Sim City 4 - Strange and weird

I play and turning a profit is a bitch. Build a LOT of low-density residential to start along with a little bit of low-density commercial. Leave some open space for building high density residential later. Build a power plant and your schools and everything and be sure to _turn down their funding_. They won't need all that money when your city is first starting. Build a bunch of medium-density industrial way off to the side of your residential and a bunch of agricultural off in another direction.

Don't let the game auto-build roads for your residential, either. Lay out 4x4 blocks and fill them in manually.

Also, I think your cities trade with each other so it might be a good idea to build several cities around each other and build them up together.

SpaceAce

the first thing i do is locating the life places , industry and other place(s)
then i buy some power plants , water things , hospitals etc etc
nearly all needed things and then i am out of money
my record is 16000 people ;)

it's a hard game..

start with a small zone, too. you can pretty much zone the whole place (low/med) with the cash you have. i can turn a profit in 2 years, police, fire, hospital, schools and all.

however, my city doesn't seem to be growing beyond 5000.

oh yea, the reason i suggest a small zone is that you won't have to worry so much about expanding all the time - there's a built-in limit. it's a good start, that's all. then when you build your next city, build it next door, and connect the two and start neighbor deals.

Diker, would you say it's harder then Sim City 3000?

i never played SC3

SC4 is much harder than SC3 but I gave up after two weeks of play. I got tired of not making any money & I've tried some of the tips listed in this thread.