Is it a scam??

[Nique1119]

Has anyone gotten beyond level 13 with a happiness rating 70 or above WITHOUT spending any actual money??

I'm beginning to feel like my efforts are useless, since the main way of earning money in the game is building and upgrading houses...which increases population...which increases your needs faster than you can afford to accommodate them. See what I mean?

Any tips advice??

[EricJorem]

Advice is simple: apply patience. You don't want to build and upgrade too quickly in the beginning, but do it balanced. Before you even start building/upgrade, make sure that everything you need is there (electricity, water, wastemanagement, sewer, etc.). Sames goes for fire dept., police and health. When you have those, you can build/upgrade. Parks, entertainment etc. are nice, but not essential, but they will enhance satisfaction and population growth. Don't spend all your money at once, keep some savings for unexpected situations (like roads that need to be upgraded).

Patience is virtue if you want to build without spending actual money. It can be done. Eventually you will get to a stage where you produce more than you need and then you start selling superfluous items and earn money, but it takes time.

[Persipan]

Yep, I'm at level 24 and have a 100% happiness rating (and have had for a long time). The trick in the early stages of the game is not to level up until you have the simoleons to pay for whatever new thing the next level unlocks, which means being patient and selling stuff until your balance is high enough. 

[bustynutz]

No it is possible, do not forget that you can bulldoze as many buildings as you want to scale back population and make a smaller city . Doing this and slowly adding services to meet the needs of you sims population is a great way to increase happiness. Also start saving to add the extra services and features such as parks . Plan and build to meet their need .when they are unhappy the will tell you click on them and meet there needs. If you can not provide it then buldoze the building and decrease your population until you can. Rebuilding is easy it's the patients to do it slowly that's hard.
Hope that helps.

[jeffk42]

The others have said it right: it's all about patience.  I'm at level 31, 450,000+ population, constant 99% happiness rating.  I haven't spent any money.

Don't upgrade beyond your means, that's the key.  Check the coverage of your area services (fire, police, medical) and the capacity of your other services (power, water, waste, sewage) frequently and don't create new residential zones until you're sure you have appropriate coverage already in place. If you build a residential zone before it's fully covered, you'll end up dropping your happiness rating and losing tax revenue while you scramble to get the funds together to buy the necessary services.

Even if it's going to take a day or two or three to get the necessary services in place, be patient and let it happen. Try not to buy items to upgrade RZ's -- craft them instead, even though it will take longer. That will keep 100% of your income going toward building services so you'll complete them faster.

Hope that helps a little. mileyhappy:

[jamiel222]

Yes it's possible.  When I first played the game, I had only 20% happiness on level 8, had 200 simeleons,  gladly deleted it. After a while, I wanted to start again Second time round is so much better, way better. 

This isn't a game where you build a city and finish it on the day.  This is the kind of game where you play a little bit, check out, check back in an hour, come back tomorrow. 

Build one house slowly at a time. This is very important. You need to save a lot of money at first and this will require just doing a lot of production and selling items. This will take a lot of patience.  Don't buy another store like "garden store" if you can't afford it. It is tempting but there is no rush. 

When you buy a fire or police station, pay attention to the coverage area- the red and green shades. This is a huge thing I didn't get at first. I bought 6 fire stations and couldn't understand why they were still complaining over lack of fire service. The same thing applies to parks-watch the blue bars inside the houses.

If Sims complain in blue,  then it's alright,  it doesn't affect happiness or population.  If it's in red then you need to attend to it. 

 Always keep in mind to save and keep building up money. This is the only way you have control of the game before it has any chance to defeat you. I see people complain about how it costs 6 grand for a road upgrade- that's not the way to play the game. 

If you're struggling at first,  it's most likely you don't have enough of the vital stuff like power and water and sewage etc So you can't rush with building new houses.

[jacenchan]

After a few tries with small and medium police stations, hospitals and fire stations, I started to be very patient to buy and build the biggest ones, placed them and started planning buildings around them. Each group of large police, fire station and hospital can cover 20-30 buildings.

Just means a lot of patience to wait and come in occasionally everyday to enjoy your city without spending money.

Also try to place a residence zone within the coverage of 2 or more special buildings such as park, school and bus terminal. When the plot of land is dark blue in the land value status, you can have nicer skyscrapers.

It is also important to complete cargo shipments and launch many disasters so you can accumulate golden keys to buy more special buildings. I can reach 450,000 population with 80+ buildings by placing a lot of special buildings around my skyscrapers, which increase population. Also, this will help you to reach the population required to built your airport and build the nice japanese homes.

[Nique1119]

Thank you all for the great advice! I bulldozed a bunch of houses and the extra serves I no longer needed and was able to bring my happiness level up.

BUT now all of my residential lots are fully upgraded. And I need simpletons to continue building. Are you guys saying the only other way to earn simoleons besides upgrading and building homes is selling resources? Bc that doesn't seem like much fun. I don't make any simoleons at all really in the global market thingy.

[hilary0]

Yes, you can make simoleons in the global market. Always sell at max price. Don't sell things that don't sell! I know, that sounds dumb! What I mean is, make small quantities of items and see if you can sell them before committing to large quantities.

You can always sell items from Building Supply, Hardware, and Farmers Market.

AND sell your items to the game. When those orders pop up, do the math and sell your items for even more than the max price in the global market. Click "no thank you" on the ones below max price.

Good luck!

[BasinCity]

I sell things that "don't sell" all the time... To Daniel's city. If I don't need it, I jack the price up and let Daniel overpay for it a day or two later...