A Struggle Within

[Mike3715 3]

  As I sit in front of the screen, watching a city develop, I wonder where I should go next.  What should I build next.  A city of 50,000 Sims is a typical frustration point for me.  I have the tendency to step back, look at my city in disgust and say, "That looks nothing like what I expected, or wanted", and then I destroy it and start over.  At this pace I will never get those big beautiful cities that you guys build.  I think I'm expecting too much of myself.  I've even gone so far as to draw out a diagram of a city on paper before I develop it.  I'm thinking I should try a different approach.  Maybe I would be better satisfied with several smaller cities through a region, than one big city.  Maybe they would grow more toward my suitability if I didn't get so impatient with myself.  Has anyone else had this sort of struggle?  Are these typical of someone still learning the game? 

Thanks for all your input.

[xcalbier 43]

  yes as a newer player we have all going through this . and for the nice large city building the burbs first then alowing them to feed the growth of the large city works the best.

   the burbs and or country farm villigas should be almost all $ and $$ class sims and bunnisess . alowing your main city to be 50% $$$ and 50% $$ creating the grand city of your dreams.

    the hard part is when using several citys squares to creat one large city and avoiding the square city look . so use on city  square for your center out then 8 more city squares to creat the rounded look or half round in the case of a shorline city.

[soldyne 111]

welcome to simtropolis Mike!

ah yes, this is a standard problem among new SC4 players. with the new addition of region play, designing a city has a whole new meaning.

I used to be a "grid it and forget it" type of player and my biggest city with that was about 100k before I would start over. the problem I had though was not neccessarilly in the design of the city itself but in the fact that I was not taking neighbors into account. with SC4 dont just design a city, design a region.

Start large! create a region by either hand terraforming or downloading a map fromthe stex. make it interesting with rivers, valleys, hills and such. this will force you to change your designs as you go and make your cities look more organic, like real cities.

Try to design the region like nature would, not like a mayor would, this will add to the realism.

when the region is ready, sit back and look at it from a mayors perspective. imagine where a real city would be after 100 years, where are downtowns, the suburbs, the farmland? where are the skyscrapper forests, the highways, and the bridges. when you have your dream city in mind, then start building.

Now is the time to go small. start building your city from the outside in. begin with rural areas and develop purposfully small villages of no more than 1000 people or so with farmland all around. Then move on to a neighbor, start developing low density res and com in a small town feel. then go to another neighbor and start developing your suburbs and medium density commercial (remember to stick to your regional plan as best you can).

The trick is not to make every city square the same. not all cities need to have sardine like living conditions. every type of city has a purpose and will influence the develpoment of its neighbors.

as for city design, if you want to break away from the waffel world approach in the small rural towns then just go random. put a road there, lay a street here. conform the networks to the terrain like a real city would and experiement with different designs. if you need to start a blank region and just experiment with random road layouts until you are comfortable with it. it will pay off in the long run.

eventually you get to the downtown area and your demand will be peeked having been influenced by the rest of the region. this is where you can get a little griddy (but not too griddy) and you will have skyscrappers popping up like weeds all over the place.

This is just how I play SC4 and I have been having much success with it. check out my CJ and you will see exactly what I am talking about.

keep us informed about your progress and feel free to ask as many questions as you need! we like to answer them

[Battlecat 14]

I did run into the very problem you are mentioning several times.  I personally have never gotten a city past 100,000 people but I have some things I keep in mind when building a region which may help you out.  These are just guidlines, not rules by any stretch of the imagination. 

1. Know what kind of region you want to build: Do you want realism or massive cities?  Do you want to build you city through natural evolution (gradually build to large cities, or do you want an instant metropolis (You could try the radical demand mods for that effect).

2. Terraforming is very important.  A city build in terrain is always more interesting than  one built on a flat empty map.  Even a single river can give more character.  Download, or build your own! 

3.  Playing on a regional scale never hurts and can be quite rewarding.  In fact, the game is really designed to be played on a regional scale.  Neighbouring cities can help growth immensely.  

4.  Don't be afraid to demolish and redevelop sections of you city if you don't like them.  Real cities do this all the time, granted not on the scale we can get away with in game, but still, it's worth the trouble.  

5.  It's the small details that really make a city nice.  Farms look much better with trees, country roads, ponds and drainage ditches even if they have no impact on the game.  Downtown areas look much nicer with parks, and a wide variety of urban buildings.  

6.  Mass transit can help immensely.  Particularly roadtop bus and subway station so you don't have to loose to much land (Try uroncha, they look very realistic and work on intersections).  

7. If you're shooting for realism, build railways early on.  The vast majority of cities have railways impacting them in some way, and they have a significant impact on how developement proceeds.  For example, railways are bottlenecks that very few roads cross.  They are industrial corridors.  Often cities will evolve around a railway station. 

8. Going along with the realism, try not to be trapped into a grid.  It is true that square grids are the most efficient way to build in Simcity, but they are very difficult to make asethetically pleasing.  Build diagonal roads (ands streets if you have the NAM), cul de sacs, winding highways and twisting roads.  Fill in leftover gaps with greenspace! 

9.  Read city journals!  They are full of good ideas, just don't let them intimidate you.  Everyone here has gone through the same difficulties as you're having.  Many of these people have been playing for months and months.  

10. Mods make the game much nicer!  Some of the new mods are truely amazing and make the game much nicer.  The NAM, terrain mods, and Cycledogg tree mods come to mind first, but there are many to choose from (BSC, CSX, Pegasus, jeronij, NDEX and many others). 

Personally I'm playing my region with dozens of small cities which are slowly growing.  Keeping the pace of growth under control allows me to grow aethetically pleasing cities by repeatedly demolishing and rebuilding sections of the city that I don't like while expanding through a fairly large region.  

Anyhow, I hope this helps, these are some of the things I keep in mind when I'm building my region.  

Above all things, remember to be patient, and keep trying.  Don't be afraid to post your pictures in a city journal of your own, even if you're not entirely happy with it.  The people in this community are very helpful and quite willing to provide constructive criticism and encouragement. 

For inspiration, I recommends looking at the following city journals (These people are artists):  

Anduin Valley Revisited - Great technical tutorials here

Green Depra - Gradual evolution of larger cities

Urland - Rural journal

Digby - Doesn't update much but lots of good information on realistic farmland

Astoria - More of a constructed style

Simtropia - Beautiful detailed work here.

[RandomInsanity 0]

What I like to do is to start a low density city by placing large zones of residential randomly, and not usually touching each other. Then I develop on top of this, filling in spaces with main avenues, roads, and commercial when the demand goes up. Then I begin to add services (schools, police, etc...), taking time to detail things that would be around those buildings (parks, basketball nets, commercial districts, major roads...) Then I spread out a bit more, add some suburbs, then build straight up. When you get rewards, make thier placement special. For example, if you get the major art museum, put it off a main road, on the waterfront, and with lots of parkland. It's not as planned as other people's cities may be, but it seems over-planning might be your main problem. This is typically the way a city will develop in real life.

[Mike3715 3]

Wow...this is exactly the kind of advice I was looking for...I appreciate all the help. I will keep you abreast on how things go...and one day I may try to put together a CJ to show what your advice helpped me to create.

Thanks

Mike