Sandy New York

[PatternRec 1]

 This is my first time using NAM and I wanna post a city journal, hopefully to get some pointers from experienced players as I move forward with this. 

Here's the town, Oct 03: Low density housing and medium industrial. Some LD business mixed in to the residential. I think of them as corner stores. Trying to leave some open spaces for later growth. Pop about 1400. I'm on the large square that's between Queens and Brooklyn (my home town!) in the New York region that comes with the game. City has a fire station. Making about $200 a month. Wanna be conservative with spending. Will replace windmills with coal when appropriate. Need to put in a garbage dump soon. 

Pic:

[image resized. Please keep the pictures no larger then 800x600. Thanks - Chptrk]

This is kinda fun to post this stuff here.

[PatternRec 1]

Oct 2009: about 4000 sims. Making about 400 a month. Small clinic and landfill in place. Pretty boring layout. Time to take a break from the comp for a while. 

[image resized. Please keep the pictures no larger then 800x600. Thanks - Chptrk]

[jacqulina 162]

good start my friend keep it up

[PatternRec 1]

Thanks. Just played a little more before hitting the hay. No screenshot, but it's the same as above with some more industry and residential. Basic services and infrastructure is there, including a police station, elementary school, high school and library. No college yet. Replaced the small fire station with a large one to cover the bigger area. Pop's up to about 6700 and the city is making about $500 a turn.

One thing I've always struggled with at this stage - on the one hand it makes sense to start putting in other transportation networks now, other wise you have to do major bulldozing later to put in rails and stuff. On the other hand it seems ridiculous to put a railroad in a small town only a couple miles wide. Maybe I'm thinking too "realistically" for the game? I don't know anybody who houses a family of 12 in a single ranch home, but those are the numbers in the game. Maybe the same distortions apply to traffic.

[Chptrk 86]

Good start. I'd like to see where you go with this!

I think putting in railroads now would make things easier in the long run, less destruction later. I'd be like a train just running through the town. That's my advice, but the choice is all yours.

Keep on working!

[PatternRec 1]

Thanks for the tip, Chptrk. I'll give it a try.

I've never messed around with rail all that much in the past because it was annoying to lay. How seriously should I take the advice about dedicated freight rail, ie. not mixing passenger with freight lines?

[PatternRec 1]

 Here's a pic of the city as described above. I'm gonna tweak things locally and avoid growth while I try to plan for future transportation. Never used to plan in the old days. I just reacted. Hence my cities were always broke in no time. Been much better playing the game these days.

[PatternRec 1]

Is it ok to keep asking questions in my CJ thread? I don't wanna come across as spamming or post pumping. I just like the idea of visiting a single thread rather than being all over the place. I can get pretty scattered easily.

I have a question about rail stations. The arrow faces a road. Does the rail just have to touch any part of the station? Is there a way to do it right? Never sure about this.

So glad I re-found this forum. Gave up on SC years ago because I didn't have answers to a lot of questions.

edit: added a dedicated freight rail, straight shot out of town with 2 freight stations. Two months later neither were used. Reverted to the pre-rail save. I don't get rail at all in this game. Should I leave it for the future? The roads next to the industrial areas are not congested, but they're at 100% so I'd hoped to get some of the trucks off them. :/

[Chptrk 86]

Yes,  it's ok to ask questions in your CJ, just try to to make to many double posts in your CJ. Like if you have two posts within a short amount of time, just make them one instead of posting two.

For rail, the arrow needs to be on a road while the tracj just needs to be touching the station. Passanger and frieght share the same tracks. To get people to use the passanger train, have bus stops around the city so people can take a bus to the station.

For frieght, just make sure it's close enough to the industry in your city. It should do it's job from there.

Hope that Helps!

Chptrk

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

Oh I like New York styled places mine is one itself! If you're going to go up and big in a big hurry like I did be prepared for the draw backs. Traffic is the biggest. And hit those sims with education hard and fast and it will pay for itself. Don't forget a elvated freeway to help them get where they want to go!

I like this and will watch more it's fun to see someone use a Maxis map

[PatternRec 1]

@Chptrk: thanks. Good advice as usual.

@Kusajika Yachiru: I grew up in NYC, and I think that's why I used to be really bad at SC4 when it came out. I always tried to make tightly spaced, dense cities like the one I knew. Now that I've lived in Phoenix for a few years I know what they mean when they say suburban sprawl. I'm gonna try to keep a lot of less densely zoned areas this time around. I had a few biggies in the Berlin region before I installed NAM. I did a clean install of SC4 before putting in NAM because I wanted to start from scratch. Gotta work now for the next eight hours but I'll be jonesing to build my city instead. Can't wait to grow it.

[jacqulina 162]

coming on well my friend

[PatternRec 1]

 Population of about 7k. Making around $500 a month. Replaced clinic with hospital, upgraded to a large police station and added a city college and a museum. Water treatment plant cutting into profits but was needed. Surrounded area with rail and avenues. Rail connects with screen edges in two directions.

High wealth residential starting to move in.

Started to get commercial demand so created a "downtown," but it's only low density right now. At some point I'll have to start experimenting with the new transportation stuff like roundabouts and things like that. 

Here's a pic:

[PatternRec 1]

Population about 12k. Making almost 2k a month. Zoned a couple of blocks of medium density residential in old town. Now I've got some tenements! Bus system in place. Connected an avenue, power, water and rail to a northern tile.

Tomorrow, neighbors!

[Larks2242 251]

Great job looks really good

[PatternRec 1]

Thanks. It's nice to get positive feedback. I looked at some other city journals and I'm way out of my league here. lol

Some real creative stuff out there. Pic of the latest soon.

[jacqulina 162]

great work my friend

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

It's looking good, maybe use a few diagonal raods/avenues? Sure they can be a pain to work with but once the buildings grow up around them, they look great! And help with commute times greatly because sims don't have to keep zig-zagging through a grid system like the one you got there. Just a suggestion, I got a a few of them in my city if you want to see what they look like in a city that is similar to yours.

Keep it growing and keep this CJ going!

[cmdp123789 710]

Well I have to admit that is really entertaining.... you know... I just simply forgot of what was like to play SC4 with no plugins at all hahaha, it reminds me of good ol' days....... CJ TIME... It's interesting too see it evolves... also I would suggest to start to grow out before growing up!!! Oh, try to use all of the block or else no big buildings are gonna come out... remember that having suburban sprawl is great but they need a downtown and since this is the beginning of the city it's assumed that it is the downton... so fill up the blanks hahahahha REALLY!!! DO IT!!! GET DONE WITH IT!!!! hahaha

[PatternRec 1]

Thanks guys. I really hate the grid system, but I found working with diagonals unwieldy and didn't realize there were benefits to traffic. I'll try some out. I had an old city in another region that I laid out like Santa Fe, all winding streets, but it felt like there was so much unused space.

As for the open areas, I've been leaving the so I wouldn't have to bulldoze when I went to put in bus stops and subway stations. I used to really fill everything up densely, and then I thought maybe that wasn't so good. I'll keep experimenting, but it's definitely cool to have some feedback from experienced players.

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

If you are worried about placing bus stops and subway stations here is a great mod that lets you place them on top of your streets, roads, oneway roads and avenues.

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=21305

There are a few minnor bugs for example, if you place a bus stop on a street and decide to upgrade that street to a road, you have to delete the bus stop first. And also if you place these on oneway roads sometimes the direction of the road will get reversed in an area, so beware of that. But other than that I haven't had any problems out of them and they work great and Sims love em

[PatternRec 1]

I'm hesitant to try any new mods, particularly buggy ones, because I have a limited amount of free time and I want to spend it playing rather than trouble shooting. As I build I might add a few more but I stick with NAM-only now. 

Haven't played in a few days. Population about 13k right now. City making money. Don't recall how much. I added a couple of medium density residential areas in a place with some air pollution - demand for low wealth res was way up - so now I've got some apartment buildings:

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

Looking good, keep growing. Hope those sims don't mind the bad air.

[PatternRec 1]

The pollution there isn't that bad - just the edge of the dirty industrial cloud. I'm actually surprised that there's some medium and high wealth buildings there. I've got some time to play tonight so I'll see where I go with it.

[Larks2242 251]

Nice update sand

[Aldender 15]

I'll be watching this from start to end, count on that...

Great so far!

[PatternRec 1]

 Up to about 15k sims in the first city. Now that I've got an economy and some demand, started a city next door with the purpose of playing with some of the new toys that NAM gives me. Here's a screenie:

[Larks2242 251]

Great job love the city name

[PatternRec 1]

Love the ped malls. I've got a nice ped bridge over an avenue that looks great. Two quick questions:

1. I assume they increase ped traffic and are good for commercial zones and the benefit is they don't cost like the ones Maxis put in the parks menu. Is that right?

2. How do you place them? Which way does the arrow face? Since they're technically "roads" according to the help tool, does this meanI can put business zones facing them without any streets, roads, avenues, etc? Confused.

[simcity4fan12 13]

I beleive the Ped mall tiles can have buildings in front of them and the buildings will function with out abandoning due to lack of road connections. I think the Ped Bridges won't allow buildings to be connected to them and still function. Also, I don't think the positions of the arrows matter with those.

Anyway you're off to a great start! It's so 2003 classic simcity4, I like it! Can't wait for more!