The price to pay to be beautiful.

[YannickSHE 0]

Hello everyone. Here's something I want to share with you. A frustration. Hehehe. Tell me if you agree.

I played the game, with money cheats, no other cheats involved, and I created a beautiful region, with 15 cities all interconnected, no dilapidation, mass transit fully productive, etc etc.

I played the game, without money cheats, I have like 3 times more population overall than my beautiful region, but everything is disorganized, not planned well, mass transit holes everywhere, polluted to the max, no ordinances.

Is it the price to pay to be beautiful?

I guess it is. My very well planned and good region, which is astounding work from me, gets barely 1.5M in region ..... my ugly and not well planned region (which is one of the first I started months ago), gets to 4M in region. With approx 3-4 cities additional in the ugly region.

So I guess it's unfair from game developers. I like to play for asthetics and realism, and I have less population, less Sims to enjoy my work. When it's bad and ugly, the sims are happy in it.

We need answers.

What do you think?

[football_fever 6]

You're right, it doesn't make too much sense at all.

As for me, my most beautiful, most organized cities have a total population of.....Zero. Not a single person. I hardly ever grow a city anymore, and when I do it's the filler part of the city I don't plan on showing on ST.

Population isn't everything...just build a city that you enjoy. You're the only person that matters

[Alvo1016 0]

When building your city in a disorganized and fast way, this tends to make it easier for sims to construct well... everywhere. when you take time to do a beatiful realistic city you control where buildings grow, what kind of buildings grow, and which areas will be designated into parks etc... all this planning is better for traffic and good macroeconomcs of any city. if you take time to make a really nice middle class section of your city the sims will be happy there. even more so though high class areas need the most attention. as you have to take care of traffice, pollution, and overall desirability.

in the region where you have 4 m people, i guess there aren't many super nice middle or high wealth areas right?

[Sketchley 0]

I wouldn't so much agree that more sims want to live in the disorganized, dirty cities, but that they come from limited means, and those cities provide the most opportunities for them. I'm pretty sure that if they had the chance (ie: finanicial means,) they'd move to the organized, beautiful cities.

Wouldn't you prefer to live in a lightly populated city with plenty of parks, and excellent transportation, as opposed to a crowded city, with few to no parks and bad transportation?

[YannickSHE 0]

Originally posted by: Alvo1016 When building your city in a disorganized and fast way, this tends to make it easier for sims to construct well... everywhere. when you take time to do a beatiful realistic city you control where buildings grow, what kind of buildings grow, and which areas will be designated into parks etc... all this planning is better for traffic and good macroeconomcs of any city. if you take time to make a really nice middle class section of your city the sims will be happy there. even more so though high class areas need the most attention. as you have to take care of traffice, pollution, and overall desirability.

in the region where you have 4 m people, i guess there aren't many super nice middle or high wealth areas right?quote>

 

Well I agree that there's less "light residential" in the 4M region. I think you're right ... the fact that we take the time to build, makes it harder for tenements to come into the cities ... I noticed that large tenements in my disorganized region have a lot of sims in them. Tenements rarely come to my beautiful place.

Oh well, I prefer to play and have 1.5M sims when it's clean, organized and planned. 4M sims, with the planning, would be awesome achievement.

[MrFingers 0]

I think the biggest problem is aesthetic beauty requires space. more than anything else, space is what makes anything attractive.

[Abc987 3]

I agree with MrFingers. You can't just plop down a small little plaza and expect the region to be this beautiful and enchanting masterpiece. You need to place spaces for parks, parking, buses, subways, nicer buildings, rewards, and all those little things that make the city look its best.

[belfastuniguy 18]

I would also have to agree. I rarely grow cities anymore, I spend alot of time creating wonderfull well planned cities with huge plaza's, parks, open spaces and I try to make every detail just perfect. Not always realistic but I love seeing my cities once finished and looking great.

This of course comes at a price and that being a low population, this doesn't bother me as I'm more worried as to how the city looks. So don't worry about population figures and just built what you want, how you want to.

[YannickSHE 0]

Originally posted by: belfastuniguy I would also have to agree. I rarely grow cities anymore, I spend alot of time creating wonderfull well planned cities with huge plaza's, parks, open spaces and I try to make every detail just perfect. Not always realistic but I love seeing my cities once finished and looking great.

This of course comes at a price and that being a low population, this doesn't bother me as I'm more worried as to how the city looks. So don't worry about population figures and just built what you want, how you want to.quote>

 

I guess you're right. The thing is, I'm pretty used to the game now, and used to modds and downloads. But I barely use them. I have NAM, industry 4x, water mod, slope mod, etc. I have maybe the 15 essential mods. And that's it... I want to play the game, and see how it develops, what rewards you get, etc. I do put lots of plazaz, parks, tennis courts, grass, etc in my cities, I put 1 landmark max per region (Chrysler building is in only 1 city, etc etc, don't plop them twice).

I really play the game with my essential mods, and had astonishing results. There's maybe 3 or 4 buildings I haven't got from the game yet and it's quite a challenge for me to achieve that. I want my region to have everything the game offers. I even fell in love with te parking garages (there's maybe 10 per city!!!).

I've never been able to exceed 500k population in any city of my region so far and it's quite a challenge for me to achieve it ... with all the magnificent beautification I can possibly add to the game.

[patriots_1228 51]

if you really want you could always tell us the population is higher than it really is! ive noticed this problem too, ive developed 1 gigantic tile, 1 medium tile, and one small tile, and my pop is only near 300,000!

[Imperar 4]

Your question raises very interesting philosophical and technical debates. Firstly, let us consider building a city, does it need to be beautiful? Cities are built to work, to serve and satisfy the function and purpose of its inhabitants and the desires of the inhabitants themselves, not necessarily to be built over the decisions of aesthetic appeal in the eyes of a singular viewpoint. In my opinion, the city that works is itself a beautiful mastery. Secondly, what defines a beautiful city? In all reality, this depends on the opinions of people, so what may appear beautiful to you may not necessarily be beautiful to another person. So ask yousrelf, what is truly important, is it only to satisfy oneself based on aesthetic qualities of the city or is it really about, satisfying the majority of the whole, based on function, purpose, and reason? I believe these are the sorts of questions the programmers are trying raise awareness amongst interested gamers, to give them insight and understanding into the true art of city planning. Thanks for your time. - Omnika

[YannickSHE 0]

Originally posted by: patriots_1228 if you really want you could always tell us the population is higher than it really is! ive noticed this problem too, ive developed 1 gigantic tile, 1 medium tile, and one small tile, and my pop is only near 300,000!quote>

 

Actually, if that region becomes a city journal, or if I show pics of it, I won't pretend its population. I really want to see how high I can go, with my cities. I basically consider them "neigborhoods" and my region is the city.

I'm trying lots of different concepts, throughout the region, and it became quite beautiful. But the thing is, I have cities that, by the look of its skyline, looks more like 1M real life cities rather than 250k.

[John94538 0]

I also agree, like many other people, to Mr. Fingers. Beauty takes up space... but not if you build your city on large tiles!

[cammo2003 20]

Yeah, I work with large city tiles now myself, and I didn't realise how long it can actually take to fill up a tile until I started working with my current region (which is very, very spread out). My PT use is insane.... I have several stations at 10,000 + pax, with most of my major stations at over 6,000. That's just the rail system. The buses are used fairly well, too.

[snotbowst 1]

I just thought of an interesting expirement you could do...

1. Grow a nice city in the nice region

2. Grow a crappy city in the crappy region of equal population

3. Transplant each to a new region with conection to each other and see where the net flow of people is

This would have its flaws liike play time and others but it would be a unique project.

[YannickSHE 0]

Originally posted by: snotbowst I just thought of an interesting expirement you could do...

1. Grow a nice city in the nice region

2. Grow a crappy city in the crappy region of equal population

3. Transplant each to a new region with conection to each other and see where the net flow of people is

This would have its flaws liike play time and others but it would be a unique project.quote>

 

Indeed, it's very interesting. In my beautiful region, I did a "garbage" city with no I, C, or R. And I decided later to add some dense R. It grew with lots of tenements and low-wealth buildings. It's very interesting to see this city in middle of the beautiful region.

[football_fever 6]

Check out the CJ "Who Wants to be a Millionaire"

He builds a city (with money cheats of course) completely organized, mass transit oriented, everything zoned, all health and education down, etc.

He hit the go button and had 1 million on a large city tile in 11 years. He made some other adjustments and did it in 8 years. The thread is closed now, but you should go check it out.

[Shingure 56]

If you look at my cj of Reema then you will see beautiful cities and towns that uses transit and well car traffic. They arent as polluted because the mass transit was placed in the most densely populated sections.So it spared the extra 10,000 passengers.

[YannickSHE 0]

Originally posted by: football_fever Check out the CJ "Who Wants to be a Millionaire"

He builds a city (with money cheats of course) completely organized, mass transit oriented, everything zoned, all health and education down, etc.

He hit the go button and had 1 million on a large city tile in 11 years. He made some other adjustments and did it in 8 years. The thread is closed now, but you should go check it out.quote>

 

Nice experiment the Millionnaire CJ.

I don't necessarily want to have 1M people in my cities, but it is certainly a good way to show us it's possible. Great.

That means I can grow a mega city in my region. I have to remove some water (I love rivers and lakes). With a large map, with barely no water, it's possible.

I think I have to stress out a bit. I have cities with 30-40% of water, that's why I can't grow larger in population in some of these cities. Mmmmmm. Why didn't I realize that before? But anyway, I got used to my region, and even with 250-400k capital cities, I think I got the stage 8 for every city (I even think I'm at stage 8 with my farming and suburbs).

Do you think it's possible to achieve stage 8 in a messy and dirty region? I think it's possible. There are some really nice stage 8 R$ buildings in the game.

I think I'll purposely create 4-5 interconnected cities onto my region that are polluted, criminal, lots of traffic, but in a organized way. Mmmmmm. Lots of ideas here.

[MrVegetable 2]

One guesses you can never have a functioning region that is perfectly beautiful unless you cheat. I suppose we need cities that are full of ugly, crime infested, polluted, congested cities just to keep the population (which leads to economy) growing, just like in real-life. Just shows how in-depth a simulator SC4 actually is.

[YannickSHE 0]

Originally posted by: MrVegetable One guesses you can never have a functioning region that is perfectly beautiful unless you cheat. I suppose we need cities that are full of ugly, crime infested, polluted, congested cities just to keep the population (which leads to economy) growing, just like in real-life. Just shows how in-depth a simulator SC4 actually is.quote>

 

A nice way to put it. Yes of course my beautiful region has some cheats, but not that many (unlocking marinas is one). I guess the only real cheat that is making things possible, is the money cheat. Of course, without the money cheat, it takes months if not years of real life time to achieve what you can do with endless money. The thing is, it doesn't change the population fact. Money or not, the game leads to the same point. It just takes more time without the money cheat.