Detail vs Attention Span

[danza3343 1]

I've been contemplating recently why I always give up making regions when I hit the 20-30 city mark. The issue is they are bland and very similar, despite my efforts to plan ahead and make realistic suburbs and city districts. One issue I noticed was it was hard to distinguish between most of the cities and I felt that I was just making more of the same.

Recently I was making some medium res city and all the friggen buildings where the same, the R$$$ white condos [about 20 floors tall] despite skyrocketing demand to build larger ones [like the nice blue/greenish one] and really highlighted how my cities just looked so boring and similiar.

How do you guys keep interest in your region ? I often enjoy playing on flat land with some rivers/sea but even then I get so frustrated at how those awesome custom beaches that are really big look really weird from the region view and how seawalls take FOREVER to make due to terraforming the landscape then adding in each bit. I find myself wanting to make a detailed city so that its enjoyable to just LOOK at yet I am beggining to question why I am bothering.

I would really love your input guys, I've never seen a topic like this and would really appriciate feedback. Feel free to post image examples if you can think of any compromises of detail vs time to make it... One example was not using seawalls but instead just making plaza's against the highly raised river side to give a general feel for manmade interference and design

Thanks for reading, Dan

[TekindusT 3,809]

My cities were very bland when I began playing SC4, grids and more grids, some highways and ugly beaches. But then I began experimenting with other region typologies, hilly terrains, islands, etc. Why this road has to be straight? Just bend it! Why placing five identical Maxis rail stations in a row?

About building repetition, try playing with all four tilesets enabled the same time or try playing with a radically different tileset. If you're used to Chicago 1890, try to make an Euro contemporary city, for example. And for beaches, try downloading Pegasus OWW2 BDK beaches, which don't show on the region view and look MUCH better.

Just one more thing: you could try downloading a good amount of custom content (specially residential buildings if repetition worries you), plan well what you like and what you need and test this creations in your game.

Suming up; all the above requires a lot of time playing and knowing the game. Nobody makes a detailed and eye-pleasant metropolis overnight and those cool cities you see on the CJs are product of uncountable hours of gameplay. Be patient and results will come up.

[danza3343 1]

Good advice Tek, thank you =)

I will go in a bit more detail about my situation... I have 800 megs of custom content, about 50NDEX buildings and a further 20-30 residentials amongst many buildings/mods and I really feel I am lacking in light residential custom building [$$ and $$$] and medium residential/commercial. My towns and small cities look bland and repetitive, so I think I will try having all tile-sets, I've always shyed away from Chicago and the other one on the left [i forgot, fail heh] just because I like my cities to look modern. However, this was my mindset 5 years ago and I've never questioned it. So I may change it up ! =)

As for hills and such, I find them very annoying in regard to region consistency, how sometimes neighbour connections mess with the alignment of cities connecting and just general weirdness in regard to how some buildings are built, but again... Perhaps I should try.

So yeah, any ideas on getting low/medium residential and commercial buildings ? I have so many high density but hardly any of the former, I just can't seem to find them on the STEX x..x

[Indiana Joe 1,751]

Keep looking. The STEX is the hardest place to find what you're looking for on the internet. I wish I could help more, but it's the truth!

If you click on the categories 'residential' or 'commercial' at the bottom of each upload's thumbnail, it will filter out all non residential/commercial (depending on which one you click) things on the exchange. But you probably knew that!

Good luck on your quest to build awesome, original cities!

[Tysons4 68]

i found that i should embrace the similarities in every city... from the region map the one thing that stands out is farms... so i zoned nearly all the cities farms and have each cityas i would see a small town... i play with multiple size cities so it gives it some diverstiy... my journal explains it better than i can, but after 730+ cities in my region i still find some uniqueness to every city, sure some fall between the cracks in the region view but when i go to those cities i find they have their own signature... i use no plugins and my region has taken a life of its own

my region is in my signature

[Ryan123220 18]

Try downloading some of the mountainous maps on the STEX, Im alot like you in how i like to play, big open places to build but almost every city has a some water on it. Something i started about a year ago is i downloaded "Maxisland" and started to rebuild each city from scratch, but for some reason when i get rid of a city that citys residential demand always stays at max negative while the rest are max positive. The best thing you can do is just look at peoples CJ and look at there roads and zoning, get some new ideas on how to build your systems. I build cities where streets flow into roads, roads into avenues and aves into highways, I also do my best to stay away from a direct grid system.

[thefunktopus 1]

For residential low rise (houses) just download mattb325's stuff. There are hundreds, and its great, makes your suburbs look real realistic.

[froelich131 13]

Honestly, no matter what you do, repetition will always haunt you. What I usually do, is let it happen, grow out a entire metroplolis, then. Landmark buildings I like, then, completly demolish the ones I don't. Repeat this, 2-6 times, on each city, and BAM it looks much nicer.

Also, plenty of parks, different zone types, and SIZES! Different places for your sims to work, have plenty of diversity among the transit networks.

Also, it never ever hurts to plop a few building to make the area more lively.

Hope I helped!

~Joey

[tkuelker 2]

Base your cities on real cities, that could at an extra challenge and get you more excited about playing.

[Cyrilix 0]

Seriously, guys. I think Simcity is great for the system. The game mechanics. That's where it shines. If you want beautiful, you might as well just run Cities XL, since it has an extremely terrible and weak system, but the game is designed to be pretty.