Hello, right now I have a city size of about 35,000 people with mixed zones. I am starting to run out of room so it's getting pretty hard to meet the demand for RIC. Now that I read some posts in the forum I plan to make a neighboor city with 3/4 commercial and 1/4 high tech industry. Does that sounds like a good plan? Since I'm starting a new city will I get high tech industry right away? I have an excellent education system. How will the development work on this new city that I plan to start. I mean since the other cities are paused how do I know people are going to come over to my new city to work? Wich city will I have to play for that to happen? My old city or new city? Or a little of both? Would it be okay to leave the old city the way it is or should I focus on converting it to mostly residential? I really want my old city to be mostly commerence though, should I convert residential to commerence and the new city will contain residential and industrial? Thanks for the help!:)

Your plan might work. I have not done it but other people here have.

If you only want high tech then one thing you can do to make sure the other ones (ditry and manu.) do not come in is to rise the taxes for them all the way up. They will never build with that high of a tax so you will be safe

Ok so raise the taxes for dirty and manu, that's the single and double dollar sign right? How high is high? 15%?

What's the next thing I should do for my city now? The map is pretty much used up (except for a few places). All zones are set to max density. There is a plot of residential that won't develop next to the country club and advanced research facility. I can't figure it out. Should those places be placed on the outskirts of the map?

jp7358, the advance disease research lab does not bring up property value right next to it. Look at the deseribilty map and you will see what I am talking about. I do not know why the country club land has not been developed..


When you raise the taxes for them...you can do it as high as you want. Just make sure they do not come in. I do it all the way up to 20%. Just in case. ;)

But the lab doesn't lower land value either does it? I have to check my map. Yeah, weird about the country club, I thought wealthy people would start moving right next to it. There was some development there before but now it's all abandoned.

Thanks for the info about the taxes, will have to do that, think I'll just raise it to 20.

make sure there's a low commute time, anywhere, for residential.

I've had problems with residential around the country club like that, and it didn't go away until I'd built a good amount of commercial in the area for people to have jobs nearby.

for the neighbor cities, I've found it best to have residential along the border of one city and the jobs along the border of the other city.

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What an excellent idea! There is no commercial near the country club and very heavy traffic. Thanks.

Right now I'm trying to transition industry and commercial to my other "new" city. Is raising taxes the only way to accomplish this? I started to transition last night and it worked out good from the start but then people weren't communiting to the new city. I would have a high demand for high tech and commercial in my orginal city but that wouldn't transfer over. I connnected both cities with a highway connection. Could the lack of an airport in the communiting city be the reason for no demand for commercial?

I'm also trying to obtain a hydrogen power plant. I have energy needs that exceed 35,000 (deals included) and I think I have about 2,500 in my original and communiting city. Do I have to build up on thi high tech in my orginal city? I tired zoning high dense industrial but it won't develop no matter how high the demand is.

What am I doing wrong? I just got the game, what a difference from Sim City 3000!

put in a rail connection between the two cities for your commuters; maybe more than one (depending on the size,) although one'll definitely work, and then bus or subway stations near the rail station to get around.

high-tech industrial needs good land value; low crime (so lots of police stations in the area when the crime gets high after it develops,) and not much air pollution. and a high education level.

i've never used a hydrogen plant though, and have only had a couple cities where i got the high tech population high enough for it.

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Rail system in addition to the highway?

That explains my high-tech problem, even though there's a high demand for it, I have like 6 coal power plants and a trash incinerator, that area has tons of pollution! I'm thinking of dumping the incinerator and exporting.

What was your pop when the hydrogen plant became avaliable to you?

I think I might start new cities using the neighbooring commercial / residential method.

Having to bad reactions from the patch. I installed it and ever since then the games has been acting jerky. Another problem is that the numbers in the tax window are all garbled. Anyone else have similar problems? Is there to uninstall the patch?

i don't remember the population. i'd guess about 600,000 though.

that's wierd about the patch...try reinstalling it. and are you playing rush hour, too? it makes things run better.

if you're doing neighbor commuting cities, rail is pretty much a must.

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My population isn't near that size! Guess I'll hold out for the nuclear plant. Just afraid of a meltdown but that's not the case unless you run it over capacity right?

I placed a rail between my residential and industrial cities and people are now just starting to use them. At first they wouldn't. I also placed a subway between commercial.

I did reinstall the patch and now it runs pretty smoothly. No, I'm just playing regular Sim City 4.

Is Rush Hour like Ultimate Sim City 3K?

Rush HOur really improves SC4 in many ways, system and feature wise. lots of cool new things.

the only time i've seen the nuclear plants melt down is when i hit them with disasters, for fun. it's not as unreliable as it was in SC3k.

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I've seen pictures of Rush Hour I think. Does Rush Hour have one way streets? I seen a photo of a city with tons of one way streets. Looks pretty cool.

I always had to constantly monitor my nuclear plants in SC3k. Glad to hear that it has become easier to manage.

Originally posted by Style

Your plan might work. I have not done it but other people here have.

If you only want high tech then one thing you can do to make sure the other ones (ditry and manu.) do not come in is to rise the taxes for them all the way up. They will never build with that high of a tax so you will be safe

just in case no-one has mentioned it and you haven't noticed:

There's some handy city ordinances you can click to help you in your plan. If you can afford them.

I just enacted the clean air ordinance. The demand for high-tech has encreased and the others decreased drastically. But any new zones won't develop in the neighbooring city. I have abandoned my original plan, now I want to create a industry type of city neighboring my main city which would only be residential and commercial. I did have like 5 coal power plants in my mina city but because of pollution I’ve decided to move them to the neighboring city and sell. Also did the same for trash. So the neighboring city is selling powers and importing trash but buying water. So because of that the neighbor deal evens out. I did all this because [list=a] There was tons of pollution with 5 coal plants and a trash incinerator and I wanted to boost up my residential population and I figured removing these would do just the thing.[/list=a] Here’s the problem: I have no demand for any type of commercial and residential. This includes all wealth levels. Taxes are moderate with Low class res at 10%, middle at 8.5% and high at 6%. Taxes for commercial are: 10% for low, 8% for middle and 7.5% for high. Industry taxes are high, around 15%, because I want them to move across the border to my neighboring city. I’ve tried to reduce the taxes to 0 for both residential and commercial but that hasn’t done a thing. I kept it like that for 3 years but had to raise them again because I was loosing money. I’ve tried building parks all over the place but demand stays the same. I don’t know what to do…could it be because I’ve been messing around with industry??? Anyone have any advice? :?

Well I guess (this is just me thinking out loud) that if there's a certain ammount of people, then there's also a certain ammount of jobs available. So if you get more people, you'll get an increase of demand for jobs.

I'm not really sure of this though, but you can always to to get a neighbouring city with lots of people in it.

That makes sense, now I just have to get more people, which I can't do. It's so weird, even with taxes at 0 there wasn't demand for anything! My other neighboring cities don't have that many people in them, the city I'm working on now has the highest population. It seems to me that it may be industry related. But that doesn't make sense, I should be able to move industry without a problem...right?

Yeah that makes sense too. I read that you shouldn't 'overdevelop' one city, so it has too much of the population in the region, if you get my point. Maybe it's got to do with that. I really wouldn't know.

Things like paved areas, the tourist trap, an airfield etc. help the commercial areas and you can do the same with the residential area if you build statues, parks and stuff like that.

Also, check out the city ordinances, they can help too.

It's possible that it's got to do with safety, perhaps there's too much crime.

It could also be an infrastructural problem, maybe your commute times are way up, I don't know.

So how do you know if a city is overdeveloped? Is a city overdeveloped when that city out of all the other cities in that region has the highest population while the others don’t even come close? So in that case should a new city be created then connected or connect it right from the beginning?

I do have a municipal airfield and I have noticed an increase in high wealth commercial at first but now everything is low.

I will go over my ordinances, the only ones that are enact are the clean air, tourist promotion and power conservation.

Crime isn’t really a problem, I do have my gaps but the majority of the city is safe, I have an excellent education system that’s funded top notch.

Not sure what my commute time is, I think it was something like 60 the last time I checked. I do have a major highway that divides the city in half that connects to my neighboring industry city and I'm working on a subway system.

I know pollution use to be an issue but since I've been buying power pollution levels have dropped. Has any of your cities been overdevolped? What did you do?

right, there's lots of factors. I've had some problems now and then with people not moving in...and basically it required destroying the industrial and replacing it with commercial.

which goes to the point of your taxes; you should lower your tax rates on low and medium commercial and residential (especially commercial.)

I've had continuous demand for low wealth commercial, and usually continuous demand for medium wealth; by developing those, you get people to move in, too, and then later the high wealth follows. you can't just have rich people.

and I usually run commercial taxes lower than residential.

Rush Hour does have one way roads, and Avenues, and other rail options (combing elevated rail and subway seems to work well.)

and the one way roads and avenues do reduce commute time and pollution.

I'd say the key though is low taxes on your low and medium commercial, because you can really sustain demand and keep it high for a long time, and that'll usually spur other demand.

Overdevelopment...I've only seen something (since Rush Hour) that maybe fits this in satellite cities where I've discouraged office growth with high tax rates.

Demand just went down for everything except low wealth commercial (in some medium wealth services has stayed, but at lower levels) and industrial.

my solution has been to rebuild my way out of it; try and get a better balance of commercial and residential together.

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Okay now by replacing industry with commercial would that mean that the industry jobs will develop in the neighboring city?

Yeah I just want rich people to move in (lol) so I'll reduce taxes in for low and middle. And you say the commerical taxes that are lower than residential work best? So should all residential tax be set the same like 7%?

Pretty cool about Rush Hour, I just have regular Sim City 4, I might want to upgrade in the future, is there an expansion disk or something like that?

Ok so to recap, lower low and middle taxes, particularly the commercial lower than residential, zone commercial over industry, basically rebuild out of it. Have to try that and will let you know how it works out. :D

yeah pretty much...and if you run into budget crunches, you can raise your medium and high commercials, but leave low low, so there'll always be a something developing, and plus you don't make much money off it anyway.

i usually keep my residential at a "flat tax," depending on the city too (higher in the central city, less in the surrounding to develop the suburbs and also reduce services in schools and hospitals.)
it'll depend on what type of city setup you're going for though.

Rush Hour's an update disk, that's $20, but there's a $10 rebate, and sometimes it's on sale at some places for $10 or $15, so it's even cheaper (or really close to free.)

and not only do you get the new features, but at least with my computer, the game ran a lot smoother in performance and in gameplay.

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Ok good, just wanted to make sure I understood you. Will try it out tonight and see what happens. Will have to check out rush hour too, really looks neat with elevated trains and one way streets. Thanks.

Okay first thing I did was lower my taxes, all residential taxes are 6.5%. Like ten years passed and nothing happened. Then shortly after that there was a surge of low-wealth residential. I quickly zoned and they were moving in with their little trailer parks…cool it worked. I notice that my city is becoming more if a commercial city and the demand for industry is getting smaller. So I did the same to the commercial taxes, 7% and I had a high demand for medium and high wealth commercial offices. Little by little zoning over the industry zone, just like you advised. I made out pretty good, bumped my population up by 20K and even have a few residential hi-rises. The most popular one is Jolly Manor, medium residential I believe.

I got the Tourist Trap as a reward. I have a quick question about that. I’ve noticed that the area around the Tourist Trap high in customers. Does it entice more people into the city thus increasing all commercial areas or are people just attracted to that area? What does the population have to be before you get commercial hi-rises? I mean I have some now but I’m talking about those huge hi-rises.

Thanks, I thought my city was just over with!

no problem.

I'm not sure about the numbers for the huge commercial and residential high-rises, someone else has them though; you do need zones of at least 4x4 though for them.

Tourist Trap provides an overall boost for commercial throughout the city (I think) and yeah, for the area around it.

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I remember reading something about the requirments somewhere in this forum. Have to search for it...

Oh ok, it seems that only that area is effected by Tourist Trap, I did have short demand spurts once and a while.