Cities XL Hints & Tips

[soltangris 42]

Guys, still trying to learn how to build highways. It might be only me, but I

[morriswalters 16]

1.    Very Large Interchange              240 by 300 m

2.    Large Interchange                      240 by 300 m 

3.    Road interchange(large Avenue)  300 by 500 m

4.    Clover-shaped Interchange          400 by 300 m

Soltangris

Using a rural road bring the road from the direction your hoghway will come from, when you get to the spot where the interchange will start  put an intersection in.

Then carry the road through the intersection.  Place 5 60 meter tiles on the new section of road.  Draw another intersecting road.

It should look like this.  Delete the tiles and the road between  the intersections.  My example uses the two tee interchanges.  They should snap between the two small roads like this.

Flip the interchange by moving the your mouse up and down the interchange.  Now connect to you highway.

Enjoy.

[morriswalters 16]

Did you know that at the end of any straight road is the "other" eight way tool.  Try it out.  Draw a straight road going in any direction.  Start a new road at the end it.  Drag the road to the angles of the eight way road.  It turns blue.  Cool.

[Cob92 360]

Originally posted by: morriswalters

Did you know that at the end of any straight road is the "other" eight way tool.  Try it out.  Draw a straight road going in any direction.  Start a new road at the end it.  Drag the road to the angles of the eight way road.  It turns blue.  Cool.

quote>

Actually, that only shows that the new road is precisely straight or perpendicular to the existing road, which could be any direction. The 8-way tool builds SC4-style roads snapped to an invisible grid that does not change.

[morriswalters 16]

The behavior of new roads started at an endpoint of a straight road are referenced to the face of the last road segment of that road.  A road started from that point it will snap blue at 45 degree increments in rotatation around the that point, thusly the other eight way tool.  Or the other right angle tool if you prefer, the primary difference being the reference point.  If you are curious about it's utility, for drawing circles it's moot, however the behavior of roads at the endpoint of noncurved roads allow you to draw octagons of any size freehand as long as you draw faces in the correct order.  That in turn gives you circles without guides.

[morriswalters 16]

Freehand drawing of octagons.  Draw a straight road.  Finish the road a the first snap after a price change.  Now alternating left and right draw the next six sides at 45 degrees increments using the same technique to measure the length. Close the last face.  A freehand octagon.

Edit

This technique works with varying degrees of success depending on the levelness of the ground.  There is also a massive problem with MC's tools.  If you find you can't complete all eight sides, then use three.  Simple geometry gives you the rest. I'll post a tuorial with screen grabs as soon as I can.

[morriswalters 16]

It turns out the road measuring code is worse than I thought.  After double checking some things here's the tutorial.  You can still use the other technique, sometimes, some places, grrrrrrrrr.  This is based on the fact any two connected sides of an octagon are all that's needed to create the whole thing.  You can start anywhere and with any orientation.  If by some odd chance you find that you can't make the second segment the right size move slightly.  Although I never had any trouble when  moving to the left.  It seems that  the poor code shows handedness.  At the end use the center square to find the center for your circle.

[morriswalters 16]

I call this post the 15 min city.  Sometimes the hardest thing about this game is knowing what and how much to do first.  The city developed here will give you a starting place that will work on any map.  It's a good place to start and you will end up with a tidy little grid that makes money.  It's not complicated and the recipe is simple.

1  A city connection

2  10 zones of low density unqualified.

3   4 zones of low density qualified

4  6 low density offices

5  6 low density retail

6  The Bates Motel(Psychos welcome)

7  1 All in One tile

8  2 zones low density Heavy Industry

9  2 Zones low density Manufacturing

10  City hall

And here we are.  The long rural road going to the left is where we set our All-In-One.  Until you set the City hall nothing will develop.

And here we are.  We had to tune it by adding 2 houses of low density qualified.  This setup makes about 7 k per tick.  It gives you time to build cash and to explore the interface and the map while making money.  If you wish you can make it prettier by using the tools menu to start the plop mode and replace anything you don't like. And here is the final result for me.

Happy City Building.

[fx2050 0]

thats a good start, may try a variation of so got my highway as a base point to build from and branch out

ty

[fx2050 0]

i think my problem is pollution so elites wont move, if i destroy and try to import i never have token to buy anything only sell

i have loads of contracts selling farm but never able to buy anything

????

[Delor315 0]

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO CREATE AN EXPRESSWAY WITH OVERPASSES IN CITIES XL:

To build an expressway that "dips" into the ground, kind of the way a highway does in real life, except there will be no roads bordering it here, and have "overpasses" crossing it, 1) create an EXPRESSWAY as a road, not a bridge, lay it in a straight line to make this easier, 2) Line the road with BUILDINGS ONLY, 3) Delete the road and replace it with a bridge, except lower it into the ground, provided you are working on terrain that is of high enough elevation, but make the ends of the bridge level with the terrain to create future intersections, 4) delete 1 building each, directly across from each other, on each side of the road in order to clear space for an "overpass," 5) pick the SIMPLE ROAD BRIDGE and get it to work just so that you can cross the expressway, provided the expressway was built deep enough to allow the bridge be high enough to cross, also make the bridge LEVEL with the terrain surrounding the expressway (if the simple road bridge says BRIDGE FOUNDATION TOO LOW then DELETE the expressway and replace it with another expressway bridge, but this time make it a little bit deeper in the ground and if it doesn't work at first just keep trying it until it does), 6) if the last part worked, DELETE the expressway once all the overpasses are completed and replace it with the same EXPRESSWAY BRIDGE, except this time it's going to be to make the road foundation higher, making it as close as possible to the "overpasses" for additional realism, 7) once this is done, DELETE that expressway and replace it with an EXPRESSWAY ROAD, not the bridge this time (it helps save on costs, bridges are far more expensive than roads).  FINALLY, YOU ARE DONE!  You have created your first seemingly realistic, or as realistic as it gets in my book (so far) EXPRESSWAY WITH OVERPASSES.  Congratulations and hope my instructions have been helpful.  If not, please feel free to e-mail me at Delor315@aol.com with questions.  Thank you.

[mentarman 14]

Looks good, will have to give it a try.

Might be easier to read if you put some returns in, so the list is like:

1 blah blah

2 blah blah

3. etc.

[musicianhits 0]

I don't know if everyone already knows this.

after you place an oil field, for example, you can't place another one too close because the oil producing area will disappear . If you pause the game first, you can place as many oil fields as you want within the oil producing area.

Edited post with correction, please use Edit button instead of double posting.

--Liv

[oneale90 0]

Hey guys,

How do I Unlock things like Trees and Water? I've searched in the STEX but can't find anything ? :S

Any help is much appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Josh

[Damastius 5]

Actually, they are not in the game yet. So for now you have to download mods from Citiesxs.net. All you need is there.

[oneale90 0]

Originally posted by: Damastius

Actually, they are not in the game yet. So for now you have to download mods from Citiesxs.net. All you need is there.quote>

 Thanks for the reply mate.

 I have found the "Tree Mod" but not the water/lake mod

 Thanks again matey

[Roger51 381]

They are under the more parks mod.

http://www.citiesxs.net/forum/index.php/topic,1136.0.html

[Stef42 0]

Citizen satisfaction affected by traffic

If a lot of 'city service buildings' like the police station or the hospital are placed on roads which are highly used, they won't have a large radius.

By decreasing the amount of traffic on these roads (on which the buildings at), the satisfaction might also rise.

I have a ingame-city on which houses on the borders of the city had low satisfaction.

After I added a new busline, which raised traffic satisfaction from 50% to 75%, all of the satisfaction levels (like education, safety) went up from 60% to 80%.

Conclusion: City services are affected (negatively) by the amount of traffic (heavy).  

[strange-emily 0]

I'm having problems placing seaports. Tips anyone?

[Livin in Sim 83]

This thread is a great resource, good work!  For the sake of less clutter and thread readability, let's please keep chatter to a minimum, so tips are the main focus.    It's great to hear your compliments on the thread.  So you can make them if you have a tip. 

--Liv

CXL Forums Moderator

[tomtomsim 0]

hi there reaing your tips on placingwater towers, and the how if u place and delete a tower the water resource dosent come back, ive also noticed that if you pause the game when building something like a water tower it dosent use up the resource untill you click play again allowing you to place 2 water towers next to each other, would this generate more of the resource, but kinda feel if it does it sorta cheating.

[PhoneyBaloney 0]

There is a highlighted area on your coasts it will be green. That is where you will place it now it must be green to place it. You can rotate it by holding shift and moving your mouse which will allow your port to be paralell to the coast. By then you should be ready to place don't forget your gonna need the required money to place a seaport. Practice on those coast cities as it will have space for your ports. Hope this helps

[spyke01 0]

Here's a way to draw perfect circles of any size with only using two houses. It takes a little bit to set up but once you are done, circles are a breeze. I only illustrate a quarter circle here as that's all I need but you can see the other circles I've created with this method near the bottom of the post. I use small avenues for the main 45 degree roads, and small roads for the 22.5 degree roads.Very important to use the 8 way snap for everything you can otherwise some things adjust slightly. Also, make sure you follow the first few steps closely, as the order seems important.

[spyke01 0]

Sick of watching your finite treasury deplete slowly at the start whilst you're trying to set out your transport infrastructure and general city layout? Want to get positive income flow from the very start without cheating?Well, heres how:

As I'm such a perfectionist with my cities, I keep restarting and what I noticed was that if I straight away call my new city the exact same name as my old one (on the same map of course), the trading screen would actually retain the old games trading certificates. This happens whether previously you had either positive or negative income I think? So if I was buying goods, I would be in the positive for that good, and the goods I am selling are in the negative. Whilst my resource screen does show a massive deficit in goods, without any population, whats the problem?

I've had up to (+)$100,000 per month at the start which let me undertake massive earth leveling at the start. I don't know if this is considered a cheat or not as you eventually have to zero it out once you start placing residences. More of a loophole!

[Dragonfire967 0]

im new to cities xl, and when i go to start a new city, it keeps saying i need to place a road on the purple layer before i can do anything, ive read the user manual, and looked all over the map, but i dont see any purple layer, or anything ti indicate a connection point. Any help?

[Jesse Swiss 6]

yes i can try and help, tell me what map youre using, and if your game was paused. If youre game is paused nothing will really work but for you to build other things, 1st you must build a road on the purple layer, and then build the town hall.

[Dragonfire967 0]

i cant remember exact name of map, but it was valley map, the one on the lake. And yes, i had the game paused.

I tried unpausing game after you mentioned it and it let me build the connection finally. I'm used to sim city 4, and usually pause the game so i dont have to get barraged by pop ups on problems till i get everything set for starting off. Thanks for help.

[use the edit function, please - GlobexCo]

[Jesse Swiss 6]

haha no problemo, I would like to say welcome to simtropolis too!, next time you post something though don't double post okay Good luck with your game!

[City Planner 121]

How do intercity connections work, specifically the one for the water? i don't see how to connect it from the water to the land.

[archaeum 0]

Originally posted by: City Planner

How do intercity connections work, specifically the one for the water? i don't see how to connect it from the water to the land.quote>

You have to connect the water lanes to a harbor