ADVANCED TOPICS
Tip #4 -- Neighbor Deals

You can make deals with your neighbors to:

• Buy or Sell Power
• Buy or Sell Water
• Import/Export Garbage

For a Power Deal, you'll need to run a power line connection to the neighbor.

For a Water Deal, you'll need to run a water pipe connection to the neighbor.

For a Garbage Deal, you'll need to run a road, rail, or highway to the neighbor, or have a functioning seaport.

The connection must be built before your neighbors will start offering deals.  Your neighbors will also wait until your city is a certain size before they offer a deal (from my experience it seems like you need a population of at least 1000).  If you want to sell them power or water or import their garbage, you'll need to have a large surplus of Power, Water, or Garbage Disposal.

Buying power or water from your neighbors and exporting your garbage will reduce the pollution in your city and you won't have the expense of building the utilities.  However, the neighbor deals are really expensive and are not a very good long-term solution.  You can use this if you have lots of money and need to lower your pollution, but usually it's better to just build more Water Treatment Plants and Water Pumps and replace some of your older dirty Power Plants with less-polluting types.

Note: if you start seeing messages that neighbors are trying to sell you power or water or take your garbage, it's a good sign that you need to build more power plants, water facilities, or garbage disposal.

Selling power and water and importing garbage is a great way to make money for your city!  Just keep in mind that you will be creating the pollution for two cities.  Make sure you have Water Treatment Plants and the cleanest possible Power Plants.

Save your city before accepting any renegotiating of the deal, as sometimes the new amount will be more than you can produce, and instantly result in a large cancellation penalty (this seems most common in Water deals).  If you've saved the city first, then you can go back and load the city, build more power plants (or water pumps or garbage disposal) before accepting.