What is the best way to create growth and cashflow in Kairosoft's Venture Towns?
Solution 1:
Yeah I had this problem too. There is a secret to building in this game, or an understanding that you need in order to succeed, but unfortunately the game never makes this information available to you.
Important: The range from which an office building can discover jobs from closeby businesses is 5 tiles. The mega large office you get way late in the game has range 10.
Important: To successfully combo, the three buildings in the combo have to have AT LEAST 1 SQUARE of their territory inside what I could call a combo-window. Remember this when you are comboing with buildings that are 2x2. The window is a 3x3 grid like this:
X X X
X X X
X X X
So you can still qualify for a combo by placing buildings at the following 'O' locations:
O X O
X X X
X O X
This is very important, and turns out to be the secret to succeed. What you need to do is spread out the scaling benefits of combos to as wide an area as possible in order to raise land values, INCLUDING land values of the resident's homes. When you do this, and they upgrade their properties, they end up paying loads of tax and this is the solution to your money problem. Therefore I recommend building like this, where 'R' is a road, '#' and '*' are business combos, and 'X' are houses where people live:
# X #
R R R R R
X # X
* X *
R R R R R
X * X
There you have it, do this and you will be rocking in this game. Also, try this combo: Office, City hotel, Office (yes a second one). Although it sounds crazy and limiting to have two offices within a couple squares of each other, this is potentially the best combo in the game.
Solution 2:
What you do in the beginning of the game is very important in these city simulation games. You probably don't notice but all you talk about is build build build - which is the worse thing you can do when starting up this game.
The game gives you more than enough money to get you started. At the beginning of the game, all I did was buy about 8 vacant spaces all in a nice little compact block surrounded by road. Next to this block (or across the street) I have the office (to discover more types of jobs), Chinese restaurant, steak house, bakery, florist, a park and a deli (a bit later on). This will become your town center! And anything you build in the next couple of hours should be around this area. I place the houses and the business as close as I can because the little sprites can't travel very far at the beginning. And that's all you need for a while! Watch it grow. People move in (more income), business starts growing (more income). Remember, the only real expense at the very beginning of the game is the monthly $2000 you have from the office building. So if you can make more than that at the beginning, that means you're making dough.
Next step, just let the game sit for about one game year. If you do EXACTLY as i say you WILL exceed the $300,000 mark the game starts you off with. If your secretary says more people want to move in, make another small block of housing units close to the town center. When your office building discovers new higher paying jobs, switch your population over. By now you should have just about 12 - 18 people at MOST. Switching all these people to the higher paying job will NOT even dent your $300,000.
From then you'll start seeing a snowball effect. People getting richer, upgrading their houses, an spending more. The more they spend, the more you get tax.
Baby the game...be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day.
I have more 8.5 million in this game. Trust me
Solution 3:
You'll probably have to look up combos on a wiki. It's very poor design to expect people to guess combos, because most of the fun, challenge, and replayability is when you know all the combos and are trying to figure out how to mix them best. Kairosoft tuned down combo guessing on future games because of this.
Housing
Venture Towns is about property. On your first run, most of your cashflow comes from selling housing land. Your residents are dirt poor - they'd take a few years just to get to the $2k wage level. Though on a second run, you can import your starting resident with a lucrative job like Martial Artist ($6k) or Mafioso ($8k) and instantly start off with a decent cashflow. But otherwise, you'll have to live on housing and land price.
You make housing money in two ways: - Initial Sale - Rent Collection
Initial sales give you 6x the land price. That means you need to get your land price as high as possible before putting down a housing plot. Initially LP is $5k and gives you $30k. Put land next to a Nature combo and some trees, and it'll be worth $10k, giving you $60k. Land at well developed areas go for about $20k-$40k and thus sells at $120k-$240k.
Compare this to your residents earning money at a rate of $1k-$3k early on and you see how much of an impact this is.
Rent collections will pay you what the land is worth every year. The average will be a "house" or "condo", giving about 80%-100% of the Land Price. So, if you have about $200k of developed land, on average, you'll earn about $200k a year.
You'll want to develop these houses as much as possible - condos earn twice as much as bungalows and mansions earn 160% the LP.
Shops don't earn money
This is very counter-intuitive, but shops aren't there to earn you money. They are there to increase your land price.
Let's say you have only one bakery in the middle of town. Everyone will keep buying at that bakery until they run out of money. And then they'll work for more money and spend it. You'll want higher prices because they make people spend faster and work harder. But you don't actually want a lot of shops; each shop will lower the profits of other shops and
Some shops like the sports shops, college, trade school, arcade have such high prices that you'll lose money on them. Also note that the bigger your city, the higher their travel time, and the less time they spend working and spending money!
The 3x3 block
I took @Andy Fallon's answer and combined it for the 3x3 block, which I believe gives the optimal land prices and highest product price.
RRRRR
RH1HR
R2T2R
R121R
RRRRR
R is road. H is for house. 1 and 2 are different combos. T is a tree. Note on trees: The special trees will boost appeal. This is great for high paying blocks, bad for cheap blocks because they will appeal residents to buy cheap things instead of expensive goods.
Combos will boost land and product prices for adjacent buildings, and sandwiching them like this will provide double, stacking boosts for two different combos, and stacking land price for the houses.
You can also save a little space by reusing a item from two different combos. The following is how I set up my Geek and Toy combos together, giving enough space for an extra house:
H1H
2TG
12H
G here stands for the Game Shop, a poor choice otherwise because of low price and high maintenance, but good in this case.
Don't be afraid to reuse combos
I have 5 business combos in my game, because of how effective and cheap it is, plus having offices nearby unlocks certain jobs and buildings. Reuse the good ones and don't even bother with the bad ones, like the Lunch Combo and Silicon Combo. I'm tempted to dismiss the Pleasure Combo because of its bad effects, but Casinos can earn quite a lot.
There's also another counter-intuitive game mechanic: The more research you do, the higher the research costs for the next item. It's tempting to research useless things like the lunch combo because it's cheap and you have too much RP to burn. This will bite you back later, when it increases prices of actual good buildings like the Art Museum and College.
Most of the combos are rather poor, but the game will throw different buildings at you in each play through. Some variety may be needed to unlock different jobs and such.
Business + Shopping
The business + shopping combo are one of the most important combo in the game because it unlocks one of the best characters in the game. Both actually go best in the same 3x3 block, because the 30% product price boost really helps with the Jeweler's high prices.
I've never unlocked the buildings needed for this early, but it should be your first target as soon as you reach Super Town status.
Summary
Use as few shops as possible. Maximize land price before placing houses. Set up special plants along roads for RP.