Challenge to Make money?

[Eliteforce]

Is it a challenge for you to make money and a huge city with over 100k residents?

Personally, I never go bankrupt.  Ever.  It's so natural for me to make a city with proper funding that I don't even notice I have 15 million simoleans in the bank.  I've tried on the medium and hard settings and it doesn't make a difference, I am too good at making money.   When my city hit 50k people I was making 20k per month.  One  of my friends that plays this game can't get above 20k sims before he goes bankrupt on easy mode.  I don't find the basics of this game a challenge anymore.  My challenge is to make the biggest most beautiful city I can.

[SC4BOY]

The game presents no challenge at all as far as money goes unless you are impatient or inattentive and just start slapping stuff in without waiting for proper development and expecting a stage 8 city in 5 years..

[Strategist01]

Stage 8 in five? I do it in four! No, seriously...

In my one city I have 500K ppl, with water taking up a quater of the med. tile with 11 mill. simoleans... I actually wonder what the hell I'm gonna do with all of this money. If only there was a mod that let you gift the money to some of the other city's treasuries...

[Eliteforce]

Stage 8 in five? I do it in four! No, seriously...

In my one city I have 500K ppl, with water taking up a quater of the med. tile with 11 mill. simoleans... I actually wonder what the hell I'm gonna do with all of this money. If only there was a mod that let you gift the money to some of the other city's treasuries...

I've thought about that too, in one of my old regions my main city had well over 100 million $.  I wish you could buy the city next to you.

[cogeo]

Me too! I find making money not a challenge at all!

Actually it wass the main reason that stopped me from playing simcity, and it was long ago. If you are careful with education and health (esp play with the sliders), don't overdo it with public safety and plan your utilities well, it's almost impossible for your city not to be making money. I'm not talking about parks, they do have maintenance cost but they actually pay for it (you get more taxes due to the higher land value). Mass-transit can also be a big source of income.

So I found SC4/RH extremely easy, I would say boring. Then I made a mod that sets the start cash for the hard difficulty level to 0, so that you can only start with loans. I had to take loans initially, but as the city grew the budget was soon in the black. Then I posed some more restrictions, like "no business deals", "no more than $10,000 debt" etc. This was quite challenging, as you had to lay zones and networks and some utilities (initially just a wind tourbine), ie a basic functioning city for less than $10,000. As the zones were rather small, they generated little income. But the city (ehm, village) had low expenses too (basically utilities and roads plus debt servicing), so it posted small surpluses. Little by little the cash reserves accumulate, so it was possible to progressively add more zones (further increasing revenues) and structures. After some point land value increases and you get taller buildings and considerably higher revenues. The city then generates big surpluses and can self fund its expansion. Well, at this point I lose my interest and switch to another city - but this wouldn't last much either (actually growth is faster, if you have another developed city in the region). As a result, I have never had a region of more than 150,000 total population (so no MDs to show ).

I wish SC4 was more challenging, but this requires changing some things with the growth parameters, stages, scripts etc. This would be a very major mod and still, I doubt if it would make the game really "different". Plus I don't really like the concept of those "caps", and the way they are implemented (they artificially cap growth until you build some structures). So I didn't proceed with making such a mod (I was considering making it though).

[SC4BOY]

I still find MANY MANY challenges playing the game and have great fun for many hours annually.. however I find the beginning tedius and since I have proven to myself that I have no problem with the money part, I use various money cheats to set up the city, its transportation, various terraforming fun, various landscaping fun, etc and don't even bother with the village to megalopolis move.. mega's aren't of much interest to me anyways.. I guess it's kind of like my etch-a-sketch..   I like to play with it.. though I do like to run the city and I don't generally do any plop-a-pic city building.. but I recognise that that's another aspect of the game.. since the game has no "I WIN" condition, its limited only by one's imagination.. do what ya want the way ya want it..