My Simcity Social Tips & Tricks: Raw Unsorted Tips

These tips are from various forums on the net (see Sources of Information on the sidebar). I found some of the tutorials difficult to follow and information sort of fragmented, so I decided to repack the tips and group by topics, so that I can figure it all out easier.

Social aspect

This is huge. You will need lots of stuff like expansion permits and different items. The more neighbours you have, the faster and easier you will get this stuff.

Make lots of friends on facebook. Visit them for the first visit bonus and 5 bonus energy.
Places to find neighbours:

You're limited to 20 daily friends to visit for the 5 bonus energy (past the first visit bonus), so choose some dedicated friends to work on relationship levels with.
Find someone very reliable and dedicated partners to quickly raise your twin cities level.
Finding a twin cities partner is very important, as it's one of the only ways to get the Unity ingredient.
The higher your partner's twin cities level, the higher the drop rate of rare items such as Bliss, Wrath, and Unity, which are needed for the Arcology and 2500 Fame buildings.
When visiting your neighbors, do actions on their factories and businesses. If your neighbor's factory/business is ready at the time they click your visit, your visit will cause the factory/business to pay out without your neighbor having to spend energy to do it.
How to find out who on your list is a partner? They'll have a handshake icon over their name. You can only have one person as your twin cities partner.

Layout and expansions

make horizontal rows of roads from the main vertical road, spaced 6-7 apart
place decorations and attractions in between the roads
IMPORTANT - start with buying land land expansions with the alien wreckage parts around the map. Any other expansion is secondary. These alien wreckage parts are neccessary to build Arcology
build the Arcology asap
Always keep some room open for a swap space, since you can't place buildings into your inventory. Don't forget you can put most/all decorations into your inventory.
Expand south: it's the cheapest direction to go, and offers lots of open land.
when you've levelled up somewhat, a lot can be gained by using 6x6 squares with 2x2 buildings all around and a playground in the middle.

Arcology

Once you have the Arcology and Fortress of Woe or Gaia's Garden, your layout plans will change to surrounding them with as many buildings as possible.
It's preferable to place them within waterfront range to maximize the waterfront residential bonus.
The Arc and 2500 Fame buildings are self operating - they don't need to be next to a road to operate.
build the Gaia's Garden - it's much easier to be nice to people and your partners and earn Bliss than it is to be mean and earn Wrath

Residental zones

Don't bother with 1x1 or 2x1 sized residential zones, it's a waste of time and space. Use 1x1 and 2x1 sized space for decorations.
Place residential buildings by the waterfront for the 90-110% waterfront bonus
you can maximize residential layouts using technique called the "scaffolding trick". A residential building that requires roads will operate perfectly fine as long as the building is underneath at least one "green tile". Give the residential building a valid placement with all green tiles covered, then bulldoze the nearby road and replace it with a more distant road that still grants the building at least one green placement tile. Using this scaffolding trick, you can place a huge number of buildings around a landmark with minimal road coverage.

Roads

Roads are your enemy that take up space. Try to use as few roads as possible. The one exception to this - roads on the railroad tracks.

You can build roads on the railroad tracks one at a time (click twice on a single railroad track tile), then the game will treat the railroad tracks as a congruent "road" which allows building placement.

a piece of road has an invisible radius of 2, in the same square shape as every other decoration, attraction, and business.

Fame

Fame is the best way to get around spending tons of simoleons and resources. Make tons of friends, get those first visit bonuses, and send lots of gifts to everyone to earn +2 fame per gift accepted.
first build 1-2 2500 fame buildings like Gaia Gardens
purchase Factories and Businesses with Fame - Chemical Plant, Computer Factory, and Convenience Store (after obtaining 1-2 2500 fame buildings ).

Quests

Quests are a tricky situation in SimCity Social. They often cost a lot of simoleons, yet the rewards are paltry. Decide if you want to participate

Farms

Farms are a waste of space. They're only useful for quests or clicking on wild animals (such as horses) on the map. Have as few as possible.

Businesses and factories

Each house near a business grants a payout bonus. A lv 1 house grants a 2% bonus, scaling up to a lv 9 house granting an 18% bonus. So a business surrounded by lv 9 buildings would give max payout bonus.
Place your businesses in between residential areas
Here is businesses and factories efficency analysis - http://pastebin.com/fnVCt3wM
upgrade your businesses or obtain more energy efficient buildings like the Spa
Boutiques and Convenience Stores are energy efficiant and superior because they take no time to pay themselves off because you buy them with fame, while most other stores take 50-100 clicks just to pay themselves off
good investments

Coffee Shop 480s/h 0.75e/h 640s/te
Convenience Store 300s/h 0.5e/h 600s/te
Spa 111s/h 0.05e/h 2220s/te

go for 230%+ locations

Landmarks and attractions and decorations

landmarks give both a population radius and a population bonus. E.g. Gaia's Garden gives pop+1800 and a pop+235 radius+5
if 2 landmarks have the same range but are different sizes, the bigger one covers more squares
you actually get more population density by stacking Observatories close to eachother.
Any decoration larger than 1x1 or 1x2 is not worth paying for. If you have a 2x2 space that a road can access, you should probably put a house or business there instead. Decorations are pretty much a dead end/money trap...
at the end landmarks is what you want to aim for
Observatories and Zoos are a later addition and are mainly used to max out your existing buildings to 660 and fit in tight waterfront areas that landmarks are too large for

Trains

train isn't a waste but it's fairly low priority. Train is a simoleon to material converter.

Diamonds

dont waste your diamonds
you get 35 free diamonds from level 1-10. Save them, do not spend them.

Economy

materials are not nearly as important as simoleons
You mainly need materials to buy more Oasis Towers and upgrade your attractions and a few businesses
you need a huge supply of simoleons to keep buying increasingly expensive land

Bad choices

tennis courts are nearly worthless
farms are nearly worthless

Next
http://forum.playfish.com/showpost.php?p=1020282262&postcount=130

My Simcity Social Tips & Tricks

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Raw Unsorted Tips