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My end goal is to create a tech city. The very first city I created I tried this, but soon ran into resource problems.

I then started a new region, my first city was mining. When I got to the point where I could smelt, I wanted to start creating alloys (for the later tech city), but of course I needed coal. So I started a second city that just mines coal. All good so far. I have two cities, one mines ore, the other mines coal.

At this point I want to send the coal I mine from city 2 to city 1, instead of having to buy it from the global market. But for the life of me I can't figure out how to do this. I have searched far and wide. Please Stack Exchange, help me out, it's very frustrating.

Thank you

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4 Answers 4

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You can gift any of the 10 commodities to any other city in your region that has a road or rail connection. You can also gift cash.

To do this, go to region view while loaded into the city you wish to send the gift. Once your camera pans out, select the city you wish to receive the gift, but do NOT load it. Once the city is selected, click the gift button on your toolbar (it will be the farthest icon on the right). This will allow you to send anything your host city has in stock to the remote city.

A couple of caveats:

  • The host city must have the item in supply at a trade depot or at a place of origin. Such as the coal mine or oil well. The host city also must provide a vehicle for transport (each of these sources has 1 by default, more can be added via module).

  • The destination city must have a place to store the item, such as their own trade depot with the appropriate module OR a building that can receive it (in this case, the smelter).

  • Gifting is not instant. The item has to actually be physically loaded into a vehicle and transported to the other city. I like to wait for the notification at the top of the screen confirming that a "gift has been sent to city X". By the same token, the other city will take a bit of time to receive the gift as it is in transit. When the gift is received, you will also get a notification.

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  • Thanks for the answer. I knew about gifting, but I was under the impression you could make it happen through trade, just like you can with electricity and other services. Is this not the case ?
    – Dirk
    Commented Mar 17, 2013 at 9:35
  • You know, I'm 99% sure that is the case. I've not seen any other way to send resources between cities other than gifting, but I'll check one more time when I get home. It would be nice if there were an interface that allowed you to exchange a shipment of say, coal for a shipment of oil each day or something.
    – Tater596
    Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 12:26
  • The way they (Maxis) have made it sound, saying that people in a region should be relying on each other, would make one think it should be possible.
    – Xantec
    Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 18:08
  • You'd think, but that relying on one another thing seems to be taking shape in the form of gifts, at least when trading commodities is concerned.
    – Tater596
    Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 18:18
  • I saw a tip on the loading screen yesterday, that went something like this "You can send resources on a truck to a neighbouring city" Not exact words, but it was something to that effect. But yah, there seems no way of doing it that I can see.
    – Dirk
    Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 8:38
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The other way to support other cities is to set them up to buy and sell on the global market. Selling lowers prices and buying increases them. I believe SimCity simulates a microeconomy of the global market by making things cheaper to your local cities that you sell. Note that ports and train depots can be built to dramatically increase the scale and speed of gifting. In this way, it becomes much easier to manage the trading because you don't have to worry about capacity problems and rate. "Trading" resources is done by "mutual gifting" so that you can "trade" with yourself in the other city or offline players. Not exactly elegant, but that's why.

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But (and I'll admit I'm relatively new to this version of SimCity) my first city, which has a coal plant, has always had to pay $6000 a day for coal, both when it was my only city and now that I have a coal-rich neighbor selling tons on the global market. So I don't think that selling coal is impacting my region's microeconomy at all. Although I'm having the coal plant buy directly rather than via a trade depot, so that might be the reason?

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I just checked. You have to have trade depots one each end to be able to gift it, and IN the depot's inventory, and some way to physically deliver it.

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