A flat terrain can support more people than a hilly one. Sims can't live on hilly terrain. However, in a suburban hill top, land values tend to be greater.
Ocean water is always salty. River water is sometimes salty, too. Make sure you have enough fresh water lakes so that you can get your water from there.
There are two kinds of powerplants that won't fail after fifty years: wind and hydroelectric. To run a full sized city, you need about 250 hydros or about 1250 windmills. It makes much better sense to choose the hydro because in all, you'd be taking up less space to power your city. If you choose the hydros, you need to create hills and waterfalls to make this possible. Then you will be able to run your city indefinitely without spending any more money on power when you have built enough for your city.
Water pumps can go anywhere, but they're much more effective next to fresh water. [Salt water markedly reduces their pumping capacity.] Water pumps are also effective on top or below a waterfall, even if that waterfall is covered up by a dam. There is one catch, however. You can't run plumming underneath a waterfall or a dam. You must have some space reserved for the pipe to do any good.
If you are brave and decide to have the "No disasters" off, you can still make your city somewhat resistant to disasters. In the terrain editing mode you can build most of the city one tile above sea level to protect against floods. You only need to have a seaport and some water pumps at sea level. You can also call for no trees since trees spread fires (though your land values won't be as good). Since a majority of crashes occur on or near the airport, you can opt to put nothing surrounding it (except for a road and powerlines). This way a crash that happens at an airport will affect only the airport.
If you do have a disaster involving a fire, pause the game. Demolish everything around the fire (unless it's really valuable), and then put out the fire.
Make sure that the water is deep enough wherever you put your seaport. Two tiles away from shore, the water must be two tiles deep in order for piers to be built.
Start small, of course.
Be sparing with roads. Build only enough for sims to build next to.
If you choose the grid style road layout, a 6x6 is a neat choice. You can cram in a school, a police station, a fire station, and a hospital in one square. Anything smaller than a 6x6 arrangement is awkward and less efficient.
A 7x7 arrangement is actually quite feasible, and more efficient, too. This is better for arcologies than the 6x6 arrangement because you can cram an arco and a police station within one square to keep the crime down. The only con to this: somewhat heavier traffic.
A 6x7 arrangement is good for arcologies, too, but it provides less flexibility than the 7x7.
Do not build any larger than a 7x7 and expect all the tiles to be filled up with people, industries, or businesses. However, you can build a 9x9 and put a park, school, police or fire station, or a hospital in the middle. They don't need any roads. However, you can't build an arco in that square without destroying what you put in the middle.
A 10x10 arrangement is much better than a 9x9 because you have enough room for colleges, stadiums, zoos, powerplants, llama dome, or arcologies.
Do not zone dense and area just one tile wide. Your population values for that area will only be light. In other words, you'll just be wasting money.
When starting out, remember that at first, sims will not demand much commercial--mainly residence and industry.
Go to your ordinance window and click on all the money makers. I just click on legalized gambling and parking fines. Later on, all you will need is just parking fines.
When starting out, go to your budget window and reduce your spending on police, fire, health, and education. Click on the corresponding bubble icons to figure out how much of each you need. DO NOT REDUCE YOUR TRANSIT AUTHORITY, OR ELSE YOU WILL END UP WITH POTHOLES IN YOUR ROADS!
Keep an eye on your RCI graph. This is the graph that tells you what zones are in demand and how much of it. If your sims demand more of a certain zone, give them more of it.
Just after starting your city is when your are in the greatest danger of running into debt. If you have very little or no money in your treasury, and if you are spending more to finance your city services than you are making from property taxes and such, you need to take drastic measures to save your city. Remember, when you have no money, your roads will deteriorate because your transit authority will not have enough to cover all the roads.
Whatever you do, do not take out a bond, you will sink faster into debt.
Go to your ordinance window and turn on all the money makers if you haven't done so already. Turn off all your ordinances that you have to pay for.
Go to your budget window, and reduce your police, fire, health, and education expenditures down (reduce them to zero if need be), and ignore the outcries of the sims until you get enough money back to provide services for your city. Remember, don't reduce your transit authority. If you're spending to much on transit, demolish some roads that you really don't need. That will save you some dough.
Once again, keep an eye on your RCI graph.
There are only three worthwhile ways to cheat on a DOS version. All otherways involve some risk, and they're really not worth it.
Probably the more obvious would be to use the Urban Renewal Kit, if you have it. With this tool,(called Scurk for short), you can build anything for free. Even arcologies are at no cost to you. You can use scurk to get a head start on your city. I have used it for building all the hydroelectric powerplants my city will ever need (hydros will last indefinitely, so they're the best value if you plan on running your city for more than fifty years. Otherwise go for fusion power, if you can afford it--but who needs money when using Scurk?)
Oh, so it IS money that you really want. The FUND cheat works well provided you do it right. Here's how to do it:
Note: Do this at the very beginning of a new city. Do not do anything before this.
1. Type FUND and click YES.
2. Again type FUND and click YES.
3. Go to your menu bar on the top of the screen. Go to your windows menu and select BUDGET.
4. Click on the open book icon to the right of the bond payments.
5. Click on ISSUE BOND. It should say that the rate is ".%". Click YES. Hit REPAY BOND to pay off your oldest bond. Do this twice.
6. Click on ISSUE BOND for the third time, and again click YES. Do not repay bonds ever again!
7. Turn it on Cheetah mode. This will give you over one million dollars per year!
In Sim City 2000, you can "erase" buildings and plunk down new ones yet still retain the original population values plus any new population values that the new buildings bring in. Here's how you do it...
1. Go to your toolbar and select the TREE tool.
2. Click on the map and hold down the mouse button. You will see a couple of trees put down on the square in which you clicked. Don't worry about that. You're on the right track.
3. While holding down the mouse button, hold down the shift key. While doing both, move the curser to the area that you want to be erased, and the objects will disappear.
Let's say, above all, your goal is to attain a population of 120,000 sims so that you can start building arcologies--and it does not look like you have enough room to accommodate such a population here's what you can do...
1). Refuse a military base if you don't have one yet.
2). Destroy all your big parks, and zone them according to your cities needs. Ignore any "residence demands park" displays: you can give them back when you have some arcologies. Or you can give them some marinas, if at all possible. Sometimes, you can boost your residential population by adding a zoo or a stadium.
3). Demolish any unnecessary roads. Sims can build as far as three tiles away from a road. After destroying these roads, zone them accordingly.
4). If you can afford it, use your level terrain tool to turn your mountains into livable places--unless you have hydroelectric powerplants or windmills already there.
5). Make sure that your airports and seaports are large enough to support the commerce and industry that your city needs. Simply zoning more airport of seaport space may be a big employment and business boost for your city.
6). Destroy any light zones and rezone as dense.
7). If you have tried all the above and your population is still a few thousand shy of your goal--if you can afford to, reduce your property taxes to zero until the population gets up to your desired goal. If your goal is 120,000 (for arcologies), and once you reach it, restore your taxes once again. The moment you get a reward, you keep it forever and ever as long as you run that city and no matter what happens.
Churches appear in dense residential areas and there's one for--say--every couple of thousand residents. When a church appears, the land is no longer dense residential. Churches contain no population values within themselves. An added benefit to this is that crime would be slightly reduced in that localized area versus if that 4x4 square was an actual residential building. However, you have no control wherever these churches pop up. And if you type "DARN" or "HECK" or "CASS" you'll get an irreversable church virus. If you demolish one, another will appear somewhere else.
However, if--say--you feel guilty about destroying a church to put an arcology in its place--or if you want to build a totally neat residential building layout. There are a couple of things you can do.
1. Zone all light residential. Even with this, a population of 120,000 will still be possible.
2. Use the Urban Renewal Kit, if you have it. With it, you can plunk down churches where ever you want, and if you build enough of them, none of your dense residential areas that you do pay for will be donated as church zones.
If you have a population of at least 120,000 residents, your city qualifies for arcologies. However, they don't become available until starting about at the year 2000. The following is a rundown on the four types.
1. The Plymouth Arcology. Available at around the year 2000. Holds 55,000 residents. Price $100,000. Comment--the only arcology to emit mild polution into atmosphere.
2. The Forest Arcology. Available at around the year 2050. Holds 30,000 residents. Price $120,000.
3. The Darco Arcology. Available at around the year 2100. Holds 45,000 residents. Price $150,000.
4. The Launch Arcology. Available at around the year 2150. Holds 65,000 residents. Price $200,000.
After doing the simple arithmetic, you can see that the Plymouth Arcology is a best buy. It's the cheapest and the second largest. If you are a perfectionist--there is a way around the mild polution problem. You can devote one area of land to the Plymouth arcologies (and their police stations to keep the crime down). Yes, if you look on the city map chart, they will still pollute. However, your residents will not complain about it since the arcologies are away from the rest of the city.