Stage Caps Mod

[toroca 160]

I said a long time ago that I was going to create a mod that changed the Stage Caps to be more realistic, but I never got around to actually doing it. After playing with the Reader today, my interest got reawakened in this, and now I''m trying to find out if there''s still interest for the idea.

Here are my basic thoughts on how I''d set this up:

1.) Stage Caps on all forms of commerce would be lowered somewhat, so you''d start getting the larger commercial buildings earlier.
2.) Stage Caps on all residential would be increased significantly, so you''d have to get a higher population before you''d get the biggest buildings.

With these two changes, you would see less of the "downtown hole" problem that is common now, where your commercial core (assuming you have one) is dwarfed by the residential buildings around it. The idea is that commercial skyscrapers would appear LONG before residential ones, making for a more realistic city. I wouldn''t be able to completely eliminate the problem of residential buildings being taller than commercial ones, for the simple reason that Maxis for some stupid reason made most of the game''s tall towers residential, contrary to almost every real world city. But I could significantly reduce that problem by keeping the tall residential towers out until your population has grown very large.

Note: This mod would NOT be for people who just want to get as high a population or as many skyscrapers as possible, because by making it harder to get the big residential buildings, it would by default become harder to get a high population and the big residential towers. This mod would be for people who want more realistic looking cities.

So, what do you think? Would this be worth my effort to produce? If you''re interested in this, please post here with comments and suggestions that I might be able to incorporate into this mod, assuming I actually do create it.

EDIT - For those who don''t know what Stage Caps are, they are controls Maxis put in the game that prevent you from getting towering skyscrapers when you first start a new region. They''re meant to make your region grow more realistically, but they don''t really work that way because of the size of the big residential buildings and because the commercial office stage caps are set the same as the residential stage caps, which ends up causing big residential buildings to appear first. The reason for that is that the Stage Caps are based on residents/jobs of each wealth level. So a city might have 50,000 people and thus be past the Stage Cap for Stage 8 (big) residential buildings to appear, but that same city may only have 20,000 commercial office jobs, so it would still be limited to smaller commercial buildings. Ask if you still don''t understand.

[toroca 160]

*listens to the crickets chirping in the silence*

 

Well, it seems there's less interest in this than I expected.  I guess I'm the only one still bothered by the "downtown hole" problem in SC4.  Just in case someone who IS interested happens to peek in, I'd like to mention that I decided to go ahead and make this mod.  I'll release it either tomorrow or LATE tonight if I get it done.  If you want details, post and ask.

[mentarman 14]

Well, keep in mind, if you release it, you run the risk of someone later attributing it to Ralpahael.

Anyway, sounds like an interesting mod. Unfortunately, it does seem somewhat hurt by the way Maxis did things. And it seems to me people could try to control this problem (the hole downtown you refer to) through zoning density instead. Though it seems like this would help with the occassional Ryan Apartments being built among medium density stuff.

[toroca 160]

Yes, people could using zoning to somewhat control this, but not entirely.  I'm going further with this mod to put a tighter control on it.  I think I've finished this mod, and as soon as I get done reading the forums, I'm going to go start testing it out.

 

Basically what I've done is change all the Stage Limits for residential and office.  Decided not to bother with services.

 

Office stage limits are now lower, which means the bigger buildings should start appearing earlier.  Indeed, Stage 8 buildings should start appearing once I pass 35,000 office jobs instead of 45,000, and I should get a higher percentage of them too.  Also, if I ever get to a million office jobs in the region, fully 30% of them should be in Stage 8 buildings, compared with the current maximum of 20% reached after 125,000 jobs.

 

Residential Stage limits are now higher.  No stage 8's should appear before 75,000 people now, compared with 45,000 before.  And the maximum percentage of Stage 8s is set at 18% when you reach a population of one million, slightly less than the 20% you'd reach in the original game at a population of around 125,000.  I'm optomistic that this mod will be a success, but I'm going to play with it for a while first to make sure it works before I release it.

[MoJooo 0]

Sounds like this would help make cities more real looking.  I'd be interested in this.  I'll be looking forward to using it. 

[eroseu 0]

Toroca, I really think any mod that bring more realism to game is allways welcome. Even if no more people is interested in posting here, i think a lot of people will be interested in downloading this mod.
Keep on the good work and I will espect to see this mod.

[toroca 160]

Well, here it is.  You'll find the mod attached to this post.  Please be sure you read and understand the included readme file before you use this mod.  I still consider this a beta, because the kind of changes it makes will take days or weeks to fully test, and I wanted to get it out there for people to try.  I've already played with this installed for a while, and it DOES appear to be working properly so far, and I'm not anticipating any problems, but you never know.  This is a complex mod.

 

If anyone tries this on pre-Rush Hour SimCity 4 and determines that it does work, please let me know.  I think it SHOULD work, but I am by no means positive of that.  There may be changes made by Rush Hour that are included in this mod and won't work without Rush Hour.

 

Enjoy!

[El Effe 5]

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On 10/28/2003 11:50:06 PM toroca wrote:

*listens to the crickets chirping in the silence*

 

Well, it seems there's less interest in this than I expected.  I guess I'm the only one still bothered by the 'downtown hole' problem in

SC4

.  Just in case someone who IS interested happens to peek in, I'd like to mention that I decided to go ahead and make this mod.  I'll release it either tomorrow or LATE tonight if I get it done.  If you want details, post and ask.

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I am interested in your new modd. This is the first time I've seen your new thread and I visit Simtropolis 6-8 times a day to read the forums, download lots and modds.

 

[Nightraven436 0]

Well, just got here after being directed in the right direction in your journal. I'll be downloading and I'll give you the results as soon as possible. That is, if I ever get around to playing. I haven't played in a while(except for a few experiments). I'm more likely to just go to Simtropolis and see what's the latest news and to talk to the community.

[DaveParker 0]

I'm not sure about the lowering of com stage caps, but maybe increasing the res ones would make things better.
I don't know a huge amount about the stage caps - I don't know which buildings are in which stage, whether these caps are regional or per-city, whether com caps are based on reaching a certain com population or res population, etc.
But whatever stage Ingebretson Place is in, I don't think that should come so early. In my new city I've just got my first com tower - a 20 storey West & Co. At exactly the same time I got a taller 30-storey Ingebretson Place in a medium density res zone. I think that building should be high-density not medium really - then again it doesn't accommodate all that many people for it's size which is why I suppose it's only medium density.

[Trolca 15]

There are many areas that I would like to have more realism in the game. I personally feel that the taller buildings both commercial and residential show up way too soon.

 

An example would be Wichita Kansas, where I'm from. With a population of 370,000, the tallest two buildings have 26 and 22 floors. It is very spread out but still the core area would have enough population for stage 8. Cities of that size shouldn't have stage 8 buildings.

 

I like your idea of the taller buildings being commercial instead of residential. That is an improvement for realism.

[The_Dalai_Llama 15]

I'm not going to download the mod.  I like my SimCity plain and unsalted.

 

Still, Toroca is right for the most part about stage limits.  It's too easy to get residential stage 7's and 8's early on while commercial stage 7's and 8's take time to get.  From the looks of the details of the mod, it is much more realistic than what it is now.  I suggest if you're a mod lover and you like realism, download it now.

 

The way I'll do it for now is zone low and med density zones while my high density zones will be developed way later.

[frogface 352]

hmm i dont agree with making it so you get less residential skyscrapers. but definately get commercial easier!

[toroca 160]

DaveParker, I agree wholeheartedly about Ingebretson Place.  This mod SHOULD make it appear a little later, but it'll probably still be too early.  At some point I'm going to take a look at it and put it on a lot family that's not Stage 5; that's why it appears so early now, it's on Stage 5 lots if I remember the files correctly.  I figure it'll be better if I can find a lot family that has Stage 6 and 7 lots it fits on.

[DragonFire1380 0]

Instead of lowering or raising the caps, why not just change the percent chances? At the moment, there is a 1% chance of getting a stage 8 res building when your pop is 46,000. Why not make it to where its 1% chance at 80,000 sims?

For com, you can just increase the % for a lower pop number.

CO-$$ has a 3% of stage 6 buildings with a pop of 9,086. Make it say 6% instead.


EDIT:

hhmmmm.....just forget that idea. I just realized that all the stages only have percent chances up to 125,267 pop which would make things confusing when trying to change the percents of stage 1-6.

[toroca 160]

Dragonfire, that's exactly what this mod does.  The Stage Limits/Caps are those percents you're talking about, but they're not a percent CHANCE, at least according to the Prima Guide.  And they're wrong about so many other things it wouldn't surprise me if they got this wrong too.  Anyway, according to them, these percents are hard and fast limits, meaning at a particular population level the game HAS to have that ratio of building stages.  I've never fully believed that because for instance, if you only zone Low Density, the game should start having problems when it wants to create a Stage 4 building, since 4s can't be built on low density.

 

And it's a little more complex than just changing the percentages, because the percentages across all eight stages have to add up to 100% at every population level.  You can't just double the Stage 8 percentages and expect it to work, there has to be a corresponding decrease in percentages among the other seven stages.

 

What I did for this mod was completely throw out Maxis' population numbers and percentages, and wrote my own from scratch, all the way up to 1,000,000 instead of their maximum of 125,267.  Took me over four hours in Excel to get numbers I was happy with, and which hopefully improve the game's realism.

[Shoe 2]

Personally, I think you should make it so that everything comes later, I mean, the requirement for stage 8 is 125K I think, when have you ever seen a city with that many people have a huge skyscraper?

So I think that it should be increased across all feilds, but Res should definitely be higher.

[toroca 160]

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On 10/30/2003 4:35:07 PM Shoe wrote:Personally, I think you should make it so that everything comes later, I mean, the requirement for stage 8 is 125K I think, when have you ever seen a city with that many people have a huge skyscraper?

So I think that it should be increased across all feilds, but Res should definitely be higher.

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That might be something I could do later on, after I'm sure this mod works properly.  The problem with what you suggest is testing it.  To properly test a mod like this, you need to start a new region and develop it to see if you can see a difference.  If I made the limits as high as you suggest, it would be that much harder to be sure they work right.  Sure, it would be clear early on whether or not the big buildings were being delayed, but what if you hit the appropriate limits and they never appear?  You'd never know that until the population got high enough.

[DuskTrooper 314]

I don't mind the height of res buildings at all-just a mod for commercial would be good enough for me.

[+Guest]

I thing in a realism one, stage 7's could come around 300k for commercial, and 350k for residential, with stage 8's like 50k later. Maybe start them at like 10% or so.

[toroca 160]

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On 10/30/2003 5:00:11 PM iamrobk wrote:I thing in a realism one, stage 7's could come around 300k for commercial, and 350k for residential, with stage 8's like 50k later.  Maybe start them at like 10% or so.

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The trouble with that is where exactly is that commercial threshold?  All Stage Limits are based on the population of THEIR OWN developer type.  So high wealth office doesn't care what your residential population is, it only cares how many high wealth office jobs there are in the region.  If you mean that office stage 7s should start appearing at 300,000 people, how many office jobs should that be?  100,000?  150,000?  And then do you apply that limit to both types of office?  If you make the limit 100,000 for both medium and high wealth office, then it would take 100,000 jobs of EACH before you'd get any stage 7s, and that might make the residential population requirement 400,000 or 450,000.  This is one of the reasons stage Limits are so complex.  You have to think about them all at once to try to understand how they interact with each other.

 

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On 10/30/2003 4:59:52 PM DuskTrooper wrote:

I don't mind the height of res buildings at all-just a mod for commercial would be good enough for me.

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I should have mentioned in my post where I released the mod, I did residential and commercial separately.  You can use either one or both of them if you wish, they're both included in the zip file.

[+Guest]

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On 10/30/2003 5:17:33 PM toroca wrote:

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On 10/30/2003 5:00:11 PM iamrobk wrote:I thing in a realism one, stage 7's could come around 300k for commercial, and 350k for residential, with stage 8's like 50k later. Maybe start them at like 10% or so.

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The trouble with that is where exactly is that commercial threshold? All Stage Limits are based on the population of THEIR OWN developer type. So high wealth office doesn't care what your residential population is, it only cares how many high wealth office jobs there are in the region. If you mean that office stage 7s should start appearing at 300,000 people, how many office jobs should that be? 100,000? 150,000? And then do you apply that limit to both types of office? If you make the limit 100,000 for both medium and high wealth office, then it would take 100,000 jobs of EACH before you'd get any stage 7s, and that might make the residential population requirement 400,000 or 450,000. This is one of the reasons stage Limits are so complex. You have to think about them all at once to try to understand how they interact with each other.

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On 10/30/2003 4:59:52 PM DuskTrooper wrote:

I don't mind the height of res buildings at all-just a mod for commercial would be good enough for me.

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I should have mentioned in my post where I released the mod, I did residential and commercial separately. You can use either one or both of them if you wish, they're both included in the zip file.

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Yeh I really wasn't thinking when I made my posts. I think that CO$$ should be like 80,000 jobs for a stage 7, while CO$$$ could be like 120,000 for a stage 7 (with stage 8's like 30 jobs later).

[ScLu 3]

I posted a question about a currently existing stage limits mod that LOWERS the residential stage limits.

[DragonFire1380 0]

I didnt realize that the game had to have that % at a given pop. It nice that they made the game in a way that we can edit such things but geez they made it all more complex then what it needs to be.


I say they just make a patch that turns everything back to the way Simcity Classic worked.

[toroca 160]

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On 10/30/2003 8:09:01 PM ScLu wrote:I posted a question about a currently existing stage limits mod that LOWERS the residential stage limits.

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....and?  If you expect an answer to the question, you're going to have to ask it here or point me to it.  Just telling me that you asked a question isn't particularly helpful.

[mavere 0]

Just to make sure, all stage caps are regional right?

[toroca 160]

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On 10/31/2003 10:48:45 PM mavere wrote:Just to make sure, all stage caps are regional right?

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Correct.  The exact answer seems a bit fuzzy, but yes, in general, the stage limits are based on regionwide numbers and not per-city numbers.

The reason I say it's a bit fuzzy is because it doesn't ALWAYS seem to look at the rest of the region.  Sometimes you can start a new city in a developed region and get skyscrapers immediately, but other times it takes years and lots of development before it happens...

[toroca 160]

Just a bump to get this back among the world of the active topics.  Has anyone who posted in this thread tried this mod out?  If so, what are your observations about it?  I'm still testing it myself, but it's always helpful to have other people testing too...

[DaveParker 0]

Nobody seems entirely certain if stage caps are completely regional, or per city. I think they should be per city, personally though.
Has anyone had a chance to test this mod with patch 3?

[+Guest]

I have! I am using it in my city journal, Spid County. Check it out if you wanna see it in action.