- increase all tax to 11%
- only use the most cheapest roads (no asphalt roads)
- decrease and adapt the slider for water and electricity on demand
- use specialized industrial zones

I am playing it this way with Populationmod and it really is a challenge.

Sadly I don't get any tax revenue because of some porblems between my mods, but it worked fine till the day before yesterday

Pretty much what 'B wie Bier' said. I even upped my tax rate to 13% or 14% in my industrial zone and they are staying happy. Also, every time I plop down a new service I adjust the slider - usually down to 50% - then work my way up. You have to be very patient and wait for your coffers to fill once you start making money. I got into a jam a few times where I didn't have the funds to build another landfill or something and had to take out a loan.

I'm at about ~16k pop now and finally starting to upgrade roads and hoping to get a medical clinic soon. I think this mod might be a little too much for my play-style but I definitely prefer something like this over vanilla.

Yes, you definitely have to start with gravel roads and fiddle with the budget slider. It took me 4 tries, but I finally got a city started where I'm not in the hole.

Thanks guys, I have been playing around with a one way roading system that was just not viable with the mod. Glad to hear you guys have managed to survive the start, off to try again. :)

I think the designer of the mod might want to reconsider what it means for the game/mod to be "hard". I think scarcity of money is not really harder - it's just more tedious. It means you have to scrimp and save, but ultimately the game is more or less the same, it just takes longer to do things because things cost more and your tax revenue is less.

Real changes in difficulty comes in things like people not despawning so easily, more realistic cost for watts in power generation, level up bulidings take longer, etc. Making it so that you have to start the game with dirt roads and what not just means I have to waste a lot of time saving money initially to get that one item, but doesn't make the game any more difficult.

I love this Mod, it really makes you think on what you want and what you are doing. I built High density commerce but didnt have the education for the jobs being offered, took me awhile to figure that out, also, make sure and balance people with commerce and industry. I make the commerce and people close together so they dont have to run all over the map to get to each other.This Mod sure makes you think on what you are doing. lol

Just my 2 cents here. I play with the non-hard version, and even then you have to carefully and slowly build your early city. Don't place too much services, taxes at 11-13%, and careful buget management will get you slowly to the Boom Town milestone. At that point you HAVE to make a carefully planned bus network, maximizing citizen going to work and minimizing commute time. Then, income should rise at a nice rate, as well as your expansion.

Of course, hard mode make this more difficult and slow, but even in normal mode it offers a more interesting experience that vanilla.

I like the premise of the hardness, but I don't think it works very well with the mechanics as set. I think a sweet spot would be 20-25% increase in maintenance costs instead of 40, but the biggest problem is that the hard mode necessitates more budget management (especially the power/water sliders at start), but it also slows money growth so you're prone to overrun a sudden power shortage (i.e. plot zones, speed up to fill zones, new zones draw too much power, cause a rolling blackout, income values drop, now at a budget deficit).

The 'disasters' are also a bit random (which is fine), but they can strike power plants, which will basically kill your income until it's extinguished (because there will be a power shortage).

I'd recommend a few features to address a handful of problems, especially with early city setup:

Pause the game when the budget switches from positive to negative (or when a blackout or water shortage starts.

Provide 100% refund of recent purchases while the game is paused (e.g. if you are laying roads you get 100% back until you unpause once after laying them). City planners get the magic of pre-laid grids and being able to make curves in advance; players do not.

I'd start at $125,000 (mostly because proper pump placement and starting with a coal plant basically require 50,000 (for the plant an maint until you're using 50% of the power because the budget can't go lower) and because roads and pipes are expensive (which is good and more realistic). In fact, I'd also recommend slightly shrinking the pipe radius to be like 5 or 6 tiles).

Hold off on disasters until like 3500 population.

Originally posted by President Rex:

I'd recommend a few features to address a handful of problems, especially with early city setup:

Pause the game when the budget switches from positive to negative (or when a blackout or water shortage starts.

Hopefully, this is never implemented, or if it is, it is optionnal. Whats the point of a management/simulation game if you are held by the hand everytime something isnt working?

Personally, I'd love a difficulty being added to make it even harder. So grateful for this mod as I wouldnt be playing the game in its current state without this mod as I feel its too broken.

Not as much as sc2013 was broken, but really... They made some mistakes in the balancing of this game and also some decisions they took make no sense.

Good thing there are mods to save the day. Its funny tho to see how long its taking them to fix the glaring issues the game have while there's a mod already available since a while who fixes alot of these issues.

They might as well take this mod and make it patch 1.0.8.

I have to start with a lot more money than what is being started with just to get a town on the positive side. Love this mod, but could use some work on balancing. My freeway got back to back traffic as far as the eye could see on all the maps coming and going from my city. What gives? Other towns have traffic problesm also?

I started a city with this mod. It's quite different than starting one without it, I'm enjoying the experience.

You need to play it slow and actually try to delay some of the milestones (so some services don't become required before you can pay for them). I only ever laid down gravel roads, my budget for everything is at the minimum possible (energy and water increasing as needed), etc.

The only problem is that this cause quite a bit of downtime while you just sit around waiting for you cash to increase enough for you to build another block and/or build a services building (if your income can already support it).

Playing like this kinda feels a bit like a different style of Banished.