Cranial Overload

[GTD-Carthage 0]

Well, hello, guys. I'm new to Simtropolis...

And of course, that's not really and introduction. It's not really forbidden to post here first before posting up an introduction in the Omnibus. I will make my introduction a little later when I get myself on the right angle.

Now to get on-topic... well... cranial overload.

I've joined the forum only very recently and I seem to have failed to catch up... three years! I've been a long-running player of SC4 but my failure in first try forced me to put my copy away for a very long time and it's only presently I've dusted it up and installed it. Now to get the real point: the first thread I came to see here was the "Show Us Your Accomplishments". For three days I've been building a small town using those demand increase ordnance plug-ins... the town is now of  32,000 people neighboring to one smaller city but no skyscrapers. The deal is, I saw those pictures of megacities and ultrapoli in the thread and... I got BADLY OVERWHELMED! I said to myself "WTF-OMGTWOL!!! How did they make those cities?! They occupy entire regions!!! Military bases! Massive farmlands! Super my-brain-can't-render-it transportation networks! Skylines that are dominated by masses of the tallest skyscrapers in-game... which I've never built myself!"

So there. I want to make (try) a megacity myself. But do I think it's that quick? NO! It's a process that may take ages - years! Looking at my 32K-people city, it's not even beautiful - nothing more than rolling landscape of gridded roads and congested ways overshadowed by low-altitude-scrapers. I've never built a skyscraper as of yet and I'm not exactly the type to cheat for money. The only good thing about it is that it's my biggest city as of now and the people are happy... (thanks to more ordnance plug-ins )

The thing is... where can I start? What tutorials should I read? What plug-ins should I download?  How can I get the overloading mass off my brain?! :0 :0 :0 Please help. It would be nice for some sort of "Beginner's Guide to Fantasy Cities that Encompass Your Wildest Dreams".

[Sam 163]

Welcome to Simtropolis!

Making a big city like you have seen in the CJ's does take time. SimCity 4 is more realistic than previous versions in that you can't have skyscrapers in a small town. Skyscrapers (stage 7 and 8 buildings) start to grow at a population of 48 359 for the residential developer types (ie if you have 48 395 R$ sims in the region, about 2% of your R$ buildings are likely to be skyscrapers)

So you need high populations before skyscrapers will appear. The people who have lots of skyscrapers are likely to have spent a lot of time developing their region very carefully.

For beautifying your city, first you need a profitable budget each month (or "alternatively obtained" cash in your coffers). I find some of the best tutorials for creating nice looking features in the City Journals. Cjah has started collecting a few of them here: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=23&threadid=75821

Rochefort also has a collection of nice tutorial in various threads. One can be found here: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=23&threadid=76058

I'm sure others will have lots of suggestions too.

You could also do a search of the word tutorial, and also look in the city building concepts forum. There are several nice "Show us your..." threads, which might give you some good ideas.