What frustrates you about sim city 4

[jacksunny 741]

Here's another one: auto-streets. I'm placing a rather large (6x6) gridlock in my current city, and this feature is just making zoning a complete pain. Does anybody know of a mod that can disable this? (I'm sure it's been tried/done)

I believe holding down the control key or shift key while dragging out a zone disables this temporarily.

[Gringamuyloca 47]

When zoning: (on a PC.. not sure about other OS.)

holding the Shift key suppresses streets.

holding the Ctrl key will create a 'block'.

holding the Alt key will change the zone's pointer orientation.

sometimes holding a combination of two or all three of these keys will give a Mayor control over zone orientation... if the desired orientation can not be obtained using the above resources, I personally have found I need to delete the 'overriding' motorway... place my zoning in the desired orientation and then replace bulldozed motorway.

Happy gridlock!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Sounds like lack of raw resources. When I was running XP on my old HP box, this combination ran fine. I suggest increasing your memory and maybe increasing your virtual space as well.

[PontiacFiero84 109]

A thing that gets me mad is how a Residential House will have the logo for no jobs , when there is jobs across the street or next door !

[Kifflom112 355]

Get NAM, that may help out a lot. I don't really get frustrated anymore since there are mods, but what really frustrates me are the random Windows 7 crashes to desktop that happen even when I begin saving. Also, I hate that when you delete a lot of stuff your mayor rating plummets and you have to build to fix it.

[jacksunny 741]

I don't get crashes often, but I hate when you are saving, and Simcity suddenly decides to "not respond". It happened on my old computer a lot, but doesn't seem to happen that often any more.

[mongsi 10]

I use to experience CTD every time I play the game but after reading somewhere about making SimCity 4 run on 1 processor (Task Manager -> Processes -> Simcity 4 -> Set Affinity... -> Choose 1 CPU), I never had any CTD related problems again.

[CahosRahneVeloza 385]

Somebody mentioned this before & I agree that Maxis making airports & seaports a one plop building was a bad idea.

I haven't played SIMCity 3000 yet but in SIMCity 2000 I absolutely enjoyed the fact that you were made to zone sea & air ports & that both sea & air ports would develop depending on how big or small you zone them.

[gamzdude 57]

Okay i got one right now

i just made a dirty industry city and that goshdang environment adviser is still complaining to me about the air pollution and shutting off my water even though there is no residents/commercial in my city i mean it is suppose to be dirty not clan and and she is really ticking me off :rage: :rage: :angry: :angry: any way i can shut her up and stop her form turning off my water i hate her when it is suppose to be a dirty city in fact i hate her altogether beacause she is a buffoon lol.

[RipRap 4,400]

I complained on that before. Make connecting pipes on the neighboring city, then build your station there. Or try to download some BATs on the STEX. Or maybe play it in hard.

[gamzdude 57]

okay new complainant that stupid jerk environmental adviser turned off my water even in slight water pollution as seen in this image hear

and guess what she shuts it down as seen hear any way to stop this stupid jerk from turning off my water as it 100% ticking me off :rage: :rage: :rage: :angry: :angry:

  Edited June 27, 2011 by gamzdude  

[z1 566]

That's not slight - that's major water pollution. You need to add more water purification to your city.

[Cob92 360]

And don't build your water pump in the center of the industrial zone. That's just bad planning. You need to build it as far from the pollution as possible.

[Cob92 360]

i got another one these dumb sims striking just because i built a nuclear plant as seen heare

any way make to them stop as they are ticking me off :angry:

Those are just SimHippies protesting. They'll get tired of it and give up after a while.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

"Leave them alone, and they'll go home

"Wagging their tails behind them."

You could always call the cops.

[archelon2001 2]

While it is called simcity, the regions make it feel more like simnation. So what really bugs me is that you can just build a city in the middle of nowhere that somehow gets everything it needs. For example, start with a completely empty region. First thing you need to do is build some roads and streets. But where do you get the asphalt for the roads? Where did the paving trucks even come from? Where do the sims get fuel for their cars and materials for their houses? And what about the fossil fuel plants. I don't see any oil rigs or coal mines anywhere. And apparently sims can grow their own food in skyscrapers, because I never put down any farms.

It should be more realistic by adding resources. Not too complicated, just things like food, lumber, and fuel would help a lot. You could get food from farms obviously,and lumber from forests. Later on in the game you can plant tree farms so you have a renewable source of lumber. Fuel from oil rigs and coal mines, or biofuels from an algae plant. If you don't have food, your sims starve. If you don't have lumber, they can't build (or they start chopping down trees by themselves). No fuel means no cars. Would be an interesting way to force them to walk to work.

  Edited June 28, 2011 by archelon2001  

[Terring 6,476]

Water bug! After hours of building, your advisor warning you for storage of water. Some buildings lose the water access as a result.You solve the problem and check this... The above buildings will still abandoned, even 1 year after! Why? because for 5 Simseconds they didn't had water!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

#archelon2001

What you are asking for is a rewrite. In an FPS do you have to make your weapons?

If there were all the necessary resource industries available, it wouldn't be rush hour any more. The emphasis in this simulation is getting to work. The wherewithal is what the player supplies, using the resources available in the game. Many of us have considered and even mapped out strategies to produce what you want, but the requirements for such a game go well beyond the capabilities of most micro-computers available at a reasonable price.

When you get a really big city with a population of over 1,000,000 take a look at your memory residency. It should be upwards of 2GB, which is nearly beyond the capabilities of a 32-bit machine, on which this program was written. I have the luxury in my operating system of watching programs run using a system monitor, while I don't think this is easily done under windows.

So far, my largest city has not taken more than about 2GB, and since I have 4GB of RAM and an running a 64-bit decor, I can withstand this. If necessary my memory manager will page the program to the virtual memory with a considerable slow down.

Now, if we add all the features to support resource industries, you would have another load of approximately the same size. Elephants do not fit well into breadboxes.

  Edited June 28, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[Tsokoa 9]

It would indeed be a rewrite of the game but I'm sure they could (should a new sim city be made some day) come up with ways to deal with it. For instance Cities XL has an interesting resource system and while the game is slower on my pc than SC4 I think it's more due to its release date and graphics than dealing with these resources.

To me the most frustrating (passed mico-management time waster like fires or gauging schools/hospitals every 5 minutes) is that the game is based on regions but does not handle them well (square city limits, no regional airports, no cross city pollution...).

Introducing resources in the context of a virtual country/outside world could be a way to make the game more realistic (for example to make a seaside touristic city so you would have to build beaches, hotels, lesiures... in order to attract tourists and then you would have to build highways, hi-speed train, airport for Sims outside your city to come spend their holidays here) because until now our cities are basically isolated and self-sufficient which removes a big factor of a city's developement.

  Edited June 28, 2011 by Tsokoa  

[XIamLuigiX 0]

A while back I had a region with 3 large cities and for whatever reason all the sims from 2 of the large cities drove though this other city to go work in a city that had like 500 Jobs!

The highways had like 250,000+ people on them!

(The up-side was I could practically run those cities on toll booths )

[SLagonia 71]

Here's another one: auto-streets. I'm placing a rather large (6x6) gridlock in my current city, and this feature is just making zoning a complete pain. Does anybody know of a mod that can disable this? (I'm sure it's been tried/done)

Just hold the shift key down.

The problem with this however, is that once you hold the shift key down, your zoning committee forgets how to do its job properly. If you're not careful, they'll have backward-facing zones and zones facing each other. I have no idea why it does that.

It should also be noted that the reason these streets appear is because it's trying to stop you from causing gridlock on your streets, so don't just ignore them.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Generally the auto-streets are too close together. If you like longer blocks, set them down with more mouse clicks. If an unwanted street shows up, back up until it disappears, then release the mouse and click again. Just take a little more time, and get what you want.

The reason you get lots pointing the wrong way is that you've overrun the depth limits on a block. Just avoid doing that.

Another technique is to let the streets appear, then demolish them using the dezoning tool (V), then fill the gaps with appropriate lots.

One of the things I really hate is that if you zone by click and hold, you often get a street lined on one side with 1 x 1 lots. I don't like them very much, and if I want them at all, I create them individually. Of course, click and hold is a rather primitive way to zone, but it will get you started.

[jacksunny 741]

I don't like when you are zoning something by diagonal railway tracks and it creates little 1X1 sections of street Try it and you will see what I mean.

[SLagonia 71]

The reason you get lots pointing the wrong way is that you've overrun the depth limits on a block. Just avoid doing that.

Except that four-deep blocks aren't a bad thing at all. If it were up to the computer, I would never have any four-deep buildings, since they would make it a backwards one facing three, the end result being that all of the lots are completely useless.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The reason you get lots pointing the wrong way is that you've overrun the depth limits on a block. Just avoid doing that.

Except that four-deep blocks aren't a bad thing at all. If it were up to the computer, I would never have any four-deep buildings, since they would make it a backwards one facing three, the end result being that all of the lots are completely useless.

For that, I hand lay the lots. The game has lots of quirks, and as you progress you will learn the necessary work aounds.

[lloydyboy232 12]

It Takes WAAAAAAY ToO Long To Get To A FULLY Hi density city.....

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

While it is called simcity, the regions make it feel more like simnation. So what really bugs me is that you can just build a city in the middle of nowhere that somehow gets everything it needs.

Once again, lack of realism...

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

It Takes WAAAAAAY ToO Long To Get To A FULLY Hi density city.....

Relax! This is not an FPS or WoW. It is a simulation and it takes all the leisure time you have if you let it. It is a time-eater, and gives you time to relax and problem solve at your leisure. The main goal is not to get a city with 5,000,000 Sims in it working their virtual fingers off. In fact, one of the beauties of this game is that it has no goal other than to not go bankrupt.

Because it is a simulation, the bigger your city gets, the more it has to do, and therefore it seems slower. If you have a way to see your CPU activity, it will be around 100%, which means if you want to go faster you need a bigger machine. Put it in low gear, and take some time to enjoy the animation. There are interesting varmints in the trees.

This is not a program for the now generation. It is designed to be a thoughtful, leisure, partial simulation of a city at Rush Hour. Take some time to problem solve, and try to get optimum solutions. There is enough perversity in the programming to make you think problems through more than once. Artificial Intelligence programs like this will drive you around the bend, if you let them. I'll bet you've never met the program called Eliza, which is a kind of shrink program that will take you to the next level of insanity.

Among other things, SimCity 4 teaches patience, endurance, and problem solving. The worst part is that the problems are of your own making. And the best part is that it is fun, too.

[CahosRahneVeloza 385]

It Takes WAAAAAAY ToO Long To Get To A FULLY Hi density city.....

Relax! This is not an FPS or WoW. It is a simulation and it takes all the leisure time you have if you let it. It is a time-eater, and gives you time to relax and problem solve at your leisure. The main goal is not to get a city with 5,000,000 Sims in it working their virtual fingers off. In fact, one of the beauties of this game is that it has no goal other than to not go bankrupt.

Because it is a simulation, the bigger your city gets, the more it has to do, and therefore it seems slower. If you have a way to see your CPU activity, it will be around 100%, which means if you want to go faster you need a bigger machine. Put it in low gear, and take some time to enjoy the animation. There are interesting varmints in the trees.

This is not a program for the now generation. It is designed to be a thoughtful, leisure, partial simulation of a city at Rush Hour. Take some time to problem solve, and try to get optimum solutions. There is enough perversity in the programming to make you think problems through more than once. Artificial Intelligence programs like this will drive you around the bend, if you let them. I'll bet you've never met the program called Eliza, which is a kind of shrink program that will take you to the next level of insanity.

Among other things, SimCity 4 teaches patience, endurance, and problem solving. The worst part is that the problems are of your own making. And the best part is that it is fun, too.

Very well said Good sir!

And for the folks who make stunning City Journals, the game is their canvass with their creativity & vision as their paint & communities like simtropolis is their gallery where we get to see their hard work

[lloydyboy232 12]

It Takes WAAAAAAY ToO Long To Get To A FULLY Hi density city.....

Relax! This is not an FPS or WoW. It is a simulation and it takes all the leisure time you have if you let it. It is a time-eater, and gives you time to relax and problem solve at your leisure. The main goal is not to get a city with 5,000,000 Sims in it working their virtual fingers off. In fact, one of the beauties of this game is that it has no goal other than to not go bankrupt.

Because it is a simulation, the bigger your city gets, the more it has to do, and therefore it seems slower. If you have a way to see your CPU activity, it will be around 100%, which means if you want to go faster you need a bigger machine. Put it in low gear, and take some time to enjoy the animation. There are interesting varmints in the trees.

This is not a program for the now generation. It is designed to be a thoughtful, leisure, partial simulation of a city at Rush Hour. Take some time to problem solve, and try to get optimum solutions. There is enough perversity in the programming to make you think problems through more than once. Artificial Intelligence programs like this will drive you around the bend, if you let them. I'll bet you've never met the program called Eliza, which is a kind of shrink program that will take you to the next level of insanity.

Among other things, SimCity 4 teaches patience, endurance, and problem solving. The worst part is that the problems are of your own making. And the best part is that it is fun, too.

Thank you for this mate. I t will be hard to change my ways that I play the game but i will try!!