Simtowns vs Simcities

[mtb324 3]

I wonder if many people have experimented with using SimCity 2013 to create a town and tried to keep it that way.  I've created 4 or 5 cities the past week or two and I have to say I don't find them aesthetically pleasing.  They all seem to balloon to mammoth size well before they should.  Part of this may be a problem with the zoning advisor and the population panel which seems to constantly push you to expansion and higher density due to "worker shortages."  But it leads to very silly cities.  One of my cities had a population of 60,000 people and looked like Manhattan.  Totally unrealistic.  Would be like Palo Alto, California or Brockton, Massachusetts with 50 and 60 story buildings.  

 

My new mission is to create a town of 5,000-8,000 souls who are happy and live in a beautiful town.  I am paying less attention to "winning" the game and more on making a town look like it should.  For instance, the game pushes you to place your town buildings in random places to increase land value, but I'd prefer a town where the town buildings (school, city hall, library, clinic, police station) are clustered around a town green.  (Incidentally, I wish Sim City had a post office and courthouse, two other civic buildings which look very much in place in a downtown).  The game also pushes you to constantly increase street density, but I'm keeping the town small by using low density roads except around the very outside of the city where I'll allow some larger density buildings to grow (not skyscrapers).  

 

I wonder if anyone else has tried using this model with any success.  Will the game's intrinsic nature to want every city to be Manhattan eventually override my efforts?  For instance, will my citizens start to demand larger streets and move out if I don't give it to them?  Will the game contend that my stores want more and more workers even though the businesses and factories are in synch with a town of 5,000 people?

 

Any comments appreciated!

 

[JimCityBuilder 14]

I have been testing this same thing across seven joined cities and keeping the population at just over 5000 to allow for the construction of each Department module allowing access to all the available services and utilities, then when everything is in place zoning for separate wealth residential and commercial estates with most of the commercial in a central location like you around the City public buildings and parks. This zoning of the residential areas fills up the vacant job slots for each wealth level and helps to reduce the population of each city to below 5000 and turn them all in to towns as such. Until recently all the bugs have messed up these towns but with things now settling down and the game becoming more stable it shows great promise to build and keep such regions like this in check. Hope you have as much luck and fun as i have been having doing this instead of trying to go global, but with the regional save boxes at the start up it should allow the keeping of both types of cities/towns to keep playing for ages after.

 

i never zone on roads higher than low density road except for some of the industrial to create massive single factories as an example rather that these higher density roads are used to filter traffic into and out of each separate area and to and from the main highway. I have yet to have a functioning passenger railway system in place to see what impact this would have on each town or the region overall.

 

looking forward to seeing how you progress with this too.

 

Jim

[stringerbell 9]

starting to try this more as well, just to keep the game fresh. Blasting through a 2x2 plot as quick as you can to top out in some kind of specialization, or max out your pop, really gets old fast in this sim city and is not fun at all.

 

the best screen shots ive seen of this game are of people who make small, realistic looking towns. as you said OP, the big cities in this game NEVER look realistic, and it kills the fun for me.

[AshTym 31]

I have yet to have a functioning passenger railway system in place to see what impact this would have on each town or the region overall.

 

 

I've been doing the same thing, trying to make smaller towns and keeping the population down. The inclusion of a rail system connected to the region helps somewhat in achieving this goal, as it allows workers to commute into the town thereby filling unfilled jobs without the need to zone more residential for them. Of course, it all depends on how many other cities in the region have a railway station and on how many excess workers are available in the region.

[MinecraftFTW 4]

Brockton ,MA turns into Boston, MA would be hilarious in Simcity.

[mtb324 3]

Unfortunatley I have no rail connection but I do have workers flowing in from one of the other cities I created.  The biggest problem I've found is that without a rising population, your tax base does not increase and so it is very very slow accumulating any kind of treasury.

[Catchin22 299]

Yes, I made a town, you can see it here: