Laying down zones, having to redo all streets to roads

[GotJack 0]

I am currently playging Sim City 4 rush hour, and when ever i lay down zones, i always have to go over the streets making them into roads.

Is there anyway i can change a defualt or something, so the zones build roads automatically?

Its getting a bit tiresome,

[CaptCity 4,915]

GotJack...

There isn't any other way. Streets are the only thing that 'auto-zone' uses. If you want roads, you could lay them out first, and then press 'shift' while zoning. This will de-activate the auto-street-zoning so that only the zone will appear. Just a thought...

[SC4BOY 21]

The autozone makes redicuous choices when making street placements anyways.. why would you ever use auto-roads?

[GotJack 0]

New to the game, ut i have noticed its *****

My only worry is, that if you dont put the raods right, places dont have acces to a road?

What are the stipulations of this, so i know where to do roads

[Tysons4 68]

i always use auto road... i just click and hold in a spot at a road and and as it needs it upgrade the simple streets all the way to highways if i have to....

alternating zone types as demand warrents...

creates some awesome looking cities

[MattShizzle 11]

I always use auto zones, too because if you don't (and even sometimes when you do) you wind up getting buildings with no road access inside.

[Muck308 55]

Well, it sounds like you need to learn some more hot keys. Try playing around with Ctrl and Alt when plopping your zones. These keys will change the size and facing direction of your zones.

[SC4BOY 21]

There's no excuse for having "no car" zots.. if you regularly get em, you're paying no attention to what happens when you zone... as for auto-road, its abominable unless you're building on flat, open areas and even then it pretty much sucks. Since all of you who use them say you then REDO THEM, why use them to start with ?? LOL..

I sketch in my streets, roads, etc FIRST, then use the zoning tool as needed.. And as Much308 says, learn to use the tools..

[Rady 94]

I have to agree to what SC4BOY said. Whenever I start to zone a new area, I start with roads (normally starting with the high-capacity ones like avenues, ending with simple streets). Then I'm placing public transport (el-rail, bus) since I don't want to spend money for zoning an area for just "dezoning" it a second later iin order to place public transport. The last thing to do is to acutally zone.

Using the Ctrl, Shift and Alt key gives fairly enough options for placing the zones the way you want. One thing you need to keep in mind is that zones will automatically try to adjust to the road with the highest capacity available.

That is, if you're zoning between a road and an avenue the zoning tool tends to orient the zones facing the avenue. The Ctrl/Shift/Alt-keys cannot override that behaviour completely. So if for a certain purpose you definetely want a zone to face a certain street you might need to demolish another one (or build it once you zoned that specific part).

But to be honest when I started to play SC4 some two years ago I also used auto-zoning without thinking an further since my goal was to simply bring up a huuuuge city. I was kind of "demand-bar-driven" - since the demand was up all the time I could think of nothing else but zoning. It took me a while to realise that there is much more than simply zoning suared blocks. Browsing the "show us your .." threads helped a lot to get an understanding of what SC4 could be about  ...

So one important part in playing sc4 is to have patience in building your city.

[MsProll21 0]

I usually just stick with streets in RES zones and use the roads for connections with COMM, IND, etc. Later as the population increases I revamp what I call 'main veins' with roads, and avenues replaces the connecting roads to commercial and industry zones.

I use to replace all the streets with roads but found it very expensive for a small city just starting out.

Good luck to you

[SC4BOY 21]

LOL>. well indeed! .. what I meant is the area where I'm going to zone... In the city tile I usually only lay the BIGGIES.. my main rail if I'm going ot use it and at least the space to develop the major arteries and how they (and the traffic) are going to flow.. where I'm going to develop CBD's and where I'm going to lay out Industry and residentials.. this is a plan though.. not laying out the whole city.

Let me say however, that it is possible to lay out huge sections quickly if you're going to "drive to population" first and quickly.. This can be done quite successfully though I rarely play that way. The Omnibus has examples and tutorials on how to do it this way.