Has Anyone Turned A Profit?

[Carol Mom to Dara]

I tried 7 cities so far and have yet to make a profit. It seems like all the services, medical schools, Police Fire Garbage Post Office, etc, draw extreme money to run. Even when I turned down budgets to 50% and raised taxes to 15% my money was still draining away. Has anyone managed to make any money so far?. Seemed easier in Cities 1.

[~Kronos~]

Money is definitely harder to come by, but leveling up is such a massive influx that it hasn't bothered me yet. Tier 2/3 service buildings are wildly expensive to maintain - I was turning a very small profit before building a hospital.

[AlienWired]

Hang on, I will tell you how i have to go get my gut and paste.

[Verios44]

The key is to not overbuild your services. For example do you really need 7 clinics? 10 police stations? Etc?

I trimmed mine down to only one or two and I am right now at 4k profitability at milestone 8.

Cannot go nuts on the services.

[a set of stairs]

not even close, only once with 4k pop with alot of taxis, buses and parking lots. but that was very short lived

[AlienWired]

DO NOT BUY ANY SERVICES.... Plop down enough Housing for 800-1000 people. Only build small section of industry and commercial for the moment.

After you get done hooking water and sewage, go into the budget panel and turn down the budget for water and sewage to 50%... As it is only using 10% of the resources until you get bigger.

Then as you get to bringing in about 500-600 a month.... Turn your taxes down on Income taxes gradually..... as it keeps going back up to 500-600, drop them down to 8% then 6...

All the way down to 0.... Keep industry and commercial at 10%.

This will expand your population....

Then once your population seems to level out, start raising taxes gradually until you're bringing in about $2000 a month.

Then you can slowly start introducing services which helps off set the costs of losing population as you raise taxes. Because the services then act as a population draw and improvement that will make people want to come to your town.

Now is when you want to start expanding your industry and commercial like crazy so that they off set the costs of the services you provide while also providing your citizens with employment and plus they pay taxes.

[Carol Mom to Dara]

Originally posted by a set of stairs:

not even close, only once with 4k pop with alot of taxis, buses and parking lots. but that was very short lived

No I only had one of everything, and it was draining so fast

[Kozzy]

Money seems easier this go around imo, had 6.5 Million, now 4.4 as I spent a bunch. Just make sure you are unlocking new things and checking taxes. Early on I turned taxes a little up and now that I am swimming in money I turned it all back to 100. Also do just enough services to start (Start off with just one fire department,etc.. and then add more later on when needed, don't over do it).

[AlienWired]

Also, you want to use the cheapest road, that's not gravel.

But if you use gravel it's not bad either.

[TUSSIN+]

1. Don't build a lot of services. Don't upgrade them until you need to
2. Don't hesitate to raise taxes to 20% for some time, "people" won't complain about them for some time
3. Check which products you lack and try to create industries that will produce needed goods

Got my first profit on a 15k population, and now it's 2 millions with a 50k population with taxes around 13% (still can easily raise them to 17-18%). Also now I don't care about services lol

[NameInvalid]

SEVEN cities already? In only 2 days? 😅 Did you sleep...

I only build one so far. Yes the first day i did not figure out how the industry and commercial works, getting zero tax from them resulted me in deep negative. Second day i figure that out and start to turn profit around 6k citizen. There are definitely many services you can turn down to minimum and things still be fine, healthcare, parks, police, firefighting, road maintenance... Dont over build services, they are goat dang expensive to maintain. Only build what you really need. If you want to build some expensive things like college and university, make sure your economy almost break even when doing so.

Mamy suggested selling electricity makes easy money with coal power plant. Personally i did not go that route, but you can try it out.

[Lt. William L. Calley]

Originally posted by Verios44:

The key is to not overbuild your services. For example do you really need 7 clinics? 10 police stations? Etc?

I trimmed mine down to only one or two and I am right now at 4k profitability at milestone 8.

Cannot go nuts on the services.

I have 1 of each main services and have not built most others and I make like 1k and hour after I defund everything and crank taxes

[icedude94]

Give your zones time to grow and level up. Education takes longer in this game, too. I've never turned down the budgets for any of my services. Just crank up them taxes when you are offering services.

I've reached the point where I am building up a large treasury, then flipping my industry taxes to -10% for a couple years to stimulate leveling growth.

My low and high density office zones are always on -10% stimulus now to keep demand for large office towers high. It's only costing me about 57k a month atm but I am easily making 10x that back in residential taxes on highly educated cims who now have those high paying corporate jobs.

And yes, with enough stuff boosting happiness, you can put them in air pollution zones and they will still be content.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3061377952

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3061377899

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3061380108

[102e]

Maybe that have been already been said. But pretty much like CS1 try to grow as many as resident possible (u can but i prefere not to grow taxes to not slowing down people to come) + when adding first services reduce the budget to he minimum 50% (avoid education a firs his is the most cost) and then continue to grow.
You should not wait lon for profit.
I found pretty much interresting not building water and electricity plant and just let the people import what they need, cost is far less, and you dont wpend on construction.

Pro tips if you have the map for, build < 10M DAM that will give you a LOT of power to sell

I'm actually waiting for my 20 000MW DAM to fill up xD

[pkmis007]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3062281070
profit $ 1.4m/month

[Lukas]

Originally posted by 102e:

Maybe that have been already been said. But pretty much like CS1 try to grow as many as resident possible (u can but i prefere not to grow taxes to not slowing down people to come) + when adding first services reduce the budget to he minimum 50% (avoid education a firs his is the most cost) and then continue to grow.
You should not wait lon for profit.
I found pretty much interresting not building water and electricity plant and just let the people import what they need, cost is far less, and you dont wpend on construction.

Pro tips if you have the map for, build < 10M DAM that will give you a LOT of power to sell

I'm actually waiting for my 20 000MW DAM to fill up xD

Reducing service funding works differently than in CS1 - at last as far as education is concerned - it does not decrease radius or capacity - it decreases efficiency. So instead of students graduating in 7 months, it will take 42 and dropout rate will increase to 50%+
Do not decrease funding.