441 replies to this topic

[Ion Cannon!]

CJ, on 20 Jun 2010, 20:35, said:

I don't see how you can manage to build such cities without feeling the urge to use that excellent catastrophe option to turn everything into ashes

I sometimes do, I just never save it after having massacred 3 million citizens

[Kris]

One thing i noticed in your region shot is, you like to keep your cities heavily compacted; You should really try spreading it out .

Oh yeah, I've abandoned the region i showed here earlier and started a new one (like i always do ). Here we go:

Region shot:


Road layouts shot:


EDIT: Fixed links

Edited by Kris, 20 June 2010 - 20:56.

[CJ]

Mmmhh... Setting some highways in the middle of nowhere doesn't seem like a good idea to me, especially those at the north, which doesn't lead anywhere... It'll just cost you a lot of money to maintain them. But then, with so many cities called nowhere, I guess you only play on a couple of them, and are just using the industrial cities to get energy for your capital without pollution

[Ion Cannon!]

Its compacted because I want a huge megacity. 9/10 times I try and make suburbs I change it to a skyscraper city fairly fast. I think I may stop my high rise spree now though and concentrate on urban sprawl. Or at least begin the transistion from urban to suburban. I need a huge ring road first though. I think I may try and make a huge 10 lane RHW.

Heres a region shot, population is pretty fucking huge

[Ion Cannon!]

As you can see i've expanded quite a bit, the cities outside the mega ring road - Its the highway that doubles up - are the boundary between urban and suburban. I've also varied my road layout as well so it isn't as grid like.

Here are the region shots, including my super highway - Which carries over 150k vehicles. Not suprising though, its surrounded by about 6 million sims.

Satellite view

Traffic view, i'm quite proud of my highways network, its all used very extensively. Every city also has extensive subway lines and frequent bus stops. You can clearly see the superhighway.


The superhighway terminates at Whitesands Bay, which I made today, it has an extensive sunken highway network and currently is superdense, but thats just because i'm constructing the core first. Whitesands bay is intended to be another major population centre, although likely not as large as Eaton. Eaton has 3.3 million sims, 1.8 million commercial jobs and 500k industrial jobs.

Here is an overview of Whitesands Bay. It currently has 515k sims and 308k commercial jobs.



And lastly, typical usage of the superhighway where it leaves Whitesands Bay to feed into Taylor Junction opposite.



If anyone would like images of the individual cities, ask and ye shall recieve.

[Destiny]

Jesus man, that city is so dense a nuke probably won't flatten it

[Zhao]

how do you guys do that last time i played Sim city 4 my cities always have issues


Lay down some industry
connect it to the green zone

and have some blue zone on the high way and i can never get big buildings like that =/

[R3ven]

After seeing this thread yesterday, I got my uncle to loan me his Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition, I'm still doing the tutorials(I'm on the Money Making one since the next one says it's easier when you know how to maintain 20k+ Pop cities, currently have 8k). I'm gonna get that Industrial quadrupler thing from earlier in this thread

Edited by Huhnu, 10 August 2010 - 05:51.

[Kris]

.

Edited by Kris, 29 May 2017 - 05:03.

[GuardianTempest]

That's it, I'm going to try and take this game for one reason: Low specs.

[Ion Cannon!]

Aaron, on 10 Aug 2010, 2:58, said:

how do you guys do that last time i played Sim city 4 my cities always have issues


Lay down some industry
connect it to the green zone

and have some blue zone on the high way and i can never get big buildings like that =/

At the start money is tight and growth is slow, you need to adjust all your services / power accordingly to save money. For example when you plop an elementary school unless you already have a sizable population the entire 750 student capacity will not be needed, so you lower the number till its more appropriate to what you need. do the same for police, hospitals, power plants and the fire department. Do not zone alot of high density residential straight away, it will cripple everything, you need experience in designing mass transport before you can zone super dense. Super dense zones also need alot of amenities. A default hospital can have 3300 patients, my 515k superdense zone has 59k patients.

Do not build highways for a while yet, they are very expensive to build and maintain and if you don't put them in the right place, the usage will be small. For now stick with roads and avenues.

The first city is always the hardest, but you can make it easier by using region play. When you get to the point I am at the game becomes easy, I can start a city and have 100k+ residents in a short space of time. Most of the power for my entire region comes from two powerplants. One of which has a capacity of 528k Mw, 10x more than the Hydrogen powerplant.

I have also made extensive use of custom content, which has allowed me to build such massive cities, without the custom content it would be much harder. For example those huge residential towers you see in Whitesands bay have a large amount of residents. The tall white ones have 6.2k R$$ and the tall blue ones have 5.8k R$$. I rarely / ever plop anything though. I sometimes plop Co $$ as its often reluctant to grow or gets taken over by Co $$$.

The NAM also has a component which increases all the traffic capacity of every kind of transport. Before this while my commute times were good, they were much higher.

Its perfectly possible to make large cities with just maxis content, but its harder and the cities look much worse. Huge repetition of buildings, particularily in the commercial areas. Schools / Hospitals / Power will also take up alot more area unless you use custom content. The hospital I use has 10x the capacity and 12x the cost of the default hospital and a footprint of 6x8.

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 10 August 2010 - 10:17.

[Jinzor]

Recently I've been starting to get back into SimCity 4.

Here's what I've got so far, nothing to boast about just yet but it will soon be bigger.



Made this region using SC4Terraformer, thats why you can see regions with a bright green colour. Also, I think I made the region WAY too bumpy because its kind of difficult to make a city look good on bump terrain.


PEG is an awesome BAT maker, this is one of his agricultural ones (a vertical farm).


I think there is something wrong with my NAM because nobody is using public transport. The capacity being used is 0% on all stations, bus stops and airports.


Growing city.


Farming area (to the West).



(The custom trees, terrain, civil/growable/utility/whatever buildings I got from the Exchange on Simtropolis, excellent website for adding more variety to your game. www.simtropolis.com)

Edited by Jinzor, 10 August 2010 - 13:34.

[Ion Cannon!]

NAM does sometimes fuck with public transport. Nobody ever seemed to use my rail so I deleted it. I'm not sure why the elevated won't work though, nor the bus / subways. There is also a NAM addon that replaces the elevated rail with high speed rail, its called the High Speed Rail Project(HSRP), you can probably find it on simtropolis.

Having 0 usage on an airport is odd.. did you make sure to download the newest version? It may be that you haven't run a road along the access side? As for bus stops having 0 usage, i've never encountered that problem, my bus network is heavily used.

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 10 August 2010 - 12:42.

[Jinzor]

Ion Cannon!, on 10 Aug 2010, 13:19, said:

NAM does sometimes fuck with public transport. Nobody ever seemed to use my rail so I deleted it. I'm not sure why the elevated won't work though, nor the bus / subways. There is also a NAM addon that replaces the elevated rail with high speed rail, its called the High Speed Rail Project(HSRP), you can probably find it on simtropolis.

Having 0 usage on an airport is odd.. did you make sure to download the newest version? It may be that you haven't run a road along the access side? As for bus stops having 0 usage, i've never encountered that problem, my bus network is heavily used.

Yep, the airport is definitely connected to the place it is supposed to be facing. Maybe I should reinstall the game and then reinstall the NAM with different settings. (No need to worry about all that custom content I downloaded, I got them all in my external harddrive. I can also easily rebuild this city and my region)

Oh and which is the newest version of the NAM?

Edited by Jinzor, 10 August 2010 - 13:36.

[Ion Cannon!]

This is the latest version - http://www.simtropol...ls.cfm?id=21355

[Jinzor]

O.K thanks.

[R3ven]

I found this kinda helpful, I'm really new at this though. I always seem to be the worst mayor ever within a few years xD

EDIT: Also, if you are gonna watch the vid, turn your speakers off, the music is horrendous.

Edited by Huhnu, 10 August 2010 - 17:42.

[Ion Cannon!]

[quote name='Huhnu' post='797182' date='10 Aug 2010, 18:42']

I found this kinda helpful, I'm really new at this though. I always seem to be the worst mayor ever within a few years xD

EDIT: Also, if you are gonna watch the vid, turn your speakers off, the music is horrendous.[/quote]

Or better yet, just mute youtube. I honestly wouldn't recommend what he is suggesting, at least not to begin with. The upkeep of the highway and other services will cripple your profit margins, and thats assuming you have one, with the above you might not. Its also quite obvious he already has lots of cities set up around - hence the highway connection. Once you have your first city running then this guide becomes alot more viable.

[Ion Cannon!]

No idea if anyone still plays this, but I do, so heres some more pictures, I've even included some which aren't skyscraper forests!

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 30 November 2010 - 13:14.

[Admiral FCS]

Seems like, for some reason, that I suck at every game there is. /Pessimism

So, I'm not that big a fan of skyscraper forests, but then how do I get a high enough pop that I can see at least some highrise? Region play?

[Ion Cannon!]

Admiral FCS, on 30 Nov 2010, 7:00, said:

Seems like, for some reason, that I suck at every game there is. /Pessimism

So, I'm not that big a fan of skyscraper forests, but then how do I get a high enough pop that I can see at least some highrise? Region play?

Region play would probably be your best bet, what problems do you encounter with your cities? Maybe I can help.

:Edited picture post, imageshack deleted the first image for some reason

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 30 November 2010 - 13:14.

[Wizard]

Ion, you need a new game to play mate

Those are some nice pictures though. Shame no one here plays OpenTTD, I've got some superb station setups going atm.

[Ion Cannon!]

Wizard, on 30 Nov 2010, 13:27, said:

Ion, you need a new game to play mate

Those are some nice pictures though. Shame no one here plays OpenTTD, I've got some superb station setups going atm.

I've been playing FO3, VVVVVV and a few others, but I always seem to go back to SC4. Then I get bored of it and drop it, only to pick it back up a few months later.

[Whitey]

This has made me really want to bust out my CD. Too bad it's at home...

[Admiral FCS]

Ion Cannon!, on 30 Nov 2010, 5:12, said:

Admiral FCS, on 30 Nov 2010, 7:00, said:

Seems like, for some reason, that I suck at every game there is. /Pessimism

So, I'm not that big a fan of skyscraper forests, but then how do I get a high enough pop that I can see at least some highrise? Region play?

Region play would probably be your best bet, what problems do you encounter with your cities? Maybe I can help.

:Edited picture post, imageshack deleted the first image for some reason

Haven't played in sometimes, going to start a new city. How do you take screenshots? I would think a screenie helps more than anything.