Sim City 2000 Advice

Okay, I 've made zoning for homes, zoning for industry, and zoning for commmercial use. I've also placed electricity sources, water sources, and roads for travel. I've even built a connection to another city. What am I doing wrong? I'm losing money now, since I have no one to tax.

[size=1][color=#666666]This message was edited by bobbonew(moderator) on Nov 01 2009.

Is your city (err, in this case village) new? If so, make sure to have a proportion of 50 of industry, 35 of residential and 15 of commercial. Once it starts to grow, zone more Residential and later on commercial with industry zones. A city manages to grow if the sims find abundance jobs.

Also, sims will only walk 4 blocks away from the road so make sure not to zone far off the 4 block limits. This is basic info about roads. I recommend a 8x8 for roads in the beginning and later on when the city grows just make the length longer but always keep a 8 tile in between the adjacent roads.

One good tip is to place the water pipes under the roads and make sure to have a water pump near a water source for better results. You can make puddles in residential areas and add a water pump near it + the puddles will raise your land value .

Connect electrical lines with a power plant and make sure to zone them near roads (just for convenience) so your sims can have access to power. You can always use your map to see unwatered or places of your city with no electricity.

Everything that I mentioned before is just basic info. The next paragraph will explain why you're losing money as in the causes and how to fix that .

Fire and police departments take away money from the cities income and shouldn't be built so occasionally when a city is new. Use your map to see the range of police department and only built one in those areas that have a degree of medium of crime, although always make sure that the police departments cover all of your cities area since high crime lowers land value. If you have disasters turn off, there is no need for Fire Department thus for they should be bulldozed and only built when the city demands one.

Hospitals and Schools also take money from your income and should only be built when they are about to be saturated. Later on in the game, education becomes an important factor and schools should be built very occasionally thus for smart sims attract cleaner industries. Meanwhile, just have a moderated amount of schools and hospitals.

Ordinance. I always recommend to have every single ordinance turned on but in your case, turn off those least useful ordinance. Later on when you start to get high amounts of cash from your city, make sure to turn on every single ordinance, except the gamble ordinance since it attracts crime.

High pollution and low land values won't help at all so make sure to place those polluted plants and industries on the edge of your city. Zone residential zones on a separate road areas but not so far away since sims don't like to travel far from their jobs.

Try to increase land value. Built parks, trees and ponds with the water tools near residential and commercial zones. Increasing land values will attract more population and crime will lower. Remember this, crime won't attract people to move into your city so you should always keep crime low.

Check your budget. If land taxes are too high, your population will lower and no sim will want to live there so make sure to keep the residential and commercial taxes at 6 and industry at 5 in the beginning of the game. Later on, level them up at 7 all and once your city becomes a megalopolis, make the taxes for industry at 8.

Lastly, make sure to always zone medium and dense residential, commercial and industry zones. Low dense won't increase your population as the medium and dense zoning would, and the higher your population is the more incomes you have.


Hope this info helped you and if you need any more help, feel free to post your queries and I or others will kindly answer .

I'm not sure which terrain you chose, but just about any terrain, except New York, has undeground water. Knowing that, you can just lower the terrain to a certain point to obtain lower dephts of water compared to the puddles of water you'll make with just the water zoning tool.

To take care of that water shortage problem, make one tile of water and 1-6 water pumps around it in the area where the water shortage is. Make enough of these tile until the water shortage is resolved.

Adds: Something I forgot to tell you is that Water Towers do help in areas where water dries out because there is no underground water or because the water pumps aren't placed correctly near the water; such as the New York (Liberty scenario) map for example. Place water towers in those areas where the water shortage occurs. Only place them if there is no underground water hence they're not as great as water pumps and occupy more room.

quote beitz

My city is lacking jobs. It has 2000 ppl and dropping. I have a mix of low and high density zones.How can u get it to rise?

A very late reply my bad friend hehe. IMO, low density zones are mainly for luxury or showing off that you have suburbs in your city or low polution jobs. If you are starting a new city, the advice that everyone, including myself, will give you is to only use high density zone. A new city's attraction would be jobs so that's what you need to focus on. Jobs for a new city usually mean having a 50% high dense industrial zone. This will attract people to move into your city. A new city doesn't focus at all in commercial zones but you can have a spread of a 4x4 tile for a starter city and have it grow as commerce is wanted. It takes around 10 years for a good city to stabilize but you'll still be dependant on industrial zones as your city income. As time progresses, you might want to start adding more schools, colleges libraries and recreational buldings. Soone then and in a few decades you might have a city who economy is mainly based on commercial with a few industrial demand. Make sure to also provide your city with all its resources neds such as water from the very start of the city. once police and Firestation can be enough for a starter city but you might want to lower the tax rate for fire supply to 0 if you have disaster mode off. Anyways, you can take a read of what has been said in the thread as well as it serves for further help and if anything we are here to help .