How To Properly Build a City (Simcity DS)

Oranga

'Oranga' is doing *much* better than 'orange' city did. I fired that other 'advisor' (Options -> Delete All Data) and started fresh. Unfortunately I ended up with the same land area- but I took a very different approach to city development this time around. Now 6 'Simyears' in and I am *making* money at the end of every month and have yet to even consider a loan. By comparison, 'orange' was over $70k in debt- unable to get *another* loan in order to begin to rebuilt a power plant- both of which blew up within 'months' of each other- leaving the city essentially a ghost town.

I have uncovered other gripes I have with this installation of the SImcity series- notably the map selection. Unlike previous Simcity titles- which allowed you to select from a vast array of maps on which to build your city- Simcity DS gives you one 'large' map which is sectioned off into a 4x4 grid. You pick one of the grids- and that is your map. Kinda sucks. Worse yet- the difficulty, and thus, the amount of money with which you start off with to build your city, varies according to which grid tile you select. Naturally there is only one $100,000 tile- in probably one of the most uninteresting Simcity maps I have ever seen in over 15 years of playing this series. The fancy maps closer to the ocean typically go from about $5-10k in initial funds. And despite having played this game for a very long time, there is NO chance that I could survive starting with a mere $5000.