Avenues - Questions

[grazr 0]

Hi, this is my first post and i'm kinda unsure as to which part of the forum this thread should really go, but this seemed the most appropriate so forgive me if i'm being stupid.

Anyway, i just bought SC4 the other day and i'm having trouble with a particular issue. As a city develops you need to upgrade it's road network. Such as upgrading streets to roads. How ever when it comes to upgrading roads to avenues it becomes rather problematic. The avenues are wider than roads (2 squares instead of 1) and so you're required to demolish swaths of developed real estate in order to do so. Including amongst other things your first mansions and factories. This seems kind of counter intuitive when it stumps your simoleons house-wealth plots. I kind of have an idea on how to develop my next city, planning avanues ahead of time, but this requires placing tier 3 roads in a tier 1 city after the tutorials said in order to manage your funding, build only what is necassery at the time (It makes sense, avenues are expensive to maintain).

The other issue that comes with planning ahead is the roads that sims use to travel, say to and from work, are completely arbitrary; which also means it's difficult to predict which roads will actually need developing. I tried increasing the number of roads between residential areas and industry areas (home and work, where most of the traffic was to and from) but the first roads would sit and 300+ traffic with the road 2 squares beside it at 0. I had 1 road sat at 550 cars but it was impossible to upgrade because of terrain limitations.

This is becoming really frustrating for me as there was no small>big city tutorial. Only "here's a small city" and "here's a broken big city". It doesn't tell you the bits in between

Edit: Oh poo, i posted in the wrong tab :/ I meant to post in the forum above this, nevermind...

Edit: Oh poo, i posted in the wrong tab :/ I meant to post in the forum above this.

Moved to General Discussion. -CaptCity

[TekindusT 3,809]

You can use one-way roads instead of avenues, to avoid destroying existing buildings and fixing the usual zone mess. Look for them in your roads menu, they can be very useful! This doesn't mean you don't need to use avenues anymore when planning ahead, but one-way roads are a good solution when upgrading.

As for the pathfinding, one thing is sure: without using the NAM, sims will always use the shortest route instead of the fastest. It has always happened, and I've seen hundreds of players complaining about the same. The transit modder z1 will be able to give you more details about pathfinding problems.

EDIT: Oops, just realized that you're new here... Welcome to Simtropolis!!

  Edited May 6, 2011 by TekindusT  

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

First, hiya, welcome to the site! Second, not sure you're into mods/add ons, I highly recomend them! They add missing features that should have been in the game as well as greatly improving path finding, and that's just only two of the amazing things it does! I got you some pure basic mods I recomend, as must haves to start off:

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/23827-network-widening-mod-windows/

NWM, gives you many more road and avenue mods. Now you can have turning lanes in the middle of the roads, or two lanes on one side of a road. One way roads with up to five lanes going one way!

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/25831-nam-retexture-and-cosmetic-mod-north-american-version-windows/

NAM Retexture, makes all the roads look better and more realstic.

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/21355-network-addon-mod-nam-version-29-for-pc/

NAM

This is the big daddy that improves path finding, as well as soooo much more!

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1008

There are others I would recomend as basic but I'm keeping it to the big three for transit networks. This should help with your problem of expanding streets but do keep in mind sometimes the city does tear down house or (takes away some land) to add extra lanes.

  Edited May 6, 2011 by Kusajika Yachiru  

[Vern 29]

In the cities I've been playing lately I have been concentrating on using OWR. This does great for keeping congestion away for awhile. I plan ahead of time where I will lay down an avenue if I intend to do so. Prior to doing this I always in end up having congestion problems and having to do major restructuring. Had to demolish lots and make my sims move. While it has negative impact it is only short-lived.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Welcome to SimCity 4 and Simtropolis. Beware! This program is addictive.

One way circuits have their points, but what happens is that you have to convert two two-way roads into two one way dual lane roads. You have to have a circuit that will carry traffic within a block or so of each other. Makes a good temporary solution until you figure out what you are really going to do.

This is a city simulation, so urban renewal is part of it. If you need to tear things down to fit other stuff in, that's part of the story.

By all means, you should start considering adding extra content. This should be done with great care and attention. Each new plugin needs to be tested with the ones you have. There is no guarantee that these will dance together, and in fact, some of them don't.

Because there are thousands of plugins and millions of possible combinations, the STEX moderators cannot possibly test them all. This is the kind of problem that the math guys call NP complete. Which means there is not enough time in the universe as we know it to solve this problem. And this is why you have to test.

Don't fall into the 'Gee, that's neat, I'll download it and maybe I'll find a use for it someday.' syndrome. This is a trap that many fall into. Only download and install the stuff you are going to work with right now. You should probably start with the Network Addon Mod (NAM). This is the most developed plugin we have, and it has been through several evolutions and is under constant upgrade. The current version is No. 29, so you can see it has been around for a while. After you unpack it and install it, you should spend at least a couple of hours reading through the documentation. This plugin is very large and does lots of things to extend the transit networks in the game. Open a sandbox region (just create a region and call it sandbox), then fool around with the NAM's features. You really need to get some hands on with this set of tools before you start working on your real city with them.

The NAM has some extension packages that are dependent on it like the Street Addon Mod that allows you to change the textures (appearance) of your streets (not roads). This can be a lot of fun and make your cities look better. Then there is the Network Widening Mod which gives you some extensions to the standard in-town streets with fancy one-way roads (OWRs) and avenues. When you go to this package, the regular avenue will be referred to as an AVE-4. Believe me, there are some slick thoroughfares in this package.

There are about a half a dozen more NAM dependent packages, but this is enough for now. Have fun. And do read the documentation, of which there is reams and reams, but you really need to understand this stuff, which is why you need the sandbox to play in.

Have fun, and welcome to the most addictive game I have ever played. I've been playing this one for more than nine years now. Just remember to treat it gently because it is an old legacy program and doesn't understand any computer made since the Pentium III. You sometimes have to baby it along. If you have any problems, please post a topic, and we'll be here to give you a hand.

[EyeofMobius 27]

Welcome to Simtropolis.

The first hotkey I learned was B for bulldoze followed by V for dezone. When I first started out I would fret about placing each thing and errors in direction or being forced to place my first firehall when I hadn't created the perfect spot for it. In time I got over it and now regularly bulldoze and dezone as I progress; nothing is safe from the mighty yellow dust exploder. Sure money is thrown right out the window but it doesn't sit in your expenses if you demolish it so overtime you will simply get the money back and eventually your income will exceed your ability to spend it even at a breakneck pace. Parks have given me a bit of trouble at times since I want to just instantly want to lay down a huge number of tiles but then end up spending in the red. Instead of building parks and networks right away if I actually plan to set the space aside for eas of development later I will lay down tonnes of Mayor mode trees. There are many good downloadables on the STEX for mayor mode plopables but definitely limit the eyecandy for the first while.

I will second the warning about a plugin frenzy as I recall myself after my first month on the site I had a plugin folder over 9 GB. Currently my plugin folder is down under 1 GB and it is mostly rural and some parks since that is what I am using. Everything else will wait until I am ready for that stage of my region.

[grazr 0]

Thanks for the very informative posts guys, this really helps. The NAM sounds like it'll help me create more logical cities and control traffic better without the use of one way roads.

As for renovation, i completely understand the need to redo areas of a city, it's a natural thing in reality and an interesting mechanic to see in the game also. I just found it slightly counter-intuitive to my enjoyment of the game when my first high wealth land has to be demolished to fit in a bigger road, i felt like i was constantly playing the game backwards and each piece of progress was swiftly met with another necessity which would have me going through a cycle of one step forwards and two steps back. Each time my city takes on a form i like i have to destroy it, it feels like instead of letting my kids teeth fall out naturally for the second set i'm punching him in the face and smashing them out. It doesn't make me feel particularly great. So as a game mechanic it seems nonsensical to me, but then i also appreciate that my tastes and what translates to seretonin for me is not the same for everyone else. I should probably just accept it as a part of the game and try to avoid it with prudent planning and mods.

[Cob92 360]

If you want to plan ahead for an avenue expansion, you can do what a lot of cities do in real life: Lay down just a regular two-lane road first, and keep a 1-tile wide space of empty land alongside the road to upgrade later. When the road becomes congested, all you have to do is lay the avenue over it and no demolition is necessary. Most of the two-lane main roads in the area where I live are just "half-avenues" waiting to be upgraded.

[Lucario Boricua 7,049]

Expanding on the "half avenue" concept, you could keep that space more useful with parks (park grass being a good option) or with streets (in order to ensure both sides of the future avenue have access to the road while keeping them intact when upgrading the road into avenue). You could even leave both margins empty: one for avenue expansion and the other one for elevated rail or monorail.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Most cities don't do this level of planning. They are kind of like Topsy in GWTW, and they 'jest growed'. In your position as god, you can make these provisions, but if your city starts out naturally, growing from a village to a town to a small city to a megalopolis, this is often not in the cards. I guess that outlines my playing style in a nutshell.

I often start with a settlement of some kind, and just grow it as demands drive me. Sometimes I start with a farming village, sometimes with a village at a river crossing, or a village by the sea. One thing I would like is that if anyone knows of a fishing village model, please let me know. I really would like a beach with fishing nets, fishing boats, and maybe a fishing port including some fish factories, etc. Our east coast has a lot of this, and I haven't found a way to simulate this. If I ever get gmax working under Linux, I'll take care of this myself, I suspect.

[Yuu Caa Sim 55]

A Nonny Moose: Pegasus has made some nice things for a fishing village (PEG CDKM and PEG OWW2 sets). I use these very often in my cities. {This download from his CDK3 set} might also be of interest to you.

Another interesting one I sometimes use is the {Cobb Fishing Village}, which is built entirely over the water (except for a lot that connects up to land visually).

In addition, {Somy also made a nice fishing harbour}, although it seems a bit more Japanese than Atlantic, and Glenni's made some {Seaside Warehouses} as well.

  Edited May 8, 2011 by yunxiang  

[MandelSoft 2,775]

Leaving room for widening is here in the Netherlands only applied on some freeways, where there's enough room in the median to add another lane whenever required. Mind there, "some" freeways use this concept, most of the older ones don't use this concept. The A4 near Leiden for instance is a pain to widen and currently forms a bottle-neck in the route between the two largest cities of the Netherlands.

I myself also leave some room next to my freeways (and railways) for lights, signs and noise barriers. Mostly I lay down my main transit network (railways, freeways, avenues and some main roads) first before I build my city. I know this isn't realistic at first, but in my imagination these cities are founded long ago (say somewhere in de Middle-ages or the Renaissance). And the end result actually does look realistic...

Best,

Maarten

  Edited May 8, 2011 by mrtnrln  

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

Around this part of CA, most roads get expanded by taking back farm land, moving over powerlines, or some peoples front lawns. Othertimes if too many house/buildings have built up on a road the city make force in a middle turn lane but that is mostly so residents don't block traffic as much going into their homes. So I just do the same in my cities.

[Zeck180 18]

Or if the congestion is so bad it's expensive but invest in mass transit(Subways, train stations, bus stops) thinking forward into the future.