city planning/growth

[jakve 4]

hi. I´ve just started playing sim city 4, and a real $%&^! yes i know i want to play the game without cheats. my problem seem to be that i cant get my city to grow in height, only in width i now have a city with a population of 5000. excellent coverage with police, fire dep, full edu, health. nice residential demand at about 4000. if i try to expand to much, i get problems with commute times (as it seems most players do)

any tips?

also, i would really appreciate some tips on the most common patterns of zoning. the only way that seems to work for me is putting zones right next to each other. i try to keep commercial in central places, but still pretty low custom rates.

if necessary i could post a photo of my city

many thanks!

[Mayor Goldie Wilson 0]

I've always found that getting a city to expand upwards is dependent on how many people you have in the city and how much high wealth you have. Once your city grows to around 50,000 people you'll start to see taller buildings rising up. To do this you need to gradually develop high and medium density housing, paying careful attention to demand for high and medium wealth. High wealth areas can be developed by improving the area with parks and good coverage of education, health and safety etc.

I used to get similar problems with commute time as well. Based on my experience here's some tips I can offer off the top of my head:

-Start with 3 distinct zone areas. Commerical in the centre, residental and industry on either side. At the start, allow them space from each other rather than putting them directly next to each other. This will give you room to build a higher capacity road network later on when more people move in and the roads start getting congested. Eventually all your zones will meet as you develop further.

-In the early days of your city keep your residential at about 50% low density, 30% medium density and 20% high density. Same with commerical.

-Keep high density commercial in the centre and zone lower density the further out you go. Lower density businesses on the outside push higher density businesses in the centre.

-Zone higher density residential closer to the town centre to help with commute times.

-Raise taxes of dirty industry and manufacturing to 20% to tax them out of your city. Ensure you keep air pollution down using natural gas plants instead of coal and oil to encourage high tech industry to move in.

-REMEMBER: Sims always use the quickest route to work. Check the "traffic capacity" graph and observe the moving dots to see where sims are travelling too and from. Theses are the key routes you need to develop to reduce commute time.

-Commute time problems can be solved by connecting residential areas to commercial areas and neighboring cities effectively. I've found highways are the best way to get your sims working across different cities as they provide fast links and are very high capacity.

-When your city grows and you have enough funds try constructing a ring road using elevated highway that allows traffic to circulate around all your zones. Keep the ring road close to the 'edge' of your city to ensure it is seen as a viable route from A to B. This will improve commute time and reduce congestion in the city centre.

-Work on smaller/different style towns and cities around the main one and connect them up accordingly. You should find that demand increases as the right people move to your city (providing you offer the right facilities) and the people you don't want move out to other cities that better meet their needs. E.g. - If you encourage high wealth high tech industry in one city and low wealth manufacturing in another, eventually the rich sims should come to the rich city and the poorer ones you don't want should leave and go to the other city. Giving your sims more options using neighboring cities gives you a better chance of avoiding unemployment issues, providing you set each city up to cater to different jobs.

That's my two cents anyway, hope it was useful!

[jakve 4]

thanks for taking the time! very useful, will try it out

[cmdp123789 710]

Well... if this is the first time you're playing simcity then I guess getting skyscrapers is your main goal. Let me tell you something about it. When I first started back in 03' when the game came out, my objective was the same... with time, you realize that skyscrapers are not what you truly want is to achieve a certain look on your city. You see, the no cheating thing is just some excuse that wont work in the long run... I mean, money, demand... etc... those are things that you're gonna have to play with in order to achieve some reality, yet, make your own way of designing your city's growth. Think about it, if you get a big city next to a small one, lets say suburbs... the demand will be too high, right? if demand is high, then skyscrapers will come out in suburbs too. There;s where demand, money, etc tweaks come in... so my advice is... play the game, know the basics... then try to figure out what you want... and use cj as inspiration... HAVE FUN

[jakve 4]

yeah, well guess im still working on the "know the basics" part. still need much more experience, but its nice to pick up a couple of hints along the way. thanks for advice!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Welcome to Simtropolis.

You sound like you have a nice little town. You will need a population of around 85,000 before you will see any large commercial buildings, and maybe not even then depending on the conditions. The business area must be free from pollution, have some open spaces (parks, plazas), and good city services. Your education level will also have to be around 100 to get C$$ and C$$$ buildings, which are the high rise ones.

Also, the game is programmed for players to build out before building up.

The goal to get tall buildings is an early player one. I gave it up long ago. They come along as you play and your city grows. My current goals are to have a nice region, mostly rural with a few main hubs while staying in the black in all tiles.

You don't say what the build level of your game is. Check in Program Files ... SimCity 4.exe with windows explorer. Hover over the file to the the version. If it is less than 1,1,640 you need some published fixes for bugs.

Cheating is in the eye of the beholder. You need two plugins that will help you greatly. The Network Addon Mod is a huge expansion pack (free) that corrects many of the problems in the game. It is currently with a fix The .dll is a library that opens up all the debugging commands used by the developers. This module gives you access to some instrumentation you may need and some neat commands that can control your treasury.

Because the game is open ended, you can add as much custom content as you like. Great care needs to be taken with it, so that if an update for one of them occurs, you can easily replace/update it.

When dealing with custom content be sure to read the download page and any literature attached to the download. Don't be in a rush. The exchanges are not going anywhere any time soon. Test each new plugin as you add it because not all of them dance together. You might seriously benefit from walking through

Have fun.

[jakve 4]

overwhelmed by the quick response! thanks a lot guys.

yeah, i really think figuring out things like this is a part of the thrill about the game. but seriously, my residents tend to moan about long commute times if they have to travel more than 10-15 tiles distance to work. is this normal? are they more tolerant to commute distance if i use highways? oh, and does anybody know when the new simcity game will be out? (for mac)

peace

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

overwhelmed by the quick response! thanks a lot guys.

yeah, i really think figuring out things like this is a part of the thrill about the game. but seriously, my residents tend to moan about long commute times if they have to travel more than 10-15 tiles distance to work. is this normal? are they more tolerant to commute distance if i use highways? oh, and does anybody know when the new simcity game will be out? (for mac)

peace

This little design glitch in the unmodified game is fixed by the NAM. No kidding, go get it.

[Mayor Goldie Wilson 0]

Yes, sims will be will more willing to travel on highways as they can travel further faster. As long as you connect residential to commercial or industry using highways you can get sims to travel right across the map and also out to other cities. Sims will always gravitate towards highways if they connect key destinations, instantly freeing up small roads, that's why I love em <3

[jakve 4]

is there a decent mac version of the NAM?

[FDEL 0]

NAM will fix the commute issue. Also, if you're open to using mods, there are ways to make the game easier that don't feel very cheat-like. For example, there's a lottery ordinance mod that gives you an extra $10,000 each month, which makes the game much easier, but it also makes sense (since a state-run lottery program making you profit could easily happen in real life), so I feel it's a much better method than other money tricks (like the toll booth trick) that do not require mods but are less realistic.

Aside from that, some of the general advice that I've learned so far for this game are:

1) you always have to build out before you can build high. Certain building height can only be achieved after meeting certain population levels.

2) optimizing your zoning/traffic layout can only be a good thing in the long run, so don't be afraid to demolish what you currently have to make things better

3) for your city to be profitable, it is very important to not overspend on infrastructure you don't need, play with the funding sliders in each school, hospital, etc and only spend what you need

4) religiously follow the RCI demand graphs in your zoning if you want things to grow

5) transportation is very important once your zones are far enough apart, and transportation is really fun to play with, so the extra $10,000/mo you get from the lottery can be used to splurge a bit here (but of course, only do what makes sense, and occasionally what looks beautiful)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

is there a decent mac version of the NAM?

http://www.moddb.com/mods/network-addon-mod/ Choose downloads, get the mac version and the hotfix.

[jakve 4]

hi guys. where is the best place to put an airport? I have tried everything: close to the highway, close to the commercial area etc. No matter where I place it, i get messages like "airport for airheads". nobody seem to use it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Airports are mostly eye-candy and commercial cap relief. If you are getting that message, you are too early. I generally wait for the commercial area to request it.

[jakve 4]

Hello. Anybody ever experienced your parks and roads suddenly turns into all white? just happened in all my cities. i know its christmas, but i suspect its not supposed to be like this...

[jason leo 485]

Hello. Anybody ever experienced your parks and roads suddenly turns into all white? just happened in all my cities. i know its christmas, but i suspect its not supposed to be like this...

That thing happened because today is 25 Dec ! It will gone tomorrow because tomorrow is 26 Dec.

[jonpfl 0]

NAM will fix the commute issue. Also, if you're open to using mods, there are ways to make the game easier that don't feel very cheat-like. For example, there's a lottery ordinance mod that gives you an extra $10,000 each month, which makes the game much easier, but it also makes sense (since a state-run lottery program making you profit could easily happen in real life), so I feel it's a much better method than other money tricks (like the toll booth trick) that do not require mods but are less realistic.

Aside from that, some of the general advice that I've learned so far for this game are:

1) you always have to build out before you can build high. Certain building height can only be achieved after meeting certain population levels.

2) optimizing your zoning/traffic layout can only be a good thing in the long run, so don't be afraid to demolish what you currently have to make things better

3) for your city to be profitable, it is very important to not overspend on infrastructure you don't need, play with the funding sliders in each school, hospital, etc and only spend what you need

4) religiously follow the RCI demand graphs in your zoning if you want things to grow

5) transportation is very important once your zones are far enough apart, and transportation is really fun to play with, so the extra $10,000/mo you get from the lottery can be used to splurge a bit here (but of course, only do what makes sense, and occasionally what looks beautiful)

I assume once your map is filled and there is still demand, you have one of two things you can do to continue to grow :

1) rezone low to medium or high

2) start a neighboring city

Right?

Thx

jonpfl

[jason leo 485]

1) rezone low to medium or high

2) start a neighboring city

Right?

Thx

jonpfl

Actually, you can do both things too. And remember if the date when that post is posted is more than 4 months ago.