You're ready to make great, successful towers? Your already half way there. All it takes to build excelent towers is some basic information and guidelines, your own strategy, and a little confidence. By following these guidelines, you can build your own towers with your own design, built the way YOU want to build it. It's much more fun that way. So, lets get started shall we?

Lesson 1 - In the beginning...
In order to build a great tower, you need to start strong (well, you don't NEED to, but it helps!). So, before you can build anything, you need to build a lobby. But, if your a cheater, you can select the lobby tool and click it in the way bottom left corner of the main screen and your funds will double (not recommended for more satisfaction when your tower is completed).

Did you know that you can build two and even three story lobbies? All you need to do is hold ctrl (for 2 story) or ctrl and shift (for 3 story) when building your first section of lobby. Now, you need to decide how wide you want your lobby to be "for now", as you can always expand it.

Just for your information, 9 condos wide can fit 9 condos(obviously) and 16 offices perfectly, so you may want to take that into consideration when building your tower. However, I usually start a little smaller, maybe about 6 condos wide and expand later (to save money for now). When you have finished building your lobby, you will need an elevator/elevators (more depending on how big it is). I recommend placing it/them on the sides of the tower, but anything works. Be sure to save room for express elevators somewhere (preferably in the middle), also, otherwise you will need to delete the one you just placed later.
Now that the lobby has been built, it's time to build on top of it! I recommend placing only commercial items (fast food, shops, party halls, etc.) on the floors directly above and below the lobby (and skylobbies) for best business. Taking that into consideration, you can either build fast food joints right above the lobby now, or leave it empty and build later (I prefer the latter since fast food costs a lot). Next, I recommend that you build only condos until you have reached about 3 or 4 million dollars. Condos cost $80,000, but they pay you $150,000 right away. This is why I recommend condos, because they almost pay double what you put them down for! (but if you really don't like condos, you could place offices too, it will just take longer to build up enough funds, and more elevators and shafts will be required.) If you haven't built the fast food joints yet, you should do that now.

Download completed example of Lesson 1

Lesson 2 - Now what?
Now, all your tower should have is a lobby, a couple elevator shafts, some fast food joints, and some condos (or offices). What do you want to build next? Its up to you. You can build condos or offices (and if you have two stars now you can even build hotel rooms!). I recommend building offices, although condos do provide a hefty amount of money in a short time, you need a solid weekly/daily income, which offices and hotel rooms both provide (you could build them both). If you do decide to build hotel rooms, you will need housekeeping to clean them up in the morning. You can either have a housekeeping station or two on the same floor, or have them on a different floor and have a service elevator connect the two. I prefer the first, because you can build as many housekeeping stations as desired, but only 24 elevator shafts.
Another thing to keep in mind when you continue to build your tower is that its good to have a mixture of things on floors. IE-

Blending of rooms helps keep your tenants from waiting to long too get on an elevator. This is because things like offices require much more elevator use than hotel rooms or condos. But I do recommend keeping the same type of rooms on the stories. Keep building, but stop when you complete the 13th floor. Remember what I said about lobbies? Put fast food places on the 14th floor and save one condo width for security (unless you have it, then build it). I recommend building security stations below every skylobby for best coverage. Build a skylobby on the 15th floor. Build skylobbies and only skylobbies every 15 floors. So, floor 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90 should all be skylobbies. If theyr'e not, your game will become much tougher. I cannot stress that enough. When you have finished building the fast food and the lobby, stop building!(Unless you have 3 stars that is, then you can move on to lesson 3, but read the rest of lesson 2 first) You can bring your elevators up another 15 floors, but I do not recommend this as your traffic will be very, very bad. Also, always load your elevator shafts with 8 elevators to keep things running smoothly. Now you must build horizontally. In order to do this, you will need to expand your lobby. Remember to build only what you built before on that story (unless they are commercial type items). When you obtain three stars, which should be very soon, move on to lesson 3.

Download completed example of Lesson 2

Lesson 3 - The 3rd star challenge!
YAY! You have three stars, time to sit back, relax, and watch your gorgeous tower work, right? Unfortunately, it isn't that simple. Now that you have a higher rank, your tenants require more things! First of all, your offices will require parking spots. I recommend building those first. Build a parking ramp on b1, and build as many parking spots as that floor can handle. You may also need to reserve B2,B3,B4, and even B5 for parking depending on how big, and how many offices you plan to put in your tower. For the average tower, 3 floors of parking should be more than fine.

The more bigger your tower is, the more recycling centers are needed.

You will need to put a recycling center down there too, while your at it. Put it on the floor directly lower than the last one reserved for parking, and connect a normal elevator to it.

You do NOT need a service elevator connecting it to the lobby, contrary to the manual. Also save those whole two floors for recycling centers (you'll need them).
The tenants also request that a medical center be built near the lobby. Put one above the lobby (If you don't have space, you can delete some of the condos or fast food places, or expand), but make sure it is less than two floors away from the lobby. You probably will also need to place one of these just above every skylobby, too, depending on how many offices you have.
If you want your tower to be wider, now is the time to widen it. Expand your lobby to the desired width, then build, build, build! Remember to use extra elevators where necessary, too (if the room says "Elevator is too far away", then you will need to build one closeby). When you're done making it wider, we can make this thing taller! If you click and hold the elevator tool button, you will notice that there is a new elevator, called an express elevator. Express elevators are great, without them, no tower over 60 stories could be built. Express elevators have no limit to the amont of stories they can reach, they are much bigger, but they only stop every 15th floor (which should be a skylobby).

Let me explain what these are used for. Say you are a tenant and want to get to your room on the 81st floor. First, you take an express elevator in the lobby to floor 75 (which is a skylobby), then, you take a local elevator, also located on the skylobby, directly to your floor. It's that easy! You will probably need one of these things for each skylobby you have, and you will want to put them in the middle of your tower, so plan accordingly. I also recommend having one express elevator dedicated to each lobby. for example, have one stop at only 15, one only at 30, etc. Place an express elevator near the middle of your tower, and raise it up to the 15th floor, and have it go all the way down to your last parking floor. Put a couple of shafts in there for now, and add the maximum 8 when you have the money. Bring your other shafts down to the 14th floor, and build new ones as close to those as possible on the skylobby. Then, you can raise those new ones another 14 floors, and build just like you were doing before.

Remember to only place commercial items directly below and above skylobbies, and to build skylobbies every 15 floors.Also remember to build security below each skylobby, and a medical center above each skylobby. Well, here is the part where I turn you loose, you know pretty much everything you need to know, and now I am sure you can build some awesome towers!

The Miscellaneous
When you reach 4 stars you will need to build a metro station. Metro stations are pretty much subways that connect stop at your tower, and nothing can be built below them, so build them low. People from these busses will only shop and will stay in the underground area of your tower, so build some commercial items beneath your recycling centers for them to use. I also recommend that you connect those with escalators, otherwise they will use the express elevators, and that could be cause a lot of traffic.

When you reach 5 stars you can build a cathedral. Cathedrals must be placed on the 100th story. You can only get a TOWER rank if you have a cathedral and a permanent population of 15,000.

Its good to check your evaluation every now and then. To do this, click EVAL on the map. Blue areas are excellent, which means everything is perfect. Yellow areas mean its good, but it could be better, sometimes this just comes from a stressful tenant or two. Red areas mean terrible. Try to fix these as soon as possible or tenants will move out. Usually its just that the elevators are taking too long to get to their floor, unless a seperate complaint is listed. Try to make another elevator shaft near the area if possible.

Download finished tower

The Key Points
- To cheat and double your funds, click the lobby and "build" one on the way bottom left corner of the screen.
- If you want a double story lobby, hold control when building the first section.
- If you want a triple story lobby, hold control and shift when building the first section.
- 9 Condos can fit 16 Offices perfectly
- Only build condos in the beginning to boost your funds
- Build only skylobbies every 15 floors
- Build only commercial items on floors directly above and below skylobbies
- Don't build past the 15th floor if you don't have 3 stars, build horizontally
- Put 8 cars in each elevator shaft
- A mixture of floors keeps elevator traffic good
- Offices require much more elevator use than anything else
- Save room for parking and recycling centers in the lower levels.
- Build security on every floor beneath the skylobby
- Build medical centers on every floor above the skylobby
- Have one express elevator for every 15 floors (or skylobby).
- Dedicate each express elevator to a skylobby.
- Build metro stations as low as possible.
- Have fun!

If you have any questions or need clarification on anything, E-mail me!