It’s not always easy to get a good start with your city. Often you have to take a loan or two to get the city going. But with a little patience and hard work it is possible to skip those pesky loans and make a profit of your own. Here are some basic guidelines that will get you going fairly easy. Before we start pause the game.
STEP ONE
The choice of power source isn’t that important. Build an Oil Power Plant if you want lower pollution. A good tip is to build it at the corner of the map, by doing that your neighbours will get half of the pollution generated.
STEP TWO
After you have built the power plant you should zone some industry near the power plant. Zone about four to six 3×3 industrial squares and separate them with roads. Build dense zones of industrial and if you find some unused land zone it light or medium dense.
STEP THREE
Your next objective is to zone twice as many residential as you have industrial zones. Don’t zone dense residential in the beginning as you did with the industrial area. That is just a waste of money since they won’t develop to their full potential in such a small city. Also make sure they are far away from polluting areas. This early in the game there is almost no need for commercial buildings. Zone a 2×2 square or something similar of your choice.
STEP FOUR
Don’t bother building police and fire stations, hospitals, schools and parks before the people desperately needs them. The first years there is no need to build them, because there is almost no crime, no old or young inhabitants and the land-value is so low that it’s almost impossible to make it better by placing out parks.
STEP FIVE
Before you press the play button go to the budget window and set all taxes to 9%. Later in the game you should lower the commercial taxes to 7% – do this to give them a boost. As for ordinances check the ones that gives you money.
When you have done all of this just press the play button and you should make