If you're making a city recreation/eye-candy metropolis

[Pipcard 20]

Such as demand mods?

Let's say I want to make a Japanese-styled futuristic city (built on a Tokyo map) that is also a bit realistic-looking (like a futuristic recreation of Tokyo that has a different layout than Tokyo). Rice fields as outskirts, moving towards suburbs, modern wall-to-wall shops, and higher density buildings (tall, glass towers) that look futuristic. It's going to be like a mix between Tokyo and Hong Kong.

What is the proper residential-commercial ratio for a big city? Does education play into jobs for a citizen? Let's say there's a R$$$ citizen and a C$$$ job. Can that citizen get that job even if there are no schools?

Should I make this from scratch or should I use cheats?

Also, in popular CJs, do people care about civic structures (especially schools and hospitals)?

  Edited June 29, 2011 by Pipcard  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

And the answer is: --- --- --- Do what you have to do to get what you want. Review some of the CJ's and see what they did. Creativity knows no bounds.

[Dannibee 138]

Yes, I find it quite impossible without buildingplop cheats to get the right buildings to grow in the right places, If I'm doing a bit of my recreation.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

I'm using some money and demand cheats to build my city, but with that in mind the cities I build are centuries old and development only goes for only let's say 100 or 200 years before I 'complete' my city. So yes, the money actually comes from centuries back. And when it's fully developed, the city actually makes profit while offering good services, wich means the city can sustain itself. So after a certain time, no need for cheats anymore.

Even then I don't make my cities too extreme; I give myself boundaries. In fact, my city layout is far from perfect, but realistic for an European styled city. It also looks nice.

There are certain cheats you can't really call cheats, since they don't affect gameplay that much, such as:

• whererufrom ### : only changes the city's name
  
• hellomynameis ### : only changes the mayor's name
  
• tastyzots: removes zots from the screen (like no water/power/job/road connection). Actually this cheat gives you a disadvantage: you can indicate the problems in your city more difficult. However, for CJ updates, this cheat can be used to get rid of those ugly zots in your shots.
  
• whattimeizit ##: changes game clock to ##:00 hours. Usefull when you want to make sunrise-shots.
  
• zoneria: removes zones from screen. Usefull for CJ pictures when you don't want to see undeveloped zones.
  

[sumwonyuno 42]

For my region, I have used cheats. The game is not real life, so it is acceptable to bend the rules to get a desired effect. For example, there are only 4 power plants on the real Oahu. In the game, you'd need several plants for a few city tiles. The simolean cheats are helpful if you're building out a transportation network first.

In some cases, it's necessary to plop buildings. You can do pure eye candy w/o running the simulator or saving. There are things to consider if you run the simulation with plopped buildings. It's fine to do so for Commercial and Industrial if you have the demand and meet the stats requirements (e.g. 400 CO$$$ jobs, have 6000 CO$$$ demand). Residential plops are buggy, and too much job supply can wreak havoc on the simulators. Same goes for landmarks with jobs.

[Pipcard 20]

Actually, I found out that you don't need demand mods, just a money mod and set taxes to 0% on the classes you want.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Actually, I found out that you don't need demand mods, just a money mod and set taxes to 0% on the classes you want.

Quite true. The only money mod you need is moolah. Be careful of setting taxes to zero. You need revenue, moolah or no moolah. Set classes you don't want to 20% instead.

[Pipcard 20]

Actually, I found out that you don't need demand mods, just a money mod and set taxes to 0% on the classes you want.

Quite true. The only money mod you need is moolah. Be careful of setting taxes to zero. You need revenue, moolah or no moolah. Set classes you don't want to 20% instead.

Don't worry, there's the Cousin Vinnie Ordinance.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Actually, I found out that you don't need demand mods, just a money mod and set taxes to 0% on the classes you want.

Quite true. The only money mod you need is moolah. Be careful of setting taxes to zero. You need revenue, moolah or no moolah. Set classes you don't want to 20% instead.

Don't worry, there's the Cousin Vinnie Ordinance.

Waste of time. I don't care for UDI, and always turn it off. The extra cheats dll turns on so many useful tools.

[Pipcard 20]

Actually, I found out that you don't need demand mods, just a money mod and set taxes to 0% on the classes you want.

Quite true. The only money mod you need is moolah. Be careful of setting taxes to zero. You need revenue, moolah or no moolah. Set classes you don't want to 20% instead.

Don't worry, there's the Cousin Vinnie Ordinance.

Waste of time. I don't care for UDI, and always turn it off. The extra cheats dll turns on so many useful tools.

This has nothing to do with U-Drive-It. But moolah's good too.

[x493x 446]

I always use cheats and in face plop everything when trying to create a specific city. Use Google Earth to get proper ratios, it really helps.

[jacksunny 741]

Google maps too. I like to use it to get ideas for my road networks and interchanges.

[Munchiez 74]

I like the google Earth strategies as well. And as most of you do, I like to do the ploppables in my city as well.

You can't get the desired effect without it!

[CutlassCieraFan 22]

"If you're making a city recreation/eye-candy metropolis do you use cheats?"

Well, the simple answer would be

If cheats & modds will help me to achive my goal of creating a Utopia, I will use them. As I said in a different thread, I strive to build a city the way I want to build it, not how the game wants me to. As far as CJs are concerned, I usualy see schools or hospitals that are very nicely worked into the city and look like they belong there. If you are considering making a City Journal and are concerned about how hospitals and schools will look in it, I suggest looking for some good custom ones to fit the theme you are tryng to complete. That said, you don't always need hostitals or schools, I have a city, that, for many years of its excistence, had hardly any clinics or schools. Said city, however, managed to get somewhere around 300,000 residents and a thriving centeral buisness district, complete with skyscrapers. Nowadays, though, I usualy have a fairly comprehensive health and enducation system in most of my cities, thanks to the use of the Money Tree modd. In summary, use cheats if you see fit. And assuming you are going to use a money cheat/modd, you can use the money from that to buy and fund schools and hosptals. If you ask me, its a win in any regard I also use demand modds, mostly because I only seem to be able to create the kind of demand I want (Co- and R-$$$) in only the most rare of cases, and even then, the demand is impossible to sustain for any amount of time. Quite frankly, without modds and cheats, I would've never been able to create anything like what I have now.