Love is Dead and I started a region up the other night on Europe East 3. I did my best to apply the stuff I've learned so far and the results were actually not catastrophic.
I started out as a coal and ore mining town, which I think is a good economy opener since it requires very little education since it's low tech. Remembering the festering crime hole that I made the first time, I prioritized placing a school as soon as possible. I expanded the size as needed and kept a little more than half my population educated, which seemed sufficient to keep them from running amok.
I placed one fire station and one police station on each side of the city. I maxed the fire stations, but only added a couple more police cars.
Once my mines were functional, I got a trade depot and started selling. That helped my income a lot. I also plopped a coal powerplant to help my overworked wind one that I only used to get things going.
Soon after that, my one sewage drain pipe got overwhelmed, so I saved up and got a treatment plant. I plopped it right next to the water treatment facility. With a little upgrading as needed, I never had a sewage or water problem again.
In the early stages, I kept the roads close together to maximize the amount of low and middle income homes and businesses I could get. As my Sims got wealthier, I started removing roads to make more room, bulldozed the small houses, upgraded the roads, and watched my population climb.
I kept my taxes high enough to get around 5k income an hour to start. Once the mining economy was going, I lowered taxes to about 2k income to encourage more population and job growth (yes, Obama, lowering taxes works).
I added a ship and rail trading port and decided that I wanted to get into smelting. Unfortunately, I had made the mistake of getting the Commerce division at my metals HQ instead of Smelting. My production was nowhere it needed to be to upgrade Metal HQ again, so I decided I needed to retool my economy.
I bulldozed some poorly performing homes and businesses next to my passenger rail station and put in 8 casinos. They quickly started turning a profit. I'm pretty sure they will give me the security I need for when my resources run out.
I also got rid of the grade school and got a community college to attract more middle and upper class residents for my casinos. I started getting lots of tourism from Love is Dead's town, too.
Before I logged off, I added an Expo Center and hosted a rock concert. It netted an easy 150k on a 45k investment.
I don't plan to go heavy into casino specialization and my population has leveled off at around 150k, but I feel pretty good in spite of the mistake or two I made.
I started out as a coal and ore mining town, which I think is a good economy opener since it requires very little education since it's low tech. Remembering the festering crime hole that I made the first time, I prioritized placing a school as soon as possible. I expanded the size as needed and kept a little more than half my population educated, which seemed sufficient to keep them from running amok.
I placed one fire station and one police station on each side of the city. I maxed the fire stations, but only added a couple more police cars.
Once my mines were functional, I got a trade depot and started selling. That helped my income a lot. I also plopped a coal powerplant to help my overworked wind one that I only used to get things going.
Soon after that, my one sewage drain pipe got overwhelmed, so I saved up and got a treatment plant. I plopped it right next to the water treatment facility. With a little upgrading as needed, I never had a sewage or water problem again.
In the early stages, I kept the roads close together to maximize the amount of low and middle income homes and businesses I could get. As my Sims got wealthier, I started removing roads to make more room, bulldozed the small houses, upgraded the roads, and watched my population climb.
I kept my taxes high enough to get around 5k income an hour to start. Once the mining economy was going, I lowered taxes to about 2k income to encourage more population and job growth (yes, Obama, lowering taxes works).
I added a ship and rail trading port and decided that I wanted to get into smelting. Unfortunately, I had made the mistake of getting the Commerce division at my metals HQ instead of Smelting. My production was nowhere it needed to be to upgrade Metal HQ again, so I decided I needed to retool my economy.
I bulldozed some poorly performing homes and businesses next to my passenger rail station and put in 8 casinos. They quickly started turning a profit. I'm pretty sure they will give me the security I need for when my resources run out.
I also got rid of the grade school and got a community college to attract more middle and upper class residents for my casinos. I started getting lots of tourism from Love is Dead's town, too.
Before I logged off, I added an Expo Center and hosted a rock concert. It netted an easy 150k on a 45k investment.
I don't plan to go heavy into casino specialization and my population has leveled off at around 150k, but I feel pretty good in spite of the mistake or two I made.
