Questions about region planning and play

[Pipcard 20]

When planning a region, how do people know where to put and how big to make each development type (e.g. CBD, suburbs)?

How to transition from low-density R$ and dirty industry to $$ and $$$ skyscrapers without getting no job zots? Bus stop placement?

Do people build highways first when starting a city?

How to integrate other forms of transport (rail/e-rail/subways)?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This is totally dependent on your playing style and where you are with respect to your region. On a cold start in a new region, I generally take it slowly with a farming village until I get far enough into the black to start expanding. I play on hard, so this makes things a little more binding.

In a recent post in this forum, I posted an opening strategy for another user who found it useful. I suggest you have a look for it.

I hardly ever use highways. Thw NWM provides all the wide urban streets with good throughput you need in town, and an avenue (AVE-4) usually suffices for an intercity connector. Today, I had one neighbor connection that was so busy, I made a five step toll plaza with avenues to cool what appears to be a commute loop. Still working on that. I will probably bulldoze my ferries, which seem to be a major cause of this kind of snap-back.

Heavy rail doesn't integrate with other rail systems. The light rail tracks can't stand it. All the light rail can be integrated. You will find a transition from El to Subway as a default. The transitions for GLR (tram) are on the STEX. Monorail is separate, but there are some integrated stations available that combine bus, monorail and subway. If you check the STEX, you'll find all kinds of aids to integration, and also some fancy additions like rail catenaries for model train enthusiasts. Realistic rail is entirely possible. When working with rail, it is probably best to put stations on spurs or sidings rather than on your main line. Only heavy rail stations have parking, so you need buses or parking garages or both at the other stations.

To transit from the $ level to the $$ you need to educate your Sims. For a baby Sim, it takes him to age 18 to complete high school (6+12=18) plus another four years to get a degree, so it takes a while (Sim-years). As education levels ramp up, you may want to zone some better accommodation and better job classes. $$ get to be $$$ by work experience, apparently. There should never be more than about 15-20% $$$. Not everyone can conduct the orchestra, and some have to beat the drums.

I am afraid I've gone a little philosophical on you, but this is a thinking man's game.

[EyeofMobius 27]

First tip is definitely it is all dependent upon your play style.

On my current project I am linking rural towns on a string of coastline only laying down an RHW-2 as my regional connection. from that point I just keep going along feeling the demand out from one town to the next filling in garbage and power demands. Everything for me at this point is farmland and on large tile my towns are capping at about 5-7 thousand residents. Even though I have to start this project over i am still going to build up the region like this and once I feel I have established a baseline of rural across the region I will upgrade certain areas towards concentrated development; this is as long as the demands don't start running amok on me and demanding more density but no one is being educated yet I am just providing enough health to keep sims from dying off to quickly and police & fire to keep riots and fire from rampaging. I also play in hard mode and am very strict for myself in maintaining a balanced budget from the get go.

I have had success using the approach of building concentrated pods with I-D in small doses to stimulate a huge need for residents allowing the jump in density from R-low to R-med and R-High quite quickly; I don't enjoy this as much because I hit development walls quicker and have more deep seeded development problems when they rear their ugly heads than if I take meticulous time to plan everything. Sometimes when I build small town parks I have had to build them over a couple of in game months because the money needs to come in or the town needs to save for that new roundabout garden.

Integrating mass transit options is dependent on your play style as well but needless to say if you are going to race for High density and populations then you need to have a good plan to be successful and spend reasonable money on it early. The slow progress route will favour the slow upgrade of mass transit; until your population has somewhere to commute to & from you don't need anything really as far as mass transit goes. I have my NAM traffic simulator set on low and with a regional population of over 20,000 and the biggest town being a little over 7,000 I haven't has any traffic congestion problems to warrant a single bus stop. As I develop and move into larger urban centres I will upgrade as needed and implement transit options that fit with demand, geography and SC4's little quirks. If you choose to develop more slowly make good friends with the bulldozer operator and look at leveling buildings as a way to get a short boost in demand as you will have made a number of sims homeless and/or jobless.

[Tsokoa 9]

As it has been said I think the first thing is to know what kind of city you want to make, how big, how widespread... Do you want to make a huge metropolis spaning over several large city-tiles, a medium city on only one city-tile, several cities connected in the same region...

Personnaly before starting a city I study the map in order to chose my center city and plan where my main areas and transport axes would be according to a general circles approach (a dense city centre, medium neighboring areas, and then mainly low density suburbs), but it may be also interesting to start almost randomly and adjust on the go as your city grows without planing too much.

Highways are not needed and even wished when starting a city as they are quite expensive to maintain.

Rail personnaly I plan quite in advance in order ton link my main citie-tiles, subway I use when the downtown is quite big and el-rail I use as a subway extension outside of the downtown.