Sending recyling to other cities

[varlak74]

I have a recyling center in one of my city and I send 3 truckc to 2 other cities. But when I go on these cities they never seems to come, it show that I have something like 5 recyling picked up on over 12000 and the city is just crowded of recycled.

Also I have another problem with students. If I open the regional map it show that a lot of students commute between cities but when I click on my univercity, grade school, colege etc, it say that I have 0 regional student and its full of local student. Is it normal ?

[BlackjackWidow]

Sharing recycling and garbage trucks between cities can be very hit and miss. Regional traffic can cause issues with the trucks - they may leave to pick up garbage in another town, but get caught in traffic and don't arrive in time for their shift. Once that happens, they're "lost" and don't return to the original city. Or, they get stuck in the garage for some reason and after a few days you notice there are no trucks leaving the recycling center or garbage dump, and your cities are falling apart because of garbage. It can work for a time while you're growing your cities, but the best way to deal with these services is to have each city with their own. That avoids glitches and bugs in regional sharing.

Students commuting is somewhat the same issue, with a calculation bug in regional view that breaks the simulation. Without getting into a lot of explaining that doesn't really matter right now, let me just say that eventually education breaks down in a city, and if you're trying to share education in the region, it will happen a lot sooner. The short answer to your question is "yes, it's normal but not right".

It's best to use only one type of educational building in each city, place multiples around the city to get students to walk as much as possible. In the case of university, try to plop the extension buildings a couple of blocks away in each direction from the main building (near residential areas) and use dorms to increase attendance. Dorm pathways can be drawn all over the city, and students will use them to walk to the university. You don't want or need more than one type of education - a student is a student. They will all go to elementary school, and if you demolish the elementary school and plop a university, then they'll all go to university. I usually use community colleges, they're the best bang for your buck and provide tech for your industry.

Provide the right type of transportation for the kind of schools you're using. Elementary and high schools use school buses. I don't use them because they greatly increase traffic in the city and do stupid things, but if you prefer them, make sure you have bus stops in all residential areas and place them all on the same side of the road (makes traffic flow much better if they don't have to make u-turns). Community college and university students use mass transit buses (not school buses) or drive their parents' cars. They do not use any other mass transit like trains. And, if you are going to try regional school sharing, make sure the other cities have the right transportation to get students to and from school. You will need school bus stops to share elementary and high schools, regional bus terminals and stops for college and university.

Remember, with any sharing, available services (and resources) are split between the cities connected. So, for example, let's say you have 4 cities that are connected directly to each other. You build a university in one of those cities. You have 120 extra classrooms for regional students. Each of the other 3 cities can send a maximum of 40 students to your university (120 total divided by 3 connected cities). 

Bottom line - sharing resources like power, sewer and water works well.  Sharing services like garbage, recycling, fire and education can work for a time while your cities are growing, but provide each with their own services once the cities start to expand. And remember that resources available to share are divided by the number of cities that are connected to the providing city.

[varlak74]

Thanks a lot for taking time to respond.  So basicaly all of my city at some point should have a recycling center, garbage dump, a university with several upgrades, several buss station-tram-train and fairy ?

After all of this am I suposed to have enough space remaining for city specialisation and enough space to hit 400k poeple ?

Still need to plant comercial and industrial zone too lol

[BlackjackWidow]

Ha ha - well, no, not ALL of that, exactly, although you could try

What I have started to do now, is when I start a new region I first build a "utilities" city; find a basic, boring city and zone in just enough low wealth RCI to bring in tax income, do a basic grid for the roads, and don't let the buildings grow beyond medium density. This utility city holds all the water, power and sewer services for the entire region. Put the water plants next to the sewage plants (always - sewage filters and then dumps water into the ground. You never need to worry about water or filtration pumps if you put your water pumps next to the sewage plant). I wait until I have enough banked money to plop 2 each fully maxed out water and sewage plants and usually 5 or 6 maxed out oil power plants, and set them to to buy oil from the region.

Make sure everything is running, go to region view and share all of this with all the other cities in the region. Then, transfer all the simoleans you have left over to the next city you're going to play and load that city. You never really have to go to into the utility city again, but if you do, as soon as you load it - turn off all the extra utilities while you're working in there, and don't forget to turn them back on before you leave. Your goal here is to provide the utilities without actually having to pay any upkeep, so don't run the oil down enough that you need a delivery. 

As far as education goes, the regional sharing of unlocks works really well. You only have to use a university in one city, and the unlocks will definitely share among the other cities in the region. I personally prefer using community colleges in all the other cities. It's cheaper and more efficient to plop 5 - 7 community colleges around the city rather than expanding one college and hoping to get the education and tech levels to stay up throughout. If you plop them strategically, all students can walk to the nearest college which reduces traffic immensely - and the tech levels travel along the roads, creating a much better coverage to keep your industry happy and staffed.

I do plop dumps in every city; for me, it's much easier to just manage a smallish out of the way corner than it is to keep such a close eye on regional sharing. I rarely use recycling plants, unless I'm building a high-wealth highly educated city. But that's just personal preference. I find recycling works the best when your city has at least 3 hats of education before you start. And education is basically the name of the game in SimCity. The more education, the higher the happiness, the lower the crime and fires. If you're experiencing problems with any of the other services, instead of building a bazillion fire stations, for instance, take a look at that education map and plop a few more colleges to make sure everyone gets and stays educated.

If you don't share education or have tourism, you can get away with no regional bus stations at all. Sometimes I try to plop a few shuttle bus stations, which will move your Sims around the city, just not from one city to another. As much as they touted this as an online, interconnected regional play game, I've found that it works best for me to think of each city as an island unto itself, at least until I get it running well on its own. Then I can branch out and do stuff with the other cities - CoT expansion and Omega and stuff like that.

This is just the way I play it, there are no "rules" that say you have to do it this way. And tbh, for the longest time I felt like I was cheating somehow by using the utility city concept. But it's really helped a lot, now that I get the hang of it. I do a "cash cow" city (generate as much money as quickly as possible), then transfer the simoleans to help start the utility city, then run the cash cow for a couple of months more and transfer the simoleans to start the "real" cities that I'm going to play. It has worked pretty well for me.