded land as fast as possible, using freebies and/or buying only discounted items to do so, as much as possible.
c) Used the Global trading for hours on end, shopping for bargains and re-selling them at full price -- I had not investigated that at all when I started the game or when I asked my original questions. I didn't see the answer about earning 1,000,000 or about the higher levels getting stingier with the expansion/storage parts. And I did not realize why people were complaining about the Global trading -- now I get it, because as you go up the levels, there are more items to buy, which means that useful parts like storage/expansion don't turn up as often and there is fiercer competition. Wish I had known that!!
WARNING TO OTHERS:
Not knowing those things, I did keep spending and eventually (unfortunately) I started building residences again - mostly low-density at the outskirts of the city, but it's been enough to raise my level to 20, and therefore cause major headaches. So, for those just starting, please heed this advice: DO NOT GO TO LEVEL 18. As soon as you do, the number of useful freebies you receive dilutes and you are flooded with donuts and the pickings in the Global trading center get very much less useful because for the longest time about 50% of it is just donuts!!!
Anyway, in between foolishly increasing my level, I also did expand the land and storage as much as possible. Then I built the transport/education depots (40,000 each) and then added schools and buses and, just now, a library. Also added the entertainment depot last night because the Sims started to comment on boredom.
I do have a couple more questions:
a) should I build the donut, fashion, etc stores? I haven't because I find my furniture and garden stores are idle half the time waiting for nails, hammers, shovels and planks, so I figured it would slow them down even more if I had more stores to service. But do they actually use different ingredients and therefore help me make stuff faster (presumably the donuts need flour bags, though, which is a major source of income for me, sold as-is). So, in short, does having these higher stores actually help me make money faster?
b) I have the factories that make 4 at a time - haven't upgraded because again the hardware and building stores seem to create a bottleneck and my storage fills (I. Is it worth the 27k per factory to enlarge to make 5 at a time?
c) I haven't enlarged the production lines much, inside the stores (using Simcash). Is it worth spending the Simcash on these so that presumably I can make more stuff during sleeping hours? If so, how many units can I pre-order and is it worth it to max out on them?
d) If not for c) -- then what should I use Simcash for? I don't waste it to speed up my ships or my production -- is it worth getting the Llama or whatever? Should I hoard it for later?
e) Other than my personal amusement, is there any advantage to beautifying and improving the city - extra parks, a HS / university etc?
Thanks again.
- I'm glad to hear your headaches are going away!
Here are my answers (or not) to your questions.
a) Hmmm, I don't know what to say about the stores. I got them as they became available to me. I'm not sure what happens if you don't get them.
b) I think it is worth it to buy the larger factories. You can always make lots of seeds to sell, they always sell fast.
c) Buying slots for the building supply, hardware, and farmer queues is the BEST thing to buy with Simcash. You will be able to make more items when you're away from the game (doing silly things like sleeping, eating, and working, no doubt) and so have more to sell. Buy them when you need them.
d) Otherwise save the Simcash for fun things like Llamas. Using it to speed up production or expand is a waste, IMHO.
e) First of all, your amusement is the only reason for doing this! But yes, parks and special buildings cause the population to become denser, so there is more tax income for the same number of buildings - and without leveling up!
I hope this helps! a) should I build the donut, fashion, etc stores? I haven't because I find my furniture and garden stores are idle half the time waiting for nails, hammers, shovels and planks, so I figured it would slow them down even more if I had more stores to service. But do they actually use different ingredients and therefore help me make stuff faster (presumably the donuts need flour bags, though, which is a major source of income for me, sold as-is). So, in short, does having these higher stores actually help me make money faster?
b) I have the factories that make 4 at a time - haven't upgraded because again the hardware and building stores seem to create a bottleneck and my storage fills (I. Is it worth the 27k per factory to enlarge to make 5 at a time?
c) I haven't enlarged the production lines much, inside the stores (using Simcash). Is it worth spending the Simcash on these so that presumably I can make more stuff during sleeping hours? If so, how many units can I pre-order and is it worth it to max out on them?
d) If not for c) -- then what should I use Simcash for? I don't waste it to speed up my ships or my production -- is it worth getting the Llama or whatever? Should I hoard it for later?
e) Other than my personal amusement, is there any advantage to beautifying and improving the city - extra parks, a HS / university etc?
Thanks again.
a) I usually held off on buying new stores until I had everything else I needed at that level. Meaning, if I was close to running low on power or something, I'd make sure I took care of that first. The need for the items a store provides doesn't usually ramp up until several levels after that store becomes available.
b) I wouldn't worry about that. In fact, most of my factories are still 3-item factories (at level 32) because the cost for those is negligible. Very slowly as I come into the money, I've been upgrading them to the 5-item Nano-tech factories (because they have no pollution) but as of right now I've only upgraded two of them. The need just isn't there for me to have more production slots available than I already have.
c) This is the only thing I've used my Sim Cash for so far in the game. I've expanded each of my stores to hold four items. I'm not sure how far they can go.
d) The rule of thumb for any game of this type is to never use limited resources to get anything that you can get in-game anyway. That means, never use sim cash to speed up a timer or to give yourself an craftable item that you need to finish something. I have, as I said, only been using it so far to expand production queues. I'm hoarding the rest. Maybe there will be a park that I can eventually afford with it, but probably not. My guess is that one day I'll just max out the production queues with it, but for now I'm holding onto it.
e) Bring up the list of buildings for one of the specializations (like education) and tap on one of the buildings. Pay attention to "Area" and "Population Boost". The area operates the same way as Fire, Police, etc where they create a green square around them. Take, for example, the Public Library in Education. Any residential building within the 12x8 green square of a public library will experience a population increase of 25%. So a maxed out skyscraper with 1836 population, if it's within the area of the library, will actually have a population of 2295.
@Trinilliana wrote:I do have a couple more questions:
a) should I build the donut, fashion, etc stores? I haven't because I find my furniture and garden stores are idle half the time waiting for nails, hammers, shovels and planks, so I figured it would slow them down even more if I had more stores to service. But do they actually use different ingredients and therefore help me make stuff faster (presumably the donuts need flour bags, though, which is a major source of income for me, sold as-is). So, in short, does having these higher stores actually help me make money faster?
b) I have the factories that make 4 at a time - haven't upgraded because again the hardware and building stores seem to create a bottleneck and my storage fills (I. Is it worth the 27k per factory to enlarge to make 5 at a time?
c) I haven't enlarged the production lines much, inside the stores (using Simcash). Is it worth spending the Simcash on these so that presumably I can make more stuff during sleeping hours? If so, how many units can I pre-order and is it worth it to max out on them?
d) If not for c) -- then what should I use Simcash for? I don't waste it to speed up my ships or my production -- is it worth getting the Llama or whatever? Should I hoard it for later?
e) Other than my personal amusement, is there any advantage to beautifying and improving the city - extra parks, a HS / university etc?
Thanks again.
a) Eventually you will need the other stores but don't buy them until you can afford them. If the cost of the store will leave you with only a nominal number of Simoleons, then you should wait. If you built up a bunch of cash (as suggested above) then go ahead and get the stores now. (Remember to place them outside the coverage of police/fire/medical/etc., as the stores don't need the coverage.) They will use a mix of ingredients -- some of the same and some new ones. They will also use some of the manufactured items that your other stores make.
b) Personally I have the factories that make five items at a time, but you will be fine with the slightly smaller ones until the cost isn't an issue. When the game gives you the chance to build more factories, be sure to add the largest factories you can afford. Regarding full storage, remember that you don't have to collect the items from your factories until you need them -- free storage for those items!
c) I am much more careful about SimCash purchases and have not maxed out any of my production queues in the stores. The most any store has right now is six slots; three or four is most common. Don't add slots until you find you need them to keep the game from consuming all of your time. The first slot is always cheapest, and then they get more and more expensive as you add them. I also added slots to my Trade Depot so I have a total of ten slots there. I'm not saying you need to do this as well since it's quite possible to play with fewer slots, but it is convenient when I want to sell lots of different items at once.
d) If you see something you like, that costs SimCash, and you can afford it, then by all means spend it. The whole idea of a game is to have fun, and in a game like this, the choices you make are what makes it yours.
e) As others have mentioned, items like the schools, parks, etc. will help increase your population. Place them so that their coverage area touches as many residential zones as possible, without wasting the coverage areas of other buildings. One caveat regarding educational buildings: In order to buy each one, you need the one before. Until you get to the University, only buy one of each of the prior educational buildings as the benefit from the University is so much greater than the lower buildings that you don't want to use more keys then required. Regarding Entertainment and Gambling buildings (other than their HQs) WAIT until everything else is stable before you start buying these, no matter how many times they tell you they are bored!
If you feel that the answer provided here resolves your concern, please feel free to click accept solution as this may help others with similar issues obtain resolution. XP is greatly appreciated but not required.
