The Community (News and Member Thread)

[Baro 44]

Welcome!

My self and some friends have been tossing ideas around for an ideal turn based multiplayer simcity4 region and after compiling all the ideas together into one cohesive plan, I have come up the the new multiplayer region titled The Community.

Riding in on the heels of Neptune Bay, I'm putting together a smaller more intimate and flexible region for people who want a little more freedom and a little faster play.



Here is the map of the region, anyone interested please PM me, reply here, or contact me on MSN at baronjutter@hotmail.com

The core focus of this region is on realism and team work. If that sounds interesting to you, and you have enough free time to do about 20-30 years a week to play, join in! We are looking for about 5-6 friendly players interested in not just building and submitting their cities at the end of the turn, but interacting with their fellow mayors in the region.

And a huge thanks to Simvision for hosting the region, you know who you are!

1
2
3 miniklobb
4
5
6
7
8
9
10 Baro
11
12
13 BarbulaM1
14
15 Cjah
16
17 Dutchdragon
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26 MallowTheCloud
27
28
29
30
31 baco2005

A few people have asked how the game will work and what they'll need to do. Most of you have experiance playing like this, but I thought I'd post an easy tutorial for those who arn't sure how it all works.

At the start of the game you will download 2 files, a region file that contains the map info, and a plugin file that contains all the plugins for the game. The region file will go into your mydocuments/simcity4/regions foler allowing you to load the region once you start the game, very straight forward. The potential tricky part is with the plugins folder. This folder is designed to totall replace your existing plugins folder(s). It must be in the correct directory and there must be NO other plugins other than the ones downloaded for the game or the game will not work correctly.

Simcity4 atually has TWO plugins directories. One is located in mydocuments/simcity4/plugins and seems to be the most popular location to put downloaded plugins. Simcity4 also has a plugins directory where you installed it, which default would be program files/maxis/simcity4/plugins. It's important before you play to make sure you are only using ONE of these folders for your plugins. If you have plugins scattered on both, simply cut the contents of one directory and paste into the other, ensuring everything is in only one folder.

Once you've made sure all your plugins are in the same plugins folder, re-name the folder. Call it something like 'myplugins' or 'backupplugins' or 'poop', what ever you want. Now that your personal plugins are backed up, just put The Community's plugin directory where the old one was. Now when you start simcity, it will only see The Community's plugins, not your own. It also means you can easilly play The Community, your personal game, and any other multiplayer regions simply by re-naming your plugin directories.

Now that you have the region directory and the plugin directory, simply start simcity and play the map you own for 30 years. Once 30 years is reached, make sure to pause the game, then send me your city file. Your city file will be located insde the region folder you downloaded for the game in a big list of everyone's city, but only send me your own. That's it, you've done the turn! At the start of the next turn you will be asked to delete your old region file and download a new one, this new file will have the city you sent me, along with all the cities the other players sent me. Then you just play another 30 years, and repeat. It's extremely easy once you are familliar with where all the file directories are.

[Baro 44]

To answer some questions I was asked.

What mods are we using?
We have the latest NAM made slightly more ped and MT friendly
A realistic services mod which scales the service radius, capacity, and costs up to levels coming closer to reasonable.
A lovely tree mod and terrain/water mod that sends our region to a more temperate northern climate rather than southern california.
A power plant mod that attempts to keep them all balanced and fair from a gameplay perspective, but adjusts their stats to be slightly more realistic.
A mod that increases industrial jobs to above average compared to real life to be more in line with the above average compared with real life population of residential buildings, allowing more space and time to be spent on your lovely city rather than industry.

And of course, each turn more plugins will be added at the player's requests.

[vadvaro 2]

are those large and medium squares, or medium and small?  i like 14

[Baro 44]

THey are indeed large and medium.

I'm currently collecting the first 3-5 'charter members' to build the critical mass to start the game, can I put you down for 14 for if/when we start?

[baco2005 0]

baco would like # 31 and # 14 i belive if thats okay with baro

[vadvaro 2]

> can I put you down for 14 for if/when we start?
yes please

 

[Baro 44]

Just to keep things simple at the start everyone is starting with just 1 city, but can quite easilly expand from there to as much as any player feels they can successfully control. I'll put you down on 31 since that was your first choice ok?

[miniklobb 0]

can i take #3

[Cjah 15]

I'll take 15!

 

[Baro 44]

Great guys, welcome aboard, I added a list of who is claiming what starting points. Almost forgot _I_ gotta pick one too!

[Dutchdragon 74]

17 looks cool to me!

[miniklobb 0]

how is everything coming and when will decisions on mods be out?



This smiley is under utilized>>

[Baro 44]

We currently have far too many to easily list, and if you have any you'd really really like to have, let me know and maybe we can have it in on turn 1.

[Baro 44]

Ok guys, just thought I'd post an update.
We are most probably starting on friday some time, but I'd like to get a couple more people in just to be safe, so feel free to invite your friends and such.

Other than adding in a few more plugins that have been sugested and finishing up the land claiming/holding system, the game is good to go.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Hmm... well, I wasn't going to join, for fear that I wouldn't have time to do this and Neptune Bay. But... I think I will. So... city 26 looks good to me, if it's not too much trouble.

[Baro 44]

26 is it mallow, welcome aboard!

[Baro 44]

As the start date approaches I thought we should talk about some of the potentially unique rules in this region.

Claiming Land: One important issue in any multiplayer game is who gets what land. At the start everyone simply picks a tile, first come first serve, but as the game progresses, how do people expand? Do they buy land? Does the game vote? Does the person running the game simply decide who gets what? Something else?

What do you think the most fair way of handling this situation would be?

I want to see a system that is fair, that allows people land when they want/need it, and allows land to be taken away from players who can't handle the expansion.

As realism is one of the primary focuses of this multiplayer game, I had the idea to put rule making/land claiming and enforcement to the ultimate level of realism, allow players to raise their own city militia in order to claim land, settle disputes and such. BUT I also don't want this to be an adversarial military game, just a simple and realistic way of settling disputes when all diplomatic options are exhausted.

Having a dirt simple military system would solve a lot of problems and add an interesting dynamic, but it would also create new problems. If military units only cost money, could a rich player simply use their money to hurt other players? Would a military system make people more likely to attempt to cheat?

So, what does the community of The community think about this issue?

[MallowTheCloud 41]

I hate to be Mr. Negative here, but I just don't like the idea of a military in our game. This isn't a war game, and I fear it would turn it in to more of a race to build up the biggest military rather than an attempt to make good, cooperative cities.

But, we shall wait to see others' opinions on the matter.

[Baro 44]

That was exactly my feeling too. It would just come down to who had the most money to put into units, and if it's just about money, might as well just buy the land, and I don't want it to be just about money.

So, we're just going to go with new land costing 100,000 (taken by the GM between turns) and used as the initial funds. As much as I hate arbitrary rules, would it be agreeable to limit expantion to a maximum of once every 2 turns?

Other than the initial funds, let's just keep it polite. Check with your neighbours, make sure they don't mind. If no one minds, go for it. Don't expand too fast as I'd like to keep some land open for the first few turns for new players who wish to join.

Cities not sent in by the deadline will be put up for auction as the citizens have voted for a new more active mayor. Your starting tile can never be auctioned off unless you quit.

Neighbour deals:
We're all(hopefully) mature people here. Feel free to make deals with your neighbour, but you must both agree to the deal, and both follow it for an entire turn without canceling or changing it. Obviously there is room for abuse here, like one player selling his excess power to another city without the other person buying it to make gobs of money out of thin air. Or another player doing the reverse and buying power out of thin air. Keep it fair, keep it realistic.

Landmarks:
We're going for realism here, so please avoid plopping the empire state building in the middle of a farm or sleepy downtown area. In fact I'd go so far as to recomend no landmark office buildings, as they are just expensive unrealistic eye-candy with no real function. Of course these are just recomendations in the name of realism.

Neighbour Conections:
If two players would like to exchange cities before the regional exchange to better coordinate a conection, or just because they want to update their demand/traffic sooner than once every 30 years, go for it. As long as everyone submits to me their city every 30 years a week it's fine to share between eachother sooner.

[Baro 44]

Game Launch!

After following the instructions in the first post on how to download and instal the regions and plugins, simply start playing (on hard) the city tile that you have reserved for you. It would be helpfull if you would add a little (XX) after your city name that corresponds to your tile, eg Barotown (11) and use your ST name as your mayor name, so we know who is who.

region and plugins!
Plugins
Region File

[BarbulaM1 38]

Very cool, I hope to join this region soon. Im just finishing up my UCS-2 city.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

It's downloaded! Look forward to the beginnings of the city of Kumo Coast!

[Cjah 15]

Good I'm off work and ready to download....

I like the idea of buying land better then military....

 

If I wasn't so sleepy right now I'd say more...

[miniklobb 0]

When are our cities due? and how should we send them to you?

[I-will-crush-u 1]

I will take number 30 please - just a medium sized for me.

[Baro 44]

Cities are due pretty much today, as I'm hoping to start turn 2 sometime on monday, unless people ask for a little more time.

Please email them to me at baronjutter@shaw.ca

[MallowTheCloud 41]

You received mine, right?

[miniklobb 0]

my city will be in soon just need to let a few more years play out. could i purchase 2 by any chance?

[Baro 44]

Hey guys! I've recieved a lot of your cities, but not all. Sorry for the delay, but was waiting for as many stragglers to catch up. I'll hopefully get the 2nd turn uploaded this evening and provide a link here.

[miniklobb 0]

did you get my city? also what about purchasing more land?