Since Economy 2.0 cannot balance budget early game

[TidBuryFukles]

I cannot get the budget to balance early game. It's always 5K or more in the hole. I can raise taxes all the way, increase service cost and drop maintenance. Sure it slows it down but it never really comes close to break even. And I do this population and of course suffers.

My income is selling electricity, service fees and taxes. People keep coming in, I am at large village now but the amount they pay never breaks it even.

What am I doing wrong here? Is there another stream of income I am missing? Or does it run in the hole for many milestones no matter what?

[darkscott]

just try adjust the public expense like CS1, water / electricity / health / fire service / police / education, just build necessary.

[girlaroundthecorner]

This is what worked for me. I dropped all my service budgets to the minimum initially and slowly increased as the population grew. Selling electricity is always good. I made money early game by saving for a coal fire plant - I know some say it's too expensive but it really got my city moving with a coal mine across the road. Not having to pay for electricity from outside made a difference. In between I built farms, farms and farms. Got the signature Dairy Farm which reduced unemployment. I ended up with three coal fire plants, then saved up for an incineration plant which produced more electricity and also collected garbage. In the meantime I built rock, coal, ore and oil - slowly, slowly, slowly and got the signature buildings. Helped unemployment. I also charged for roadside parking, and put down parking lots. Revenue. It was a long, long, long road to a geothermal plant which exports even more electricity. This is where I am now. Currently only making $63,000 an hour, which is a far cry from before the update - but such is life.

[🐺Blue Wolf]

The game went from a build how you want, to follow the meta.

Build specialized industry, bump their taxes up, profit.

Also unless you use a mod to disable tile upkeep, just use the starting tiles until mid to late game. They are otherwise too expensive to bother with now.

[dulany67]

You start with plenty of money. It's OK to be losing money early on. Don't place a service until you absolutely need to. Focus on resource exploitation because having resources available leads to profitability for your corporate sector.

[Sebsayswhat]

Yeah I can't quite figure it out either.
I've started small, limited services and expenses paired back to 60% on those.

Over time as population and demand grows I added services, and then slowly started to increase the expenses back to 100.
Decent income for a while, slow demand spikes but making money. Have lots of farming and some mineral industries. Have higher taxes for industries that I have to maximise profit. Making good money steadily for a while then BAM! Start hemorrhaging cash like nothing else and the only way to get it back is reduce services expenses back to minimum, raise taxes or turn off services completely.
Otherwise I'm broke in no time.

No idea what I'm doing wrong for it to suddenly go from +120k to -50k while watching the budget without changing anything.

[AlSemz™]

How many farms have you build? Make sure you city is producing things, other wise all your money will go into importing and services.. you wont draw enough tax revenue that way. Beef up your industrial sector to supply all your factories and stores.

Just like real life, if a country is strictly a consumer, its headed for hard economic times.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by 🐻 Veles:

The game went from a build how you want, to follow the meta.

Build specialized industry, bump their taxes up, profit.

Also unless you use a mod to disable tile upkeep, just use the starting tiles until mid to late game. They are otherwise too expensive to bother with now.

I like the game better now, but this is fair. The player is much more restrained in what they can build.

I think you can still get to where you want to be, but your city will need to evolve to that goal over time.

[TidBuryFukles]

Good answers thanks. So specialized industry, there is a screen that shows amount of the resource coming in and going out. Of course export would be the way to make money but I don't see that. Unless I can tax this some how? I did some specialized last game before I quit and started over, maybe I missed how it can make money for me.

Another person posted about tile cost. I did that last game and its why I started over.
Bought too many tiles and went bankrupt. I know to not do that again.

[john.glossop]

Disable big tax items for a while. Only enable the Hospital when there is an ambulance call. Only enable the crematorium when there is a call for a hearse.
Look at what you are producing, and for those categories where to taxation is zero, bring their tax rates back to 1 or 2 percent. Go back periodically and see if any of them are now producing. If any of them are, ramp their tax rates steadily until they match the tax rates for your other industries. Use wind power, even if you have insufficient wind to generate the full amount of power that they are capable of - add better blades and solar power panels to all your wind generators.
Generally, think like a city manager, and work out ways to cut costs and incentivise people and industries to come to town.

[Doc_Hotpants]

Originally posted by TidBuryFukles:

I cannot get the budget to balance early game. It's always 5K or more in the hole. I can raise taxes all the way, increase service cost and drop maintenance. Sure it slows it down but it never really comes close to break even. And I do this population and of course suffers.

My income is selling electricity, service fees and taxes. People keep coming in, I am at large village now but the amount they pay never breaks it even.

What am I doing wrong here? Is there another stream of income I am missing? Or does it run in the hole for many milestones no matter what?

30% tax on any raw material extraction (wheat, chickens, cotton, etc, oil, ore, stone). It works. Build as many farms as you can first thing. No fertility? Build chicken farms. And tax them to the max (literally). You will have enough money for everything.

I recently found this advice, and it works!

[dulany67]

Originally posted by TidBuryFukles:

Good answers thanks. So specialized industry, there is a screen that shows amount of the resource coming in and going out. Of course export would be the way to make money but I don't see that. Unless I can tax this some how? I did some specialized last game before I quit and started over, maybe I missed how it can make money for me.

Another person posted about tile cost. I did that last game and its why I started over.
Bought too many tiles and went bankrupt. I know to not do that again.

As a government entity you tax to gain revenue. Having raw resources locally makes your industrial sector more profitable, and therefore generates more tax revenue. Any surplus of a resource will be exported by the producer, who will again increase their profitability and generate more tax revenue.

[john.glossop]

Originally posted by Doc_Hotpants:

Originally posted by TidBuryFukles:

I cannot get the budget to balance early game. It's always 5K or more in the hole. I can raise taxes all the way, increase service cost and drop maintenance. Sure it slows it down but it never really comes close to break even. And I do this population and of course suffers.

My income is selling electricity, service fees and taxes. People keep coming in, I am at large village now but the amount they pay never breaks it even.

What am I doing wrong here? Is there another stream of income I am missing? Or does it run in the hole for many milestones no matter what?

30% tax on any raw material extraction (wheat, chickens, cotton, etc, oil, ore, stone). It works. Build as many farms as you can first thing. No fertility? Build chicken farms. And tax them to the max (literally). You will have enough money for everything.

I recently found this advice, and it works!

Good get. Does it wrk with other resources as well?

[Weird Uncle]

Originally posted by 🐻 Veles:

The game went from a build how you want, to follow the meta.

Build specialized industry, bump their taxes up, profit.

Also unless you use a mod to disable tile upkeep, just use the starting tiles until mid to late game. They are otherwise too expensive to bother with now.

Honestly prefer it like this... I Liked Subsidies, but they felt like TOO much. If they brought them back at much lower levels, it would be nice, but I had to purposely increase services and decrease taxes max when the update came out because my city was at $41m beforehand and just felt like sandbox mode. There was no point in going on. Since the update my balance has been far more realistic to the in game prices, and my population has boomed (and so has the traffic...). The original method of just dropping services like in 1 just feels more game like if you know what I mean.

[Kbyte]

Originally posted by john.glossop:

Disable big tax items for a while. Only enable the Hospital when there is an ambulance call. Only enable the crematorium when there is a call for a hearse.

But this is a flaw. The game should balance a progression for services, not to let you to micro manage the on/off button every 5 minutes.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by Kbyte:

Originally posted by john.glossop:

Disable big tax items for a while. Only enable the Hospital when there is an ambulance call. Only enable the crematorium when there is a call for a hearse.

But this is a flaw. The game should balance a progression for services, not to let you to micro manage the on/off button every 5 minutes.

It doesn't need to be done that way. It can be, but doesn't need to be. You can lower budgets to limit costs on services and balance that against pop happiness.