my problems with sc4

[lucius0605 0]

Hello everybody,

First off all, sorry for any bad english, im from the netherlands.

Now my problems. I have started building in the region san fransisco. I tried to build some poor suburbs first, to later on work my way up and let the last tiles become big cities. (see picture below) The cities have become Leonora and Pointblanc.

Now i run into the problem that demand for industrie and for commerciall stays so high that even if i want to build suburbs again at the left side going down (first of them is launceston) i get forced by demand to change plans. Exactly i wanted to keep gibson more open for some nature view but demand forced me to build industry there.

I dont understand how people can make such beautiful regions while i get forced to buid big industrial cities! how do you all do it? Even my suburbs are changing in look because commerciall demand forces me to keep zoning add the avenues and such. But all i want are some nice suburbs residential areas with a view commerciall strips down the avenues.

Its very hard to plan a city, and i wanted that leonora and pointblanc became high wealthy cities. now its all mixed up. I hate that, because in real life you never see a getto block ugly flat building next to the trump building. See picture. And again i come across the most wealthy of cities. Even if i develop just one city and let it grow and build school and college and museums and all, the city will change but still stay mixed up. Changing taxes never worked for me. Eventually all demand goes down.

I dont understand how to get it all balanced. I wish i could just build one massive industrial area like on a sea side with ports and all, and then let the rest of the tiles be resedential and commerciall. But i feel like im restricted to 4 tiles when working on 1 city because they will not reach further then the neighbouring tiles. That really mess up my planning of my region. I still feel not in control of the game.

I hope you guys understand what i mean and can help me out. (i know answers like if you have high demand build up, but thats exactly what i dont want in some cities. Or if you have high demand build in a neigbouring city, i know that but that mess up my planning, because i for example, wanted to have another suburb there.)

I hope you guys can open this:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lucius0605/Simcity4?authkey=Gv1sRgCMvq2r3g453K-AE#5603209519809319730

https://picasaweb.google.com/lucius0605/Simcity4?authkey=Gv1sRgCMvq2r3g453K-AE#5603210377448142626

  Edited May 5, 2011 by lucius0605  

[jim 546 43]

Most people use the INDUSTRY QUADRUPLER to get around having to build huge industry districts. It adds jobs to all existing industrial buildings, so demand for industry will drastically drop and some buildings will be abandoned. You may also want to download the newest NAM, it contains a traffic simulator that improves the way sims find jobs and travel to them.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I guess I am not 'most people' because I don't use multipliers. I do have the NAM, NWM, SAM, RTMT, SPAM, extra cheats dll, the normal fixes, and a few lots I like, but none of this influences my style.

You are not 'forced' to do anything. You are a god, remember. You can ignore demands, and even shut them off by taxing them out of existence. Some care and attention to your tax rates, and the main panel showing where trouble spots are developing are very helpful. Run on hard. It mostly shuts up the stupid advisers. If you need money, get the extra cheats dll and use the moolah command. The extra cheats program simply unlocks all the debugging commands that were put there by the developers. They are not really cheats.

Also, have a good look at all the displays. They can be very handy if you are running into development trouble and will usually show what is going on. Very useful are the population by age, and education by age. The traffic flow display, especially with the NAM and the RTMT is very useful in solving traffic problems.

So be like the Harvard Law of Animal Behavior and do as you damn please.

[lucius0605 0]

I guess I am not 'most people' because I don't use multipliers. I do have the NAM, NWM, SAM, RTMT, SPAM, extra cheats dll, the normal fixes, and a few lots I like, but none of this influences my style.

You are not 'forced' to do anything. You are a god, remember. You can ignore demands, and even shut them off by taxing them out of existence. Some care and attention to your tax rates, and the main panel showing where trouble spots are developing are very helpful. Run on hard. It mostly shuts up the stupid advisers. If you need money, get the extra cheats dll and use the moolah command. The extra cheats program simply unlocks all the debugging commands that were put there by the developers. They are not really cheats.

Also, have a good look at all the displays. They can be very handy if you are running into development trouble and will usually show what is going on. Very useful are the population by age, and education by age. The traffic flow display, especially with the NAM and the RTMT is very useful in solving traffic problems.

So be like the Harvard Law of Animal Behavior and do as you damn please.

If i ignore demands for like lets say commerciall and industrial that will only lead to abbandoment.

I have tried playing with the taxes like making it sky high for dirty industry and everything with one $ sign but that only leaded to having no demand for anything at all...

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

If i ignore demands for like lets say commerciall and industrial that will only lead to abbandoment.

I have tried playing with the taxes like making it sky high for dirty industry and everything with one $ sign but that only leaded to having no demand for anything at all...

I am sorry, but I think your problem is experiential. Try something smaller rather than truing to create a fully developed city.

Think about where cities come from. They don't leap into existence in a few days or weeks, they build over decades and centuries. Start small, say with six or eight farms with a village at a cross roads. You only need to provide power for this.

Then, as your area demands grow, increase the number of residential and business lots (all single occupancy) until you get a demand for a school and maybe a fire station. Carefully add municipal features, but only as you can afford it. Don't use school busing, there is still an active radius for a school. Do not play with the fire station funding unless you want to see the firemen not arrive in time or generally goof off. This can be amusing, once. Control your school funding so that you have enough slots for the kids that may attend. Review your population by age graph to see what school age Sims you have. You don't need a high-school until there are enough kids in the age group, etc.

Keep an eye on your garbage. Use a waste to power plant (on the edge of the tile) and remember to use recycling centers for every 25000 Sims. You can set the funding of such a plant to zero and it will still eat the garbage. Use the presort ordinance to help here.

Police are only necessary if you have a lot of crime. Use the neighborhood watch ordinance to reduce the need for policing.

When I am running this way, I usually run a road out of town and build a small area of dirty industry. This needs water and more power. You may decide to water your town at this time as you get better houses. Keep your water plants away from the farms and the industry or they will get polluted and shut down. When you can afford it, a water purification plant will really help.

Only vegetation helps with air pollution. Parks and cemeteries help some. If necessary you can find a air cleaning building on the STEX. Try to avoid coal power plants. They really belch junk into the air.

So take your time, and don't rush it. You will find as you run along easily in either Turtle or Rhino speed that things happen at a more manageable pace. Your zoning problems will sort themselves out naturally.

[EyeofMobius 27]

The default big city tutorial in the game actually gives great insight on how to break apart the mechanics of zone manipulation. Use all of the graphs and visual maps that are available.

Also building series of rural communities to start may not make a speedy region growth but it will give you a great base of poulation to draw from. When you are ready to build up you can specialize tiles into industry, commerce, residential if such is your fancy.

I also do not use industry quadruplers or demand modifiers. I like the way the basic demand engine in the game works on hard mode since it feels the most natural to me. Easy actually is more difficult for me because I usually end up rising up super fast and then having large scale crashes in demand.

You dont always need to separate zones by tile either. I prefer to mix my stuff in to reduce the amount of traffic everywhere. A high density R$ pod can feed an industry zone quite nicely if place nearly next to it (maybe squeeze some parks or mayor mode trees in to reduce the pollution enough to make it tolerable). Commercial High rises and Residential High Rises mix very well together if you can set some quiet driveways off of the busy avenues and have some plaza buffers you can keep everyone happy. Commercial services fit in residential areas very well as you will need some high flow access to make residential traffic commutes tolerable providing great spots for services and mass transit hubs.