Mycity has a water shortage, fire stations needed, sewage overload and the need for transport and education. The only way I know to make money is from upgrading houses and selling stuff on the trade market. How else do I earn a lot of money?
(3) Trade items on the global exchange. Really good rates go for items that are needed to expand city storage (ladders, security cameras, padlock), to expand map areas (dozer exhaust, plow, gear), and for doing disaster events (gloves, buttons, batteries). However, you can sell ANYTHING that you manufacture or create in a factory on the global exchange.
(4) Wait for simoleon bubbles to pop up and complete the trade that's asked for. Many times it will be for manufactured goods, but sometimes they ask for expansion items. If you don't have the items right now, you can manufacture the goods and go back to the bubble later and sell the items when you've completed the manufacturing.
(5) Do cargo shipments on either the boat or the airport. By fulfilling those items not only do you receive simoleons but also keys and other items to purchase specialized services that are unlocked later on in the game.
Also, in general, it pays off in the long run to purchase the most expensive police stations, hospitals and fire stations to encompass the largest area. Also, it makes sense to invest in better sewage, water and power options. Then you don't have to worry as much about making sure you're covered.
Try and focus on upgrading houses to the max (or close) before building more, as a 2000+ citizens apartment building is equivalent in needs to a 20-citizen house, but earns you much more money in taxes. Slowly build your city from a cluster of buildings, adding a couple every time you max the older ones out, and you'll level up steadily with 100% satisfaction.
So apparently the quickest way to earn money is to grow your population by building and improving Buildings. However, increased population obviously means increased demand for services. It seems there is a disproportionate difference between the amount of money one can earn and the amount of money it takes to buy improvements.
For example, I'm level 11. I'd like to invest in transit for my citizens rather than building wider roads all the time, but the Department of Transportation building is 40,000 Simoleons. It's a slow process to earn that much when you're selling 5 Seeds at a time at 30 Simoleons a pop.
Then, if you do improve your buildings so you can increase your taxes and you hit a new level, you might be suddenly slammed with a new responsibility, like suddenly having to buy police stations to cover your entire city. I don't even know how much that costs, but I'm afraid to even try to level up without having some cash reserves.
Does anybody have any advice for how to earn money without investing in building improvements? Does anyone have good advice for growing my city strategically, so I don't get surprised with sudden inability to meet demands of water, power, new responsibilities like Police stations, etc.?
When I was at earlier levels (now at level 52), I found that producing and selling wood was a good way of making money as it is quick to produce and 5 can sell for the max price of 100 simoleons. Visiting Daniel can be ok too as he often has good items for sale and at their lowest price, which you can then sell for the highest price.
So far, I can't make money in the game. I don't understand how this is done yet. At the moment, I earn money for the game using best money making apps. I have downloaded several such applications at once, and by performing elementary tasks, I make a little money. Sometimes it can be up to ten dollars at a time. So I spend this money on building my city in the game. Sometimes I buy groceries at home. It turned out to be very convenient, I'm surprised. At first, I doubted it at all, but in the end, I was convinced.
Your first city is a trial, second is practise. The third city is what you really plan. Do not underestimate the power of the market. Sell the items that are laying for no reasons. You can make money as well as clear the stock. Also, keep your sims happy. They will give you more tax than. Listen to their needs. Do not place sewerage plant near residential area, keep Fire station, hospitals, police station intact in the ratio of your population.
At level 11, you can make metal and use the building supply shop to make nails. Do that- over and over. Max out all your factories to make just metal and put them through the shop and list on the market. This can yield 12 Simoleons/coins per minute profit.
While doing this, as you accumulate coins and Sim Cash, use those only to upgrade factories when you can, increase slots at factories to create longer queues, and add slots to your market HQ selling place to list more items.
Balancing city growth and finances in simulation games can be a real challenge, just like managing real-life budgets. If you're looking for ways to make money within the game or strategize your city's development, here's some advice.
1. Economize: Prioritize essential services like water and power. Focus on cost-effective improvements before expanding. Save your in-game currency for crucial upgrades.
2. Specializations: Explore different city specializations like industry, commerce, or tourism. Specialized zones can generate higher profits and taxes.
If you're interested in real-life ways to make money, there's a useful guide on making $100 a day. While it's unrelated to the game, it might provide insights into achieving financial goals outside the virtual world.
Hi all, I am new to Sim City 4 (I know i'm very late) after purchasing it on steam.
I'm having fun so far and have downloaded several great additions.
I have a busy bus and ferry service in my little city but only seen to make $10-20 per month through fares. Each bus stop has over 100 customers when i click it and the ferry port over 300. Is there any way to improve the income from these services? I must be charging next to nothing to use them and it dosn't seem worth the monthly cost to run them.
I have the nam addon installed but am not using the traffic flow tool (is there a setting in this that I am missing?)
Thanks for any help.
100 passengers is actually a pretty small number, so keep on working on increasing ridership. I'm not sure how many passengers each transit stop needs in order to make a profit (more fare money coming in than maintenance money going out), but in the past I've been able to make quite a bit of money off the transit system.
In general, mass transit isn't for making money, it's something which supports the rest of your city, like schools or hospitals. With good mass transit you can fit more sims in your city without congesting your transit network, and keeping your commute times low.
I suppose its possible to make money, however as Jasoncw pointed out the real reason for mass transit is to ease congestion and keep commute times low. Generally if i can keep it so that i make about 70-80% of the money i spend on mass transit back thru fares I am happy. Some things you might try to improve ridership are making sure there are enough stops in places people want to go, sims are lazy and if they have to walk too far to catch a bus or ride the subway then they will just drive instead. Also R$ sims will use much much more mass transit than R$$$ sims will. Placing many more mass transit stops in the poorer areas of your city, should improve ridership thus improving the amount of money you make from fares
I just had a more detailed look after increasing the size of my city to 4500 population. I have 2700 customers on my whole transport systems and make $20 from fares. Thats less than $0.01 per customer. Would be good if there was a way to cover your costs.
Thanks for the advice, I will use fewer stops and place them more sensibly in the high congestion areas. I have one that is near the library and it is a very well used facility with 700 customers and another that has only 46 so could easily be removed.
Maybe you were just impatient, or running out of money. For a large tile like the one shown in my shot below, I use the moolah command to grant them 2,000,000 simoleons for openers. Today, I took the grant back because the city is now making about 10,000 a month. The money balance on the snapshot is what has been actually earned by the city.
Notice that the mass transit is making money. Maybe it is just that you didn't have enough people to make this happen. I've been running this city now for about two weeks, on and off. It is a big region, and I have several cities on the go at once.
My main concern was $20 in fares from over 2500 customers means I was charging nowhere near a realistic amout. Here in the UK it costs me 2 to take the bus into town, so 2500 customers would make 5000 in fares. I wasn't looking to make big money just more than the measley $0.005 per customer. As I say I have tweaked it and almost cover the mass transit costs so i'm happy with that.
Assume that about 1/3 of the population are workers. In that case, I have about 71,000 customers. Bear in mind that many of them pay multiple fares going from buses to trains to monorail, sometimes more than once, to get to their jobs. Also, some of them are close enough to walk to work.
You could place mass transit between the industrial and residential zones, and then add toll booths on all of the connecting roads... that way everyone pays up on the way to and from work! MUHAHAHAHAHA!!
Once my city starts growing and the population climbs, I put a toll booth on each major roadway that is a connection. Im thinking this maybe cuts down on the number of tolls paid by actual residents of the city, and focuses most of the toll revenue on people traveling from other cities.
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