What Is your Playing Style?

[joshriddle 29]

I couldn't seem to find a thread like this out here, but if there is then please point me to it! So as the topic would suggest, how do you like to play? Mine would be barely any medium or high wealth residental, small downtown, with 40% mid rise commercial, 60% high rise.

Any replies appreciated!

[paroxysm 2]

Well, I try usually to start with a small city or settlement and take the organic approach. Build out slowly, add things as needed, try to make the city as realistic (yet as awesome) as I can. When you just start from the beginning with plans for a gigantic city, it takes some of the fun and all of the realism out of it.

[tkuelker 2]

Realistic. Right from the start I try to make things I would only see in the real world. Whether small town or big city, if it's not realistic I don't care much for it.

[Tysons4 68]

i think there is a thread like this.... but now i'd like to answer:

sim style: click and hold, and sometimes hold shift of alt

when everything develops dezone and control

[dghh70 5]

Giant and profitable

[urmomology72 0]

I start out building a dirty industrial city, with plenty of landfill space, and then begin a neighboring residential/commercial city, and an agrictultural city next to them both, and develop all of the cities at once, so that I can meet the demand of the RCI bars. 

[9988 428]

I start on large lot, always on coastline, i build city over 200 000 pop, industries on edge and hirise commercial and residential on coastline, often some islands built through gameplay (using god mode unlock cheat), than i build surrounding cities, after that i fill whole map with residential and I kick out industries to islands, but some hitech industries i have in city, with this metod i made city of over 730 000 population and region with 5 million population.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Generally, I start with one tile and keep it profitable.  If I am playing an interesting map, I try to keep several cities sort of, in step.  I will add terraforming if I don't think the land will support a profitable simulation, because above all, I like my cities to be in the black.  I guess you could call me a parsimonious mayor.  However, unless I an building an agricultural tile, I start with a wind power station and a water tower.  Because I have water, I use second level lots, and this can quickly add up to a nice profit if you don't rush it.

One more item.  The traffic advisor goes nuts if he gets a red tile in any street or road.  Use the traffic flow display, and don't worry if the colors are in the cool side.  Get excited by yellows, oranges and reds, though, because those roads are over capacity.

[joshriddle 29]

I slam the door in the advisors faces, first I would just click it off, cause they were the most annoying things on earth, now I turned off all the popups and just play.

[Yonk 2]

I never listen the the SC4 advisors. I've been playing SimCity in various iterations for five years before they were even CREATED, so I know better than they do. They'll curse my urban planning and call me a top mayor in the same sentence, anyway.

My own playing style is largely dictated by realism and beauty. I do like everything to work, though, and I'm almost always making a good profit, depending on the stage of the city I'm working on. I usually start by laying out the roads, then filling everything with farms, and a small town, and then expanding the town a la "natural growth". I'd never be able to start with absolutely nothing; I have to have some transit laid out to sort-of plan what I'm going to do later, or I'd get lost and confused along the way. But mostly it's just to look nice.

- Yonk

[Jeiman2008 21]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

I guess you could call me a parsimonious mayor.

quote>

I had to look that up:  "Parsimony is the use of the simplest or most frugal route of explanation available."

I'm a bit of a master planner.  I lay out all of my major transportation networks first.  My cities are ruled by roads.  However, I use real world networks as my inspiration.

[joshriddle 29]

I do too. Use real road networks as inspiration

[Dizastrow 4]

I usually like to start with several small towns, play each one and let the game decide which ones will flourish and which ones will be suburbs, and so on.  I like to also revamp entire towns to make a flow of residential and commercial communities that lead to downtown

[Silur 3,304]

I'm with Mr. Dizastrow now ...

This is for me too ...

[Josh6 873]

I play like tkuelker. Everything has to be realistic. But my entire region is one big city kind of like New York and its boroughs. Lots of people

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, here is an example of one of my rural outlying communities that is related to my big city tile.  I built this today as part of the overall strategy of having supporting tiles all around the big one.  I am using rail as the main communication method.  Here's the snapshot:

So you see, there isn't much in the tile, but everybody wants out, pretty much.

[§haÅ--Ñ€ §hÅŽo 370]

I want to make a big metropolis. With sport staduims and park, and with a positive balence.

[Loney 22]

-Terraform, make it realistic yet not impossible to build on.

-Measure out everything using street tiles or trees.

-Build using the measurement (I like my main inter-city connects to be in the center of the border as much as possible...).

-Build $$ and $$$ residential, commerical service, and HT industry in one city tile, commercial office in another one, and D/M industry with commercial service and $R in the 3rd city tile.

-Always make sure that each commercial office city is surrounded by primary residential cities, and do the same thing for the residential cities. Why? To max the demand=big development boom through out the region's life.

-Use lots of mass transit, discourage car use.

-Lower tax down to zero as the income from mass transit usage exceeds the entire city's expenses.

-Enjoy the massive development growth.

[3dpuzzlemaster 20]

I like to build cities to look realistic. I think about what is in the real world and I build off of that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Continuing from my previous post, here is a snap of most of my big tile that I am workiing on.  I have GIMPed in some labels to help you understand how things are going.  The population is around 40,000 now, but I am in no rush.  I tend to make objects in the tile drive what happens around them.  The newest items are the air port colony, and the Out of Town High Tech colony.  I am using a thumbnail so that, if you want, you can see this in full size.

Now you can see a few features here.  Notice the cottages set up next to the country club.  This is a nice, watered area with  a private lake, so this is to be expected.  The Old Port, the Original Farms, and the Original Industrial areas are now majorly stressed because I am taxing the daylights out of ID and IAg to encourage them to abandon. 

The freight rail and the passenger rail are separate networks, and there is a new monorail associated with the airport.  I have so much rail traffic that I am using one of Simgoober's big stations to handle the load.  My original stations were overloading constantly.  You can't see it (sorry) in this picture, but the seaport is quite busy.  A lot of the frieght still goes there.

The University was placed out-of-town, and a new colony grown around it, including some high-tech industrial.  Some ot the industrial in that area is IM, but it is starting to shrink.

I guess my real playing style, besides staying in the black, is doing what comes naturally.  This region started out as a render of Maxis Region 6, but I have had the terraform brush out, and dredged some of the shore lines.

[Aldender 15]

I ignore advisors-

"Its my city, not yours!"

I start with a good old coal power plant and lower the funding, (I don't care if its years it'll work goes down, as I'll be demolishing it later.) I create a very large area of dense industry and place it in a medium sized city. I sell water from my res city which is basically all res and then in a large city above both of those cities I have res and commericial.

Usually.

I WANT to start from the middle, with agriculture, and then, agriculture is pushed in as the suburbs come then the metropolis!

*sigh*

I'm on my 47th attempt.

(Can't figure  out where  to place the dirty and manufacturing industry.)

I add a water PUMP when my budget allows it but I keep to low density. I start to build avenues and roads, and highways for good transit, before the medium density comes in.

 (Now) I'm very good with demolishing:

R$ Low density

ID Medium and high density

IM Medium desity

IA

R$$ Low density

R$ Medium desity

CS$ Low density

CS$$ Low density

CS$ Medium density

I'm okay with demolishing:

R$$$ Low density

IHT medium density

IM high density

R$$ medium density

R$$$ medium density

R$ high density

CS$ high density, (there isn't really and high density for CS?)

CS$$ medium density

CS$$ high density

CO$$ low density

CO$$$ low density

CO$$ medium density

CO$$$ medium density

I'm bad with demolishing:

R$$ high density

R$$$ high density

CO$$ high density

CO$$$ high density

IHT high density

[BattleshipAgincourt 1]

I hardly ever follow realistic patterns. I always plan out my transportation routes before I even begin zoning. The issue I have with neighbors is that it's so easy to miss connecting a highway or rail and end up with very rough edges for every neighbor connection. I often use a large tile and provide power, garbage, and dirty industry from a neighboring small city tile. Once that large city is about 15 years old and developing high rises, then I expand the city into a region with rail and monorails as my favorite means of transportation. Highways don't work, but I include them in my designs.

I use the 8 x 6 grid for most everything, maximizing road efficiency and lowering the city's footprint as much as possible. I do leave many spaces within the developed city open, as to expand with parks and services when I want them. I also pack trees on open areas to reduce pollution.

[Reikhardt 50]

I started by trying to fill every inch of space on a city of map with something and cram thousands of people into the smallest of spaces.

Now I'm looking at building a real looking region based on a Louisiana Costal region. Maybe I'll go Teaxas themed though just so I can have town called Pantego

Just spent around 3 hours Dling and tesing variuos downloads and mods, hoping to make a city Journal starting next week.

Wish me luck!

[joshriddle 29]

Pantego, TX borders Arlington, Texas, BTW.

Oh and I am going to begin work on a realistic entirely rural region called Rain Port I designed with the Mapper. I stuck the blank map on the STEX and now I am going to use it for myself.

Shove in a main highway, maybe something RHW would look nice, and then make roads which will serve as business routes. If I do what I intend on doing, it should look something like this at where Main St passes over the highway at any given town:

and this when you are in the middle of nowhere.

And this as a towns business district:

Ignore the stupid tractors...

Like I said, real, rural, highway. That is all there will be.