Q. Building cities to scale

[gloon 0]

  I’m working on building a scale version of the Washington DC metro area.  Got the Mapp Squad Washington DC map that comdude21 put up on the STEX. (Thanks guys)

I’ve been screwing around building up the region a bit before I settle into the real work of making it look like it does on google earth.

After searching through the forums and asking around in the chat room I have been unable to find out how to measure miles in the game.  How big is a map square? 10 sq’s a large or medium map…  I know there has to be a thread out there that has covered all this before, can you point me in the right direction.

Any other useful tips for replicating real cities (using the hard setting and at this point no mods) are always welcome.

  Oh and if anyone happens to have the landmarks that cover the Mall that would be nice.

   

[Jasoncw 11,941]

The game is in metric, with each tile being 16x16 meters, and each small city being 1 km.  The ruler tool in Google Earth will be useful for you.

[tomdapom 79]

First off, welcome to ST!!! A Washington rec. would be really great, I would like to see it in a CJ (city journal)!

One large city square is 4km x 4km, a med 2 x 2, and a small is 1 x 1. Each SC tile is 16m by 16m, hopefully this will help .

Also, I recommend getting the NAM, some sort of suitable terrain and water mod, and any BATs that take your fancy (all on the STEX, BTW).

Tom

[gloon 0]

Great I'm breaking out some graph paper and getting to work. I'll try ta get a CJ going here soon.

Hey there is also 1 large map that failed to render correctly. Its got the river cut in right but only flat land around it anything that I can do for a quick fix?

[yamaneko 2]

To build a typical American city to scale, you need to think beyond the boundaries provided by Sim City 4. According to the Wikipedia, Washington is 177 sq km, 159 sq km land, 18 sq km water, so it would require at least 12 large tiles to represent, and probably more since the city runs from NW to SE. A large tile is 16 sq km. According to the Wikipedia, the National Mall is 3 km long from the Lincoln Memorial to the steps of the capital.

[corsulian 0]

Before you get too far into it, think to yourself about the realism of Washington, DC:

1. The C&O Canal

2. Great Falls

3. An economic model that cannot be reproduced (easily) in SC4 (the federal government)

[Jumorgan 0]

Google Earth is a great resource--it can give great hints on the land use of an area too, so you can zone residential or commercial where it really is. I'd also reccomend buying a paper map at a bookstore or something (just $5)--you can annotate it and refer to it easier. I'd reccomend a series of maps called "American Map", published by ADC. They should have one of DC. Highways and avenues are clearly marked, and they even show libraries, FD stations, etc. if you want to plop such stuff in the same spots. The reverse of the map should have the major roads of the whole region.

I am using such a map to recreate a city quite similar to Philadelphia...I say "quite similar" because although it's a great game and there are a lot of mods, you can only be so accurate, put so much detail into SC4, like an artist painting a portrait. It's okay to use a little poetic license if need be.

On the STEX, there is a mod to give train and subway cars a DC metro skin: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=3346

Best of luck & I hope to see pics when you're done!

As for me, I should stop being so shy and do a city journal sometime...

[djlee1999 3]

If you want to add even more realism, most county/city websites offer a .pdf maps of the land use for within a county, city, etc. (might take some time to search for it) I'm taking this approach before I start laying down my roads. I was able to find mine relatively easy. Wikipedia is a great resource to use for statistics about certain areas. Good luck!