Politician Archive
Thread: Mayors- your biggest lessons learned so far
Don't place civic structures near the perimeter of your city....
-Turn zoning rights on after you reach Class II...I wouldn't try to impliment a city layout until then, just focus on getting your citizen count up first. At Class II, you can start to focus on making a set layout.
-Either place new houses yourself, or explain very well to your militia placement guidelines. Our first two weeks we lost a few citizens because they placed a house just barely outside the city borders and declared, and was unable to declare within borders for 24 hours...valuable XP lost.
-Focus on what you can USE for your city right then when training your skills. Fiscal Policy I may put your city's name on the map (well, now you cannot do this until Class III), but it also adds to maintenance costs. Instead, perhaps place streetlamps to show the city's growth to it's citizens, or work on being able to place skill trainers, mission terminals, a militia, etc. Some of these add to your cost as well, but at least it is something the citizens can put their hands on and use.
-Make your city independent. Lure crafters by creating programs for free resources for them...try to recruit Novices in their profession (architect, weaponsmith, armorsmith, etc.) and invest in them! They gain wonderful XP from all the crafting, the city gains cheap or free items, and everyone is happy.
-Keep taxes low, or non existent. I almost always close a deal with gaining a prospective citizen when they find out Castoria has no taxes. Instead, create contests--have a statue placed in the city, named especially after the winner of a fundraiser. I managed to raise nearly 1 million credits in a week, and two citizens now have guardian statues in front of the hall named after them.
-Always be personal, and attentive, with your citizens. Get to know them...what profession(s) they are/aspire to be, their goals in the game...everything you can. If they send you a tell or e-mail, respond immediately. Always make your citizens feel they are the priority, and you'll not only gain their respect but their support as well.
Hope this was of some help.
Kindarin wrote:
-Turn zoning rights on after you reach Class II...I wouldn't try to impliment a city layout until then, just focus on getting your citizen count up first. At Class II, you can start to focus on making a set layout.
Actually, you can turn it on from day one. I did.
So far for me, the biggest thing has been the difficulty of moving people around after the event. We squashed everyone in to get maximum population. But its been a long drawn out process to shift people out from the core of the city (its almost finally complete now).
Have a plan, make sure everyone knows what it is, map it out, display it everywhere. Then people understand what they are working towards and why they need to keep out of certain areas with their houses.
as in real life communication is very important......a weekly newsletter has worked great for me and ive gotten a good responce from it. let everyone know whats going on and how they can help......everyone wants to help out the community but if you dont ask and let them know what you need they will figure you dont need any help. everyone is a recruter for your city remind them of this all the time (communicate) and your population will grow......if you build it they will come.......but only if they know that you are there 
good luck
Osti, Mayor, Plains of Valour
We only made 2 really big screw-ups.
The first was we placed our cloning facility in slightly the wrong place and, assuming it was not redeedable and not wanted to have much down time we made a new one and then went to destroy the old one. Turns out it WAS redeedable. Anybody want to buy a deed to a Corellian cloning facility on Naritus (not kidding here, btw)?
The second mistake was to go ahead and start placing some faction elements like turrets in anticipation of the cloning facility and THEN discovering that /cityban DOES NOT prevent people from using your cloning facility and you can't ban enemies or enemy guilds ahead of time anyway (so you'd just have to get lucky and be there as they arrived whenever that is and then ban them before they can enter the cloning facility to store data, but even then they can still clone there just not without taking wounds). Basically, /cityban is useless to prevent people from using your cloning facility & shuttleport against your faction elements so just don't place them.
Don't leave the stained purple dress in your office where anyone can find it.
(Real tip: make sure your citizens inform you when making donations to the treasury, it makes finance management a little easier.)
This system I use and it seems to work great.
1. Try to make your city at least 3k+ away from NPC cities (or other player cities) since are you starting out you don't want the competition of people being lure off your city.
2. communication... this should be number 1 hehe.. but I'm just listing.. not order of importance (all important to me)
3. Property tax is not good. I have 1% sale tax (then again all the founders are crafters and we are ok with that) and 2k income tax. (this will keep the city alive and well.. not to mention it is equally tax no matter how many property you own)
4. Zoning rights... turn them on... looks good this way.
5. Best way is to have your city planner to place buildings and /transferstructure to the new owner. This way you know where the buildings should be
6. never (or try to avoid) placing buildings around the outskirts if possible.. (around 10-15m of the border) especially houses. this seem to cause lost citizen... I always put factory further out (not in the city) and only houses in the city when you start out.. eventually your factory will be in the city (i.e. as you expand)
7. communication... did I already mention this?
8. If you wish to advertise but not a level 3? well mission terminal puts you on the map, skill trainer, and global advertisement vendor That is what I did for the 1st week to draw people.
9. Decoration is nice, but also have upkeep... what you rather spend? 1k for a lamp? or 1.5k for a mission terminal?
10. Know your neighbors... sometimes they can give good info
That is about it.
oh.. and one more thing.... communication..
whipple wrote:
as in real life communication is very important......a weekly newsletter has worked great for me and ive gotten a good responce from it. let everyone know whats going on and how they can help......everyone wants to help out the community but if you dont ask and let them know what you need they will figure you dont need any help. everyone is a recruter for your city remind them of this all the time (communicate) and your population will grow......if you build it they will come.......but only if they know that you are there
good luck
Osti, Mayor, Plains of Valour
I ended up doing daily (sometimes every second day) reports of what's going on. Things like how many people we have, what we need for the next level, what's happening with the shifting borders, what services we have available, what we'll have next week (Shuttleport! finally they can stop asking about it! ), etc, etc.
The citizens are always asking me about what's going on and where we are up to. Sending an email to all citizens every day or two seemed to easeoff the tells.