Maximizing educational coverage

[Meg 368]

Importing power has its advantages. The air pollution stays in a different city. And after that city is established, it doesn't have to age. So the power plants don't age and therefore don't blow up and don't have to be replaced.

As to the specific numbers for this city, here is the deals chart.

It imports 39,470 Wh/mo at a cost of $1,820 and exports 15,000 for income of $765 for a net retention of 24,470 at $1,055. (How you do make that squiggly thing?) I don't know how this compares to replacing power plants periodically. I haven't crunched those numbers.

While I was doing screenshots again (sorry, Sharr, it's gotten to be a habit

and then figured, what the heck, include the whole budget.

And here is the crime chart. It looks high to me, especially for having a mayor rating of 100. If I lived in a city with this kind of crime, I wouldn't give the mayor a 100. I wasn't chasing down the crime scenes and sending the cops. I just let the program do its thing.

The commute is still under an hour, which I think is good for a city this size.

And here is the life expectancy

Can you tell I spent years in a job that required lots of documentation?

[DarkMatter 21]

SkiGeek, thanks very much for the school tips. I''ve started placing museums next to all my elementry schools, and its helping my education.

As for your crime, 25 crimes aint bad. In one of my cities I have hundreds! As long as you have enough jail space to hold all the criminals, your crime shouldn''t be a problem. Crimes will be committed, just as long as the criminals are taken care of is what matters.

[DarkMatter 21]

Hey SkiGeek, you an X-Files fan?

[Meg 368]

Does it show?    (As long as I retain my belief that most of the last two seasons never happened, it works for me.)

I think that museums are great way to boost the EQ.   They are relatively cheap --  most of mine cause only $6 for years -- and they put a high EQ into the next generation.  At 114,000 sims, there is still no need to build additional schools since none of them are maxed out.

About the crime . . .  you have a city with hundreds??  wow.   I lost patience with the convention center because I kept getting that "den of crime" message so I bulldozed it and put the resort hotel there.   It was on the edge of the map so it was a cheap bulldoze.  Just ran a road into it.

[Sharr 6]

Ski, that trading idea is a great one. I had heard that it wasn''t cost-effective to import power, but it makes sense if you are exporting something else that the other city needs (like water).

However, I''m finding that a 12x12 square of densely packed trees will curb all the pollution from a single power/W2E plant IF you stick the plant in the absolute corner, no distance away from the edge of the map. I''ll probably still keep generating my own power for each city, maybe import some if I go above 3 plants.

[Meg 368]

well. . . um . . . thanks, Sharr but that was BB''s idea.  and a very good one that I''m going to try. 

I''m going to use a large map for my next city so I''ll have more room to play with so I might try your plan there.

A 12x12 patch of trees, you say?  What kind of trees have you been using?  God mode trees?  or landscaping trees?  or park trees?

[Sharr 6]

either one. I started building the test city a quadrant at a time. Since the map was totally flat, I decided to put the plant at the absolute edges, and it pretty much takes up all the pollution. Looking at the air pollution data view, I don''t see any yellow, but there may be a slight shading around the edge of the woods. The road is at tile 13 - it''s a true 12x12 square. A 13x13 square would probably catch everything for sure.

Another nice thing? You don''t need roads connecting to W2E for it to work. Found that out by mistake

[DarkMatter 21]

Yup, last two seasons of X-Files were over the top. Scully and her baby did it for me....I havn''t seen more than a couple episodes from season 9. But, what more could you expect after the demise of Mulder?

Congrats on reaching 100% mayor rating. I have been having a hard time getting above 80 due to traffic and healtcare problems. Anyway, sweet city, great layout, keep the sims rolling man.

[Sharr 6]

I decided to patch the game; we''ll see how all this stuff works afterward!

[Meg 368]

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On 5/5/2003 8:03:15 PM DarkMatter wrote:

Yup, last two seasons of X-Files were over the top. ....I havn''t seen more than a couple episodes from season 9. . . .

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You did yourself a favor by not watching.  The writers did a great injustice to both their characters and their fans.  But we don''t have to go there.  

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Congrats on reaching 100% mayor rating. I have been having a hard time getting above 80 due to traffic and healtcare problems.

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Thank you.     I didn''t know if it was possible to get to 100 but there it is.  Who knew?

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 Anyway, sweet city, great layout, keep the sims rolling man.

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Thanks.  btw, I''m not a "man".  But I''m probably old enough to be your mama. 

[Meg 368]

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On 5/5/2003 8:05:16 PM Sharr wrote:

I decided to patch the game; we''ll see how all this stuff works afterward!

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Which patch?  Patch 2 or Buggi''s patch?

[Sharr 6]

Buggi and the guys'' patch. I wonder how that''s going to turn out! I applied the patch, but I''m working on something and can''t play right now to see its effects.

[Jhaville 0]

i tried the whole tennis, bball courts in the medien stip thing on my frist city.

i had long 12 x 4 blocks of hd res on either side and there were 2 lots of 4 of those side by side. 8 blocks all up

when i put the parks and recs in the population went through the roof. the only down fall was the traffic conjestion. i tried putting in mt but it just didnt seem to get used!!(although there was on subway with 8000 peeps and one train station with a mammoth 14000. all others were dead!! beats me??)

b4 parks and rec pop was: 25-27k
after parks and rec pop: 100k.

unfortunatley i demolshed it bc of air pollution and traffic problems and it had never recovered. the pop struggles to get to 20 k

but i think you should stick with the parks on the median strip idea!!

[Meg 368]

I like having flower gardens on the median strips.  It cuts down on the air pollution from the roads and it is real world. 

 

Around here, they are getting away from putting in the time, effort, and fertilizer needed to maintain grass on median strips and using "wild flowers" instead.   They are pretty and add some color.  

 

I'm in favor of low maintenance, oxygen producing plants instead of grass in areas where people don't need to be walking or playing including the median strips and shoulders of many roads.  The trick is using plants that stay low enough not to block visibility.

[Sharr 6]

Yes, but grass with trees is the most powerful pollution-killer, I think. If you expend the money to put a park structure down, at least throw in some grass with trees to alternate with the flowers.

[ftisbb 0]

sharr is correct in the case for using grass with trees specifically for the application of pollution reducing in the "median strips" .... just be advised that in both cases, unmodded, the radi of these effects is woefully small ...

 

;-)

[Hieronymus Throttlebottom 0]

I've actually been doing that 'flower' type layout myself without having read about it beforehand. I do it for school, library, hospital, police and fire coverage and it seems to work really well. It just struck me as the best and most cost-effective way of covering residential areas. My current city, Pandaemonium, is over 600,000 residents and I'm reaching the maximum effectiveness of the 'flower' layout as I have so many residents that I've run out of room for the hospitals and schools they demand, I just can't keep up with them, maybe I should slow down the game. When I laid the city out at first, I had never gotten over 180,000 before, a demand cap of some sort, so I hadn't considered the need for additional schools and hospitals at the time. Now that I've figured how to crack that demand cap, I've blown by it entirely and need to rethink how to adjust my layout accordingly. I took museums out once I had gotten the art museum as I figured that would cover the entire city, I'm going to try to shoe-horn them back in and see if it will elevate my EQ which is consistently around 160.

[Tres 0]

Ski......
I too have the same experience of education polls being low despite near 200 education numbers and even amoung the age groups are all good. Even more so my polls are much worse with most of it being in the red. Did u come up with any explaination for this?

[Desert Eagle 0]

WOW! What a great city you made! I never reached 100% mayor rating in cities with more then 100k residents... It seems that your city is just perfect because of its smart infrastructure design, education, health and more. Keep up the good work!

[Overkast 2]

Definitely an interesting city SkiGeek. Congrats on the 100% Mayor approval!

On an unrelated topic, has anyone heard any rumors from Maxis regarding a 3rd patch to help fix the commute times bug? I haven't heard anything myself, but I do know it's probably the #1 complaint amongst SC4 gameplayers across the board.

[Meg 368]

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On 6/9/2003 9:45:46 PM Hieronymus Throttlebottom wrote: I took museums out once I had gotten the art museum as I figured that would cover the entire city, I'm going to try to shoe-horn them back in and see if it will elevate my EQ which is consistently around 160.
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Let us know how it works. I haven

[Mrfocker192 0]

SkiGeek, all of this information is so amazing to me. I just started playing, and it seems like I will never get a city looking nearly as good as yours does...however, I do have a question... Your traffic seams to be incredibly low, mainly due to how you have set up the streets and MT. How did you get around the auto-road feature to arrange the roads like that?... Anyone have good tips with auto-road becasue it always messes my plans up and pisses me off lol

[Meg 368]

Thanks. I'm glad you find it interesting.

I don't let it do auto-roads. They never seem to do what I want.

I draw the roads and streets manually first and then put in the zoning. I use the alt key a lot to make sure the zones are going in the direction I want. Sometimes, the alt key will stop the auto-road. Sometimes it won't. In those cases, I back up a few tiles. The key is zoning a little bit a time.

I'm not sure that this is making sense. Try holding down the alt key before you unclick the left button when zoning and you should see what I mean.

[MostlyHarmless 0]

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On 4/27/2003 1:51:24 PM Sharr wrote:LOL, I have been conversing with Arron and BB about this concept, which I'm calling the "charmbracelet" - which is exactly what you are considering doing, separating the neighborhoods and connecting them by rail.  Arron warned me about forcing the rich to use the rail, so make sure you still keep roads functional. 

I called it a charmbracelet because it would essentially be a ring of connected neighborhoods hanging off of rail, and each neighborhood being a "charm" on the "bracelet."

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Please let us know how you get on. I tried a layout with rail as the loop, lots of stops and only one or two streets connecting the neighbourhoods to industry.  Failure . Maybe they didn't like streets. The pop never got above 3k and I made the mistake of starting on a small city tile - no room & looked messy.

 

SkiGeek that is one fine city, keep up the good work

[Meg 368]

Thank you. I had put this region aside for a while but I have recently gotten back to it. Now that my city has broken the 200k mark, it seems like a good time for an update.

First, an overview of the region:

Anasazi is the city I’ve been talking about. The

Blessing Way

, Our Town, and Soft Light are mostly hi-tech cities. 2Shy is commercial. Teso Dos Bichos, Apocrypha, Hell Money Piper Maru, and Fire are dirty industrial. Voyager is another residential city.

Here is an overview of Anasazi:

And the basic stats:

Here is my favorite section of downtown:

Somehow a Primavera has managed to sneak into the Graham neighborhood. Not that I’m complaining.

I like the fact that I have more Hogans than Ryans. They are a bit scattered, though. But here there are 3 of them together.

And, since I know Sharr will ask , here are the jobs and population graphs.

Here is residential:

 

And commercial:

And industry, without the high tech:

and with the high tech:

Education took a bit of a hit as the population grew but it is still high:

and still looks good across all age groups, although those Gen Xers are dragging it down a little. The city has both a university and a city college. I recently had to add a high school and several elementary schools.

There does seem to be more young people in the city than there used to be.

 

The commute time isn’t too bad, considering I designed this city without railroads, which is something I wouldn’t do today.

The polls look good.

Crime is still relatively low, I guess, since they aren’t fussing about it.

The mayor rating remains high.

Here is the budget. I still haven’t used any modds or cheats. I’m getting a sense that I’m learning how the game works and I’m afraid the modds or cheats would mess that up.

Still no Van Proojens or Ongs, though. But maybe 200k is a bit early to be looking for them.

[Sharr 6]

Ski,

This looks outstanding. If you use a modd, I'd suggest Perfect Pathfinding Original Engine - no changes to Maxis' capacity values but it'll fix the commute time a little bit.

Nice CO population! Everything looks so healthy. Way to go!

[geekdestroyer 1]

Skigeek you did a very nice job with your city...it look so damn cool

[dmrsunz 2]

I'm thinking that the charmbracelet could work on a medium or large map. When commute times are fixed, they can string the whole region together.

Can you explain the fixed commute times for med and lg maps, or point me to a thread that does so?

[Duke87 1,070]

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On 5/5/2003 8:37:17 PM SkiGeek wrote:

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On 5/5/2003 8:05:16 PM Sharr wrote:

I decided to patch the game; we'll see how all this stuff works afterward!

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Which patch?  Patch 2 or Buggi's patch?

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The world may never know...

Edit: You know, I probably should have noticed there was a second page.....

[Link167 0]

nice work ski... and btw... way back there.... u asked how to make that squiggley thing... do u mean the simleon symbol? not $ but