Your Style of Towns

[joshriddle 29]

This is a basic thread where you can share, and discuss what kinds of towns you like building. Whether it be urban, megalopolis, mountainous, this is a place to share your style of playing.

My current way to play is towns in the middle of the forest up in the mountains. Simple, looks good, somewhat easier to manage. I also occasionally use the wide suburbs, small downtown tatic.

What's yours?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I think I've said this elsewhere, but I prefer cities with seacoasts.  Generally, the first thing I place is a seaport, followed by a port collection of commerical backed by residential with industrial close by.  I usually set up a higher capacity road to the seaport from the industry.

One model that I like and that has been very successful, works on the largest tile.  After building the intiial port and getting it in the black, I start scattering communities around the neightbor connecting arteries going out of the city.  I also take advantage of rewards as they show up to build a cluster community around it.  For example, when I get the univerisy, I build heavy commercial along one side, high rise housing along another side, and an industrial complex, not too far away, all connected to the main town.  I usually place the univerity "out of town".  I try to reserve one side of the university quad for the Advanced Research Center and the Disease Research Center.  I have found this works very well, as the satellite community easily blends into the city when taken in by urban sprawl.

An airport is another chance to build a commuity something like this.  Many people know that out-of-town airports grow communities that soom merge with the big city.  In this case, you also get to build a rapid transit line of your choice.

[GMT 389]

I like towns with suburban sprawl, scratchboard-communities, lots of grid and fused grid layout and a typical southwestern united states look and feel to it (preferably CA AZ NM NV) and that's how I build my cities.

And I like as much realism as possible. That comes, of course, with a certain demand for custom content that enhance the realism.

[joshriddle 29]

I'll go into more detail here.

What I prefer doing is using RHW to link my small towns spattered across the region together. Sometimes they get moderate traffic, often none at all. Usually I drown the region in forests, as to add a scenic touch to it.

I'll usually build very large suburbs before I build downtown, as to ensure the time has come to actually be ready to get downtown highrises, stage 5, 6, 7, and 8 skyscrapers. I [refer low-sitting skylines as well.

I also like to use river and coastal maps. River maps are moderately sized rivers that add for beauty, communications, transportation, (and then just a place for the people living in 200 BC to do their washing )

Another thing too is, I can spend a long time working out several different problems with cities. Some of the ways I do this is the scientific method, using MySims on a rare occasion. I don't listen to advisors considering they get way too pesky and angry, they try to run you. I ignore them, and its so wonderful!

Before I begin to build I prepare first. I clear out a spot in the forest, if there are neighbor connections, drag my roads to that spot, lay out the streets, then put down the essential buildings such as the water tower and power plant. Then I begin zoning. Once my zones are filled up, I add more and more until I am satisfied, then place a school, or clinic in, upgrade the transit networks if anything. Once I see it is good, I go on to the next tile. Then later on I will always often go back to that other tile, and do other things too it, like say for example if there is a lot of traffic congestion, fix it, or if I have the conditions set up for a neighbor deal, and don't know why it won't work, I wind up going into the next tile and setting it up manually. Sometimes it will take weeks before I successfully make every last thing pleasant in that said tile, and even then, sometimes 2 or 3 months later, (often with a new set of plugins) go back in there and apply those new plugins, and then sometimes I trip on even more issues. I can complete a city tile, fact of the matter is, 90% of the time, there is something that needs to be done to said tile. Never stop till you know for sure it is perfect.

I am also a fan of neighbor connections and inter-region transportation and all that. My towns always flourish that way. However I have to have things set up in that said tile and the other tile before it will be a success. Inter-region transportation is a lot of hard work, but I enjoy it. And the same with this, never stop, till it is perfect.

That is my overall playing style.

[hmm 17]

I think I stated this somewhere before but I usualy style m towns off of the cities in the Northeastern U.S. (NYC, D.C., Boston, etc) probably because I live there and I've never traveled to far from that corridor to know what other cities look like. So far I base my cities, region and towns off of various places in the New York Metro and its been working very well for me. My central core is based off of manhanttan, very griddy and has the largest share of commercial office space. My sububs are connected via passenger rail and congested expressways like here in Long Island. I base my Industrail areas off of Jersey, and my inner city residential off of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.

I like creating a density gradient as I move out, starding with large tenements and gradualy downsizing to brownstones rowhomes and singlefamily houses as i get closer to my beltway. the street grid becomes looser as I move away from the core as well.

All my independant suburban towns are connected by rail, sorta like the LIRR and Metro North, with a suburban nucleus with mid desnsity development around the station and I usally surround it with endless sprawl.

I recently began experimenting with belways and radial highways that dosent create endless loops and reverse commuters as well. Its a pain, especially when trying to make it look realistic but I think its working!

[x493x 446]

I like building suburbs that span into dense downtowns. I usually like doing this on the prairies, mostly because it's relatively flat and easy to work with.

[9988 428]

I like Metropolises, but antique cities like The Optimia are perfect too!

[unorthodox 0]

I build the region as one single megalopolis, so I plan each zone as Industrial, commercial, residencial, with suburbs, sub-centres, the main downtown, historic town, etc. I've been building my city-region for all these years, so I never begin a new city from 0. If X zone is finished, I keep building the shape to make it look as a real huge and developed city.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Here is a snap of my region that illustrates my sparse building philosophy.

You can see that I have installed a water mod (PEG's) since I rendered this.

[Terring 6,476]

My style is Utopian-futuristic. That's mean 50% naturalistic and 50% cyberpunk. Instead om building huge, one-piece metropolises, i prefer to build mini cities spreading around the region. Those cities are separated each other bu gigantic naturalistic open areas, with plenty of trees and ponds. The cities themselves are very clean and connected each other by railroads (especially subways and magnetic rails) and roads with tram lines. This makes highways a bit useless. All of them contain mini spaceports for commercial and industrial zones. The larger of them will even have large arcologies! If we could take a big picture, we'll see them not like a huge metropolis, but mostly like the cells of the brain.

Here is an example...

And you can also check here for a bigger one (warning: big picture!)  --> http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/7066/spandaubig.jpg

[Linoa06 1,374]

I usually prefer well-delimited maps. That is to say, I'm much better playing on an archipelago (or a single island), on a valley, or on any kind of constraining terrain that shapes my city up, rather than open ground. It really gives a sense of unfinishedness, doesn't it? For the cities themselves, I tend to go historical, going back and forth between cities as they develop until nowadays. I try to keep a few cores surrounded by rural, or suburban land - though in my best regions everything ends up a huge metropolis, at least in the center squares. Then again, grids are built according to the needs of said cities, and on the level of interactivity between towns. The thing I work most on besides naming everything must be the railways - I'm a railway junkie myself :3 eventually most of my towns are built according to railway placing. Airports are just so worthless for commuting anyways.

[beer_scnerd 1]

I like metropolis. I have 1 city for commercial & residential and I build aother city for factory and power suppliers. I like highrise building in high density zone on sea coast.

I use some utopian mod (such as Mall Canal,Bus stop,Subway,etc.) or etc..

[quicksilver991 37]

Most of my cities involve a large, complex seaport. They also have large, tall downtowns, and occasionally some suburbs.

[CIUU96 6]

I always make regions with many different types of cities and towns, but I guess my most common city style is either a huge metropolis with skyscrapers and plazas, or a historical european styled W2W city. Public transport is really important to me, almost every city that I make has GLR-lines, and every single city has at least heavy rail lines. I also try to make my rails realistic, with gentle slopes and smooth turns.

[EyeofMobius 27]

I seem to change from region to region and decide on development rulesets for natural growth variations. The only thing I can really say is that I don't enjoy a region much if I don't grow it from the ground up. I currently have 2 projects on the go.

One project is pre-planned out and working on developing up a very tricky mountainous coastal region with many inlets and islands. I am currently just starting and still laying down the raillways which is very tedious work with the slope mod I use. Regardless though I am still excited as I drool a little at the map and the plan everytime I see it.

The other is based on a region that is fictional but using a RL map of Sault Ste Marie where Canada and US are divided by a river. The plan is to develop the region with a series of small communities on either side with nothing connecting the two fictional nations; that however is all just a pre-cursor to the CJ project for it where it will all just start off after the two nations agree to set aside the historic hostilities and begin developing open trade between each other. It is going to be interesting as I am working on coming up with two separate rulesets for development and cultural values to start and then I need to have fun with a bit of mish mashing to role play cooperative development. It would be so much easier if I had multiple personalities.