Anyone here playing SimCity 4?

[Dputiger]

I'm having real problems keeping my city profitable once it hits 5 or 6 thousand people. I can make a thin margin so long as I don't start adding schools, clinics, etc, but as soon as I start dropping these features in the costs skyrocket--and the associated property / tax base improvements from them dont' seem to help. Anyone got any tips?

[Whir]

When you start, don't fund your schools, etc at full. Only fund them enough to support the number of students, patients they have. You won't even need a fire department or police station until you're around 2K people, and don't fun those 100% either. You won't need garbage at all in the little towns. Once you get the balance of funding right, you'll start to see big profits.

Good luck.

[Dputiger]

I'll try adjusting funding at my schools and police stations--otherwise the problems I'm having are a little beyond the 2K area. I can get up to about 5K or 6K, but my problem is profit margin.

Say my city is earning 5K a month and spending 4K. I find people clamoring for new (expensive) monthly improvements that drive total spending up to 6K (leaving me losing a thousand dollars) yet fail to generate new growth to make up the tax loss. I can jack taxes up at that point, or try to expand, but such rarely seems successful. This is essentially what's causing my problem.

[FalcomPSX]

i've been having the same problem, i can make money...but hardly any...and I do play with the funding. I just can't do much in the game.

[Nighthawk]

It seems like the only way I can get my cities profitable is to get at least an army base or sell stuff to my other cities, and then everything's fine.

It seems like the only time you can get business deals is if your city has negative money, and then you get a bunch all at once.

[Mike]

There's a SimCity4?

[UUoodseifer]

Sim City 4 is class, sucks up system recourse's though, Its fab dandy docious.......

[grandchehaw]

I was thinking about picking this game up but I was watching a review on Extended Play and they said the one big downfall is the drop of FPS when you start to build the larger towns. Have you noticed this at all?

[Whir]

Oh ya. You need a one hell of a video card to push this game with full color and animations in the large plots.

Try dropping your taxes to promote growth. I generally wait till I hit about 2K people and then drop taxes to 6.5, 6.7, and 7.0 across the board. I end up having to rezone my residential to all heavy because otherwise I run out of room for new folks.

Don't drop too many of those city improvements in. One or two parks is really all you need for 5K people.

[WhiteStripe]

anyone know how to get a missile base normally? $450 would make a *massive* difference (im only on abt 3500population)

[Nighthawk]

I haven't really noticed a pattern to the business deals that are offered to you.

[Taxmancometh]

This is an old thread, but it was in the similar threads at the bottom of my current thread SimCity What I find is that you start getting things like a military base when you start losing money.