I don't understand

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

Okay, I have been reading the Omnibus and the Forums for almost two weeks now, and I've found that the tutorials I tried didn't help much. I was wondering if someone have a step-by-step tutorial for their CJ, as in they start with a blank region, they load the map, then terraform it, then build residential here and etc.etc. 

Because a lot of the CJ's I've looked at are completed cities in a region with pictures, and I want to know HOW they built the cities like that. Everytime I try to make a regional city, it doesn't work. I don't know how the highway is suppose to be built so that it works and sims actually use it, I don't know how the suburban people get to work using the highways (they always abandon due to commute times), and the demand bar doesn't rise and drop like the tutorials say. 

I'm desperately needing help because I have no idea to how this game works. How do people get their region like that? With the farms and the suburbs and the downtown all in seperate city tiles. Can someone help?

[rodent1989 9]

1) ok, personally, I started by buying a prima guide, because its extremely useful, but if you don't want to spend $20 more on that then you can find most of the info on this site. (but i like having a book version)

2) do the tutorials in the game, open the region maxisland/timbuktu (depending on which version you are using) and click on the city with the huge arrow over it and DO the tutorial. it will give you the rundown

3)  most of the people who make CJ's on here have already worked with the game, aim a bit lower at first, focus on balancing the budget, facilitating demand/development etc.

    a) zone all low density, don't waste money on dense zones that won't fill in for years

    b) don't add fire, police, education, or healthcare coverage until you can afford it (and when you do add it make sure to optimize funding based on usage so you reduce cost)

    c) use coal power: it's cheap

    d) build 2-3 parks right away in the center of your city, they're relatively inexpensive and will help you create a "downtown" by building around the parks.

    e) leave open spaces for highways, but don't build them until later, they cost alot of money and a city with less than 50,000 doesn't need them.

    f) use the legalize gambling ordinance:  $100 can make all the difference for a small city

4)  Do not terraform, nobody will ever see this city (because you are practicing), and flat cities are easier to build on.

5) start in ONE CITY TILE:  I CAN'T EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH!!!!  It infinitely easier to start in one city, build out to one or two edges, THEN expand into the next city tile

6) Download the NAM, even if you don't use the extra features, the better pathfinding is very useful for getting rid of no job icons.  (check in the mods and downloads section on this site)

If you have more questions, feel free to PM me, and I can help you more.

[U3D 6]

Time and patience, and reading the SC4 manual will also help. It has the basics of what you need to know and when you've mastered that everything will make sense.....i hope that helps....

oh yea look around Stex for mods and stuff that can help.....

_{Edit: gah! im always late in posting! oh well......}

[guitarist4816 3]

another thing thats helpful, once u get the hang of building profitable cities, is to download google earth, and look at arial (sp?) views of cities around the world. THis will help give u ideas on how to make ur city unique and functional.

[DreTitans23 2]

The SC4 tutiorials are a huge help. Expecially the making money one.

[Kingmaster98 0]

Another helpful thing, is when your city starts looking like *$*#, you can use your disaster buttons to relieve the stress a little. Killing simoleons really does it for me.

The way I base my cities, are the way the cities in the real world are built. In my region I have at least 5 major interstates running through. I make sure my roads connect in a realistic fashion. I start my cities out from farming, then work my way up from there.

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

Thanks for all the help! I will be trying those tips. My most recent problem is the commute time, and even with the better pathfinding from the NAM, I still have no job zots. How can I make my city realistic (suburbs with little commercial and downtown with little residential) if they abandon due to long commute?

[Sindai 0]

10x commute speed is your friend. It's possible to get big cities with the default values, but you really have to game the system and it makes it extremely difficult to get realistic cities.

[st louis dude 6]

I reccomend reading the sc4 manual.

[aminom 0]

The most important thing is to not make one massive residential area and do the same for the other zone types. This will make no job zots pop up because the sims cannot get to all the jobs. Spread out your zones, and make small clusters of residential zones so that commute times are short. The route query tool is invaluable- use it on a commercial or industrial zone to check to see how many workers are physically traveling to a job, then compare this to the job capacity when you normal query it. If there is a large difference, it's because the zone is too far away from suitable residential zones for the workers to get to it. You can either zone another small section of residential close to it, or add more bus stops, or train/sub routes.

Other important issue is to control your rich sims. At the default 9% tax level, they will storm into your city in droves, go crazy looking for jobs, and hop from zone to zone, leaving delapidation in their wake. In the beginning I raise my R$$$ taxes to 10.5% or even more, and after I have R$ and R$$ established, will lower it just so that they seep in until they are around 7%-10% of the population. I'll then raise the tax rate until the demand is -3000; halfway in full negative. This seems to stabilize them at a good point.

When you think sim transportation, you need to think stupid Sims will always use the _most direct_ route, not the fastest, or even the shortest. That is, if a job is say, 20 spaces north and 12 west of a residence, they will try to take the paths that follow that route even if it takes them off into a weird, long detour. Learn to channel the flow of your sims- most times simple grids can be very ineffective for this.

When you plan something like a highway, you need to think where your sims want to go from where they are. Do some route querying to see what paths they actually take, then think if it will really be beneficial if they use something like a highway as opposed to other means such as mass transit and rails. If so, build your highway and force your sims to take it by eliminating all other paths such as secondary roads they could take to get to their jobs. Think of it as like a bottleneck; you want the highway to be the physical bottleneck in your transportation system, but as it has high capacity and high speeds it can handle taking all the traffic directed towards it.

[toxicpiano 125]

yes you could read the game manual!

[RushHourFreak 1]

N_O_Body has a Step-by-step tutorial where you can start a minimal citry from ground up. You need to be sure of the desirabilty factors

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

Thanks for the help. I'll be looking around some more for a little while before I try building again.

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

Btw where can I find that guide to building a city? I've searched NOBODY"S name and I couldn't find it. Is there a link or is it in the omnibus or something?

[prince_of_sims 0]

here you go:

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=79659&enterthread=y

probably the reason you couldn't find it is because his user name is N_O_Body, not NOBODY

[SC4BOY 20]

Originally posted by: Avanine-Commuter Btw where can I find that guide to building a city? I've searched NOBODY"S name and I couldn't find it. Is there a link or is it in the omnibus or something?quote>

 

His name is N_O_Body not Nobody

Here are some useful "helps" for using the game and gettting off to a good start:

Traffic

City Start 1

City Start 2

City Start 3

A general guide

CITY JOURNALS on ST

As a note to anyone trying to build a "CJ" city, keep in mind that most CJ's are hardly SC4.. they are more like "paint by number" scenery builders.. There are so many mods and "bad things" eliminators, that the standard game would never be able to even get in the ballpark, much less replicate their results..

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

Thanks for all the help! I'll try these topics out and see if I can get started for once

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

There's something wrong:

I zoned 16 residential areas and 5 commercial lots, put roads down and connected it to the region. I ran the simulation and put a wind power plant there. The demand is positive, so of course the lots filled up. But then the message pops up and says there are more residents knocking on the door, and I look and the demand for residential is still positive, so I plop 16 more residential lots with roads, and I wait for them to grow. Nothing grows! I checked my desirebility, and I checked the demands and everything. I added parks, a school, firefighting station, police station, plazas, water pipes and water tower, landmarks, industrial working zones, NOTHING GROWS! I even ran the simulation in cheetah mode, and the demand is still positive (now even for industry too), and no lots are growing. NOTHING, not even any more commercial or industry. I don't understand. The pop. is barely 600 people, and the demand is positive, the checklist for growth has been gone through countless times, but no one moves into my city. WHat's wrong?

[CameronB 0]

<pre>Do us a favor, Avanine...  Hit print screen (assuming you're on Windows), or whatever you need to do to take a screenshot.</pre><br /><pre>Snag a pic of your "troubled area".  Using paint (I use the GIMP, personally) paste the image, and save as a .png...</pre><br /><pre>Post us a pic of the area, and we'll see if we can visibly see an obvious deficiency.  It may help some, to get to the heart of the matter.</pre><br /><br />And on another side note, why on earth am I getting html tags in my posts?  Does this forum happen to dislike firefox or something?<br /><br />WIERD

[-Hawk- 0]

Gosh... It took me over a year to get how the game works and another year to become really good at it (Lol, don't judge me by my ST experience ).

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

Here is a screenshot. From my previous post I made a typo, the pop. is barely 60, and it even dropped more after a few months so it's around 45 now. the demand is all positive, there are only a few houses around. I put in the civil services to see if it will boost demand and promote people moving in. I used the money cheat so I have a lot of money, but I don't think that affects it.

[sanantonio 0]

You need more power!!

EDIT: I hope somebody gets this, only 9 more years...

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

I'll try that but it doesn't have any news tickers or lightning zots showing lack of power. : /

[sanantonio 0]

Try a couple of parks, or a city-wide tree planting program. Sims like shade.

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

Grrr I've almost had it with sim city! I have so many problems and I don't know how to fix it. I just started a new town, and I used a money cheat so I didn't have to care about the profit. I made all the civil services, used a big power plant, lots of water towers, I made residential and they grew. THen, they had the no job zots so I made some commercial (very little) but they won't grow. There is VERY VERY positive (like almost to the top) for commercial. AGAIN! I have electricity, the desirebility is freaking high, there's water, good access to roads and to the residential, connections to outside towns, parks+civil services, landmarks to boost the desirebility, I DON"T KNOW WHATS WRONG!

I can't even get a city over 1000 people , and I've been trying for 5 days just to build one SMALL city.

[mayormommy 8]

I think a picture would once again be helpful for diagnosing your problem. Do you have any schools? I like to start my first cities out with a farm-based economy.

[sanantonio 0]

yeah, stupid sims are content farming for life...once they are educated, they realized there is an easier way, and will begin to want the blue collar jobs.

[mrbisonm 1,620]

avanine......no offense.......but I think the biggest problem is you. You need more patience....well, as a matter of fact, a lot more.

The best way how to play is by trying this and that and by reading the tuts. Experience will tell you how to make and grow beautiful cities. No good mayor has been fallen from the sky yet. Experience will make the difference to end up like all these folks here that have great cities. Me myself I learned how to play by cheating with everything a few times to get to know the *feeling* of the game.

Another thing: Most CJ's with great cities are built with at least some kind of cheats.

Good luck!

mrbisonm

[Avanine-Commuter 0]

I've already tried soldyne's tutorial and N_O_body's tutorial and read numerous city journals and asked many questions and tried this and that. I have all the things they tell me to do but it never works out like that say in the tutorial. By the end of soldyne's tutorial he had a large map filled with residential and the industrial town is 1/2 filled with industry. When I followed his tutorial step by step I ended up with 1/10 of the map with residential and only two industrial buildings. I don't get it, and the frustrating thing is most people's problems are commute times and mass transit and stuff like that, but my problem is trying to even get the city past 1000 pop.

[sanantonio 0]

Thy451's tutorials are a great refernece as well...

Simtropolis (w/pics)

GameFAQs (HTML)

yes, there's a lot to dig through, but it's worth it.