Various Questions

[Vapkez 0]

Hey, so this was my favorite game as a kid and I started playing it again. First city in a few years and I realized that I really do not remember much except the functionality of all of the ploppable utilities and zones. I don't need a newb lecture, but I have some specific questions pertaining to my current city.

So I usually start off by building two cities like in the image below. One industrial that is just a dump and then my residential/commercial. (I do not like having dirty industrial buildings in my city). Is it ok to start out like this? I have been building up the education and got a good amount of rich population. Then, I start getting the dreaded no job signs... My sims will not drive across town to work and I do not know what to do. Ill post a pic of my city under the region map, but it may not have any no job signs (this is because my comp crashed after half an hour of playing and I didn't have time to re-do what I just did), which was a lot

Ok, so my other question was just pertaining to budget. I had the build the army base and the federal prison just so I could pay for everything. I do not want to sacrifice my healthcare, fire, or police because that nets me a high mayor rating and I can't stand the advisers bugging me. I have a picture of the city opinion polls below me.

Last 2 questions on my agenda, what is a lot and a BAT? It is not outlined anywhere on these forums... And does anyone have a good list of things I should download to make the game more enjoyable? There is wayy too many for me to try and find. I use the PEG garbage chute already. I especially like downloading new utilities (for some odd reason), but other buildings, helpful transportation system things and other are certainly welcome. I didn't download the NAM because it seemed way too overwhelming, if someone wants to try and sell me on the NAM I will download it, but I do not have tons and tons of time to just play around with stuff, I just like to play this game leisurely. Thanks.

  Edited December 29, 2011 by Vapkez  

[TekindusT 3,809]

Some players place the dirty industry in an adjacent city, there's nothing wrong on it; but you can suffer commuting issues, like the Eternal Commute Loop. In my personal opinion, I never do that, because at some point, to make your city grow is necessary to do some "regional play" and develop the adjacent tiles. Try to find a balance between dirty industry and residents and everything will be OK.

As for the difference between a lot and a BAT, I also learnt the hard way, until I understood the following:

The lot is, basically, the place where the buildings and props (lampposts, fountains, planters, etc.) stand; the lot contains the data, the thing the game engine processes to do its commuting calculations, demands and this kind of stuff.

A BAT, is how we players call "a structure you can plop or grow in your city". These structures are rendered with the Building Architect Tool (a plugin for the modelling program Gmax), and in the beginning, people began to speak of BATs when referring to buildings modelled and rendered with the BAT. During the process of creation of a building, you have to use the Lot Editor to place the BAT (the thing you've just modelled) in a lot and edit its parameters. Nowadays, we all talk about BATs when talking about "stuff you can place in a city", whether they are buldings, bridges, stations...

  Edited December 29, 2011 by TekindusT  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Welcome back.

Your no-job zots are probably due to lack of good transportation in the default game. Among other things the NAM fixes a lot of this problem. You are right, it is large, but you don't have to read up on it all at once. There are several pages of documentation that you can read in your browser, but a quick initial skim will get you going. In depth study can come later.

You need to check the update status of your game. To use the NAM you have to be at update level 1,1,638 or better. You find this out by navigating to the exe file for the game in Program Files and hovering your mouse over it. (Windows7, otherwise right click it).

The two cities model works fine and the NAM will help that quite a bit. If you want to get rid of power, water and pollution troubles download and deploy both of these lots.

Big power plant supplies power and eats pollution over a large city tile. However, it needs the

fancy water plant because it uses water (and air pollution) as fuel.

With these in your city, I-D doesn't become a pollution problem and neither do farms. They are expensive, so you may need to make sure you can afford them. Once you have them they cost almost nothing to operate.

I would be tempted to not have highways in town. You can use avenues, and if they get too busy you can add TRAM (part of NAM a.k.a. GLR - Ground Light Rail) to the center to ease the traffic burden. Fits in very nicely. Generally, I don't use highways inside the boundaries of a town, but between cities. Because of the limited access aspect, you have to have space consuming ramps, etc. If you decide to go for GLR, you must download stations separately and read the instructions very carfully.

Budget problems can be solved in several ways. One is to go more slowly, and if you are running in top gear drop into second. More fun that way and you can enjoy the animation. The general solution to the budget problem is the Extra Cheats dll which opens all the developer commands to the user. You put this library file at the head of your plugins with no subfolder and it opens all the commands. After you have it in the running game, just press CTRL+X and right click in the dialogue box to get the list. The moolah command can reset your treasury to any value you want. For example:

moolah 500000

will set your treasury total to 500,000 Simoleans. This is not an increment. it replaces the counter value.

Definitions:

Lot ::= a unit of real estate that can be either grown or plopped. Lots that grow need to be zoned first. Lots can be modified and/or created using the Lot Editor.

BAT ::= a graphics model for a building or prop that is placed on a Lot. Building Architect Tool is available as a gmax gamepack. This means that you have to install gmax and activate it first, then the BAT. gmax is a cut down version for gamers of the 3D modeling software 3DS Max. If you look in the omnibus when you think you are ready to do your own buildings you will find an excellent tutorial called BAT Essentials. If you think the NAM is complex, the BAT is a whole new ball of wax.

A word of caution. On modern machines this game crashes frequently. Become a friend of the in-game save (CTRL+s) and you will save yourself annoying redos. I generally do one every time I zone a lot of stuff, plop civic buildings, build much network, or lay out water pipes. If you can't remember to do it, get an alarm clock. Every 15 minutes is about right.

Above all, do not ever switch away from the game during a save. You can corrupt your city and it will be unplayable.

  Edited December 29, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[Vapkez 0]

Thanks for the replies. I am sure this will help.

Nonny, your utilities that you suggested are great, however I almost feel like I would be cheating. Are people able to balance the budget, keep Sims educated, and keep everything in the city (land value, pollution, etc) in good order with just what is given to us?

[SimCoug 5,972]

It looks like everything has been covered pretty well. I would just add that your no jobs signs may be due to a lack of jobs for your high wealth sims (co, cs and ind ht). Those types of jobs won't typically grow around dirty industry. I noticed you do have some commercial, so maybe try and get some HT industry to grow.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Thanks for the replies. I am sure this will help.

Nonny, your utilities that you suggested are great, however I almost feel like I would be cheating. Are people able to balance the budget, keep Sims educated, and keep everything in the city (land value, pollution, etc) in good order with just what is given to us?

The answer is yes provided you have installed the published patch to the 638 level which is a set of bug fixes. There are a few other problems with the game that have been discovered, the most annoying one of which is the Opera House which will destroy your education budget without the Opera House Fix from the STEX.

However, you will notice that when the game starts it is in the lowest gear. The reason for this is that you need to go slowly until you are in a profitable position. If you are not making income, you are on a downward slide to the Senate. There are several ways to go profitable, and the Timbuktu tutorials point the way. If I didn't say this before, never try to run a city or two on the Timbuktu region. It may be reset at any time since it is a tutorial.

Pick an innocuous region for starting out, or download and render one from the STEX. You might find this one amusing. After you unpack it, just create a new region folder, and move the config.bmp and the gray-scale .jpg into the folder. Open the game, select that region and press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+r to start the render. Navigate to the gray-scale map and select it. Go for coffee. This is not interruptible and takes a while. This region has a lot of coastal waters and a reasonable selection of landscape. All of my maps are of the render-within-the-game type, and require no outside software to create them.

A quick start for a land-based city is:

Pick a spot and put down a wind generator.

Drag two streets at the base at right angles.

Create two or three single occupancy commercial lots adjacent to the power tower.

Create about two dozen single occupancy residential lots along the arms of the streets.

Behind all this create about six click and hold low level industrials (farms).

Sit back and watch as this goes profitable in about 1 Sim-year.

Now, just proceed cautiously from there. There is no rush. This is a leisure time activity that can become very artistic as you progress.

Here is an example of sparse town creation on my current map - Not up to date.

If you like this one, it too is on the STEX.

  Edited December 30, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[Vapkez 0]

Thanks for the replies again, I will try and take sometime to do these things. One last question, sorry, I cannot for the life of me find a download link for the 1.1.168 download that works. Can someone point me in the right direction?

[CaptCity 4,690]

Thanks for the replies again, I will try and take sometime to do these things. One last question, sorry, I cannot for the life of me find a download link for the 1.1.168 download that works. Can someone point me in the right direction?

See the notice here.

[cogeo 960]

Welcome aboard

About having specialized cities, nothing wrong with this, except maybe commuting issues. I would say absolutely install the NAM, not only it contains new network types (GLR, GLR in Avenue/Road/Street, Diagonal Streets, SAM, RHW etc), it improves pathfinding and increases capacities too. The highest capacities are really cheaty-like, but you can select the low ones if you don't want cheating. Another condition that can cause no job zots is having inaccessible jobs. Check this post for details.

As for the utilities that are available for download, some are carefully modded (on par with the Maxis ones - though Maxis isn't always right), some are "cheaty", as you correctly noticed (eg the Garbage Chute), while some others are just buggy (unfortunately there are many excellent 3D modellers (BATters) who pay very little attention to the modding/stats of their creations).

Now about the budget, I always have a strongly positive balance, and I don't use any cheaty lots; mostly Maxis, or my own stuff, or custom ones (usually revised/remodded by me), but these are all on par with the Maxis ones. There are quite a few budget items to economize from. Let's see some:

Utilities

- For power plants, if you are running a city that contains a power plant, try to sell the excess production to a neighbour (even if it doesn't really "need" it), and then play with the slider, so that usage is 75-80%, otherwise it wears fast.

- The water system doesn't respond well to the (global) funding changes, so the only option here is simply sell all excess production. Utilisation can be high (nearing 100%), without causing fast wear.

- Garbage can be a PIA. First of all, landfills are actually very expensive to operate, they cost about 3.3$/ton, although the game (due to a bug) charges much lower rates for deals. So never import garbage, if your city has a landfill. Recycling centres are simply money wasters, they charge $350/mo, for processing just 18 tons of garbage. By far the most expensive utility in SC4, so don't bother.

Health & Education:

- Play with the sliders, and fund your schools/libraries/colleges and hospitals only as much as they need.

- You can economize a lot from the bus and ambulance funding. If they serve a small or a dense area, you can easily reduce bus & ambulance funding (preferably set them to 0 - the radius is still large enough).

Police & Fire do not respond well to funding adjustments. It only makes sense to fund them at 100% exactly (default). And of course, plan carefully where and when you plop them.

As for BATs and Lots, things are a little different. Everything you grow or plop, except for trees and networks (ie streets, roads, rails...) is placed in a lot. The lot has a set size (eg 2x3, 3x2, 4x3 etc - these are tiles), and may contain a main building and numerous props. The main building can be queried, while props just display a short description when hovered (eg Tree, Planter, Fence etc). Now, both the main building and the props are 3D models, made with the Building Architect Tool, and are thus informally called "BATs". However, in the STEX, by "BAT" we mean an upload that contains original 3D modelling work, ie new models; the upload will typically be containing one or more lots (using the new model(s) as the main building or props), in order to be usable ingame. By "Lot", we mean an upload that contains one or more lots, but no new 3D models. It may be using Maxis models, or models made by other creators, or uploaded separately. Such separetely uploaded items (Texture Packs, Prop Packs, Essentials or what) are called "Dependencies" and are typically listed in the readme and the "Description" section of the upload. As an example, check my Photovoltaic and my Nuclear Plants uploads on the STEX. The former is classified as a "BAT". because it does contain new models, while the latter is a "Lot".

Beware about I-HT, the game has a bug that DOES NOT allow R$$$ sims to work there! There is a mod that fixes it, but this causes another problem, regional R statistics are double-count for some reason. Overcoming this requires merging the mod with simcity_1.dat. Refer to the SC4D forums for instructions on how to do this. Otherwise better do not tinker with I-HT.

About gameplay techniques, almost everything is possible. Currently I'm playing a new region, basically experimenting: hard economic model, no industry or farms allowed, no initial funds, just an initial loan of $1000 (made a mod for this), and of course no demand mods. And the interesting thing is that such a setting does actually work! My cities are now 15-25 years old, population is 5000-10500, balance is positive and EQ high. They grow ca 50% every 5 years. Don't know if the simulator will slow down or halt growth at some point, but for the moment it rather seems to be accelerating. Here is a pic of the region.

If you are interested in the technique, check this post.

Hope you found thes uaeful.

  Edited December 31, 2011 by cogeo  

[Vapkez 0]

Beware about I-HT, the game has a bug that DOES NOT allow R$$$ sims to work there! There is a mod that fixes it, but this causes another problem, regional R statistics are double-count for some reason. Overcoming this requires merging the mod with simcity_1.dat. Refer to the SC4D forums for instructions on how to do this. Otherwise better do not tinker with I-HT.

Wow, that is really frustrating. I-HT is basically my goal every time lol. You would think that R-$$$ would be practically the only ones that work there, because in real life these jobs pay well... Oh well, I'll figure it out.

I would like to say again, thanks for all of the feedback, nice to see that this is an actual forum with people that respond to posts. Check back, I will definitely post up a new city (and I am sure I will have more dilemmas ).

[EyeofMobius 27]

You are going to have to think of you population in a pyramid with those at the top occupying the least amount of places to live. The good news is that the R$$$ can bring in staggering levels of tax income per capita. Taxing the poor is not terribly worth it because they make you money on sheer volume. They are also much cheaper to provide for. Middle income sims will likely be your bread and butter for income since they are a really large population with a good return on taxes and a larger flexibility on jobs. If you are playing with the taxes be very gentle and only adjust them a couple clicks at a time because your demand temporarily jumps or falls and then stabilizes after the passage of time; These spikes in demand can cause some temporary movement that your city can likely only swallow in small doses.

[cogeo 960]

I-HT is basically my goal every time lol. You would think that R-$$$ would be practically the only ones that work there, because in real life these jobs pay well... Oh well, I'll figure it out.

Hmmm, not quite, actually only 10% of the I-HT jobs are R$$$ (80% are R$$ and 10%R$). But even so, this doesn't work (due to the bug) and no R$$$ sims work there (you can query the I-HT industries and see). The fix sets these to 12%R$$$/78%R$$/10%R$ (having two equal percentages seems to activate the bug^*), while there's another similar fix with the percentages set to 15%/75%/10%. That is, in any case, only a relatively small percentage of the jobs is R$$$. The building type with the highest percentage of R$$$ jobs is CO$$$, but still, this is a mere 15%. To see the complete list check this thread on SC4D.

* The bug affects also the Medical Clinic, the Solar Power Plant and the Nuclear Power Plant.

If you are playing with the taxes be very gentle and only adjust them a couple clicks at a time because your demand temporarily jumps or falls and then stabilizes after the passage of time; These spikes in demand can cause some temporary movement that your city can likely only swallow in small doses.

While I agree about changing taxes in small steps (and yes, the effect of adjusting taxes may even take 6 months to show up), I generally advise not playing with the taxes too much, if at all. Raising taxes will cause demand to plummet, and you will finally not only be collecting fewer taxes, you will inhibit any growth too. Reducing taxes will cause demand to rise, which will just cause a few more buildings of the respective type to grow, but these will rather have a tendency to dilapidate. That is, this is not a way ro achieve a continous and sustainable growth, as the jobs/population/workforce/education level won't be able to support it. Thus I would recommend that you simply set the tax rate to the neutral (for your city size) level. To see the neutral tax rate download my Chamber of Commerce and Industry and/or the BSC Census Repository from the SC4D LEX. You will have to slowly reduce your tax rates as your city grows; as far as I can remember you won't need to reduce the rate below the initial 9% before your city reaches 150,000 of pop. So palying with taxes is basically useful for keeping certain building from growing in your city. For example, I'm p*ssed with CS$$$, as these can become very "aggressive"; the game may demolish a small CO$$ building employing 40 or so sims (eg Dieckman or Bennett), only to grow a stupid boutique, employing some 7 sims! The boutique will definitely be paying more taxes, but what about employment? So I set CS$$$ tax rate to 9.2% or 9.3%, which causes CS$$$ demand to go negative (no boutiques will be growing then), and grow my offices; subsequently, when high taxes can no longer keep demand negative, I grow the CS$$$ in another city, or mark my offices historical, set CS$$$ tax rates back to normal, and grow my CS$$$ where I want (usually replacing CS$ or CS$$). This way I save my offices!

  Edited January 2, 2012 by cogeo  

[Vapkez 0]

Hey guys I'm back with another question.

So I downloaded this SOMY school. (I really like the look of it and I thought it's functionality would be great too). But, the education level of my sims has gone down. It says that it does k-12. So I demolished my highschool and elementary schools, but it did not take all of the students that were in these schools, I do not know why (the radius is the map so I know it is not that problem).

https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/11870-somy-japanese-urban-school/

I also downloaded the NAM and have been trying to work on my traffic since I am getting more and more briefcases. Does anyone have any suggestions to easy it a bit. I have been trying to place bus stops and underground parking garages (lot I got) everywhere. I do not have enough money for subways.

  Edited January 2, 2012 by Vapkez  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Hey guys I'm back with another question.

So I downloaded this SOMY school. (I really like the look of it and I thought it's functionality would be great too). But, the education level of my sims has gone down. It says that it does k-12. So I demolished my highschool and elementary schools, but it did not take all of the students that were in these schools, I do not know why (the radius is the map so I know it is not that problem).

http://www.simtropol...e-urban-school/

I also downloaded the NAM and have been trying to work on my traffic since I am getting more and more briefcases. Does anyone have any suggestions to easy it a bit. I have been trying to place bus stops and underground parking garages (lot I got) everywhere. I do not have enough money for subways.

Well, your giant school probably increased congestion on your roads. The program really wants local schools, so I really have no feel for what one single giant school would do. Not my bag, I am afraid.

If you are using buses, you should also have the RTMT (Road Top Mass Transit) mod. It lets your bus stops be actually on the road/street tiles instead of on separate lots. Considerable space saving.

Other things impacting your commute time could be such things as the appropriateness of nearby jobs. If you try to have a central business district too soon and it is not properly backed by residential lots, you may discover that all the transit systems in the world won't solve this. I have pretty much stopped using buses except where there is a clear advantage (a street or so full of pedestrians with long commutes).

You are right, you can't afford subways until you get big enough to have the city support it. For long-haul consider elevated rail rather than the more expensive monorail. The only place you need parking garages are at the light rail stations that have no parking.

All the heavy rail stations have built-in parking. Heavy rail is also inexpensive and can be considered both for passenger and freight. You can develop separate or combined lines. It is probably best to set heavy rail stations up as terminals and to have spurs to keep them off the main line. This has the effect of more accurately counting your usage.

In my current city, I have only one set of buses. These are on an island that is serviced by a ferry to get to the mainland where most jobs are. There are no mainland bus routes as yet because the ferry landing is near the job areas. The ferries are car/passenger by Pegasus. There are several different choices. Here is a snapshot under the route query operator.

Sims don't take just any job. You need to have a good variety either in your city or in an adjacent city. I have found that some Sims will travel across two cities to get to work (with the NAM).

Hope this helps you. Good luck.

[Vapkez 0]

I ran into another question that I know you guys can answer. I have been looking at the CJ and they are amazing. Only thing is that all of their land is developed even on a curved road. Is there an easy way to plot land on curves, because I have been trying hard to do it, but some of the plots are unreachable and/or just one single tile.

Thanks,

Vapkez

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I ran into another question that I know you guys can answer. I have been looking at the CJ and they are amazing. Only thing is that all of their land is developed even on a curved road. Is there an easy way to plot land on curves, because I have been trying hard to do it, but some of the plots are unreachable and/or just one single tile.

Thanks,

Vapkez

There are some specialized lots on the STEX and other exchanges that provide a diagonal overlap for this. It is quite an advanced technique. On the other hand, some CJ pictures are photo shopped, so don't get too excited.

[cogeo 960]

Indeed, there are no diagonal lots, but there do exist special lots with overhanging (protruding) diagonal building models, that do cover the "holes". And of course these are basically ploppables (you can't very much expect that the game will grow these exactly where you want, and even worse it may grow these "diagonal" buildings where it should instead grow orthogonal ones).

Also, diagonal layouts are quite costly in terms of space, as the diagonal networks take one or two tiles more, and there are those unusable tiles too. And in terms of traffic, a diagonal network isn't really faster (shorter) than its two-segment (L-shaped) orthogonal counterpart, as diagonal networks do not actually exist (technically, a diagonal tile is implemented as an orthogonal "corner"). So I would suggest that you avoid them as much as you can - they are only good for aesthetics.

However there are some cases where you may really want them. There are some simple techniques you can use to achieve (growable) development along diagonal networks. First of you have to accept that you will get orthogonal buildings (a small compromise, as far as aesthtics is concerned). And indeed, only one of the tiles will be actually touching the network, and there will be some unused tiles too.

Take a look in the following pic (from one of my cities):

And the zones view:

The buildigs are currently low to medium, however take into account that the city is yet small, and the lots small too. But as the city grows, and demand is high (you can assume that you will have high traffic too, and desirabilty looks good as well - water, those embankments etc) you can expect that you will get some quite tall (albeit not very big) buildings in growth stages 6 and 7, like Farly Audio or Reflect Systems Incorporated. And if there was some little more space (heh, I could expand the shore by one tile into the sea) and had 2x3 instead of 2x2 lots, you can even get real skyscrapers (stages 7 and 8 ).

The problem, as you said, is that only one tile touches the network, and if the lot splits into two, the other one won't have road access. The solution is to zone as a single 2x2 (or 2x3) lot, and only when demand is high - better save before zoning, and if the lot splits (despite the high demand and desirability) exit without saving and try again or later. You can also temporarily lay a short street in the empty tile to provide access to the other lot. The empty tiles can be filled with small parks (residential) or plazas or open area tiles (commercial) or bus stops (all these increase desirability and will most likely cause taller buildings to grow).

Hope this helps.

  Edited January 10, 2012 by cogeo