Cities over 100k

[NYCorBUST 0]

Waste to Energy Plant

Now that my population is really high (to me that is)

I noticed that my Waste to Energy Plant isn't enough, so I made a recycling center. 

Still not enough!

So I had to create another Waste to energy plant! 

Power Supply

Then my power supply is DWINDLELING!

I have 4 Gas powerplants, and 2 solar!

Is there another way? Isn't that a waste?

Fire Stations

What about fire stations?

I have one (the small one) Do I need more to relieve more demand cap?

Hospitals

I have 3 large hospitals in 2 blocks for the ammount of people I have, in addition to clinics and disease research center. And I still need more!

All of this is crazy! Is this why everyone on ST  has tons of downloads to handle large city demand?

Why didn't Maxis create lots that can handle the demand?

Anything I should be on look out for?

This is all a new world seriously!

[Facelessman 5]

First, get rid of those clinics, build more hospitals. Hospitals are more efficient, and clinics seem to cause problems for bigger cities.

Have you been replacing old power plants? Over time, they get old, and then they produce less power for MORE money! Same with water.

[NYCorBUST 0]

Originally posted by: Facelessman First, get rid of those clinics, build more hospitals. Hospitals are more efficient, and clinics seem to cause problems for bigger cities.

Have you been replacing old power plants? Over time, they get old, and then they produce less power for MORE money! Same with water.quote>

 

Yes actually.  All my power plants are brand new. (seriously and I will need another one soon)

I think I need a neighborhood deal to get the nuclear plant right?

My water plants.....hmmm I didn't think about that one.  Maybe I will destroy all those towers and build a few only of the largest pumping stations....that may save some more money. 

I like that. (my budget sets me at about 3k income)

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Are you using the power output of your WE plants?  Setting them to zero kills the pollution, but removes a power source.  Plant trees around them and turn them on.

[NYCorBUST 0]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body Are you using the power output of your WE plants?  Setting them to zero kills the pollution, but removes a power source.  Plant trees around them and turn them on.quote>

 

I have them set to zero because I don't want that pollution.

I do need a power neighboorhood connection inorder to get the Nuclear correct?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: NYCorBUST

I do need a power neighboorhood connection inorder to get the Nuclear correct?quote>

Nope.  Pop. 80,000 power demand >25,000.

Watch this one, if it gets too old or catches fire you will lose your game in the meltdown.

[SC4BOY 21]

unfortunately for larger cities, SC4 is rather unrealistic in terms the "power needs" as supplied.. only the nuclear plants have enough output to allow powering large cities (or of course you could mod the current plants for higher output).. And I expect the STEX has power plant dl's that supply large amounts of power.. If ya want to try the nuclear ones, you can unlock them with the "I don't deserve it" cheat (I think that is what its called.. I only use it when I am "sandboxing" and I have to look it up every time.. lol) I use both clinics and hospitals in my large cities as I see fit.. it seems clear that is what the "sims" want anyways as they moan about wanting "local healthcare" and "local schools" .. I actually get kind of a kick out of fooling around with all the "civic services" of SC4 but if your goal is "packed cities" I can see why you may get frustrated.

[Sim_Air 2]

   One city of mine that i remember had over 400.000pop. and more than 5 hospitals(no clinics,they don't do the job), almost 25 education buildings, more police station then the city really needed, a lot of fire stations but i never changed a power plant...neither pumping stations!

            Anyway, while your city grows, you need more efficient services which means you can improve them with money...

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You need to stop listening to any "moaning" from either the advisors or any MySims you have added.  The advisors have private self-aggrandizement as their primary objective.  The MySims are programmed to give you grief.  You'll just have to become more callous.

[NYCorBUST 0]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Originally posted by: NYCorBUST

I do need a power neighboorhood connection inorder to get the Nuclear correct?quote>

Nope.  Pop. 80,000 power demand >25,000.

Watch this one, if it gets too old or catches fire you will lose your game in the meltdown.quote>

 

Really?

Well my pop is alot more than that, and I am positive my power demand is more than that too.

I wonder why i do not have it then?

What do most people use when it comes to power plants?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, usually for power I use the super plasma accelerator that I created myself in the BAT.  It is not pretty, but in the largest city I have I only needed two of them.  Sorry, but it is not available on the STEX because I consider it a cheat, and don't publish these things.

[Nardo69 51]

When it is upt to large power plants that may light up a 350.000 inhabitant town on a large map you should try cogeo's nuclear power plants. He made a whole series of them plus modded the power selling in a way that the energy selling town can make a profit even with those as powerful as expensive nuclear power plants. Like the ingame NPP these babies may have a meltdown, too ....

If you don't want to risk a meltdown try SimGoober'S Hardoon Coal Power plant. It has double the output of the ingame coal PP and pollutes less in relation to the power output.

BTW 4 * Gas + 2 * Solar is not that much - as said before, the power demand of SC4 is a bit ... well ... unrealistic.

Bernhard

[MrVegetable 2]

I only really use Gas and Solar power for small cities as their output is rather limited. For the Bigger cities you'll need to use Oil until you can get your paws on cleaner and less costly power (Nuclear is ideal but you do need to keep fire services very near to them). If you don't want the pollution, put the power plants in a neighbouring city and use a power line connection to transfer power from the plants between cities with no pollution at all! You won't need to play the power plant city either!

[soldyne 111]

I use a BAT by simgoober called the Hardin Coal Plant or something like that. do a search for simgoober and filter for utilities. anyway, I modded the plant with ILives Reader and Easy Tweaker to have it produce 60,000 MW instead of the standard 6,000MW. I only need one plant for about 100k people. I also use Simgoober's Modern Waste to Energy plant modded to handle 2500 tons of garbage instead of 500. I find that these modifications seem more realistic and the BATs are nice too.

[Spookiety 1]

'"fightthepower" and '"Howdryiam" are some cheats that can help you but if you don't want to use cheats you could use your starting money in a nieghboring City to build alot of power plants and use power lines (the enourmose red ones) to connect the 2 cities. I hope it works for you because I have never tried it but im asuming it would work.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

One factor that's often overlooked is the totally skewed stats of downloadable RCI BATs.

One day when I played SC4, I thought: "Is it possible that such a moderate city needs so much power and water and produces so much garbage?" IIRC, at 350,000 sims I had 7 WTE plants on the map!

This is when I started digging into the stats of in-game buildings and downloaded BATs, and I found out that the latter mostly had horrendous stats. This applies particularly to the older ones that were made in times when there wasn't much knowledge about such issues.

The result was the stats pack I published on the STEX, which contains modified stats sets for hundreds of BATs from this site.

So if you use many RCI buildings from the STEX, you might try and give this pack a spin - just search for my name on the STEX, and you'll find it immediately. It's not a cheat, because it mods the buildings back to consumption, pollution, and financial values that are in line with the Maxis defaults, nothing more and nothing less.

As for the power plant, it is called "Hardun Coal Power Plant", and it can be combined quite nicely with SimGoober's BSC Canal Coal Wharf.

[docdewittjo 0]

Here's a couple of things to keep in mind about power plants and water facilities. The cleaner and more powerful power plants (hydrogen, nuclear, solar) are more expensive to run per unit of power than the cheaper plants (coal, gas, oil). This means that for the same KWH you spend more. I don't have the stats in front of me so I can't get specific. In general though, building more gas plants to total the power output of one nuclear plant will be cheaper. Of course it will take up more space.

On the other hand the large water pump does cost less per unit of water than the small pump. However make sure you need that much water. It isn't financially sound until you are using it near capacity.

I find that the pollution of gas plants is manageable.

I believe that neighbor connections are a must for the nuclear plant. I think I earned a nuclear plant with one of the U-Drive-It missions.

[NightlinerSGS 1]

Some tips from the STEX which I use for my big cities:

Newman Inc Hospital:

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=11066

A big hospital with a cap of 150000, covering a whole large city if placed in the center.... but it also costs money. But this is way more realistic than whats in-game.

Complete Power Package:

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=1185

A package of all power plants on new lots with new stats! They produce far more energy (more realistic) and are now 8x8 in size (they look VERY good I think). Read the Instructions for this as they are replaing the old ones (but its worth the pain!)

These Lots solved my "big city problems". Hope they help you too

[usad25 0]

Also if you want to download the radical ordinances that will help your hospitals. And your Edu.

[DOXXP29 5]

There are quite a few utilities and civic services out there with modified capacities. For example, there's the Magma Power Plant that gives you 2 million units for $1 and a water pump that also gives 2 million gallons for $1. These are pretty radical and probably considered pretty major cheats for all intents and purposes, but if you're trying to get a city up without changing power plants and water pumps every five minutes, these might be what you're looking for. Of course there are some out there that are less drastic and more realistic. I use schools with higher capacities because in a city of 500,000, I had something like 50 elementary schools, some lined up in rows of six and seven down the street which was totally unrealistic. I had something like 18 water pumps and over a dozen power plants. This was on a medium size tile. My original intent with the game was to not cheat, or at least keep it to a minimum, but the schools and utilities were taking up so much real estate it was getting ridiculous! Also, there are ways you can change the capacities with the SC4 Tool and some of the other programs, but someone else will have to tell you how to do that because I haven't figured it out myself as of yet. Good luck with your city! Keep us posted.