Newbie questions

[Drewster 0]

I have 2 questions, 1 is, what files do i need to transfer if i want to transfer my cities and regions from a computer to another, i have the regions file transfered but no cities appear, also, a real big Newbie question, how do i get skyscrapers to appear, i finally have a couple of pretty tall looking ones coming in, but only about 2, what are the requirements to get skyscrapers to appear?

[Jon2244886 0]

If the people have money, and you have a lot of ppl and you have high density residential , and high desirability, then they appear.

[Nikran 0]

skyscrapers are more to do with the total population of your region, not just a single city. Around 40,000 you'll start seeing the larger buildings and 100,000+ is for the largest ones. Your frist city is the hardist to grow in ways. Once you have a decent region population, say 20,000, you can start new citys and jump stright to medium density (Will have to be connected to your other citys) and high density is just around the corner after that.

[Griffintje 0]

I have another $%&^! question: how far is "far enough", in the meaning of putting the residential zones far enough away from the industrial zones and the power plant? And how big do I plan my neighbourhoods (size of res.zone per family)? I usually start of with a mixture of 2 and 3 deep residential lots

[T Wrecks 10,210]

There's not The One Answer to this question - it depends on which residential and which power plant type. You can get R$ right next to a coal or oil power plant, or R$$ right next (or at least pretty near) to a gas power plant, or R$$$ right next to a solar or wind power plant.

If you want to be on the safe side and make sure that the power plant doesn't have any negative impact on your residentials, simply view your city with activated air pollution map as soon as the power plant has gone online. See where the circle of polluted air ends, start zoning residential from there. Planting dense forest around the power plant makes the pollution radius smaller, btw.

2 deep and 3 deep is great for the start. 1x2 and 1x3 light residential grows right from the very start, then after a while you can try some 1x3 or 2x3 / 3x2 medium density residential zones - these are usually rather easy to grow. 1x3 strips (zoned medium and dense alternatingly) are ideal for rowhouses, later 1x2, and later even 1x1 will work for some R$$ rowhouses.
If your city works well, at 40,000 - 50,000 inhabitants you can try going for the first highrise - try a 4x4 zone first. If you get a highrise, you might get more. The more compact the zones, the further you advance. That means, if after your first 4x4 highrise you lay out a 3x3 dense zone and nothing grows, you may not be ready for such compactly packed highrises yet. Try another 4x4... as time goes by (and number of inhabitants goes up), you can keep using 4x4, but also try 3x4, 4x3, 4x2, and 3x3. Some highrises even grow on 3x2 dense zones.

When you can get fairly well-sized apartment blocks on your 2x3 / 3x2 medium-density zones, you can also try the lot sizes 3x3, 4x3, or 4x4 for medium density.

All this counts for the default buildings. If you donwloaded BATs, they can have more "exotic" lot sizes. Consult the readme in such a case, and if there is none (or no information on lot sizes), you might find out the lot size by playing and seeing where the BAT usually pops up, or if that fails, contact the uploader and ask him to provide a better documentation.

I hope this helps.

[Griffintje 0]

Thx!

O, if I have a zone that's facing the wrong direction, do I need to turn/rebuild it? (If there's a road along it, and still the arrow points in the wrong way, because you build a busstop or something on part of the ground)

And the same for buildings, do I always have to build the roads first? It is sometimes difficult to see the number of tiles (forrest) and I happen to make mistakes in putting the roads

[GMT 389]

as for copying cities to another pc, you have to take the the entire region files in the my documents /sim city 4 folder.

This is where all the cities and regions are saved to when you play.

the region folders in the main game directory are ... well, I don't know actually, but they are the preset regions that come with the game...

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Roads are important so that the zones know to which direction they should point. If you lay out zones on empty terrain, they may point anywhere. If you have a road and lay out a zone adjacent to it, the zone will by default point to the road, or you can make it point there by pressing [ALT GR] or [sHIFT] when zoning. I gather that you already know how to zone continuous areas by pressing [CTRL] while zoning.

Any residential zone that doesn't point to a road will show the "no road access zot". Nothing will develop there. So if there used to be a 1x3 residential zone and you put a bus stop in the first tile by the roadside, the remaining 1x2 zone behind the bus stop will never develop. You can use such gaps to place some small parks to increase attractivity for residential zones (or plazas for commercial zones). There's also a bus stop out there on the STEX (don't ask me for a link, though) that has a built-in 2 tiles deep park behind it - something for the lazy mayor.

[stunta21 0]

i have a question too, i jus downloaded a region and did all of the things the omibuses are telling me to do

But, when i do the shift,ctrl,alt, r thing my region isnt showing up in the folder.

what do i do

did i save it right

[Snike 0]

Hi to all citybuilders community

Would like to join to this topic to ask a few more nub questions. Please, consult me...

1. I suspect, many of you are using NAM so the 1st question about it. Where I can look at the concrete capacities of Road, One-Way road, Avenue, Ground Highway and Elevated Highway? (concrete - I mean in digits )

2a. If a plant some trees on the tiles, occupied by Elevated highway (game allows this), are these trees will do their functions? (air and noise pollution stop)

2b. Is there any way present to plant more than one tree at tile per click? It's very boring to made a green belts, especially, when I try to make them dense as much, as possible (I mean possibility to plant a several trees in one tile)

3. Considering Your experience of city building, how often you use a railway for inside-city ptransportation? Is there need to build a freight railway from industrial zone to commercical/residental? What rail network for passengers is more effective on maintenance/transported_passengers meaning? (Underground, on-ground, monorail?)

For now that's all. Will be very gratefull for answers.

Thanks.

[DFire870 2]

I can't answer all of your questions, but as for the tree planting, if you hold down CTRL + ALT + SHIFT, and then click the God mode button, you'll go into the pre-city god mode (the city won't be destroyed or anything, it'll just give you access to the terrain tools that were only available before you started a city).

As for railways, the freight railways only need to be built to the edge of the city and made as a neighbor connection. However, freight trucks will not use the railway unless there is a freight station next to it and the roadways to neighboring cities are blocked, because they'll use roads above all else.

Rail lines are usually good for long distance travel, where you have very few stations placed far apart. For inter-city transportation, depending on the size of the city, it's best to use bus, subway, el-rail, or GLR (if you have NAM). Between cities heavy rail and monorail are good (and to an extent buses). The rail network that is most effective... It really depends on the scenario. Like I said, heavy rail and monorail are good between several cities, while subway, el-rail, and GLR are good inside cities (and thus with relatively frequent stops).

A good strategy is to build heavy rail between cities, then have either a bus or subway network within the cities, with a stop near the train stations. That way people use multiple modes of mass transit.

[Snike 0]

DFire870

Anyway, thanks for answers

To plant trees in God mode - IMHO it's not the same. I suspect, that trees, planted in GM not so efficient in air and noise pollution blocking, as trees planted in MayorMode (but it's still need to be cleared out via experiments).

Thanks for consultation about rails

A one more question, if you please:

1. Where I can find an info about parks/plazas/etc. and their influence to the RC demand? (again, I mean influence in digits, demand points)

2. Is there any recreational structures, that influence to industry demand? Or it can be done only via population?

Thanks in advance for answers.

[Moundman 0]

***** here,

This is probably a dumb question but what is NAM?

[Mayor of Majesticville 0]

The NAM stands for Network Addon Modd. It is a transit related mod that adds and/or changes dat files in Sim City. Reccomended for Rush Hour and Deluxe Editions, this modd also adds new transit networks, including elevated puzzle pieces, and an ANT network.

[baby-boom 0]

please help !

have a big problem during playing sim city 4 rush hours, everything is ok, unless i want to save game. i click on the icon (or ctrl+s) and the computer freezes, the cursor is visible, but i cant nothing to do, only restart with restart button, cause ctrl+alt+del give no answer..its a disappointing, that i cant save my game, could somebody help me, please?

i increased my virtual memory to higher numbers..and is the same

what is my solituon?

I have athlon 3000 processor, radeon 9600 and 1024 memory

[silophant 0]

I just downloaded the NAM, and I can't find stations for Ground light rail. Am I missing them, or do you have to use elevated rail stations?

[cartman89 0]

can anyone help me...cuz i cant patch my rush hour on my simcity4... thx

[geemcd 0]

Is there anything resembling the NAM for vanilla SC4 (no rush hour)

[Silur 3,308]

Hi, geemcd ...

No anything, it's impossible ....

Vanilla SC4 was without any transportations .... 

[SimRabbit123 6]

SC4 Vanillas has no custom content except for lots and a few mods, everything else like the NAM and BATs only work with Rush Hour installed or SC4Deluxe. By the way, SC4 Deluxe is very cheap now (~$9) on Walmart. If I were you, I would spend that money on SC4D, it's worth it!

[Pinoy30 0]

hi, new to SC4 rush hour edition, does anybody knows why the game crashes after u installed new mods like transportation and City ordinance??? i keep getting booted out of the city, but the next city over i was able to go in and play it. so whats the problem??please help thanks

[KingTitan 6]

Originally posted by: T Wrecks There's not The One Answer to this question - it depends on which residential and which power plant type. You can get R$ right next to a coal or oil power plant, or R$$ right next (or at least pretty near) to a gas power plant, or R$$$ right next to a solar or wind power plant.

If you want to be on the safe side and make sure that the power plant doesn't have any negative impact on your residentials, simply view your city with activated air pollution map as soon as the power plant has gone online. See where the circle of polluted air ends, start zoning residential from there. Planting dense forest around the power plant makes the pollution radius smaller, btw.

2 deep and 3 deep is great for the start. 1x2 and 1x3 light residential grows right from the very start, then after a while you can try some 1x3 or 2x3 / 3x2 medium density residential zones - these are usually rather easy to grow. 1x3 strips (zoned medium and dense alternatingly) are ideal for rowhouses, later 1x2, and later even 1x1 will work for some R$$ rowhouses. If your city works well, at 40,000 - 50,000 inhabitants you can try going for the first highrise - try a 4x4 zone first. If you get a highrise, you might get more. The more compact the zones, the further you advance. That means, if after your first 4x4 highrise you lay out a 3x3 dense zone and nothing grows, you may not be ready for such compactly packed highrises yet. Try another 4x4... as time goes by (and number of inhabitants goes up), you can keep using 4x4, but also try 3x4, 4x3, 4x2, and 3x3. Some highrises even grow on 3x2 dense zones.

When you can get fairly well-sized apartment blocks on your 2x3 / 3x2 medium-density zones, you can also try the lot sizes 3x3, 4x3, or 4x4 for medium density.

All this counts for the default buildings. If you donwloaded BATs, they can have more "exotic" lot sizes. Consult the readme in such a case, and if there is none (or no information on lot sizes), you might find out the lot size by playing and seeing where the BAT usually pops up, or if that fails, contact the uploader and ask him to provide a better documentation.

I hope this helps.quote>

 

That's what makes Sim City unique and why it has lasted soooooooooooooo long.  You never know what could happen in your city. (kinda like real life) but nontheless. fun, interesting and GRAND........SIMCITY4ever

I agree with you T RECKS    Way to go....i wish i could have said that. LOL

[haydenk87 0]

hey another ***** question lol, anyway is there anyway to make disasters happen randomly without having to inflict them urself???

[haydenk87 0]

hey another ***** question lol, anyway is there anyway to make disasters happen randomly without having to inflict them urself???

[I9113N 4]

WHERE ARE ALL OF THE BAT BUILDINGS???????????

I CANT FIND THEM ANYWHERE!

HELP!!!!!

thx

[patriots_1228 51]

PLEASE DONT POST IN ALL CAPS!!!!!!!!!

you need to unzip the folders you download into your sc4 plugins folder.