Please help me...

[seven_simz 0]

Let me start by saying this:
My dream is to manage a city with at least 1 of those ULTRA-HUGE buildings. Nothing more..
That's all I want.
I play SC4 deluxe edition. Have for years. Lots of fun, of course. Every few months I'll reinstall it and play it practically nonstop for a few weeks, then stop. I almost always stop because I get annoyed. I get annoyed because I can never get past mid-nice cities. I've read a lot of faqs. I think I may be getting stuck in the, as PyroFalkon calls it, 'Peanut Butter Spot'. Whatever... anyways, in cities I'm dedicated to, I'll usually (playing on Easy) make some simple land, start my small city, continue on until I'm so poor I get booted from being mayor, and... that's it. Now lately I've been able to manage my money and keep it positive. It takes me longer, it's a lot more frustrating, but I can just barely make it stay positive. Now I always get to this point where it looks like big buildings are starting to sprout. Then.... nothing. Sometimes I concentrate on agriculture, sometimes on industry, sometimes on residential... I just don't get it...
Do I... just... suck? Am I just not good enough?  Or am I just simply not sticking it out long enough? I'll usually stay with a city for a few days (averaging about 5-10 hours of play a day).
And yes, I do make exterior cities to give my goods and to make deals with reguarding my main city. All the time.

I sort of don't expect anyone to help me, but if anyone could give any advice to help me get one of those buildings... WITHOUT CHEATING/MODS/MAKING IT EASIER SOMEHOW... I'd be very thankful.
Oh, btw, I'll probably be gone the rest of the night, so I guess I'll just check back on this question later today.

[City2TheMax 3]

Hey seven_simz!

First off, never think badly of yourself. Being able to build a successful city like you describe is a skill that needs to be developed; even I have never achieved such large buildings!

Please don't regard me as judgmental or anything: I believe that you are quite impatient with your cities. It appears that you will build a lot in a short amount of time, which leads to higher maintenance costs, and eventually bankruptcy. It seems like the best solution to your problem, with the information you have provided, is to just slow down. Build up your residential/commercial/industrial first. Don't build civic buildings immediately! Wait until you have enough income and your city really demands it. This way you can assure getting positive income. You can build quite large cities that operate without civic buildings, which is good for getting a good income base going. From there you just have to take it slowly: expand, grow, please your citizens.

If you could post some data and pictures from one of these cities it would really help us analyze and fix your dilemma. Guides and FAQ's are great sources of information, but every city builder and every city is different.

I hope this helps!

[rusty_777 0]

Most of this is from the Sim City 4 hint card.  But if you are using a Sim City Vanilla (no MODS...etc.) then I assure you that this will help. 

The 3 D's

Demand represents how many people want to live and work in your city.  Demand is broken down into Residential ®, Commercial ©, and Industrial (I).  These are represented in your RCI bars. 

Density represents how many people you can pack into a building.  By zoning lower density, you limit the size of buildings in your city.  Zoning high density allows for skyscrapers, but is very expensive.  Higher density buildings will NOT develop until you reach the following population thresholds:

Density                              Population

Low                                    0

Medium                              1,100

High                                    26,000

It isn't worth the expense of zoning for high density before you have the population numbers to support it  In other words, build out before you build up.  If you have a large population and you're still not seeing high-rises, make sure the high density zones are supplied with water.

Desirability represents how desirable a local area is to the residents and/or businesses.  All of the categories are placed into 12 groups - occupants (this is in the detailed RCI bars).  Each groups reacts to different factors in different ways.   Here is an over-simplified chart:

    Residential R-$ - R-$$$: reduce air pollution, garbage, crime, place schools, parks, and         hospitals, lower commute and reduce traffic noise. 

    Commercial Service CS-$ - CS-$$$: reduce garbage, crime, air pollution, increase traffic, place near R, place landmarks, place near CO.

    Commercial Office CO-$$ - CO-$$$: reduce garbage, crime, air pollution, place landmarks, increase traffic, place near CO.

          Follow the same guidelines for Industry (Agriculture, Manufacturing, High-tech) Think logically.  For example Industry like flat land, reduce freight trips and low crime garbage, air pollution.  High tech industry likes parks. 

EXAMPLE: To increase the desirability of a high wealth residential neighbourhood eliminate pollution generating buildings like the Coal Power Plant; make sure there isn't trash skewed around the city by providing a landfill, and reduce crime by placing police stations accordingly.

Budgeting Basics:

 Don't zone high density early in the game, when building schools and hospitals adjust local funding, don't place parks, police stations, or fire stations until you can afford the, place power plants and landfills in neighbouring cities and then set up a connection to start a neighbour deal, don't provide water to your sims until you are ready to support the necessary infrastructure,  in a pinch you can raise taxes but be careful this can dramatically lower demand. 

Region:  Place dirty business (I-D and I-M) in a different city than your clean zones (R and C).  Ironically, pollution cannot travel through cities.  Put your power plants and landfills in the dirty city.  This way you keep all your polluting buildings in one place, away from your residential areas. 

Just a side note.  Using MODS like the NAM do help gameplay.  For the matter that you cannot stay with the game for more than two weeks try downloading BAT's from the STEX.  However, this is your city.  The most important rules are to have fun and build out before you build up.  From all of us here I would like to welcome you to Simtropolis and if you have any questions/comments/concerns send me a message or check the omnibus.  We are willing to help. 

Cheers.

[Gunny 0]

What do you mean with ULTRA-HUGE buildings? Most of the really huge buildings are plop buildings, downloaded of the STEX. They wouldn't grow by themselves.

[Marcin Z 0]

In Managing Your city, very important are taxes. If You want CO $$$, reduce taxes for them. It will make bigger desirability for them. when there will be not enough vertical place in city, You can start then with medium, and later high density zones

[BBUUBBBBLLEESS 0]

ive found that if, although many advise against it, that if i start with all of the 'high industrial', 'high commercial' and 'high residental' i can normally make a city work. ive also found that, although it can lead to financial disasters, that pay less atention to the money bar at the begining really can help. i also put in schools, collages, high schools, libarys and hospitals to try and make the sim people have more similons. then, eventually, after about 1 hour or so of playing the same city, ill be earning upto $10,000 and spending upto $8,000. i also tend to get lots of big building in the residental areas, and only stop expanding when ive run out of room. i also raise tax on Dirty Industry to 20% and try to encourage High Tech industry as much as possibe, cos they lead to rich people, which sometimes leads to taller buildings.

Also, its not that ur bad at the game, u just havent found a way of making high populations and stuff yet. it took me at least a year to figure out how to get tall buildings and stuff

Hope this helps

BBUUBBBBLLEESS

[seven_simz 0]

Rawr. I just don't understand. I know and understand all the taxes, all the demand types, what each class of Sims desires in order to move in... and Gunny, while there may not exactly be any super-mega-ultra-gigantic buildings that come with the game, I know for a fact that there are at least a few super-mega-ultra-big buildings that do. =P I guess I can try to post a screeny of an ordinary-for-me city that I'm... or at least at some point was... dedicated to. I'll post it sometime later tonight, most likely. Maybe then someone can help me figure out what I'm doing wrong. But thanks to everyone who posted. City2TheMax is probably right about me not spending enough time on my cities though.

[rusty_777 0]

Remember to build out before you build up.   What are the populations of your cities ?

Another key element is that demand does not only affect your city tile , but your whole region.  So you may want to build neighbouring cities.  

Cheers. 

[seven_simz 0]

Talk about technical difficulties... sorry about how long this took but I had to make SC4 work for my new video card. I took several screen shots. But of course nearly every one of them, for some reason or another, will not work. They're severely... screwed up.

BUT! I did manage to get one good screenshot, and it's the most important one.

This is a city, pretty much my style, that I made a while back. I think it's probably the best representation of all my cities that I can dig up in ten minutes. You can see how I sort out (or rather don't) my industry, residentials, and my business areas. For some reason I always thought every city needed some agriculture. I recently learnt that this is not at all true... but I think linked cities do... or do they? Who knows. Anyways, also look at how there are plenty of semi-big buildings that look like signs that huge buildings aren't too far off, which, themselves, are signs that massive buildings aren't far off. But I nearly never even get those huge buildings, not to mention the "ginormous" ones I desire. I think this city is linked to a smaller one just for the purpose of goods transportation.

So if this helps anyone figure out my problem (probably problems) then good.

Sorry if pix this big aren't supposed to be embedded.

[coolotter88 2]

stage 8 buildings are very difficult to grow, I have a city of 200000 and they still don't grow (well, the commercial ones at least, still waiting for hurt enterprises)

edit: resize your image please, it's too large.

[seven_simz 0]

Okay, the image has been resized.

Also, how do you know it's level 8? Is there a place I can go to see every single buidling included in the game? And what level each of those buildings are? 200000 and they're still not growing? Wow.

You know, I think I haven't even reached a level 6 building before....

Also, are there any buildings on this site that you can download that don't mod the game? Like they appear on their own like other buildings with their own presets and everything, but won't make the game easier/harder or change how the algorythms work and such? If so, could someone point out where they would be? Thanks... I know I ask a lot of questions...

[rusty_777 0]

That's basically every building on the STEX your talking about.  But downloading a BAT into your plugins folder does modify the game.  These BAT's don't make the game easier or harder.  They just increase your variety of buildings to choose from.  They can be plopped or grown naturally with the game. 

Hope this helps.

Cheers. 

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

My advice to you would be to keep your zoning types more separate. For example, use small-tile cities near your residential and commercial center to build heavy industry. Farmland should be out in the suburbs, like in real life. Where you want your large buildings to grow, try to stick with only residential and commercial and high-tech industry. Pollution will lower desirability and make it less likely that big buildings will grow. This works for air pollution as well as water pollution which is caused by farmland. And if you continually get frustrated, just keep starting new cities. Expand outward in your region. Since the game isn't like SC3k and SC2k and SC Classic you can push pollution into different city tiles. Do not put every type of zone in one city tile. Specialist cities might be the answer you are looking for.

[Lampala 1]

One thing to help your finances is, when I'm in financial difficulties, I often just do evil U-Drive-it missions to give myself time to gain more money. I don't know if everyone does that, but it works well since you don't have to pay the money back like a loan. What's your tallest building called? I can't really see which ones you have from the picture. One way to see every building in the game is to download the mod that lets you plop every building in the game. You can browse through and see how much taller they are than your buildings. (If you don't want to be tempted to cheat, you can just delete the mod after you're done, of course).

[seven_simz 0]

Hey, thanks Lampala. That's a good way to make money (lowers Mayor approval for a while though =P). And the mod thing sounds like a good idea. I won't use it beyond browsing all the buildings, though. Now I just have to figure out where that mod is...

[Lampala 1]

I'm pretty sure it's called RH Plopmodd final.

[manubeas 0]

seven_simz: I had the same problem a few months ago. I've been playing for about 8 months. It's easy to solve. First, download some(many,about 60) buildings which are quite bigor big so you have a higher possibility of getting a super mega huge building. Then, check EVERYTHING, I mean education, health, power, water, garbage, high density zoning, desirability etc.. Everything should be quite high. Now, get a population higher than 26,000. Most important of all, check your commute(influenced by traffic, # of jobs, and distance from residential zones to commercial zones). If that doesn't work, then I'm screwed also.