Cape Newenham

[octaves 4]

Great!  I love all the updates!  I cant believe I missed this one...Im glad I caught it!!  The pictures are great and crisp, and the start was awesome!  Im waiting for more! 

EDIT: WELCOME TO PAGE 2!! 

[Voulpiotis 4]

Ok, I can now see the pics - your city is very good and I like the concept and the developement. Good use of trees also. Looking forward to your next update!

[polochon 2 0]

I like the pics ! Good job ^^ ( the farms are magnificent )

[fledder200 5]

looks great!! those farms look amazing!!!

i like the sound of Amstelberg (named after the beer or the river?)

anyhoo...keep up the great work my fellow Dutchman or Drechtsteder

ps: weet u mischien waar de beemster ligt?   <-------------Lame Dutch joke in a TV ad

[mkwetters 2]

Hello to you all,

It has been a while since I posted here, but as I havent been playing SimCity at all, there wasnt a reason to post.

Just a few pickies to show some of my latest work. I expanded Amstelberg from about 20K citizens to approx 55K citizens, quite some growth. I didn't spend much time sculping the city to make it look pretty therefore just a few pics who look good in my opinion.

[mkwetters 2]

Two other shots for you to enjoy, i am a little cought up in playing SC4 so no fancy photoshopping for now...

[Nardo69 51]

Welcome back my friend!

Glad you made it back gain but unfortunately I cannot see your pictures ...

Take care and don't forget to make backups!

Bernhard

[vituuu 0]

Really nice! So realistic!

[mkwetters 2]

Hello everybody,

Welcome back to my CJ. From now on I will try to explain some more why I took the decisions I made during the building ogf my city. This way I hope to start a dialogue from which everybody can learn something.

The picture below shows the current situation in my city it is about a 100 years old with a population of roughly 63K. The city consists of a connection of neighbourhoods who supposed to be more or less self sustaining. Self sustaining means that they had their own school and little hospital, some residental and some commercial areas. Besides these neighbourhoods I created a rather large industrial park which started of as a very dirty industrial area, but as time wend by and my sims got more educated production and finally high-tech industries started to develop. I will go in to the details of developen in my next post.

I tried to some distance between all neighbourhoods in order to prevent trraffic congestion and being able to provide them with extra infrastructures withour demolishing the current buildings. This worked rather well I experienced I had cities with 60K inhabitants with rather large traffice problems, but this this is doing ok even without public transport.

The bottom right corner is a little denser developed compared to the rest of the city. The biggest part of Amstelberg is light residental, but the last 20 years i developped some more medium residental. The key word for development is balance, I want to develop the region slowly with multiple cities a little larger for every next city.

The blank mountains on the bottom of the screen are designated for development, but i am not sure what kind (hihg value light residental? trails?, vacation?)

The upper left corner of the map below show my waste processing. I never really used the waste burning powerplant because i didnt think it was worth the money. I can tell you I was wrong, storing all that waste in landfills is much more expensive and has worse effects compared to the waste burning energy plant.

I am looking to create realistic sceneries for my city and therefor use every tile for some purpose, just like in reallife cities. However I dont want to crowd the city to much because that will most likely lead to traffic congestions.

In cities I made before I never paid much attention to parking lots. They are not really necessary in SimCity (dont know where they leave their cars), but in reallife they are all around. WIth my intend to create realistic cities I now place some more parking lots in the different area's

In the pictures below you can see I like to expand the "special" structures (like awards) with some lots which are fore most eye-candy, but do look good.

Another new thing for me is to place numerous landmarks and some statues around the city. In the past I hadly used those structures as i considered them a wast of money. In my current game I make about 8000 profit (30K in and 22K out) and therefor allow my self some nice-to-haves.

[s_olah 87]

Nice Update!!! Your city is getting bigger by the minute huh? And more beautiful as you go along...and about those mountains, I think it's a perfect location for parks, maybe some forest tracks?...I think the vacation spot sounds the best. BTW, nice little suburban downtown you have there.Keep up the good work!

[bbfan02 23]

Great work! I suggest you try to get some more custom content on that high-tech area. Great residential development!

-bbfan02-

[jacqulina 162]

looking wonderfull my friend excellent growth

[RJN 1]

Originally posted by: mkwetters

Gameplay:

I try to play the lace w:st="on">lacename w:st="on">Simlacename> lacetype w:st="on">Citylacetype>lace> as fair as possible. This means that cities will have to be able to sustain themselves instead of relying cheating (money-mods, typing monkeys, etc.). Although the cities have to support themselves I always have the goal to take the best possible care of the Sims living in the city. Taking care of those Sims is done by; full coverage of medical, safety, and educational services, plenty of recreational facilities like parks and stadiums and a nice and clean environment (no pollution). All these facilities while asking for reasonable taxes of 9%.>>  Furthermore I make use of the most common mods like the NAM-traffic Mod, Jagged Edges Mod, Hole Digging Lots V2, Slope Mod V1, etc. Besides these mods a large amount of BAT's as well.

I really like the Gameplay of  this CJ, I think when i have a CJ , I will do like this way.

[shane453 1]

I really appreciate all the planning you did before you ever started. The way you space the developed areas in the city looks really natural and you're right, it will be perfect when you want to add a highway or rail system in the future without doing damage to the city's urban fabric.

[nihonkaranws 88]

Excellent work my friend, love the terraforming!

[mkwetters 2]

As I promised some statistics about my city Amstelberg.

Below you can see age of the inhabitants of Amstelberg. The center of the city is the oldest part, it appears that the first generation died in this sector and a younger generation took its place, as you can see from the green colors.

The youngest inhabitants of the city live in the left and right of the city map, these are build in the last decades. I use these statistics for building schools and such. The older neigbourhoods with the aged civilians dont need kindergartens (or very little), but require libraries and universities. This way I try to minimize the deployment of schools in neighbourhoods where they don't need it.

The view below shows the placement of schools. I have kindergarten coveragein every part of the city but the older neighbourhoods have very little support costs due to the little need for children schooling. The high school covers half the city with mediocre aged civilians. All the parts of the city are covered by libraries, for "home schooling" by the sims.

Traffic in the city is still manageable even without public transportation. There is a combination of streets and roads, generaly a road around an crossing the cluster of buildings with streets connecting all the buildings.

The view below shows the layout of all developed areas. Above the double road is industrial area as well as in the lower part of the city map. The center of the map holds residental and commercial areas.

Apparently the citizens are quite happy with me as you can see in the picture below.

Police stations have only been introduced in the last 30 years. The first 70 year they did pretty well without the protection of the police.

Air pollution is still quite heavy above the industrial area. There is still some dirty polluting industry in the left of the city map. The industries at the bottom of the map are all high-tech and some production.

Water polution is quite heavy around the industrial park, but I dont want to spend about 3K a month on a water cleaning solution.

[Mike the Mayor 51]

That's an amazing region you've got there. Great pics all round and the data-showing ones look good too.

[mkwetters 2]

Demand for residental, commercial, and industry were sky high in the city. I recently applied some tax increases to slow down demand, and increase revenue.

I quite proud about my commuter time keeping them around 60 is the max i set upon myself.

Air polution is drastically reduced in after 20 of poluting industries. The following 75 years air polution slowly declined, same goes for water polution.

As I mentioned before waste is a big problem for my cities. I used to pile it up in landfills, but recently I discoverd the waste burning energy plant which solved my waste problems. Besides that I introduced some "verorderinge"n" policies for the reduction of waste. which helped me manage the flow of waste material. At one point I even started to import waste from a neighbouring city to meet the energy demand of the city. My city relied on the power supplied by the a few gas burning plants and the waste burning plant, but as my landfills reduced the plant didnt have enough waste to burn and power failures started happening throughout the city, at that point i started to import waste from Beemsterdam.

Education continously increased in the last century. I build school, high schools, universities, and libraries.

My city is quite "aged" as you can see. The aging of the city translates to the occupation of my schools which is rather low.

Growth of eduction comes with growth in income, which leads to higher tax returns for the city.

Doing pretty good I guess.

The balance sheet. I think I never had a city before with this kind of "profit" (25%).

[Patricius Maximus 236]

Great updates.

[Simtastico 0]

your city layout is interesting, looking forward to see some more pictures of your city.. !

[super_monkey 0]

man this CJ is ill... and thats a good thing.

[mkwetters 2]

Originally posted by: s_olah Nice Update!!! Your city is getting bigger by the minute huh? And more beautiful as you go along...and about those mountains, I think it's a perfect location for parks, maybe some forest tracks?...I think the vacation spot sounds the best. BTW, nice little suburban downtown you have there.Keep up the good work!quote>

 

I think I might just take on you advice there and create some leisure vacation facilities in those hills. Do you have a suggestion on some packs from the STEX which I can use?

Originally posted by: Nardo69 Welcome back my friend!

Glad you made it back gain but unfortunately I cannot see your pictures ...

Take care and don't forget to make backups!

Bernhard quote>

 

You are right, about that the custom content in those areas are the alleys with garbage dumpster (which I by the way love). Do you have some suggestions what packs from the STEX i could use?

Originally posted by: jacqulina looking wonderfull my friend excellent growthquote>

 

Welcome back to my CJ, I am still honoured such a fine land sculpter as you self visits my humble CJ.

Originally posted by: nihonkaranws Excellent work my friend, love the terraforming!quote>

 

Thanx, I learned it from watching the master (in this case jacqulina)

[mkwetters 2]

Hello everbody,

This will probaly be the last pictures for Amstelberg. I created a little recreational area for my sims and dressed the hills with trees. Amstelberg is for finished for me, maybe it can use some sculpting in some places, but I am to anxious to start a new neighbouring city. Amstelberg is probaly the most succesful city I ever build with simcity 4. The new city I will be starting I will try to pay more attention to detail and realism. You will hear from me soon when I start to develop my next city.

Enjoy the last pictures from Amstelberg.

Campin ground:

Camping ground by night:

Some more camping ground:

Watch tower in the forrest (got a few of them):