Growables Questions:

[local_authority01 3]

After four months of downloading and oranizing my plop menus, I am finally done.  Yeah!!!  My enjoyment is short lived because now I have started to work on growables and I have no idea what I am doing.  I will probably be working on growables for just as long if not longer.  I wil use this thread to post questions.  Thanks in advance for your help!!!

I started with IR but I am not sure about some of the lots.  The lots come with a LotConfigPropertySize, but is this just for the base of the farms?  If I have an 5x6 lot, will the building grow on a 10x10 zone and sprout some fields?  I have a lot of lots but have no idea how to zone for them?

Is it possible to convert CAM buildings to standerd by changing the growth stage?  What are the side effects?

How can I grow all my farms equally?  Is there any list that says what occupancy should be for the differant stages?

[Andreas Roth 629]

It shouldn't matter how large a farm zone is, the actual farm lot just has to fit in somehow. Usually, I zone my farms "field by field", that means I drag one zone with the size of the desired farm field, let it develop, and then drag the next zone (or zone several fields that are not connected with each other). Which farms are growing largely depends on the current stage, demand and desirability, but farm lots with the same size and stats should have an equal chance to show up.

As for "de-CAMifying" lots, you basically have to edit the stage, and adjust the rest of the properties (esp. occupants - about 6,500 or 7,000 max. for a stage 8 lot) accordingly. SC4PIM is designed for producing CAMeLots, but if you lower the filling degree a bit when you create the stats for a large building, you should get balanced values for non-CAM lots as well.

[local_authority01 3]

Thanks for the help with farms. The occupancies for all the farms I downloaded was similar, so I think I should get a nice variety in game. For de-CAMifying, I am unsure of what occupancies to give these large buildings, and I have more questions on occupancy below:

What determines the types of buildings that will grow in my game? I'm on Industry now and have 3 different stages for ID, IM, & IHT. All of the buildings that I am downloading have different occupancies. (I'm not sure if I have to edit them to have buildings with the same stages and dimensions, also have the same occupancies? )

What can I do to make sure that I will have a variety of growable buildings in my cities and that some don't overpower the others and grow like weeds?

[Andreas Roth 629]

Well, what I do is checking the building in question that grows like weed and see if the stats are somewhat off, i. e. a way too high (or low) occupancy value for a certain stage. One common example is a W2W building quickly replacing all your other W2Ws, which can be desirable in certain situations, but usually is not wanted in favor of some more variety. So I compare the stats and adjust those of the offending building to be more in line with the rest of similar sized buildings (SC4Tool's building database offers some good hints about the Maxis buildings, and ideally, custom content should fit into those values as well).

[local_authority01 3]

Originally posted by: Andreas Roth

Well, what I do is checking the building in question that grows like weed and see if the stats are somewhat off, i. e. a way too high (or low) occupancy value for a certain stage. One common example is a W2W building quickly replacing all your other W2Ws, which can be desirable in certain situations, but usually is not wanted in favor of some more variety. So I compare the stats and adjust those of the offending building to be more in line with the rest of similar sized buildings (SC4Tool's building database offers some good hints about the Maxis buildings, and ideally, custom content should fit into those values as well).quote>

Thank You Very Much!!!  This was exactly what I needed to know!!!

I am now on Commercial Growables and I am wondering how well the W2W work with other Commercial buildings that are more open wth parking areas etc.  Do these Commercial Buildings work well together or is it better to use one or the other?

I also got a very important question:  How much does desirabilty factors like Park Effect and Landmark Effect and Mayor Rating, affect the game?  When editig all of my plopables I tried to keep these values similar, but they might be kind of skewed compared to the maxis values.  Will this cause a major imbalance in my game?

[Andreas Roth 629]

For "non-landmark" ploppables, I think it's better to avoid any park and landmark effect, since that definitly boosts desirability and will cause the growables to upgrade to $$$ soon, which can be dangerous, causing traffic problems (R$$$ sims always prefer the car) and mass abandonment eventually. I always set my R$$$ taxes a bit higher than the rest, so the city won't get unbalanced. Personally, I don't use RCI ploppables at all, and I also use a limited number of landmarks and such. I'd say small imbalances won't affect the game too much, so there's no need to be ultra precise when editing the stats, but as soon as some building tends to grow like weed, there's definitely something that needs to be changed.

The good thing is that you can change building stats like the occupancy at any time, and the game will adjust itself after some time. You have to be very careful with budget properties of civic buildings in particular, for editing those, you always have to bulldoze all old instances before applying any new values. The same goes for any capacity properties and such; basically everything that is somehow stored in the savegame (building occupancy is always calculated "live" based on the actual occupant numbers and the local desirability).

[local_authority01 3]

My landmark effect, park effect, and mayor rating stats are all over the board and I am afraid that they will unbalance the game!!! The game is very unbalanced anyway because it allows lower stage high wealth to take over higher stage lower wealth buildings. I am hoping to stop this in-balance by not having very many mixed wealth cities. I hope that taxes can help me here because it would really suck to have to go back and edit or delete all those stats!!!

Its good to know that I can edit them without having to delete all the structures. I'm gonna spend about another month or so downloading growables, but I'll let you know how my tax plan works. I know I will find out this as soon as I start playing, but do you think high wealth will build at a 20% tax rate if there is enough desirability in the area?

[Andreas Roth 629]

It's probably different if you have lots of buildings with skewed stats, but from what I've seen in my game, every tax rate that is higher than 12% or so tends to kill a positive demand very effectively.