Your SimCity 4 Playgrounds

[Lucario Boricua 7,027]

Similar to my "Road Network Layouts and General City Plans" thread, I present you with another thread to discuss SimCity playstyles. This time, it's about the regions themselves. Like, before, the poll choices are explained below:

A. Who makes the regions you like?

1. Maxis: includes the ones included in-game, or any other published by them)

2. Yourself, 'hand-spun': you use the God terraforming tools, either included or some downloaded

3. Yourself, with an external tool: either using drawing programs for the Maxis grayscale region generation or any custom application that converts raster images to region topography

4. Dedicated mapmakers, as published: the ones who post maps on SimCity fansites for others to use

5. Dedicated mapmakers, by request : you ask for someone to make a region tailored to what you want

6. Other/Unsure (if any of the previous options doesn't match what you resort to)

B. How big do you like your regions? This is measured by region area obtained from the present city plot tiles, with one small city plot being approx. 1 x 1 km (1 sq km), medium being 2 x 2 (4 sq km) and large being 4 x 4 km (16 sq km). Total region area would be the sum of all the tiles in the region (the Maxis default would be 16 x 16 km = 256 sq km).

1. Tiny: the total land area is equal or smaller than 64 sq km (any region area smaller than 8 x 8 km)

2. Small: the total land area is greater than Tiny's maximum, and up to the default Maxis size (16 x 16 km = 256 sq km). This includes any region greater than 8 x 8 km and up to 16 x 16 km.

3. Medium: the total land area is greater than Small's maximum, and up to 24 x 24 km = 576 sq km.

4. Large: the total land area is greater than Medium's maximum, and up to 30 x 30 km = 900 sq km.

5. Huge: the total land area is greater than Large's maximum. Any region greater than 30 x 30 km - 900 sq km goes here. This includes many of the Earth-based regions as well.

C. What city plot sizes do you prefer to have dominant? (small being 1x1 km, medium being 2x2 km and large being 4x4 km)

1. Small: Large plots may not be present, small and medium plots are in balance. Its extreme would be small plots only

2. Small-Medium: Large plots are rare, medium plots somewhat more abundant than small ones (Maxis default fits here)

3. Medium: large plots are uncommon, medium plots clearly dominate over the small ones. Its extreme would be medium plots only.

4. Medium-Large: large and medium plots are about equally abundant, small plots may not be present/

5. Large: all the region is comprised by large plots.

D. How do you like your regional geography? Select any that may apply:

1. Flat: the land has very few or no topographic features (rolling hills at most, and these are even uncommon). Almost all places are OK to easily build cities

2. Rugged: the land has a medium amount of topographic features (usually rolling hills, with the occasional rugger terrain). Most places are OK to build, with some few exceptionally good ones.

3. Steep: the land has lots or very prominent topographic features (much of the landscape can be dominated by mountain ranges, cliffs and valleys). Few places are OK to build, there may not be any exceptionally good one to build on.

4. Landlocked: the land has little or no water, no water transport possibilities exist

5. Inland water: the land has some water features (lakes, lagoons, rivers) that would allow water transport

6. Coastal: the land has coastal features (bays, sounds, gulfs, islands, cays, river mouths etc), but is still dominated by land.

7. Maritime: the land has coastal features, but the map is dominated by water

8. Packed Archipelago: the land is comprised mainly of islands, usually with good bridging potential. May or may not be dominated by land.

9. Disperse Archipelago: the land is comprised only of islands, little briding potential available. Clearly dominated by water.

As for what I like, I always make my regions with the God Mode tools (have had problems dowloading Mapper and Terraformer, most Maxis grayscale regions aren't working properly to me or I don't like them), usually medium, dominated by medium and large city plots and usually flat, and between inland water and maritime. I prefer the flat and larger tiles in order to have space to develop cities to bigger scales (small tiles are an epic nuisance), but don't like my regions too big (they then become a mess to handle). I like better the inland water, coastal and maritime options because these are typical for most cities, and are also more balanced. I really hate the Maxis regions because they lack too many large tiles and because they have some notorious roughness at some areas.

How about your thoughts on this?

[Jack³ 291]

I like rivers, coasts, and a few mountains. I put some hills and stuff to make my cities more interesting... I don't like boring cities! I really like making suburbs and making them very realistic. And I only use my own regions because Maxis ones lack bigger tiles, like you said. All of my cities in the region are large cities.

[Tysons4 68]

I would vote yes to all of the above. I like small maps, big maps, medium size, on coast, inland, rivers, maxis maps, my own maps, user created maps, allcity sizes, one city size.

I love them all to develop on. Give me a map and i will fill it.

[Urbanator 7]

I like as large a map as I can get but since I don't have Terraformer (or similar) I have to make do with a 4x4 large grid...

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Generally, I use the Landscape Designer (which is somewhat wounded on Linux at the moment, but still sort-of works) to generate a map that I find acceptable then I hand terraform to suit. I prefer, at the moment, long coastal areas with some inland lakes and landlocked areas. I have rather eclectic tastes, but am not much into cities on the heights.

Big, small, I take them all. At the moment, I am playing on this region with some additional terraforming. It is my kind of map.

[Mithrik 562]

Fantasy Maps, so I can make fresh cities without any inconvenience. I don't really get to build huge metropolis (still). And also I a dapt to any type of terrain I like to build in a town, even if it only reaches the 50 sims.

[Lucario Boricua 7,027]

Does anyone here think that there should be more maps with no small tiles, given the votes for tile sizes on the regions?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Does anyone here think that there should be more maps with no small tiles, given the votes for tile sizes on the regions?

Fewer perhaps, but not none. In any urban region there will be small towns. I actually create small towns on maximum size tiles by simply having terrain separations. However, I often generate config.bmp files that contain small tiles (red) as fillers for water areas I have no intention of playing. Since most of my maps consist of a central land mass, a few islands and about 1/3 water, one has to remember that one has full control over the layout.

If you create a gray-scale map and want to have complete control over the config.bmp, open it in the Landscape Designer and build your config.bmp file in the generator to overlay your map.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Who makes the regions you like?

Well, one region of mine with I landscape I really like I've created myself with the SC4TerraFormer, so my answer is "Yourself, with an external tool"

How big or small, by area?

I have two regions. One region (Schellingen-Stadt) would fit in the medium category (since it's 24x24 km in size), the second one, Imaginia, would be in the large category (it has a irregular region shape of 26x40 km, but an area under 900 sq km). So my answer is "Medium" and "Large"

What city plots do you like to use the most?

In Imaginia I use a lot of medium sized city tiles, although I like the large ones more. Schellingen-Stadt uses large tiles only. So my answer is "Medium-Large"

How do you like your terrain? (select any that may apply)

This is a hard one, since I have two regions which I both like. My answers are "rugged" (completely flat is boring, steep is too restricting for me to like) "in-land water" (rivers) and "coastal" (isn't really a must, but I do like coasts).

Best,

Maarten

[Rury 37]

I don't really like the maxis made maps other than the San Francisco region. I like costal, steep, flat and rugged terrain, and the San Francisco region has the perfect mix of these topographies. As for size It would depend on how much flat space is available. I kind of dislike large flat tiles because when fully developed, the simulation runs noticeably slower even on the max speed.

[Finkle 14]

I just downloaded SC4 region maker, trying to make my dream region. I have tried to make it with a normal region size... I love Sc4 region maker because I don't have to stop where first planned I can now from mountains on the left, to a flat farm land, leading to a coastal type deal, to islands, to a low desert, but now i can go beyond and make much more.... can't think a high desert plain would be nice but I don't want a big region in the middle so that might go far right.... trying to talk myself out of starting over with a high desert plain on the left than a mountain map(s) to the flat farms, etc.

I haven't started my cities over yet, I usually start them then make my region different or uninstall the game and start over... but for the most part its a hugely mixed bag small towns, no towns, to very large cities.

Most of my region is coastal..

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Which region maker did you download? How about a link, please.