SimCity Societies/Dawn of Tyranny

Start by building row houses, OK these take up a bit more room, but state housing has a negative effect on your sims and also makes the nearby buildings less effective.

Workplaces should be steered well clear of anything that can produce slum lords: they increase the capacity of your houses at the cost to sims health (see paragraph below) and increase the risk of fires. Concentrate on buildings that neutralise sims moods (info card has a green/white swirl). A town hall with nearby behavoural labs are a great way to start making a bit of money. Also, make sure that you build at least two departments of public works.

Venues are a bit tricky at the start. Avoid anything that produces too much happiness. You'll need some military schools for the knowledge & authority points, but these venues will not be visited by many sims. Distribution centres are good, as are strip malls.

Healthcare: BEWARE! Creating a society of ill sims will be disastorous! Working sims will only visit the hospital at the weekend, unless they work 7 days a week, in which case they will probably end up dying from their illness. A sick sim is more likely to become furious and start shutting down buildings.

Budget: Reduce your spending in all departments to about 65%. Each day some buildings will become inoperable due to poor maintainance, but fear not, the department of public works will be producing work crew 7 days a week and they will soon scurry off to repair the damaged buildings. As long as you have a little buffer zone in your societal values, most buildings will be up & running again by lunchtime. Keep an eye on this. If you see many workers standing around doing nothing, reduce your spending further. If it is taking a while for damaged buildings to be repaired, increase your spending.

Only expand your city with proper planning. Start by choosing a workplace. Take a note of the construction costs, running costs and workforce required. Then take into account the cost to build the housing for your new workers. Also, ensure you have enough venue capacity to cope with a larger population, and if not, choose a new venue that you plan to construct. You may also need another power plant and possibly more decorations for societal points. All these things will need to be built at the same time: there's no point building a workplace if there is no workforce available! Once you're confident of the final price of construction, ensure that you have that money available at around 3am of a monday morning. This should be the point when your treasury is at it's lowest point (after a weekend of businesses being closed). You must maximise the chances that you budget will recover from this spending spree by the following weekend or you risk running out of cash & the city rapidly declining into disrepair beyond the point that your workcrew will no longer be able to keep up. Pause the game and build everything in your plans. Unpause and watch as your income (hopefully) accelerates throughout the week.

Keep up this routine with a focus on authority to achieve all the goals!