Looking for some Great ideas of city builds

[Black3200 2]

Hey guys!!

I have been playing sc4 for a few years back and have been reading the forums here for a long time. ( I am Nonny Moose Fanboy ) And i would like to ask the community what they do to keep their interest in sc4. To be honest i make a few city's and tend to get kinda bored for a while, then come back to it. What do you guys do/think about to come up with those amazing creations i see all over this site? What gives you that drive to fill out a FULL region? I really love this game and im just looking for some idea of things / challenges that you have done in sc4?

Also can someone please show me a city with a nice working Rail system ( passenger and freight ) .. Also a Large highway that is Used almost to capacity.

Lastly I know subways seem to be the best way to let your sims get around, i would love to see a city ( large scale ) that doesn't have traffic issues but does not use subway.

Thanks in advance guys!

p.s. this is also a chance that i can thank Simtropolis for being such a great site with a great community!!

[dazza262 133]

I suppose the thing that keeps me playing is always striving to make a better city than the last one.

It's also the endless possibilities you have with each new city you make. My school of thought on this is that I never plan too much before starting out, I like to let each city grow naturally and see where it ends up.

[Black3200 2]

yeah that is a great idea.. usually i have a pre planned grid style city and i know it may be the most efficient however it bets very repetitive and boring. I should try to make a city and "wing it ".. Thanks for the idea broski !

[starbar61 0]

i create lots of different citys, bad citys, terrible citys, nuclear citys, creepy chupacabra stuff desert citys, gangsta cities man all that stuff man

[Black3200 2]

Yeah i need to get out of the mind set that you dont need to shove as many people in a city at a time :/ .. Ill give that a shot thanks mate ^ ^

I still really wanna see some Nice non-subway Mass trasit

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Currently, I am working on a region called NewYorkCity whose maker I do not recall. It is not the game default one. My theme at the moment is to name the cities in the region alphabetically, and I have just run out of letters, so will now choose truly random names.

In this particular region, I am working my way down the west side of the map where there is a large river, and creating port installations and other good things. There is a set of 1 x 1 cities along the edge, and these I am setting up as rural communities.

I've added a number of growable lot sets to my plugins that allow both commercial and residential lots on small lots of 1 x 1, 2 x 1. For example, I have the Old Wooden Timber set by Paeng, and also several sets by madhatter106. With my large selection of PEG waterfront and MTP plugins, I can create a very nice looking 'old' city area. I'd like to post some of this but at the moment my server space is exhausted. I guess I'll have to do some editing.

However, my practice is that when some style of play gets 'old', I just move on to a different idea. I keep setting different goals. Currently my goal is to complete this region with small to medium towns regardless of tile size and stay in the black throughout. I often have several communities on one large tile. I've currently decided I like green space, but this could change.

Here is an example of the way I see things currently. The region that held this is gone now. I don't save these things forever. At the most I keep two or three active regions. This is a reflection of my early training in computers when disk space was very expensive and memory very small.

Most people today can't imagine a machine with only 2k words (12-bit) but that's where I started. When we got a new machine with 10K words, we were in heaven. My present machine on my desk has 4GB, and I have 1.8 TB of disk storage. This is bigger than some main frames I have used, but the space is not larger than a breadbox. The big main frames sometimes took multiple floors of an office tower. You could have a whole floor of magnetic tape drives that were six feet tall, three feet wide and four feet deep. (Yep, I am a dinosaur survivor.)

So the trick of keeping going in SC is to re-imagine your goals. Sometimes I lay off for a week or so, but generally I've played continuously for the time the game has been out. It is a great time waster, and I have tons of time being retired. Happy gaming.

[Black3200 2]

Thanks for the input moose! What a gather is i need to be more free thinking about what i do. I was never the guy who could think of amazing things, just the guy that like efficiency i will try a few and post them somewhere here on the site!

Also i have a very hard time building on Hills.. i normally just flatten the whole region. Is this normal ?

  Edited March 31, 2012 by Black3200  

[dazza262 133]

Thanks for the input moose! What a gather is i need to be more free thinking about what i do. I was never the guy who could think of amazing things, just the guy that like efficiency i will try a few and post them somewhere here on the site!

I look forward to seeing how you get on with that.

I don't think that you have to come up with anything particularly amazing, it's not a competition (unless you want it to be), and you certainly don't have to justify how or what you build to anyone. Just do whatever makes you happy.

I get inspiration almost everyday from just driving around town (I drive for a living), wether it's from a complex road layout or some mundane urban sprawl, which gets me thinking "hmmmm, wonder if I could build that in my city ".

Personally I try not to build to a grid as things tend get a bit samey, and being from the UK it doesn't really feel natural to me.

Also i have a very hard time building on Hills.. i normally just flatten the whole region. Is this normal ?

Have you got a slope mod installed ? if not you should try it, it'll make your road and rail look a whole lot better. And I'm sure you'd rather have a few hills around than just flat terrain.

Most importantly, have fun

[Black3200 2]

i dont have one! That is a great idea! ill look into it thank you !!!!