Natural Region Spread

[jacobhinds 36]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume most people on this forum have seen this amazing video:

I really like the way the player blends city boundaries together rather than treating each city like it's own universe; it looks really natural and prevents you from simply zoning like a mad thing, especially later on in the game when demand/funds are less of an issue. Plus it's satisfying to look at when you turn off boundaries in the region view and it looks like a single city.

I therefore decided to overhaul the way I designed cities. A few years ago I used the Seattle region and began building along the coast like this:

The problem is that when the city begins to bulk out and I'm trying to match up all four borders, it doesn't look as good. zones are pretty difficult to match up when almost all of your thoroughfares are streets, meaning they don't carry over to the neighbouring city and you can't judge where to zone. Add that to the fact that that every city develops differently; e.g. on the city I'm working on at the moment, the central city only wants hi-rises and apartments, and the city next door will only build those horrid "brown grass suburbs" you get at the beginning, resulting in an ugly deep-green/light-brown clash. but farms are the worst. given the nature of farms, the boundaries are pretty obvious when you start to use large swathes of farmland. So my question is this:

How should I go about building a region that looks natural, and makes boundaries almost invisible from the omni-view? Any particular tips? I've seen some really well made regions that more closely resemble metropolitan zones with multiple centres of commerce, and that's the sort of effect I'm looking for.

Thanks!

[Lordyboy96 77]

Take a look at this: https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=12096.240 The lesson on farms (on the page I linked) has some really good tips on how to get the city edges to look natural, and has a nice work around for getting street neighbour connections.

The entire guide is also full of great tips for building a city

[SilverCyric 130]

Im doing a region based on the Seatlle area as well, what I'll do is use forests, farms, and sometimes giant power stations (for multiple tiles use of power), to blend my borders. The farms can be tedious, getting 4 farms to grow the same, but it works well, and you can use road connections, just 3 tiles into each city, to mark your spots to help blend, once you have the blend, demolish the connection and it's gone on both sides

I have some pics somewhere I can post if you need more ideas

[jacobhinds 36]

@lordyboy woow. That's an enormous thread. I'll give it a read, seems really useful even on the first page.

and @silvercyric, please do post pictures, i would like to see someone elses take on the region.

Thanks for the replies!

[SilverCyric 130]

Oh hey found something you might like, it sover here...

http://www.bripizza.net/sc4/transport.html

Scroll down and there is a part where he made dummy roads for fake road connections, it might have something you're looking for...

[SilverCyric 130]

Now when I turn on the borders...

as you can see, this farm sits on the border of 4 tiles, so now anytime you look at the map and you think you see the line, it'll break ever time you follow to this farm...

[SilverCyric 130]

Here's a better shot, the city so far, haven't really gotten out of this corner yet. Just a few small towns, couple cities spread over the 20x18 large tile region. But most everything is going on up here so far. Anyways, it's spread across 4 tiles, and the farms peek into two tiles below the 4 parallel tiles containing the city and it's suburbs... I've used forests, farms, and even a small suburb to blend the borders... Still a lot of work to do, especially since I haven't built down enough to change the terrain on the second row of tiles down from the north, it's got a line there, but once i start laying roads in the next tile, it'll pull the terrain down enough for the texture to change to match the adjacent tile. At least I hope so : p

P.S. Good call Lordyboy, Smileymk is running a fantastic tutorial over there. Good Schtuff!!!

[LongAugust 1]

I'm loving these tips. How do you decide what your farm boundaries should be? I use the SPAM farms, but I'm never ure how big they should be or how close together.

[euverus 20]

Here is mine and still growing.

[Linoa06 1,374]

 

 

Latest map for Seahaven.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

You based your city centre around Bankstown eh?

The Sydney map is a great one for organic looking spread, yet there is some conformity with the water restrictions. Its why my city is being built on a very similar looking region.

[AIX 270]

@Euverus: STUNNING!

 

I have started a fresh region and this will be my top priority. I have a history of creating Dubai-styled regions with crazy sky scraper forests and vast deserts. Here is what I have so far. All non-developed tiles are cropped out, the actual region is quite large.

 

[packersfan 666]

Wow, some beautiful regions here! Good job.

[Mutilated_Pixie 2]

Packersfan, I am loving that region map, I was wondering if the map was available for downloading

[jacobhinds 36]

@linoa06, could I ask how you managed to get your landscape to be that colour?

[loudpack 5]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume most people on this forum have seen this amazing video:

I really like the way the player blends city boundaries together rather than treating each city like it's own universe; it looks really natural and prevents you from simply zoning like a mad thing, especially later on in the game when demand/funds are less of an issue. Plus it's satisfying to look at when you turn off boundaries in the region view and it looks like a single city.

I therefore decided to overhaul the way I designed cities. A few years ago I used the Seattle region and began building along the coast like this:

The problem is that when the city begins to bulk out and I'm trying to match up all four borders, it doesn't look as good. zones are pretty difficult to match up when almost all of your thoroughfares are streets, meaning they don't carry over to the neighbouring city and you can't judge where to zone. Add that to the fact that that every city develops differently; e.g. on the city I'm working on at the moment, the central city only wants hi-rises and apartments, and the city next door will only build those horrid "brown grass suburbs" you get at the beginning, resulting in an ugly deep-green/light-brown clash. but farms are the worst. given the nature of farms, the boundaries are pretty obvious when you start to use large swathes of farmland. So my question is this:

How should I go about building a region that looks natural, and makes boundaries almost invisible from the omni-view? Any particular tips? I've seen some really well made regions that more closely resemble metropolitan zones with multiple centres of commerce, and that's the sort of effect I'm looking for.

Thanks!

yea the big homie vigormaster he had some videos earlier last year with the clark city coastline but they disappeared. but now im waiting on the lets play series he said he was coming out with. Euverus  has a nice looking region but i would stretch the highway out to the edges to make it look more realistic. 

[Metalpuritan 160]

Farms to me, are the easiest to blend from city tile to another city tile.  I just make one zone on one side of the border, let it grow, see what it grows into, once it is identified, I save and exit to region and enter the next region, where I zone that farm's continuation, I use SPAM so my farms can operate without an anchor building, I will just destroy this farm until it pops up as a match with the one in other city tile.  Easy.

 

Commercial and residential are by far more difficult than farms are.

[atsummerlin53 47]

Well, something else you can try is use lots and buildings that don't require contiguity between city tiles. If you're budgets are like mine, you'll have plenty of money to build extra schools, hospitals, things like that. Unless you're in a really dense urban environment, these things can be surrounded by playing fields, modular parking lots, and even green space. If you make those things longer and skinnier than you might normally find in the real world, you can take up more real estate along your edges. These can also be plopped in the middle of large residential zones between cities to reduce the burden of lining up streets. Also, splitting an airport between two cities, so that the longest dimension of the airport runs along the edge will basically eliminate this entire edge from having to do this. I've done this in a previous CJ and plan on doing it in my current one. Just make sure you leave room to add transport connections.