Tips for Best Placement of Commercial Buildings

I'm at level 22 and have stopped expanding my city and have been concentrating on upgrading my current buildings, and making sure all their needs are met. I have been building at least 3 of each residence type, but in some cases I have more than 3. I'm having such a hard time figuring out how to best place my buildings to make sure all needs are met. I'm not thinking about aesthetics at this point - it's all about efficiency right now. I have 30 of the 48 plots purchased on the main play area so I need to work around brickyards and breweries, which I'm finding very challenging. Also, I have a lot of decorations taking up 4 plots of land and I had to deactivate my EMS since I ran out of Education Points, but I hope to add it back soon.

Any tips?

 

Can't remember what you are likely to have at level 22, but it all used to be much 'easier' when you only had Level 1 commercials, as options were then fewer. But with upgradeable commercials there are so many different combinations you can have that there is no right or wrong. Sticking with level 1 commercials, for now:
A veg stand/hollywood diner can cover 10 properties fairly easily, and 11 if you try harder. The advantage of the 10 option is that it's more linear, and so makes design a bit easier - you take four properties and place them in a row, then build a road alongside them, then level with the middle two of these, place a veg stand on the otherside of the road. Place another two properties either side of the veg stand, and another road and then 4 more properties in a row, in line with the first 4. All 10 properties should be covered.

Now, if you want to use both veg stand AND diner then you can do something similar, put the diner in the middle, and a veg stand either side of the properties next to the diner (I think that works, anyway), so middle row goes veg, property, diner, property, veg.

Smoothie bars and bread baskets have more coverage to start with, so they make life a bit easier, and a beer garden has large coverage too, and if you upgrade it, absolutely huge coverage.

If you've got the cash, it's normally worth upgrading decorations from small oaks and fir trees to the more expensive but higher mood/square decorations. The 2x2 decorations are nice, but in the end take up a lot of space.

EMS - you could add more students to your houses, to build up your Education Points, but it's probably worth taking a pause while you build up your city. Remember you don't HAVE to renew contracts, you can just train staff without extras and employ them for one contract all for free. Or renew once for 250 EP and then fire. It's a bit galling when you have to fire your one Medic specialist or similar, but another one will come along, EVENTUALLY.

Good luck!

 

Thanks for all the info!

I guess what I'm really having problems with is covering all my residential buildings as I upgrade them. The first few only require the veggie stand, then the next set require the veggie stand and the diner, and so on until now a residential building needs 4 commercial buildings in order to have all it's needs met. This is what I'm finding frustrating. I read that some people think it's fun to figure out how to make it work, but I'm not enjoying it all.

 

the one other thing that i did was deactivate the ERS system i think around l23 and then reactivated it at l53 by then i had 7mil xp and loads of vit other than that skb i spot on with his post. gl and enjoy the game

 

Some times you are better off just supplying all four commercial buildings to most of a building type and then supplying only some of the needs to the rest. This is not ideal but makes the results and totals more attainable. Just be selective on which buildings you make this sacrifice to. Good luck.

 

I activated ERS around lv25 at that time I had all the ERS-builning max-upgraded and all the rookies max-educated at the Academy and one waiting at the academy. Now I'm lv 35 and I have deactivated ERS and I'm waiting for the event art-Expo so I can get better coverage.

Since I got the advice to upgrade cityhall ( and it pays off ) ... I seldom upgrad residential-Buildings - because I'm mostly focus on Building new houses so I can finish the weekly events as fast as possible and from time to time CC-buy expansion (house-drops and streets-drops).

Around lv22 I max-upgraded stands for tomatoes and potatoes (better mood than CC-decoration), had 2 lv1 bread basket (now lv2), and I think around lv25 I started to get beer-garden (and now I have one lv3 - large coverage - I think 4 max beer-garden almost can cover the city).

I mostly fullfill needs with 2 or 3 Commercials ... but if I got the Space then I use more Commercials and later replace them with houses.

 

@ZenobiaZoe dug out this out plan of this blob containing sleeks and vintages from the early days of my city (obviously if you've got more vintages you can rotate it 90 degrees to suit) Hope it helps


Might also be good to look at the earlier pages of https://board-en.risingcities.com/threads/my-city-or-piece-of-it-2.5307/

 

As your city grows the needs for your citizens change so do not be afraid to remodel the city as time passes. When you get into higher levels and offered higher occupancy residences you may want to remove some of your lower capacity homes and replace them. This changes your needs and requirements. I am in the middle of a major urban renewal project right now in my city. I am at level 47. Trying to find room for just one more building here and there, while keeping certain features I like. Sentimental about some things I am.

 

Do not worry too much about fulfilling all your residents requirements. Top tip: remove breadbaskets. Selling rolls to your residents incurs a (significant) net loss over selling them in the market. The same is true of many products, smoothies and hefeweisen seem to be the exceptions.

 

Thank you all for your input. I think picking and choosing the highest amount given on needs is probably the best way to go. I wanted all needs for all buildings covered, but it is proving too difficult.

 

I'm thinking this advice might be good for someone that is further along in the game. At my level, I need to get as many production points as possible and the bread basket contributes quite a bit to that right now. It's all about production efficiency and somewhat about CCs.

 

Yes, I nearly included a sentence about that. PPs will arrive, events regularly award them and some houses (tenements, studio apartments and residential towers) are good providers even with no/few needs met. Check the mastery requirements for houses and you will notice that some need workers to progress through a level.

Do not feel that you have to optimise everything. It is a game and one without prizes so don't stress about getting along as quickly as possible.

The greatest joy I have had from this game was pulling down all the prefabs, suburban homes and modern single family homes and not feeling I have to keep clicking hundreds of times an hour.

 

I got the advice to build lots of residential buildings in order to help with event drops too, but I was told by a mod that the drops aren't just related to the number of buildings, but the density of your city as well. At some point, you cannot keep up with the cost of building more residentials and buying more plots of land. And you can't keep up with the demands for materials needed for power sources and the CCs needed for decorations to keep your mood up. This is why I think upgrading will pay off at some point, but has some drawbacks since you need to supply more commercial buildings to cover needs -- hence, my dilemma.

 

lol - yes in the beginning (untill you reach lv30-33) you're having trouble with mood, energy and expansion (need of CC) and getting enough PP to produce materials for Building and Commercials and upgrading production Building ... it's a real 'fight' and I think the best part of the game --- I have used a lot of time harvesting PP and CC from Prefab Home, Suburban Home and Modern Single Family-Home and it was this Buildings I max-upgraded first ... and I have done all weekly events since I started playing the game to get buildings and CC.

The only thing you really have control over is the time you are using on the game

When you're lv25 ... make sure you go to the mountain and make you're way to a new energy-source ... it will cost you some CC/MM but it's worth it.

About decorations (mood) ... I do hope your Cinama works most of the time ... go for Mystery 4.

I had 4 plots with 'small' decorations ... and I'm just started to replace them with larger decorations.

And I sold all my rolls at the market to get CC ... now I'm using the rolls and from time to time I'm selling bricks.

 

This, like everything about this game, is a balancing act...and as you progress, every variable factor can shift. I have found that upgrading the commercials while centralizing their placement creates overlapping grids that maximize the resulting payoff in needs revenues. There simply is no way to meet all needs for all buildings, so pick and choose. Buildings that produce more needs revenue for a given commercial type should get priority placement, modified by which (pp,ep,cc) needs revenue you most need. I am Level 40 and have been playing awhile, and that is part of it; but that aside, I have maximized placement much like shown in kuroyany's pic...and have over 4 million pp and 2 million ep, which even at full production I cannot deplete. I have also taken this approach when it comes to upgrades: when and where possible. This game is one of planning and patience, and if you try and focus on any one aspect (covering needs, upgrades, power, mood) you will make less progress (in my opinion) than if you try to balance attention to each. Watching my city grow and it's capabilities expand has been a large part of the fun

 

Am curious which buildings you have and which you don't. All the beginning buildings take upgrades to even begin to dent pp and ep needs....but the Urban Cottages and Terraced Row Houses really help with pp and the brownstones really help with ep. The hint is in the fact these can only house one kind of resident (yep, workers...students in the brownstones). These have been a big help to me...as has the tenement you win in the Flea Market event. Best advice I was ever given: get all your mills and farms as early on as you can, upgrade them whenever you can. Eventually, the pp and ep will come, if only because the number of houses you have increases, whether or not any needs being met adds to it. Not to mention event rewards, medals from that ERS, and so on. But without production capacity to back up those points...meh. Good luck

 

Both of you have said great things here at this time I am at level 47 and have taken the balanced approach. I am very pleased with the results. Yes, I could have done things to grow faster or have larger population, or more CC's, or more or less something else but for fourteen months work part time not a bad result. I still have every type of residence (to many people under rate the prefab house), the ERS system has always functioned, I have met the needs of my citizens generally, upgrade when I can, build new buildings when I can. My population goes up by about 200 to 300 a week, go up a level now in about every ten days. Like Geflin have over eight million production points, and three and half million education points. So production and keeping specialists around are no problem. This is not a bragging, this is to show you can get here with patience and balance. You are your own worse enemy. I remember the days of not being able to make lumber or tomatoes because I did not have enough PP's or CC's. It will come with time.

 

Good discussion this has turned into.

I must apologise for suggesting that supplying capitalists with smoothies or beer is profitable, there are a few houses that pay more than current market rate but not many.

Btw, is the price of bricks real?

 

Well said, billyjim I too have held onto all my buildings...even the extra ones I have won along the way. Each plays it's part, and I must say that when you look at the bigger picture then having the fast cycling houses DOES help with events and progress in general; I can recall when I was at a point of needing the few drop items they produced just to eek across the finish line, because though the larger buildings drop more at a time there is no point in waiting 4hrs to have 25 drop when you have 1hr to finish and only need 3 Hang in there ZenobiaZoe and don't get discouraged