Planning is a big part of how well your town will do. Mountains, water, and other terrain features are hard to work around so start with a flat, or at least a pretty simple terrain. During planning you want to take into account pollution caused by some power plants, and industrial zones. You also want to consider your placement of zones so you can get good coverage from Schools, Police and and Fire Department.
- Building your Power Plant on the corner of the map will reduce it's area of pollution by 3/4.
- Keep Residential away from Dirty Industrial zones. Put some trees between them to reduce pollution.
- Plan for future expansions. Leave some unzoned space between your Residential, Commercial and Industrial areas. It gets your sims farther away from pollution and gives you areas to add an extra Fire Station if needed.
- Schools only need to cover residential zones.
- Industrial zones are fire hazards so keep a Fire Station close. They also have a higher crime rate, especially early on.
If you just takes your initial 100k and buy one of everything you're doomed to get overwhelmed. You want to keep your income only slightly higher than your expenses. Also, You're advisors don't give a crap about your money, so don't build everything they want as soon as they ask for it. Build at a pace that you can afford.
- Build the most important utilities first. Power and Water are the two most important things followed by Police, Fire and Schools.
- Water towers are cheaper than pumps in the early years. Don't place more water pipes than you need. A pipe supplys water 6 tiles on both sides so pipes should have 12 tiles between them.
- To add to the last tip, A building with power supplies power to buildings within 4 tiles so you don't need powerlines over short distances.
- Be careful with your funding. Police and Fire don't like being underfunded, Water pipes break if underfunded, power plants decay faster when over capacity, Schools will strike if there are too many students. Adjust funding frequently.
- Lowering taxes will give you a small population boost but raising them can hinder growth for a long time, even if you lower it back after 1-2 days.
- Basically, Don't pay for more than you need.
I'm too bored to type anything else.
Gamefaqs.com has alot more information than I can think to type right now. They have some very indepth guides to getting your town started and growing into a huge city.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/dos...me/561176.html