SIM City Help: How Do You Get People to Move Into Your City in Freeplay

Cities in "The Sims" have to be build from the ground up.

The "Sim City" franchise consists of some of the most critically successful games ever released according to the website Metacritic. While each game has some minor changes and improvements over the previous entry, getting people to move into your city requires you to do some fairly simple things.

Instructions

1. Zone your areas. Zoning your city areas is far from an exact science, but one basic rule does apply: Keep industrial zones away from residential zones, or families won't move in. Either build your industrial zones on a separate part of the map and eat the extra costs of power lines, or use commercial zones as a buffer between the two.

2. Build your infrastructure. No one will move to your city if your areas aren't supported with the basic infrastructure, like water, electricity and roads.

3. Place city services, like police stations and fire houses, strategically so they cover the widest area. You can refer to your game map to see the areas that the police and fire departments cover.

4. Keep taxes steady. For starter cities, a good starting tax rate is 5 percent.

5. Use area beautification (landmarks, parks, etc.) to increase property values in a particular area and drive wealthier residents to your city.

Tips & Warnings

• Many players like to set their taxes low to lure people to their city early on. The problem with this is that while people will be moving to your city, the growth will be unsustainable due to the lack of money coming in.

• Listen to your advisors. In "SimCity 3000" and "SimCity 4" your advisors will inform you of drastic population shifts, complaints about taxes, and business opportunities with neighboring cities.

• Zone around geography. Using the geography tools is a waste of money that can be better used to zone more residential areas.

References

• Sim City 3000 FAQ
• Sim City 4 FAQ