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Something I have been working on a while. My big city keeps getting dilapidated buildings from commute time. Any easy way to fix that without demolishing tons of stuff for highway or sprawling unrealistic subways?

The first thing I could think of making your highway consistent, not piece here piece there. Then build some monorails, and try to get bus stops in there. Many many bus stops.

Heh, I kinda did spam bus stops. The highway was a afterthought, I had to drag it under the downtown area using a tunnel.

What is the average commute time in your city which keeps dilapidating? There may be a pathfinding problem if its low, or you may need more jobs. If there are jobs available but they're not the right kind of job, it will often come up as - Abandoned due to commute time. In between abandoning try and see if any sims are getting to work and if they are, how far is it and how many of them have jobs? Is it one particular wealth band abandoning or an area? If its an area you could always redesign it. Abandonment is hard to remove completely, my biggest city I have two buildings which abandon for what seems to be no reason. But 2 buildings out of 3.7 million sims doesn't seem so bad

The best solution is probably a subway network. I use roadtop subways to save space, though my older cities still have the maxis ones. http://www.simtropol...ls.cfm?id=14767

Its also worth when laying out your subway to create subway main routes, and have the stations fan off this. The main routes shouldn't go through any stations, but simply carry sims from one area of the city to another. If your main routes go through stations, it will slow down considerably.
Edited by Ion Cannon!, 05 December 2010 - 14:01.

Oh, the main routes are a nice thing to know, I simply built grids with the subway, the borders being the outtermost stations.

Click Here

This links to one of the BEST project teams in SC4. They have many projects to enhance your transportation system. I would post stuff, but I lost my SC4. I'll make something with this later...

Heres a few nice shots of a suburb I've been working on. And to all those playing simcity 4, don't be shy! show us what you've created, I can't be the only one intrigued surely? Oh and if anyone wants help with SC4, feel free to add my MSN, its on my profile.

Anyway, this little town is called Astoria, most of its residents are R$$$ and they commute into one of the commericial megacities via the highway. I've spent a fair bit of time making it look aesthetically pleasing, see what you think.




Edited by Ion Cannon!, 07 December 2010 - 02:12.

That's an awesome city you have there.

Without mods stuff look so plain, but I'm gonna post a screenie soon. Really wouldn't be comparable to this masterpiece though >.<
Edited by Admiral FCS, 07 December 2010 - 01:08.

Admiral FCS, on 7 Dec 2010, 1:06, said:

The stuff they do on simtropolis - Look in City Journals / CJ's, is simply incredible. Mine is horrible in comparison.

Hmm, imageshack fucked with my screenshots again, edited and updated..

Now that I have free time again, I might get back into this. Start up a new region this time, can't be bothered continuing with my last.

Screenshots to come.
Edited by Alias, 07 December 2010 - 02:08.

Not bad Ion. Too bad I can never seem to escape the boring square grids, probably by personality of liking to keep tidy.

I started another new city recently, on another side of my (gigantic) region. I forgot how long or the method to get the first R$$$ to move in, so what is it?

Parks. Parks everywhere. Also everything has to be nice and clean. Education has to be high too. And water, you need water. Lots of water. I'd also suggest a police station.

I was going to post a picture of my city that i was quite proud of up to this point.
I opened up SC4 and my city just looks awful in comparison to everything I've seen in this thread. I didn't take any pictures because none of it looked any good D:

I will have another go in the future

JJ, on 7 Dec 2010, 5:10, said:

Actually, having R$$$ sims isn't entirely beneficial, yes they bring in huge taxes but they also have several drawbacks. R$$$ sims primarily provide demand for C$$ and C$$$ - Of which at least in my cities, I can never build enough. They are also lazy and least likely to use public transport, instead opting to use their big cars and fucking up your lovely commute times. R$$$ also overwrites any lower wealth bands, which is a pain.. If you zone a large dense zone and have 8000 R$$ demand, but also have 750 R$$$ demand instead of the entire area being huge medium wealth condos it will be huge sprawling mansions with 13 sims in each. In my biggest cities I raise the R$$$ taxes to 12% to keep them away. Periodically I lower the taxes and allow lots of R$$$ skyscrapers to develop, then raise the taxes again to avoid mansions. Of course, in suburbs large mansions are fine, but I hate it so much in my megacities when a lot which could / should develop into a 4000 sim skyscraper instead becomes a mansion with 13 sims.

I normally use grids myself, with a little variation, I'm trying to make it less griddy as I build out though. Grids are definately the easiest and most efficient way of running a city. I rather like squeezing as many sims as I can into one tile, which is just impractical in a non grid. My current record for the largest tile is 3.7million sims, 2 million commerce and 550k industry(Small bit of space left). Medium tile, 1 million sims, 600k commerce, 100k industry (Although I still have space). Small tile 550k sims.

I also must confess that I use a cheat to remove crime. It annoyed me that even with full coverage crime still occurs ( Though thats realistic ). All my cities have full crime coverage though, I still pay the money monthly for the upkeep. Crime makes your buildings look dilapidated though, even if they aren't. I like all my buildings to look shiny and new. Thats why I remove it.

Quote

I have 2.1GB of custom content, it helps cities look nice, trust me. I have a huge variation in the buildings that can grow, I can build more complicated highway networks, I can make sunken highways, I have a choice of about 400 trees, I can create canals. I also have mods which change the streets to give them trees and just make them look nicer basically. In short the only limit is my imagination and my skill with various tools. With stock SC4 your limited in the scope of the variation of buildings and you can't do anything that aesthetically pleasing. You can still make nice terrain though
Edited by Ion Cannon!, 07 December 2010 - 14:44.

Seeing all these images makes me want to reinstall SC4 again

Update on Astoria and city overview. Also a region shot of the entire city (Not the entire region)

What's that huge ass building on the 2nd shot?

NDEX Old Post Office - http://www.simtropol...ls.cfm?id=15266

Quick question: how to install custom content >.<

My Documents/SimCity4/Plugins

Another question.

I've got the Census Repository Building. Now I'm wondering what's cap.

Why does every Maxis game require at least 1GB of custom content in order to become really interesting and bug-free? *Looks at the Sims*

Anyway, I'd play the game again but I'm way too lazy to start skimming custom content websites again so I guess I'll stick with L4D2 for now
BTW Ion, you obviously have too much spare time if you start putting so much effort in the aesthetics :o

The only really necessary custom content is the industry fix and the NAM, which add up to being like 20mb. The unessential aesthetic stuff is what takes up the room, and Simcity 4 is a brilliant game even without it.
Edited by Alias, 08 December 2010 - 07:53.

Yeah it's a great game on it's own when you have Rush Hour installed, but as soon as you start using CC, you can't go back to playing the original game D:

CJ, on 8 Dec 2010, 7:08, said:

It looks that way does it? I can't blame you, but I don't have that much spare time. I took yesterday and am taking today off, but over the weekend I worked for about 30hours.

I could have made a rather boring, yet functional city, I chose not to.

Alias is right, though I prefer playing it with custom content, I also enjoy searching for it...