SimCity BuildIt - Tip and Tricks Guide [WIP]

[ravendarkstorm]

At this time I have not upgraded roads I have scattered my buildings to avoid that for the time being. I decided to go with 4x12 areas since it is clear we have no choice but to upgrade roads. I may change to 4x14 as that with roads is more uniform. I'm working out plans for the rest of the stuff like education and such that just unlocked or will unlock from level 18 and up.

[albertkobepasky]

Can the developer give us more money via taxes

[czeuch]

They won't do it. You want fast money do exploits. But you'll screw your population and it'll be hard to build it up.

Up to you!

[alexmbrennan]

[quote]I have mentioned not to worry about this too much since it's impossible to save the necessary money for when you unlock police and health. I had 60% approval rating for a while because I was saving money to put the big police and big hospital. it's not a big deal because the only thing that happens is that you'll earn less taxes but you only get taxes once a day.[/quote]

That is misleading - "unhappy" (i.e. abandoned) residences do not generate "orders", meaning that unlocking health, for example, will kill your tax income AND cut off your main source of income (upgrading residences pays approximately $1000 even for items that aren't worth much).

This is probably intended to encourage you to buy smaller service buildings first (e.g. you can keep moving a small clinic around your city to generate jobs), and thus have to spend much more money overall to get the perfect city supplied by police precincts and hospitals and so on. 

[czeuch]

Nah it's not a big deal. You can always save up before you level up, but you'll not be able to save with upgrades.

You can make upgrades even if you have a few abandoned residences. Your taxes won't be affected too much.

Buying small services is usually not a good idea. Better save up to buy the deluxes.

[alexmbrennan]

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@czeuch wrote:

Nah it's not a big deal. You can always save up before you level up, but you'll not be able to save with upgrades.

You can make upgrades even if you have a few abandoned residences. Your taxes won't be affected too much.

Buying small services is usually not a good idea. Better save up to buy the deluxes.

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The operative word in that reply being "few", when the reality is that ALL residences will be abandoned if you hit lvl 5/12/16 without being able to afford fire/police/medical. When all residences being abandoned, you don't get any orders and thus lose most of your income. 

As for saving up money, how? To make money fast, you need to upgrade residences which automatically gives you XP and forces you to level up.

[ravendarkstorm]

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@alexmbrennan wrote:

As for saving up money, how? To make money fast, you need to upgrade residences which automatically gives you XP and forces you to level up.

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Coin popups and making stuff to list on the HQ are your best source of income until you are far enough along to unlock the cargo ship. I posted not too long ago a detailed list of starting out. Save up X before leveling up to X kind of thing. I'm not sure what thread it was in. But you are in control of how fast or slow you level by how often you upgrade buildings. So you can upgrade buildings to get close to a critical level up point and then halt and do the rest of the income methods to reach the needed simoleons to buy the required building (fire, police, or hospital). I also recommend how many residents to build to avoid over spending on basic services. It takes the minimal approach to starting out so that you spend the least amount of simoleons to lay the foundation of your city. You basically go for the end result by not having temporary smaller services when you can halt leveling to save for the best one. Once that foundation is in place it is a matter of expanding and earning at a balanced pace to cover the expanding with services. And slowly mix in specializations.

[czeuch]

Alex. you speak from theory. I speak from experience.
not all residences get abandoned when you do not provide services. I got 11 abandoned ones out of 40.
so it's not a big deal not to the money you need before leveling.
as for how to save money, raven covered it.

[AllYourBlocks]

Here are some other Trading Tips you might like to include - I make a decent bit of money by trading on the Global Trade HQ and it's not as 'loophole cheaty' as some of the city destruction and rebuild methods I've seen other people using! Feel free to add the tips in the video or just include a link. Hope it's helpful!

[gr4ntly]

I used a city block model of two, four by six building space with roads all around.
In the centre of the pair of blocks I used a park a small medical a small fire and a small police. You lose two building plots but get 10 fully serviced building plots - and 100% happy citizens. It's cheap to expand whilst you build population and get the cargo ship unlocked. Before all the utilities unlock you actually get 11 building plots.
This modular format worked for a long while - as I started to use the hospital, fire and police top buildings I was able to recover some of the space. I was able to use the small units on the edge of my city where I could not fill in a complete pair of city blocks.
I have 9 expansions with 71 residential units and space for another 20 and everything is fully serviced. City Dooby Doo