i suck bad at this game >.<
someone gimme hints
Use taxes to manipulate the crowd. You're going to have lots of low class residential/commercial/agriculture, so go ahead and give them 10%. Give the middle class business somewhere around 9.5-9%, and upper levels 9-8.5%. If you don't want something, tax it 10.5%, don't go higher or they'll complain.
Legalize gambling. It makes barely any effect on crime. Feel free to enact any of the costly edicts if you want them (I stay away from nuclear free zone and any of the ones that cost over $100-150).
Have good fire coverage. You may not have gotten far enough to notice but at some point random fires will burst out randomly. Don't bother with the fire department landing strip unless you want it and can afford it. Only cover residential/commercial areas with police coverage, it's not worth it to cover industrial with cops really.
Speaking of disasters, the only disasters you may encounter are fires randomly and infrequently. Others are variable, as in, they only occur if they exist. Unhappy population/bad mayor rating will result in riots (yay, your cops are useful!), a nuclear power plant may have a meltdown (very rare unless you do it), and a missile accident if you have a missile base in your city.
Space your industrial away from residential. It doesn't matter about your opinion, if you want people to move in, keep them away from industrial but not too far.
ALWAYS pay attention to the RCI meter. It shows you the demand for each type, and clicking it gives you detailed demands on which class level zones are demanded. If there's nothing in demand at all, which may happen, just let the game run for a bit. May take a while but eventually demands will go up.
Go cheap. It's easier on your budget in the long run. When you start out, use wind turbines and water towers. Don't move to natural gas power plants and water pumps until you can afford them. Oh, and never buy coal plants, they suck and make huge air pollution. Farms also contribute heavy water pollution.
Boost your healthcare and education budgets across the board from the finance menu. They are defaulted to be really low in order to be equal with safety/etc. because health and education is expensive as hell. If you raise them up though, your doctors and teachers will be happy and not striking. If a facility is on strike it's nonfunctional and is useless (and these rioters can't be jailed because they're just protesting, not wrecking the city).
Plan your city accordingly. Make either a belt loop highway/railway/etc. or a simple highway/whatever/etc. line going through. Don't waste money if you don't need it. Seriously, you don't need subways/elevated rails. Go ground highways instead of elevated, they're MUCH cheaper. Use railways, seaports and airports for industries so they can do their job.
