Multi-City Difficulties

[Enigma_Man 0]

Heya Folks, my first post here.

I've been playing SC4 a little bit, have a good one-city game going on, 150k people in it after maybe 20 or so game-years. I discovered this awesome forum, and read about setting up different regions for different uses.

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=146&threadid=78505&enterthread=y

That was the exact thread I read about it (in the omnibus, titled "making money the easy way").

Well anyway, I set up one city as residential only, and a city right next to it as industry. I just can't seem to get anybody to move into either city. I have it set up almost exactly like the author of the omnibus does, and it's been 33 game-years, and there are less than 1000 people in my residential city. At first, I wondered if a huge disparity in game-years between cities made a difference (30 in the residential, 20 in the industrial), so I let the industrial city "catch up" but no difference... it just seems like nobody will move into either city

Right before I started this city, I installed the "NAM" with all the plugin options and "perfect pathfinding" selected. I also installed the patch from EA/Maxis before putting in the NAM plugin. Any issues because of those?

Thanks,

-Jesse

[cooliosimdude 0]

Well are you talking about specific areas in your regions being set up for residential, commercial, and industriul? Or do you mean like regions made for them? Because as far as I now and you may need to ask somebody else about this you can't have your sims travel to different regions.

[Enigma_Man 0]

I'm talking about having one entire region for residential, and one separate region for industrial. I believe you can do this, as shown in the omnibus article, however it doesn't seem to be working correctly for me, or I'm missing something important.

-Jesse

[cooliosimdude 0]

Well I looked through all the multiple city making guides and all I could find was stuff about making seperate residential, commercial, and industrial cites. But as I said before you would probably be better off asking somebody else because I'm not expert at this stuff.

[KingTitan 6]

READ PRIMA'S STRAGEDY GUIDE. I cannot tell ya how many times I have told people about this YET....no one heeds it. "Only one type of any connection to one city" If you have more than ONE of the same type of connections....The demand is lowered dramatically. I will quote it later when I grab my guide upstairs.

[Enigma_Man 0]

There is only one avenue connection between the regions, that's it.

-Jesse

[wouanagaine 83]

Region are not connected in any way

Cities in the same region share information and allow sims to travel and go betweeen them ( providing you have connected them by any transportation network )

BTW Enigma_Man welcome to Simtropolis.

Take care

Edit ; it really seems to me that you misusing 'region' and 'city' term, Fairview/San fransisco/Berlin for example  are regions, then if you use FairView as in omnibus article,, you can create new cities in it

[Enigma_Man 0]

Yes, I have been misusing region/city, my mistake on the terminology . I'm trying to create different cities in a region that have different functions, like one city is a residential, one is an industrial, and after 33 years of game-time there is still very little build-up of buildings in either city. There is one avenue road connection between them, but that's it.

I updated my original post with the correct terminology. I'm still having the issue though

-Jesse

[asteconn 9]

try putting either a highway or large number of road connections going in between your cities?

[threestooges 0]

I can think of a some possible solutions:

1) Ensure that both cities have the necessary things:

-industrial: power, roads, perhaps rail (ensure the connections are made)

-residential: power, roads (and connections) 

(Since it sounds like there has been some development, it doesn't sound like this is the problem)

2) Ensure demand exists

-this can be a problem if caps have been reached: for residential, add schools, parks, etc fro industrial, add some more neighbor connections

3) Residential tends to not develop without sufficient jobs in the next city and same with industrial.

-Try to put a small patch of industrial (2x2 or so) and see if that spurs some development

-Try to zone more residential until the point demand slacks off; then load the industrial city and see if that takes care of it.

4) Depending on where the cities are on their respective maps, commute time may be a problem.

-Try putting the zones so that they share the same border (pollution does not go across borders so there is no worry there).

If none of these work, please let me know, or PM me if you want. Good luck, and welcome to ST.

[Enigma_Man 0]

I have a couple of screenshots to show what everything is:

http://cantarafamily.net/images/sc_1.jpg

http://cantarafamily.net/images/sc_2.jpg

I have a big avenue connection going off the south end of the residential city to the north end of the industrial city. There's a school, hospital.

Anybody spot what I'm doing wrong?

-Jesse

[wouanagaine 83]

Well I don't see the yellow arrow on the avenue that should be displayed when you have a real connection ( but this can be a visual effect has your pic is not close enough )

thoses arrows ( from the omnibus article )

Make sure you have drag the avenue behind the city limits. The game will then popup a window dialog asking you if you want to build a connection with the other city ( make sure you click ok ).

Take care

Edit : I retake a closer look at your pics. what really bug me is that on the residential city you even don't have one house. I never encouter that. just for a try, take to put a wind generator near residential. If construction of res start, then check that you have correctly setup the electricity deal with the industrial city

[juaquin 0]

I think I see the problem.  On the bottom edge of the first picture there is a power connection that does not appear to be long enough.  Try removing 2 sections of street and reconnect the power line to the industrial neighbor.  I believe connections will not work unless the extend three squares into the city. 

[Nardo69 51]

actually you need only that one single pole with the arrow - the neighbour connection is defined over that single pole. the game just expands the lpower line 3 tiles into the map but you may overzone two of them as long as the pole on the edge with the arrow isn't touched.

I would like to know if the power deal really works. In that case the query tool should tell you how much power is tranferred through the line. Could you post a close up of power that neighbour connection - if possible including the querytool's message?

Bernhard

[Enigma_Man 0]

Ok, here's a couple close-up shots of stuff, the residential city has the query-tool results from the power line, the industrial city has the query-tool results from the connecting road.

http://cantarafamily.net/images/sc_3.jpg

http://cantarafamily.net/images/sc_4.jpg

Thanks guys for all your help 'n stuff I'm just trying to figure out what I've got wrong here.

-Jesse

[juaquin 0]

I would try plopping a firehouse in the residential city, since their big complaint is safety.

[myself 0]

Maybe you should try to zone bigger residential areas... I remember reading somewhere that residential areas which are only one tile don't grow until you have certain amount of citizens. I'm not sure about this though

So instead of 1x1 residential, try zoning little 1x2 and 1x3 tiles.

[Sam 163]

Originally posted by: myself Maybe you should try to zone bigger residential areas... I remember reading somewhere that residential areas which are only one tile don't grow until you have certain amount of citizens. I'm not sure about this though

So instead of 1x1 residential, try zoning little 1x2 and 1x3 tiles.quote>

I agree. I'm not sure, but I think there may be no 1x1 R$1 in the unmodded game. So you would need to zone at least 1x2 initially. This is what I have always found anyway. Once your city is big enough for R$$ then you may be able to get some 1x1 residentials to grow. Otherwise you may need to find some downloads from the STEX that have 1x1 R$ lots.

[Meastro444 1]

Actually, there are 1x1 r$ ingame. i read somewhere, that in the beginning, you have to make at least a few tiles of industry in your

res city. then after some development of homes, build the ind only city. let it grow. go back to Res city, destroy the industry there, and let the ind city take over the jobs.

hope this helps

Meastro444

[T Wrecks 10,209]

There are 1x1 residentials, albeit only few, and only small houses, and they don't come that early. There are some R$ lots (tiny huts) on stage 2. In the R$$ sector, there are some at stages 5 and 6 (really late!), but oddly enough only in the Euro tileset. R$$$ houses on 1x1 don't exist at all.

[Indisguise 0]

I personelly of the philosophy that your first few cities...2 or 3 at least should contain a little bit of  all RCI (always go for the Farmers Market first!) play each city 20-50 years, establish some demand...specially when starting a new region, just to get the ball rolling

after establishing some region population, then start to  specailize your cities after that, when you have the demand to fill things

I find if you try to specailize from the start, you spend more time flipiing through cities at the start updating just the comute times, watching the demand charts waitng for the cities to load and save

I like zoning two or three deep at the start, most of the lower and mid stage buildings are covered

I rarely zone 1x1, but if I do to keep it...checkerboard the 1x1 lots low and med density....this will stop the game from merging the lots together...

[Enigma_Man 0]

Thanks for all your suggestions I will probably try to add some industry into the residential city, and also re-zone with larger than 1x1 squares, and see if I can get the ball rolling. I like the idea of specialized cities, but yeah flipping back-and-forth between regions is annoying

[PuddingTime 0]

This same thing happened to me. Make absolutly sure that you neighbour deals are working. Go into your budget screen and select Neighbour Deals. Make sure all neighbour deals are agreed to the Max available. You will only be charged for the actual use but there will be room to row. My problem was that my residential city had not agreed to the electricty deal from my industrial city. There were no No Electricity Zots or anything but as soon as I agreed boom growth everyehere.

[Enigma_Man 0]

Thanks Pudding, I will try that. I had some 'funniness' when initially setting up the electricity neighbor deal (it didn't fit right in the residential map, so I deleted it) so maybe it isn't actually working correctly, even though there are no zots, and it says that buildings do have electricity.

-Jesse

[tonkos 0]

How can I force two cities to make neighbour deals? I have been building a commercial city. My commercial city doesn't have any power buildings and I decided to start a city next and just build power structure, roads and few zones for industry and make connection to my commercial city. Now I still can't make a neighbour deal for electricity. Any suggestions?

[juaquin 0]

You might also try sprinkling some trees over the area in god mode while you run the game.  This usually works for me to get the housing started. 

[Enigma_Man 0]

FIXED!

What I did was re-do the power connection between the cities, not sure if that had an effect, I watched it for a few months without much of a change, so then I re-zoned one of my industrial areas with some 3x1 $r areas, and all of a sudden BAM, all of my 1x1 residentials filled-in really quickly... There are low-income 1x1 residentials, because I have tons of them now, it seems like it just took a few 3x1s to kick things off? oh well it works now Thanks for all your help.

[+Guest]

It was the area of 1x3 lots thath did the trick, there are no stage one 1x1R in the game, so you need a smal regional population before

anything will grow on a 1x1R lot.