Megalopolis

[Tadd4292 0]

Hello everybody!

Coming here is soo disheartening because all these pics show magnificent cities with tons and tons of people/building/cool things/roads and everything!

As hard as i try to get these things, i cant.  Does anyone have any tips on how to get those cool cities with everything listed above?

And one last thing.  How do you chanbe a growable version download to just a plopable?

Thanks!

[Dizastrow 4]

There is so much that needs to happen for a city to be successful. 

I suggest you read and study the OMNIBUS section of this website.

The tutorials within it can give you excellent help on building a successful city.

[TV-VCR 14]

What Dizastrow said.

One thing you want to do first is decide what style you want to go with. Do you want your region to resemble something out of London? Rotterdam? Hong Kong? Moscow? Los Angeles? New York? Yokohama? Something futuristic? City 17? Once you've decided, well, go out there and find all the custom content that meets your preferences. Don't forget to also nab the essentials. The major essential would be the NAM. There are many others though.

After that, study other user's CJs. Examine how they've put together their city structure, layed out their transportation networks, and how they achieved a realistic nature scene (if they did at all). You should be able to get some inspirations and ideas from reading them. Read through the guides on the omnibus. Many users have contributed guides to there. It's very useful, I've learned a lot fromt here. Don't forget to hone your playing techniques; find out what works best for you, what you like. Eventually you will get the hang of it and will be building cities like a real pro.

As for creating plopable versions, this requires experience with programs such as Lot Editor and SC4tool I believe. The omnibus here also contains guides regarding to that type of material.

Hope this was helpful,

Chris

[Quzo 0]

Cities need careful planning and of course you need NAM not to mention SC4 deluxe as these give you more transportation options. There are also many other good mods out there like the traffic control mod and the SC4 extra cheats file as well the super demand mod. I suggest looking though the STEX and looking for stuff you may find useful and that will aid you in your development of a metropolis. I also advise you to play your city before you start zoning, i.e build up the transportation systems first and thus is will save you headaches later. I like to put railroad and highways first and maybe add rapid transit later.

Another thing you could try is 'housing estates' or even 'mixed use developments' where by an avenue branchs of into roads and the road encirlce redidential zoning with streets inside the road along with bus stops where needed and have everything the sim may need (including some jobs but no heavy industry) on the estate (or next to it) so they won't have to commute so much. This is good for high tech industry because it likes to be near other zones and sim want to be near there jobs. So you can put it around the estate and this saves commute time. Thus a win-win situation. Though for high tech you need a good education system and low pollution. This why my housing estates I idea is good because it shortens the commute of sims and so creates less pollution. Note: this works best with lower density housing as with higher density the streets would not be able to cope, but ovbously you can just upgrade them to roads.

Now where the avenue comes in. Commercial zoning likes traffic and wherew better to build up traffic than an avenue. This is because unlike a highway you can zone next to it and it has the same capacity as 2 raods or 2 one way roads exepct it is all 1 thing. And so you can have shopping streets. Or even a main street for a certen area. Natruly main streets are busy as they are normally in the center of a town. That's why I suggest avenues.

You also need time, patience and fast computer if you want to build a fairly large city. I to desire to make a megalopolis too as my largest region was only 4.5 million inhabitants.