Stupid question...

[msupoke 0]

I am wanting to build my interstates before building the cities.  Is there any way to "God Mode" my highways (and railroads) without the huge costs to the cities? 

[CaptCity 4,669]

Nope. Any 'man-made' development must occur after establishing the city (Mayor Mode). Could use money cheats if not concerned with realism...

[CarmineHilton 6]

I'm sorry but I will have to disappoint you. Only terraforming, disasters and plopping trees/animals are able to be used in God Mode.

What I propose is that you start your city and use a modd available at the modds section or the STEX to generate money.
This way you will be able to pay the costs of highways and railroads easily. And If you play the game on pause, no time will be lost either

>> Personally I would advize the "Budget Bank" as money generator. It can be downloaded here. =)

[NetPCDoc 1]

Hello msupoke,

As stated above - fully developed transit (especially intra-city transit) can not be done before you start your city.

However - using region play - and being a bit manipulative

(some may say more than a bit of a cheat) -

Your Neighbor connections (i.e. inter-city transit) may be made prior to starting your serious cities.

The Trick (this works with anything that will make a neighbor connection):

If you start a city - make one or more neighbor connections to

an un-started neighbor city - then save the started city;

then open the neighbor city that you made the connection(s)

to (the connections will be there) and save this un-started city;

You now have neighbor connections in your un-started city.

I have done this to all four sides of several un-started cities

(in a special region - set up just to allow this type of editing),

then imported copies of these un-started cities into another region,

so as to have all neighbor connections made - region wide -

prior to actually starting to play any of the cities in this other region.

Please see my City Journal "Long Waters Region" for photos of

how SimNation provided my Region with Neighbor Connections,

using this trick.

Please enjoy,

-NetPCDoc

No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

[Facelessman 5]

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=83080&highlight_key=y&keyword1=cheats%20mod

This is a plugin that adds cheats to the game. Ctrl+X opens the cheat box (even without the plugin. Some of the new things in this are not actually cheats), and you can right click on it to see all your options. Typing "Moolah 100000" will set your balance $100,000. So you can give yourself as much money as you need to build your highways (Moolah 50000000! actually, I'd be careful with this, you might accidentally go over the limit and give yourself negative money), then start your city with the normal 100,000 when you're ready to build.

[msupoke 0]

Thanks to everyone for their help.  I usually do not like to cheat, but those highways are expensive.  I have rationalized that it is not cheating, since interstates come from federal, not city, money. 

[warrior 169]

Btw I added a button to the Mayor UI to give god terraforming in mayor mode. This saves you switching back and forth using Ctrl-alt-shift (?)

It's on the STEX and a link is in my signature \/