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Anyone know what the pros/cons of budget increasing vs new plant building is?
If the budget can go up to 150%, shouldn't I just put it up there rather than building a new plant to cater for power consumption?

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  • Don't know for sure yet, so won't post as an answer, but I could imagine ah higher power budget will increase the efficiency and lower the chance for fires or other problems, possibly even reducing environmental impacts (noise/environmental damage).
    – Mario
    Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 8:31

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The budget allows you to increase or decrease the effectiveness of your services at rip-off prices. Decreasing your budget by 50% will actually decrease the output by 75%, and increasing your budget by 50% only increases your output by 25%.

For power and water, I see no reason to increase the budget past 100%, it's simply easier and cheaper to build new buildings.

For services such as school or fire, I like to crank those up to 150% once money becomes no issue. This is because their effectiveness goes up while reducing how many of those buildings I need to cram into each area.

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  • I don't know how to check whether your numbers are exactly correct, however, when dropping the power budget to 60-70% I certainly saw more than a 50% decrease in output, so I'll tick this - thanks.
    – Stafford Williams
    Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 14:18
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    @staffordwilliams, create a new map and add a sole coal power plant. Output should be 40. Drop budget to 50%, power output should then be 10.
    – user66184
    Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 15:08
  • For water sure, power is more expensive and boosting past 100% can easily provide you with the needed time to get the funds for a new power plant.
    – Jonathan Drapeau
    Commented Mar 23, 2015 at 13:11
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When going "overbudget" on a Service it increases it's efficancy. For Powerplants it will be the Power Output. For Schools or Medical Services etc it will be the Range in which the building operates.

Let's stick with the Power Supply for the next part.

There are serveral things to consider when adjusting the budget. In the very beginning of the game you dont need a full budget, atleast not when you start with a coal-powerplant. It produces much more energy then needed. So you can go down on the budget to save you some money in the beginning.

When you realize that you do something very simple:

Adjust the budget as need be!

when you cant supply your town with 150% budget, get a new powerplant, and reset the budget to fit the new output/requirement level.

Thats how you get the most out of your buildings for the best money spend.

PS: I never had any fire on a service building, but it seems that it does reduce/increase the pollution depending on budget.

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