Let's Play SC4 with me xPooHx

[xpoohx 0]

I mulled over where I should post this this forum seemed to be the most relevant.

I have just started a Let's Play (the second play through I have done on youtube) of Sim City 4. My goal is to give some basic tools to beginner city builders but there is some interesting content for any Sim City player. My first video set is going to be un-modded and is currently supporting a MASSIVE -durp- regional population of 80,000sims. The play list has around 3 hours on it now, but I will be posting videos continuously until I feel like I've achieved enough of a region to start my modded play through.

I cover a few city archetypes that even the most green Sim City player can replicate. I start with Farming Villages, bordering on Industrial centers (seperated by industry) and eventually begin to build a medium density metropolitan city.

I wanted to post an invitation on Simtropolis for anyone to come and watch my videos, provide constructive feedback or even just watch me build. Forewarned I am playing through on easy mode, but I do believe some of the things I will show through this play through will be valuable to any player. So come join me as I play Sim City 4!

Link to my channel - http://www.youtube.c...05?feature=mhee

Link to the playlist - http://www.youtube.c...5BD04041D417E30

PS: Sorry if this is not the correct place to post.

Thanks for watching!

xpoohx

[xpoohx 0]

Alright. So my first post on Simtropolis sort of fizzled out. Here goes my second attempt to make an interesting CJ for everyone to read and watch. I will try to embed my first set of videos to show the growth of my region.

I first started this play through with the explicit goal of being able to educate Sim City 4 greenhorn's and Amateurs. My style of play is more region focused than city focused as I establish in the first video. I am a macro builder and I like to manipulate regional demands so I can establish high density cities later in the game. I end up learning so much while I play through this play through it's quite shocking.

My first City that I break ground on is going to be an agricultural center. I like to use agriculture early on because it's easy to zone for its fast to build and it gives me a slight increase in low wealth regional demand. It's fairly low traffic and populates my region with roughly 6000 or so sims. The goal is establishing enough residential growth to start populating a city with low wealth industry (mainly dirty industrial) and some medium wealth industry (manufacturing)

The first 3 videos in the series do a good job in establishing my early goals in the game

The full series is roughly 40 episodes now and I will post updates in three episode posts to try to develop a nicely paced city journal.

  Edited November 28, 2011 by xpoohx  

[Benedict 3,119]

Fascinating. Great idea, and execution.

It's hard to know if the CJ section is the best place - what audience were you looking for? Another place would be under Tutorials.

  Edited November 28, 2011 by Benedict  

[xpoohx 0]

Fascinating. Great idea, and execution.

It's hard to know if the CJ section is the best place - what audience were you looking for? Another place would be under Tutorials.

I suppose I'm looking for any and all people who want to watch Sim City 4 being played, and are interested in possibly a different play style or learning from my own experiences through the game. I felt like City Journal was really the only place that seemed fitting I guess? Although tutorials is a great idea

Realistically speaking I was hoping just to get feedback from other Sim City 4 players to see what they thought and if there was interest. Since I'm essentially building my channel from the ground up I am looking for viewers wherever I can find them.

Thanks for the feedback though it's greatly appreciated.

Now what I actually came here to do (and promptly forgot) Is post some more content

Now that I have my region starting to grow slowly, I bounce between The Dirty Burger (my dirty industrial city) and Sunnyvale. The hope is that I can develop Sunnyvale into 20,000sims of all wealth categories. I realized much later that I should probably restrict the High wealth Sim growth in these early farming cities but Sim City 4 is nothing if not a constant education process.

Once I have my low wealth growth off and running I start to zone for medium wealth Sims knowing that early on they prefer to work in manufacturing

As stated earlier my initial goal here is to set up a functioning regional economy and have anyone be able to reproduce what I do. If there was any advice I could give if someone is attempting to kick start their regional economy like I did it would be to increase taxation on high wealth sims and jobs in your Farming communities. It prevents over-growth and abandonment and will help your larger metropolitan cities later on.

  Edited November 28, 2011 by xpoohx  

[Benedict 3,119]

Fascinating to see the steps of early growth documented. You are right, the game is very interesting - for me personally, this is the main reason I play vanilla - there are still surprises at every turn!

[xpoohx 0]

Fascinating to see the steps of early growth documented. You are right, the game is very interesting - for me personally, this is the main reason I play vanilla - there are still surprises at every turn!

I actually am starting to feel the same way with regards to playing without mods. I started this play through considering that most younglings will not want to install mods before trying Sim City 4. I felt like it was to much to ask new players. While I do like some of the mods - RTMT and NAM as well as industry job doubler - I am starting to feel like playing without mods allows me to learn more about the game as I play.

Update incomming in this post.

So the next set of videos in my play series I listed as *optional* to view. As I only build more agricultural cities. So I'll skip to breaking ground on the City of Dartmouth. My goal with this city is to build a city full of people and commercial jobs. I call this type of city a metropolitan city and use medium density zones to encourage growth.

My target is above 100,000 sim and as many commercial jobs as I can stuff into the region (without being forced to zone high density). In the end I do not fiddle with the wealth of the sims in this city generally just letting them grow organically. In my later videos I figure it's probably a better idea not to have high wealth sims or high wealth comemrcial services / offices in these cities. More on that much later.

The goal of these cities is also to have my sims working in the industrial cities. They will also be working in the commercial sector. These metropolitan cities allow me to educate my sims and help increase demand for high wealth jobs.

In the first video I lay down what will become familiar as my "doughnut" that I use to minimize traffic and split these cities into 4 neighborhoods.

The Second Video I establish services and start to zone and grow the city piece by peice

The third video I do some explanations and zone some high tech industry.

  Edited December 5, 2011 by xpoohx