HELP w/ Trains Scenario Please

[Ransom_Romanus]

For having a medium difficulty I'm finding this scenario to be quite challenging. The highest population I've been able to acquire is 11,843. I have tried spamming residential zones. I've tried improving land value and services. Every run through I fall just short. Supplying enough power early game has been a headache. Any advice would be appreciated.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1422733256

note: I'm playing without any mods or assets.

[Ransom_Romanus]

So no advice or tips? Anyone? Are mods a must to complete this scenario?

[mbutton15]

Originally posted by frozen_ghost:

So no advice or tips? Anyone? Are mods a must to complete this scenario?

I did it without mods.
To be honest, I can't remember too much about how I did it, other than a relentless residential build. I used a grid system, copied from some youtube clip I saw. But this frenetic building sytle is totally foreign to how I usually play. I'll pull together a screenshot or two highlighing the zoning layout. I think you need to keep an eye on employment. Once that gets too high then population growth slows, so you need to keep zoning jobs.

EDIT - Screenshots:
This got me to 12,000 population in 146 weeks.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1426277342
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1426277420
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1426277277
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1426277379

[Mutley]

Hi there,
I am having problems with this scenario. Anyone else did it? I don't know what I am doing wrong, I already tryed spamming residential areas like hell, but it simply does not work, there is no demand for them to build. Let me know if anyone could help.

[mbutton15]

Originally posted by Mutley:

Hi there,
I am having problems with this scenario. Anyone else did it? I don't know what I am doing wrong, I already tryed spamming residential areas like hell, but it simply does not work, there is no demand for them to build. Let me know if anyone could help.

You can't just spam residential. You have to keep unemployment between 5-10%, otherwise they won't move in.

[Mutley]

Originally posted by mbutton15:

You can't just spam residential. You have to keep unemployment between 5-10%, otherwise they won't move in.

Thanks, mbutton. I was trying this already, was the most promissing path. I am going to my 5th try today. Hope it works.

[mbutton15]

Originally posted by Mutley:

Originally posted by mbutton15:

You can't just spam residential. You have to keep unemployment between 5-10%, otherwise they won't move in.

Thanks, mbutton. I was trying this already, was the most promissing path. I am going to my 5th try today. Hope it works.

If I remember correctly, there is a 20 week target. I had a few goes at reaching that 20 week target. But once you can reach that then just keep repeating the same strategy to get the rest. Once I unlocked the hi-density buildings I think the population growth really sped up. I got the hi-density unlock after 120 weeks. That means I added the final 3500 Cims in just 26 weeks, having taken 120 weeks for the first 8500 Cims !!

[Mutley]

I guess this last tip can be really useful. I didn't had the chance to explore the high-density, because I had no pratical empty spaces to place them other than destroying occupied household spaces. Curiously, I had achieved 8.5k milestone earlier than 120 weeks, but I guess my development is prone to death waves or something of the like.

[mbutton15]

Originally posted by Mutley:

I guess this last tip can be really useful. I didn't had the chance to explore the high-density, because I had no pratical empty spaces to place them other than destroying occupied household spaces. Curiously, I had achieved 8.5k milestone earlier than 120 weeks, but I guess my development is prone to death waves or something of the like.

My layout above is on just 2 tiles so not sure how you run out of space !!
As for death, I don't think I had any - 150 weeks is only 3 years and Cims have 6 year life span so you shouldn't have any natural deaths. Any deaths must be through 'bad planning', in other words, pollution of some kind !!

[Mutley]

Failed another one, l'm now goingo to roll back to 5.5k population and try different approach.

Originally posted by mbutton15:

My layout above is on just 2 tiles so not sure how you run out of space !!
As for death, I don't think I had any - 150 weeks is only 3 years and Cims have 6 year life span so you shouldn't have any natural deaths. Any deaths must be through 'bad planning', in other words, pollution of some kind !!

I guess there is at least a soften form of death wave, even within 3 years. I see dead people, lol.
I 'ran out of space' because I burnt my money and loans and had few options for new neighborhood besides turning occupied low density into high density. The bigger benefit from high density comes when we make them brand new. That's what I will try now, will save money and build across the highway to the other tile.

[mbutton15]

Not sure what to advise ? I've used the 4lane/2way roads as they are cheaper than 6lane/2way.
When my population reached 12k I did have a few deaths, but very few deaths. The most in one year was 13 and it literally was only the very last few weeks that the deaths occured.

My 5.5k save shows I have zero deaths. I have take both available loans, but do have 46k capital. I'm also making 6k profit per week. Zoned squares: 4962 Residential, 688 Commercial, 2044 Industrial.
I have no industry specialisation, so have 785 imports. There are 1272 exported, which are all goods .

81 weeks have passed getting to 5.5k population.

[Mutley]

Hi mbutton, thanks for the advices. I achieved the 12k population in147 weeks last night. Most probably my mistake was with the high density, when I started using it on empty terrain I could see the population increasing more thoroughly.

[mbutton15]

Originally posted by Mutley:

Hi mbutton, thanks for the advices. I achieved the 12k population in147 weeks last night. Most probably my mistake was with the high density, when I started using it on empty terrain I could see the population increasing more thoroughly.

Well done. The hard part of this scenario is done !! Now just buy some tiles and build isolated zone with just rail connections. I ended up with 32k population before the 200,000 rail passenger target was reached.

[Mutley]

Yes, now is a matter if time, but I will enjoy some planning. :)

[MarkJohnson]

This one wasn't too bad. I did fail each phase of the scenario and had to restart twice from not paying attention to my time limit.

But phase one, 1,000 pop is easy enough. The trick is don't build anything but the basics (water, sewage, power) then buy grade schools with the first two milestones to keep cims educated so they can level up quicker and save on resources. I think I bought my garbage dump at second milestone.

Third milestone I needed a high school & police as crime was city wide and slowing my progress down. Then bought a fire asap. Then needed more water and power. Then I kept building roads and residential with enough jobs to keep pace with demand. I think I had 3 zones of residential to two zones of jobs and was barely keeping pace.

But once I hit 12k, barely in time on my second try, it was smooth sailing and started building jobs in a neighboring tiles so they couldn't drive there very easy. same with commerce, it is better to have tourist transport, than workers, as shoppers roam all around your city all day long. It's good to start plopping these tourist unique buildings at this time near commerce, so you can centralize and use metro to move tourists and shoppers around quickly.

I also had to forgo high schools the second round, as I was falling behind on power the first play though. I placed police/fire earlier as well instead of an elementary school.

But, power and water is the highest priority as the game wants you to squeeze every dollar to complete this scenario. It might be wise to forgo all schools and add extra power early on.

This would be better named the Miser! scenario, as you can't waste a penny on anything except expansion.