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| Good Fire, Police & Health Service Coverage = Happy Citizens |
Fire, Police & Health are Essential Services which get introduced early into the game just as most players are beginning to speed up their Residential expansions and can lead to sharp cash flow crises and immediate problems with Sims abandoning buildings en-masse unless you are financially prepared for it.
The followings tips can help you operate smoothly around these most dangerously expensive levels for Essential Services:
1) Which Levels do Fire, Police and Health become active services?
Fire Services become active early on at Level 5 while Police Services comes later at Level 12 and Health Services at Level 16 (plus minimum 16,000 population).
2) What is the recommended Cash Reserve for each Level?
- For Fire you should have at least $20,000 available for purchasing different levels of fire stations for a modestly sized town at this earliest stage.
- Police Service Units are 80% more expensive than Fire so a $30,000 to $40,000 Simolean cash reserve is recommended at this point.
- Health Service Units are a further 23% more expensive so $40,000 to $60,000 cash reserve should be prudent as long as you have been maintaining a stable growth of residential units while focusing on optimizing revenues from factories and shops via your Trade Depot and the Global Trade HQ.
3) What are the actual costs per item for each Fire/Police/Health Unit?
- Small Fire Station - Cost: $6,100, Coverage Area: 48 Units of Space
- Basic Fire Station - Cost: $11,000, Coverage Area: 120 Units of Space
- Deluxe Fire Station - Cost: $42,100, Coverage Area: 484 Units of Space
- Small Police Station - Cost: $10,100, Coverage Area: 48 Units of Space
- Basic Police Station - Cost: $18,800, Coverage Area: 144 Units of Space
- Deluxe Police Station - Cost: $72,100, Coverage Area: 576 Units of Space
- Small Health Clinic - Cost: $12,300, Coverage Area: 64 Units of Space
- Health Clinic - Cost: $23,200, Coverage Area: 144 Units of Space
- Hospital - Cost: $64,200, Coverage Area: 576 Units of Space
4) Okay, it is expensive but why is it so dangerous then?
Because these estimates are based on a gradual development of optimized residential growth in your city with space and cash reserves to accommodate each level. If you have been expanding like crazy and using up all your free space and cash to expand then you can kill your whole city overnight if the population decides to abandon you due to lack of essential services. Once this starts to happen it is very hard to get back to normal with no tax base, no services and unlivable buildings.
