How to sell water and power without neighbors cancelling

[TheLegendBDT]

I'm sure vets of SC3k know of the dumb issue with neighbors buying water and power connections, and then they randomly "disconnect" and you get that nice message of "we're penalizing you X dollars for early termination!" when you didn't do anything. So we opted to just take trash since that never comes with a random disconnect (except if you bulldoze your only road/rail connections I guess but that's on you).

This was due to the fact that your cities power/water capacity constantly fluctuates, and when it shifts far enough it will somehow cause you to very briefly not have enough to meet the neighbors demand - triggering their cancellation penalty.

So I made a test city. I built a single power plant, a few water pumps, and a landfill zone with a road connected to one neighbor, then connected power and water to that same neighbor. All of these utilities were completely segregated from the main city; meaning none of them were connected to the rest of my infrastructure. Neighbor pops up wanting to buy my power and water and send their trash to me. I accepted all 3 and waited.

I went 20+ years without a SINGLE disconnection prompt before I stopped the test. I thoroughly enjoyed having such a long time of completely uninterrupted income, and even had a couple instances of them wanting MORE, thus giving me even more income. To put short, a simple early $20k investment ended up paying me back nearly double in 20 years with still plenty of capacity to spare.

I did try this a second time with two neighbors but could only ever get one neighbor to buy anything, even with a 2nd set of segregated utilities for them the other neighbor never prompted to buy, not sure what the issue was so I'll need to test this further.

My test town was raking in close to $6k/year by 1910 doing this. It's honestly not the most optimized method; there's plenty of nuance and other factors but it does work and not constantly seeing termination fees was a welcome sight.

[PlyrStar93]

Yes, you can only sell a utility to one neighbor at a time. If you are already selling a particular utility, you will not get another request for the same utility from a different neighbor.

Same goes for buying utility from neighbor. You will not get an offer to buy the same utility from another neighbor if you are already buying it from someone, but you can sell if you have surplus.

If you have at least two neighbors, you could deal with one neighbor to buy water and electricity & take away your garbage, and deal with another neighbor to sell your surplus capacity. There would be 6 deals in total. Ideally, the amount to buy would be kept at a minimum and the deals are there as a safeguard for usage spikes and prevent your sell deals from getting terminated. But there is a bug with water buy deals. If you no longer need water from the neighbor, the monthly price would still be as if you were buying the deficit amount while it should have dropped to the minimum charge.

[TruthRealm]

Originally posted by PlyrStar93:

you can only sell a utility to one neighbor at a time.

False.

Originally posted by PlyrStar93:

If you are already selling a particular utility, you will not get another request for the same utility from a different neighbor.

False.

Originally posted by PlyrStar93:

You will not get an offer to buy the same utility from another neighbor if you are already buying it from someone

False.

[TruthRealm]

Originally posted by TheLegendBDT:

I did try this a second time with two neighbors but could only ever get one neighbor to buy anything, even with a 2nd set of segregated utilities for them the other neighbor never prompted to buy, not sure what the issue was

Originally posted by SimCity 3000 Unlimited Manual:

When these connections are in place and the conditions are right (you have excess or insufficient resources or disposal means), the Mayor of the neighboring city will approach you via the Petitioners Meet window with terms for an import or export deal.

Reading The Free Manual "is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural."
SimCity 3000 Unlimited (manual)[community.simtropolis.com]

Originally posted by Prima's Official Strategy Guide:

Once you have the appropriate connections established (pipes for water, Power Lines for electricity, and Road, Rail, Highway, or Seaport for trash), the offering of deals is related to your own use of your utilities.

Prima's Official Strategy Guide[amazon.com]

[PlyrStar93]

Originally posted by TruthRealm:

Originally posted by PlyrStar93:

you can only sell a utility to one neighbor at a time.

False.

Originally posted by PlyrStar93:

If you are already selling a particular utility, you will not get another request for the same utility from a different neighbor.

False.

Originally posted by PlyrStar93:

You will not get an offer to buy the same utility from another neighbor if you are already buying it from someone

False.

Please show me a city that supports your statement and explain how you achieved it

I never get to sell water to more than one city at a time
I never get to sell electricity to more than one city at a time
I never get to receive garbage from more than one city at a time

[TruthRealm]

Originally posted by PlyrStar93:

I never get to sell water to more than one city at a time
I never get to sell electricity to more than one city at a time
I never get to receive garbage from more than one city at a time

That just means you never met and maintained the needed conditions

Originally posted by TruthRealm:

Originally posted by SimCity 3000 Unlimited Manual:

the conditions are...you have excess...resources or disposal means

Reading The Free Manual "is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural."
SimCity 3000 Unlimited (manual)[community.simtropolis.com]

Originally posted by Prima's Official Strategy Guide:

the offering of deals is related to your own use of your utilities.

Prima's Official Strategy Guide[amazon.com]

Common sense tells us that since sell deals will cover a whole map's needs, a single sell deal can supply everything, if relevant infrastructure connects everything, thus if you've a singular city-wide infrastructure you'll never be offered multiple sell deals;
Logically then to have the maximum 4 sell deals, a minimum of 4 separate non-connected non-adjacent infrastructures each connected to a single different Neighbor are needed

Reading The Free Manual makes clear a city needs to be low on capacity to be offered deals, but utilization is not city-wide in the case of separate infrastructures having distinct capacities

This means that generally the detected capacity demanded from each new separate infrastructure of a city needs to be greater than the last such that it affects whole-city utilization figures enough to trigger a deal

[PlyrStar93]

Originally posted by TruthRealm:

Originally posted by PlyrStar93:

I never get to sell water to more than one city at a time
I never get to sell electricity to more than one city at a time
I never get to receive garbage from more than one city at a time

That just means you never met and maintained the needed conditions

So can you shed some light on what those conditions are to sell water to two neighboring cities at a time? As long as I deal with one neighbor to sell them water, there will not be another neighbor requesting to buy water from me, no matter how many water pumps I have and their utilization.

And if you insist this is possible, then you should be able to achieve it. Show me one of your cities where you have two active water selling deals.

[PlyrStar93]

Originally posted by TruthRealm:

if you've a singular city-wide infrastructure you'll never be offered multiple sell deals;

That explains it

Originally posted by TruthRealm:

Logically then to have the maximum 4 sell deals, a minimum of 4 separate non-connected non-adjacent infrastructures each connected to a single different Neighbor are needed

Reading The Free Manual makes clear a city needs to be low on capacity to be offered deals, but utilization is not city-wide in the case of separate infrastructures having distinct capacities

This means that generally the detected capacity demanded from each new separate infrastructure of a city needs to be greater than the last such that it affects whole-city utilization figures enough to trigger a deal

When I tried setting up non-connected water infrastructure for different neighbors, existing water selling deal would immediately end.

EDIT--

I just put two power infrastructures in two corners of my city. One of them is connected to my northern neighbor and the other is to the southern neighbor. They are not connected in any way (no buildings/power lines).

I got the deal to sell power to my northern neighbor but can never get one to sell to my southern neighbor. Utilization for the northern power plants is 1458/16000 and southern power plants is 1352/16000

[Frostlight Inc.]

Originally posted by TruthRealm:

Originally posted by PlyrStar93:

I never get to sell water to more than one city at a time
I never get to sell electricity to more than one city at a time
I never get to receive garbage from more than one city at a time

That just means you never met and maintained the needed conditions

Originally posted by TruthRealm:

Reading The Free Manual "is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural."
SimCity 3000 Unlimited (manual)[community.simtropolis.com]Prima's Official Strategy Guide[amazon.com]

Common sense tells us that since sell deals will cover a whole map's needs, a single sell deal can supply everything, if relevant infrastructure connects everything, thus if you've a singular city-wide infrastructure you'll never be offered multiple sell deals;
Logically then to have the maximum 4 sell deals, a minimum of 4 separate non-connected non-adjacent infrastructures each connected to a single different Neighbor are needed

Reading The Free Manual makes clear a city needs to be low on capacity to be offered deals, but utilization is not city-wide in the case of separate infrastructures having distinct capacities

This means that generally the detected capacity demanded from each new separate infrastructure of a city needs to be greater than the last such that it affects whole-city utilization figures enough to trigger a deal

So... All this yapping and you still didn't prove anything? Homie even tested what you said, found it to be wrong, and *then* you mysteriously shut up?

[TruthRealm]

Originally posted by Frostlight Inc.:

tested what you said

If the above comments are an accurate picture, then an actual test was never done

Not my job to answer questions, I just love this great game and love helping others discover its greatness, but not going to waste my time when it becomes obvious that unfortunately good faith, reading comprehension, respect and gratefulness are absent

Just as an example;

Originally posted by TruthRealm:

Reading The Free Manual makes clear a city needs to be low on capacity to be offered deals, but utilization is not city-wide in the case of separate infrastructures having distinct capacities

then they replied;

Utilization for the northern power plants is 1458/16000 and southern power plants is 1352/16000

making clear they completely missed the whole point of the paragraph, distinguishing between local and global states (a key concept in SimCity 3000 and frankly realworld too)

That exchange above unfortunately is full of examples bad faith, absent reading comprehension, disrespect and ungratefulness thus am done