Colossus Addon Mod - CAM Controller 3.1.1

This is one of the best mods, maybe amongst the top 20. But I would be curious to know how many people download and install this without knowing what this mod exactly does.

It needs a basic understanding about game mechanics - about growth especially - the mechanics why certain buildings of certain sizes grow and why not and how this mod affects growth by changing the caps for grow levels.

It isn't a desire mod and it doesn't balance desire for you, it only gives more headroom (the possible desire you can create). This means if you haven't the needed desire in your city the skyscrapers won't grow, even with the 'skyscraper option'.

On the other hand - if you downloaded and installed any growable building that has more than 5000 occupants - those buildings will mostly not grow at all without this mod. So it depends on the stats of your buildings if you need this mod, not on how the buildings look like (tall or small). So yes, on certain buildings growth is easier with this mod (or even: possible) and even earlier - but not city 'growth' itself - you still have to do a good major job to have this effect.

The growing curves described above can only work with buildings modded accordingly. Especially on the beginning - on cities up to ~5000 residents (grow stages 1-3), there is almost no difference between CAM or non-CAM development. The differences between the growing curves take effect on the long run.

The CAM modifies the base game's buildings therefore (grow stage and zone density). Accordingly it also changes network capacities and does some fixes . That's why it needs writing access on the base game data and why it changes them and makes a security copy. All this is written in the manual.

But if you don't deal much with the default buildings and instead download many other buildings (which aren't 'camified'), so what you do - you break this part of the mod with custom content again. It can't take effect on custom content if this content isn't modded accordingly.

The initial idear of this mod was to extend growing process, not to speed it up. On the base game, once your city has reached ~50.000 residents, growth is finished, all kind of buildings are available, all caps are exceeded and even if the city gets bigger, there won't appear new buildings once the highest grow stages (8) is reached. So the 'surprises' are finished, visually nothing much new will happen in your city . The idear was to extend this process up to 15 stages - not to play faster but longer and still get some 'surprises' and visual changes in the game.

But this only works with buildings modded accordingly.

So if you use an extended CAM installation and at the same time many custom content buildings that weren't modded for the CAM - what you're doing is making the mod more and more ineffective. If you change the mechanics and this mechanics can't be applied on most of the objects in the game ... it's like a clockwork without index. You won't see much going on.

Dude, you are a damn genius! You have managed to fix so many of the balance issues that have been plaguing maxis arithmetic miscalculations and oversights for years when it comes to growth and development on every level. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication. I look forward to the more streamline version 2.1.1. I know you're a very busy man but I was wondering if you had a time in mind for release? And, of course, I must give kudos to RippleJet for the initial work that he started.

Well done, thanks for reviving this innovative SimCity 4 mod!

When i was installing cam, my anti virus encountered a trojan the trojan is gone but its a great mod to grow cities!

Thanks for reviving this awesome mod .

Great mod other than one little glitch i'm receiving. I have no inCAMpatible buildings and have not gotten even close to my demand cap but am still getting buildings saying "abandoned due to commute time." Is there any way i can fix it or is this a glitch in the mod itself?

 

Everytime I download CAM and install it, I'm not able to save any of my cities. It keeps saying "Option disabled" where the "Save and quit" button would be, any help is appreciated!!!

 

I used to use the CAM extensively. What are the noticeable changes since 1.0?

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 Thanks for update! 

Great mod!