Big Cities Easy (pictures!)

[CautionNYC 0]

Big cities are easier then you think.  I usually have 1 million people on a tile by year 100.  There's only a few things you really need to do to make regions sky rocket.

City stats right now (2-3 weeks old)
- ~3 mil regional population
- city with ~900k R$$$/R$$ and 600k Co$$$ (something like 30-40 ong towers already in region
- 60-90k people using highways in some places
-over 100% usage of all forms of transportation
-only 6 tiles build in region

My only goal was to make a full large tile almost completely full of R$$$ and CO$$$.  The way I went about this is pretty simple.  Here's what I did to get the region this size.

1) The biggest change from the way I used to play is restricting what I want to build to certain areas.  I built a low wealth city, a medium/low wealth city and a high wealth city.  Generally I try to keep R$, CS$ (sometimes CS$$) and dirty industry in my low wealth cities; R$$, some R$, CS$$, CS$$$, some CO$$, and manufacturing in my medium wealth cities; and R$$$, CO$$$ and high tech in my high wealth cities.  

2)  Elevated highways are the key to success.  I build them very early on, have to take out loans for a while usually to start getting a region rolling initially.  I only connect my elevated highways with avenues so that my traffic is focused.  I ONLY build commercial on my avenues.

3) Once my elevated highways are positioned (if I don't have the money, I just keep an avenue as a place keeper until I have the money to finish it), and the avenues running off the highways, I build 8X_ blocks.  I keep the other dimension blank because it doesnt really matter.  All you need is 4x4 squares on each side on the street so that the largest buildings can move in.  If the demand is not high enough for a large building to move in, then a smaller building will move in and usually put a yard or a parking lot as a place keeper.  ******The trick is that you need to hold down ctrl when you pot land for getting the 4x4 squares********* if you try to destroy the autoformatting grey streets that sim city automatically puts in (when you try to zone a large square) and then zone some more so that the zots do not point at a road, sometimes they won't build in.

4)  I hate how subways and buses screw up my blocks.  But I managed to find a way to get around it.  Just like how the game suggests to place one ways parrallel to eachother (like a avenue) to reduce traffic, I put two roads next to eachother, with a space between them.  I then put my subway stops and bus stops between them or a monorail.  With the stops between the two streets, commuters will still exit the stop on either side of the street, so the stops dont get in the way and allow you to have lots more space for skyscrapers, while keeping them organized!

5) The best way to get out of debt is to start building your industry first.  Start your low wealth city, build a ton of industry near one of your highways and keep building until the demand tapers off.  Industry doesn't really need anything else to grow, there is always more demand than you need (but you need to build it out or your demand for residential won't grow), it's just tricky finding places for the dirty and manufacturing because of the polution.

6) Focus your highways to the center tile of your region, make that your capital.  I couldn't believe how much of an impact that had on my high wealth region.  I had either 2-3 cities ( my low wealth and medium wealth region, which at that point only had 300k and 600k residents, respectively, and maybe 1 more small region) and I had 20,000 cars, 30,000 busses and 10k trucks coming into my high wealth city almost the second it started.  The first two avenues that connected to the elevated highways had LOTS of traffic, and made CO$$$ POUR in.  I used to always grid small like some people suggest here, but when I did this, my traffic wasn't focused.  Now I have all the traffic where I want it, and no traffic where I don't want it (since my residential ONLY sits on one ways, have only avenues running perpendictular to those one ways, and elevated highways connected to those avenues)


A lot of my high wealth region is distressed, despite having a full green major rating.  The reason in my mind is that I still have a lot of medium wealth to move in outside and around the main city before I can make a whole large tile just high wealth.  For the first time, I got an international airport to its largest setting, I have about 800,000 usage and only 900,000 capacity.  For the first time, my commercial is getting HIGH customers, in the past they have almost all been low customers, even on the biggest CO buildings.  Since there is so much high wealth in one region, the traffic naturally flows INTO the city, on almost every other region, the traffic goes OUT of the city.


I'll post some screen shots soon.

[CautionNYC 0]

welp, apparently I can't upload anything... Maybe ill put it on strike9 or something if I get ambitious enough

[Gridlock 9]

Cool experiment ,i  like big cities .

[CautionNYC 0]

Picture of my downtown, no cheats, just NAM at one of the lowest settings

[CautionNYC 0]

This is how I usually do blocks, commercial on the avenues, residential on the roads (upgrade to one ways when I am not lazy).  Avenues generally lead to the high way.  All commercial on any avenue has high customers.

[CautionNYC 0]

Region view, should have just downloaded a map and worked from there, but the terraforming is coming along.  The southern highway coming from the east of the city going towards the other 3 cities gets the most traffic.  Usually 30-50k in each direction, with a couple thousand more of each type of commuter going into the city.

[Gridlock 9]

Wow i am amazed that your able to use single roads ,im also amazed that the 3 tile double stops on the road junctions arent crippling the city or the single avenue cross roads,i think maybe when the city gets bigger ,from my experience ,and opinion only ,that the Mono is gonna produce lots of pollution ,next to combined with the road pollution,as sims later demand to use more cars,i hav a constant battle with polution like we all do ,if my pol level goes over 100 ,no one realy want s to live there ,i d put the mono down the centre ,then one space either side ,for trees,then 4 squares for 4v4 s then the one way road , i never have less than 6-8 tiles between any road junctions ,they just become choking pionts . Anyway cool city and good luck on reaching a million.

[bixel 1,228]

INSANE!!! Hrmmmm, watching this closely.

[helomoto 28]

Well yeah anyone can make really large cities, i would rather have a more detailed city though before a largely populated.

[CautionNYC 0]

I go for detail, but some of the buildings you can add are ridiculous (downloadable buildings).  I like it unmodded, just trying to go for the highest density city I can and add low density later.

The traffic guy always gives me problems, most of the city ordinances cover the polution problems for me, I still have trouble where like 30,000 cars first hit an avenue after an elevated highway.

The main way I get around the polution problems though is monorail.  I grid monorail.  Look at my picture above, the example with the zones that are not built on.  Even where the tracks cut across horizontal, each zone is still a 4x4 square, so I'm hardly wasting any space.  In my previous region, I had monorail grided across like 3 maps for my main city, and had off shoots go to the suburbs.

I just added 200k to my high wealth city, went to start another region above my medium wealth city and I still had demand for high wealth.  I left all the taxes normal( R$- 6%, R$$ 5%, R$$$, 4% --- CS$ 6.5%, CS$$ 6%, CS$$$ 6%, CO$$ 4.5%--------manufacturing 6%------left out agriculture, CO$$$, and dirty) I'm beginning to think that the high wealth city is actually influencing the demand on the adjacent cities.  Within the first 10 buildings, I had an ong build, along with 3 other high wealth skyscrapers.  They left pretty fast, because most of the other buildings around it were low wealth and the tile was undeveloped, but I still can't believe I had an ong build on a new region with only 50k people and after building on my main city.

I'm going to start making my cities look nicer now that I have figured out how to control what builds where.  Makes it a lot easier to gradient the size of buildings also when you know whats going to build in. 

[CautionNYC 0]

The big suburbs and the big city each have 1 mil on them, and they arent even done yet Not to mention I have 25 tiles total, lots of its going to change.

[Superchan 23]

looks cool.

[mightygoose 92]

looks very interesting however when i build megopolises i tend to get i start a new adjacent region and the first building built is either project bootstrap or the salvation tower lol...

[newyorkstate 6]

Very nice everybody! Wow! I'm learning new stuff...

[Goldfish4209 9]

That looks great... I'd like to see how it turns out...

[Dark_Jedi06 13]

Some very nice organization you've got going there, not to mention pletny of skyscrapers.

My only problem is that everything is neat and organized for like 20 years, and then it all falls apart into disarray. Good job doing what I can't.

[MarcosMX 222]

I bet you are using a RCI Plop mod, because the demand is vey low and you are just ploping Resindetial buildings.

[shivsood 5]

soz it realli does look like a plopmod to me, prove me wrong if it realli isnt

[pepsi71ocean 2]

Originally posted by: MarcosMX I bet you are using a RCI Plop mod, because the demand is vey low and you are just ploping Resindetial buildings.quote>

 

I doubt it. I tried that once the no job zots will appear within seconds if you play the game. ive tried it and it didn't work so i just got rid of the plop mode. I doubt it is being used. 

If you want proof, my cj has about a dozen cities that hit close to a million. I would be stumped if he is. I actuly just whiped my captiol which had just about 1 million citizens its growth was hampered by lack of the NAM. 

I like how this is moving along, and am looking forward to more!

[Kippis05 2]

Yeah. I tried the plop mod. After about one month, no matter how many jobs were close by, they would abandon. I got rid of it. But I doubt he's using it.

[Neon612 0]

Uh srry but i can't see the pictures so i have no visual ideas of what you are talking about

[shivsood 5]

the plop mod res works fine for me!?!?!?! i just place the building on a previously developed res building and if there is demand for the building wealth that im plopping the building works fine

[MayorTim 16]

Wow, first of all, CautionNYC: You NEED to stop posting after yourself. On this site, it is against the rules to double post. In this thread, you have double posted twice, and triple posted once. Don't do that. Use the edit button instead.

Also, none of your pictures show up. Try hosting them on Imageshack, but make sure they are 800x600 JPGs.

[shinkansen1 84]

Using the plop mod is easy. The first thing you have to do is zone for residential development, and wait for the houses and traffic to appear. THEN you plop the residential buildings on top of those. It's pretty tricky, isn't it? The really good thing about it is that when you get a residential district that you don't like, just plop whatever houses, commercial, or industrial buildings that you would like in that certain area. *****Commercial buildings don't need to be placed on a commercial-zoned area because they don't spawn any traffic. Residential spawns cars and industrial spawns freight trucks. Keep this in mind and you will have a city that you may as well enjoy editing to your liking.

[RushHourFreak 1]

Hmmm, I would take that on mind!

[wmthor 0]

I feel lazy to read so can someone post pic to proof that it work so I would bother to read.

[foxen1977 0]

Can u please upload the pictures again ???

[dillyhox 1]

yeah that would be awesome if you could get those pictures back online for the viewing...from what people were saying it was looking pretty amazing!

[The_Family_Guy 2]

I don't think he's here anymore....it's been 6 months and he's had 7 posts....

[asteconn 9]

You know, if you have problems on your elavated highway / avenue junctions, why not upgrade the avenues to ground highways?

If you don't have the space for cloverleaf interchanges - use 2 adjacent T junctions instead:

rubbish ascii art time:

                  | |                     

                  | |                                          

                 '| |'  _    _            

Elevated===========|======\===========

====================\======\==========

                 '   '   '| |'       

                          | |        

                          | |        

like that? :-) Granted it's a bit of a mess on the above image but it works very well in game.