How to force sparse zoning?

[cpsof95 0]

I've been working with a custom mod which should make the game mechanics more realistic in several ways. Yet I still haven't figured out how to force sparse zoning especially in the early game. The low-wealth sims are just way too ignorant on how many buildings there are around their little cottage.

So what should I do to make the mod either reward for having some extra space around residential zones (or penalise for having other buildings right next to another one)?

[xxbydesign 1]

why don't you just zone larger lots?? Hold down +ctrl while zoning and it wont subdivide the lot. Also, you could always try purposefully leaving space between zones. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question but it seems like modding is the harder solution.

[cpsof95 0]

Yes, I can leave some space (trees) between zones, but it's not the optimal way to play SC4, if you want to make a big city fast. However, in reality, nobody is going to move to a little village with a slum, since people are looking for some peace and quiet when they decide to move to countryside. Having neighbours all around your house with their dogs barking and children screaming doesn't give you that.

SC4 doesn't reward you for building beautiful cities with trees everywhere. I'd like to get even a little bit of that aspect to the game.

[cpsof95 0]

Ok, I found a decent solution, but it has an annoying "bug".

I decided to give a minor park effect to all trees, and increase the plop cost of trees. I also adjusted the desirability parameters so that even low-wealth people don't want to live in a new town if they don't have some park effect around. So residential zones become occupied only when surrounded by trees.

But all this comes with a stupid bug. The game seems to have city-wide park effects stored in the saved city file, and these effects are only updated when something with park effect is either built or destroyed. If I bulldoze a tree in an existing city, the new park effect of the tree is reduced from the park effect table. So destroying a wide forest in an existing city has an ugly impact on the park effect of that area. Well, realistic to some extent, but unintentional.

P.S. In the desirability settings there's a possibility to set the desirability effect or nearby zones, but these settings seemed to be buggy, or I just didn't understand how it works.

[chris0101 8]

The way the game mechanics work is that if you remove something that removes pollution, etc, the negative number automatically gets impacted (ex: if something has a park impact of +15 and I bulldoze it, within that radius, for a time, I'll get a negative park effect of 15). It's just how the game mechanics work. It appears to be hardcoded.

You need access to the sourcecode and to modify the exe to change it, which we can't.