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
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.
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.
