Experiments, Tips, and Confirmations

[JamieRamsey2005 28]

I have been playing now since the servers started working and rummaging through the forums for choice tidbits of information.

 

Confirmed Experiment #1 Trash Lizard

-Giant Lizards eat trash, only a few tons 10 or less

-Wont destroy anything if you plop one near the dumps garbage piles

-Once full it disappears and takes some trash with it

-No extra ground pollution is created from this.

 

Confirmed Experiment #2 Pollution Trees

-Trees disappear due to pollution

-Trees can be used to Clean up pollution

-Trees can purify a water table

-Trees reduce air pollution if near or down wind of polluting buildings.

 

Confirmed Experiment #3 No Industry

-Industry isn't required, but is still useful

-Sims like to work, but they can work in various services or specialization buildings

-As you get more specialization buildings you can slowly phase out industrial zones

-Once you clean an industrial zone use trees to clean it up first before rezoning

 

Confirmed Experiment #4 Bulldozing Building Parts

-For upgradable buildings click edit

-Then select the bulldozing tool and you can destroy parts of the building

-Very useful for storage depots and trash dumps

-Bulldozing a trash pile creates ground pollution, but you can plant trees on top of the garbage piles to clean it up!

-You can also bulldoze the extra trucks that some buildings come with like the Coal mine

 

Tips:

1. T shaped intersections work best.

2. Avoid 4 way intersections at all possible

3. Don't be a slave to a rigid grid. The maps are too small and you need to be flexible

4. Education is key to reducing the need for fire, police, and health services

5. Use your data views!

6. Put clinics industrial as well as residential zones as needed

7. Fully upgrading even low level fire, police, and health services isn't necessary early on

8. Specialization is the key to profit and you can have revenue in the red while specialized buildings fill your coffers

9. Use your population view to adjust your zoning to make sure that each sim has a job, each shopper is satisfied, and each student is enrolled

10. I like to upgrade city hall in the following order: utilities, education, transportation, tourism, safety, and finance

 

More to come if people show interest.

[perafilozof 143]

You could add tips about:

11. sewage processing plant and water pumps being next to each other for infinite water.

12. Zoning C inside R to get people to walk more and use cars less

13. You can create overpasses, underpasses and tunnels but you have to start a road on a sloop, hill, cliff face. 13.b Raised land bridges only work over clear ground, once you build it you can draw roads beneath it.

14. Trade depots and specialized factories are best placed next to the city entrance for fast export and import.

15. You can unzone R,C or I, if when upgrading a road you don't want all the buildings on it to increase in density

16. Don't zone on avenues, zone on side streets to keep people from stopping on the avenue to go in and out of buildings

17. Always first build a grade school, then clinic, fire and police when you first get a need for it (aka sick or injured sim, fire, criminal)

18. Population explodes when going to high density, don't upgrade roads to high density if you don't have money for 50+ busses, 20 + street cars

19. A university in a city makes all other education buildings unnecessary. You can have 2 or more of them to educate more people, they share the number of students for upgrades BUT each has a research slot giving you the ability to have 2 or more parallel research projects. 

20.  Air pollution that you put out off your city can come back in a small % from the other side from the region

21. Picking up trash or recyclables in another city will NOT bring them back into your city. It just takes them out of that city and it disappears

22. When sending $ gifts, stay in the sender city until the truck delivers the gift and you get a message. Then go into the receiving city  and when you go into region/gift view watch and wait for the truck to bring the $ in. Yes, you will watch the same thing again, just from the other perspective. 22b. You can receive a $ gift even if you don't have a town hall or a single building in your city.

23. When you claim and start a new city stay in it for the first time until you receive all the messages about what has been unlocked in other cities in the region. If you go out before that happens your city might not accept all the unlocks.

[JimCityBuilder 14]

24. If you would like to vary the density of buildings in your city on your roads, and even be able to create single isolated apartment blocks on the same roads without the need to de-zone here is a simple little trick: By adding side roads off the road you wish to upgrade you can create small sections of road that can be upgraded between these side roads with the road tool, and then afterwards you can demolish the side roads and you end up with small sections of different density of roads that will remain afterwards. By doing this it is possible to create all sorts of combinations of low rise and high rise on the same road or grid, and for the more adventurous isolated tower block estates. Try it, it's fun.

 

Jim

 

Additional: The junctions that appear along your mixed roads do not create actual stop points along the road however I forgot to mentions that these points do act as turn around points that can significantly reduce the Congo effect from utility and service vehicles by making those not need further down that length of road turning on these points and going back another direction and is some cases speeding up traffic across the city, eg school buses seem more efficient at picking up and dropping off students. Now this is working well for small cities but it remains to be seen how effective this is in larger cities. Please let me and others know if you can see any more advantages/disadvantages to this tip for the roads and their densities ?

 

Jim

[Cityfern 5]

25.  Wind turbines can be placed on hillsides.  Place the power station on flat land and draw the service road along the hillside.  You can then plop all your turbines along the hillside.  This is space I haven't found any other use for (except you can place water towers sometimes) and makes the wind station a relatively space efficient source of power.

[5uper_Mania 6]

25.  Wind turbines can be placed on hillsides.  Place the power station on flat land and draw the service road along the hillside.  You can then plop all your turbines along the hillside.  This is space I haven't found any other use for (except you can place water towers sometimes) and makes the wind station a relatively space efficient source of power.

25a. Free service roads provided by building upgrades practically expand potential snap points. This is utilized in oil wells as well as wind turbines and dumps.

[ozalpsinan 0]

Thanks a lot, you really figured it out the game!

Informations are very important!

 

Thanks a lot again!

[Panos 29]

26. If you plan to use buses as means for mass transportation, build them at the start of the map. As you expand your road, add stops. 

I found that when a city is "new", and you build a reliable bus network (ok sort we can build atm), keeps the traffic low to non existant. 

 

But when a city has serious traffic issues, and then trying to build a bus network, is too late.  Because the buses have to run fast service for few days, before sims use them. 

So if there are gridlocks, nobody is going to use the buses, and you have them blocking the network. 

[honam1021 1]

Also notice that a town/city hall is required to send money properly. If you try to gift the money without a working city/town hall, the gift will be permanently lost

[perafilozof 143]

Also notice that a town/city hall is required to send money properly. If you try to gift the money without a working city/town hall, the gift will be permanently lost

 

You must be having some problem I don't. It is true that the gifts go from one town hall to the other, but an empty city plot can receive money to.

 

You just have to make sure that when you send a gift you stay in the sender city until the gift is driven all the way to the receiving city and you get a confirmation message. Then when you load the receiving city just wait for the gift to once again is driven form the sender to the receiver. Yes, you wait for the same thing to happen twice.

 

Just to make sure you have created at least one tile of road connection so that the city buildings, zoning etc is unlocked.

[5uper_Mania 6]

Zone commercial near intersections/corners and otherwise high traffic areas. As land value and density rises, skinny high density commercial areas will spring up. Zoning residential areas near intersections contributes to increased traffic congestion.

[Cob92 360]

.

[JamieRamsey2005 28]

27. Wealth determines the highest tax rate a building will tolerate. Low wealth sims tolerate higher taxes than mid wealth sims.

[Dashafrash. 34]

Excuse me if this has mentioned before, but...

 

28. While adding parks to increase the land value is a great idea in commercial and residential zones, beware that increasing the land value in residential zones too quickly causes Abandoned Buildings to pop up with the reasons "Out of Money". When you bulldoze these homes the previous inhabitants become homeless.

[JamieRamsey2005 28]

The zip file link below contains 60+ screenshots taken from the a city I build starting from the beginning grid all the way through mining/smelting specialization and finally 625k+ population. Includes fully upgraded university, City Hall, Hospital, and other goodies.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64285054/SC5%20625K%2B.zip

[fasty53 0]

Do you think it's better to build a city that has each of the different utilities and service on a small level or in each city have something different and cover the rest?

[Screwballl 196]

2 suggestions I've found:

 

Only send 1 gift a time. Always send the gift, wait for verification message (while still in region view), then load recipient city.

If you try to gift more than 1 city before the first recipient city has been loaded and received, all subsequent gifts will be lost.

Also sometimes (but not always) if you try to send a second gift to another city before first gift recipient city is loaded and received, the first never actually arrives cancelling them both out and both/all gifts are lost.

 

As the city grows and as long as you can afford it, put 1 of each large fire/police/hospital in the middle of town, and then keep the smaller ones with 1 or 2 garage/car lot/ambulances at each of the 4 corners, this should provide coverage unless there is a lot of hills and twists and turns that must be navigated.

[humus 0]

Uhm, I found out that Region Data, especialy handling great works were synced using each city year, as guidelines. rather than real time

what I found were tried in sandbox.

cities A. founded great works, and supply it with ressource which finished at year 8 - may

I open cities B, which still year 3, the Great works were not there, Fast forward and The Great works appear at year 8 around april.

 

Still need multiple confirmation though, but seems Great works data synched with In-Cities year, rather than realtime 

So for every cities on region have working great works, they should at least have passed the in game time when the great works is finished.

[CarloTheCurious 3]

Still need multiple confirmation though, but seems Great works data synched with In-Cities year, rather than realtime 

So for every cities on region have working great works, they should at least have passed the in game time when the great works is finished

 

In my latest region the (unfinished) GW creator is on year 10, but no other cities can see it including two on year 12...

[humus 0]

In my latest region the (unfinished) GW creator is on year 10, but no other cities can see it including two on year 12...

If all cities in same ingame years (12) , maybe it will sync up

well it just presumption though. Great works work in mysterius ways it seems 

[icebob99 2]

Being a new user, a couple questions on this page: what are great works? How do you build a city hall, and send gifts? Is this for deluxe not vanilla? How do you upgrade a university and other buildings if they are ploppable? Do oil wells already come with the game on deluxe or vanilla, or are they bats? What the heck is this giant lizard? I probably have a couple more, but I can't remember them right now. Thanks for all this info, maybe I will provide a piece of info. Also, for those unscrupulous people, or those who enjoy lots of easy money, I have successfully used the money tree to get 4.3 billion simoleons, and will upload it to the exchange if I find it is not on there. Thanks!

[Noobi-Wan 22]

Being a new user, a couple questions on this page: what are great works? How do you build a city hall, and send gifts? Is this for deluxe not vanilla? How do you upgrade a university and other buildings if they are ploppable? Do oil wells already come with the game on deluxe or vanilla, or are they bats? What the heck is this giant lizard? I probably have a couple more, but I can't remember them right now. Thanks for all this info, maybe I will provide a piece of info. Also, for those unscrupulous people, or those who enjoy lots of easy money, I have successfully used the money tree to get 4.3 billion simoleons, and will upload it to the exchange if I find it is not on there. Thanks!

I think you stumbled upon the simcity 2013 forum instead of SC4 which would certainly explain why none of this makes a great deal of sense!

In case you wanted to know great works are large projects that a number of cities can contribute to completing for mutual benefits.

City hall is an upgradable government building that you get far sooner than in SC4 (I seem to recall a courthouse or something similar you got as a gift at some point).

Gifting is a broken part of the multiplayer aspect of the game. As an example I would be able to gift you money for a new fire station if you needed it.

The lizard is a disaster. Think Godzilla but not as good. Also the university and many other building have modules that you can add to them to improve function or unlock new buildings. The university has several and so does the oil well. The oil well is part of the specialisations that you can utilise to make further simoleons.

[icebob99 2]

On 13/10/2013 at 2:16 PM, icebob99 said:

Being a new user, a couple questions on this page: what are great works? How do you build a city hall, and send gifts? Is this for deluxe not vanilla? How do you upgrade a university and other buildings if they are ploppable? Do oil wells already come with the game on deluxe or vanilla, or are they bats? What the heck is this giant lizard? I probably have a couple more, but I can't remember them right now. Thanks for all this info, maybe I will provide a piece of info. Also, for those unscrupulous people, or those who enjoy lots of easy money, I have successfully used the money tree to get 4.3 billion simoleons, and will upload it to the exchange if I find it is not on there. Thanks!

I think you stumbled upon the SimCity 2013 forum instead of SC4 which would certainly explain why none of this makes a great deal of sense!

In case you wanted to know great works are large projects that a number of cities can contribute to completing for mutual benefits.

City hall is an upgradable government building that you get far sooner than in SC4 (I seem to recall a courthouse or something similar you got as a gift at some point).

Gifting is a broken part of the multiplayer aspect of the game. As an example I would be able to gift you money for a new fire station if you needed it.

The lizard is a disaster. Think Godzilla but not as good. Also the university and many other building have modules that you can add to them to improve function or unlock new buildings. The university has several and so does the oil well. The oil well is part of the specialisations that you can utilise to make further simoleons.

Thanks, I was a bit confused. It's kind of hard to tell which game is being talked about.

[mr_sim 7]

On 13/10/2013 at 2:16 PM, icebob99 said:

Being a new user, a couple questions on this page: what are great works? How do you build a city hall, and send gifts? Is this for deluxe not vanilla? How do you upgrade a university and other buildings if they are ploppable? Do oil wells already come with the game on deluxe or vanilla, or are they bats? What the heck is this giant lizard? I probably have a couple more, but I can't remember them right now. Thanks for all this info, maybe I will provide a piece of info. Also, for those unscrupulous people, or those who enjoy lots of easy money, I have successfully used the money tree to get 4.3 billion simoleons, and will upload it to the exchange if I find it is not on there. Thanks!

Considering the fact that you are in the SimCity 2013 forum and not the SimCity 4 forum, I'd venture a guess that, at least here, the game being talked about is SimCity 2013. But that's just a hunch.

[icebob99 2]

That would make sense. The forums should be labeled, it is much more logical. I would also appreciate it a ton.

[AidanA28 17]

Just so it's known, this is how I plop my city hall modules.

 

Finnance, Transportation, Utilities, tourism, safety

 

Switch Tourism and Utilities if building a Tourism city

 Bah! forgot education! It is a bit... tricky.

 

If building a Education city from beginging

 

Finnance, Education, Transportation, Utilties, Tourism, Safety

 

If building a Education city from mid-development

 

Finance, Transportation, Education, Utilities, Tourism, Safety

 

If building a education/tourism hybrid city

 

Finance, Transportation, Tourism, Education, Utilties, Safety

 

If building a city where education is a side detail

 

Finance, Transportation, Utilties, Tourism, Education, Safety

 

I said its trickey

[AidanA28 17]

Well, I have a few links to videos and other things concerning this topic.

 

 

10 tips for SC13

 

Yawn... Will add more in the mornin. Night.

[swaty 0]

Tips:

 

 

I have found Reclycling +  Trade + Omega and Education the way to go. i have All taxes are at 0

 

Recycle alloy and Plastic -> Procesors Factory -> Export Processors $$$

 

Import (not worth extracting) Oil and raw material  --> of the omega factory with drones + omega (keep comercial happy) this generated alot of $$ from resisdencials

 

Reduce spending money in hospitals, pòlice and fires with educated sims (i try to keep them all educated)

 

Its simple but not all as straight forward, since for example to get drones u need industry to update the omega factory. Once thats done i reduced/destroyed industry to just 4 buildings.

 

The low well towers also are an interesting also factor since with all the luxaries of safety education and so on the expenses and income are similar

 

 

I really cant be bothered with water, so i import it

[Trylk255 23]

Did someone asked for tips for modding ?

I got some here :

 

While modifying datas and values. Keep an eye on the IDs of the data/file that you're going to modify.

Ex : Want to mod a vehicle.

1. Note down the IDs of the original file in Notepad and specify what does that refers to.

2. Make "Export to .package" and create your own folder that you'll use for modding. (I highly recommend to not use the game folders to make mods, it could break the game).

[SimCity 2013 0]

On 11/25/2016 at 4:50 PM, Trylk255 said:

Did someone asked for tips for modding ?

I got some here :

 

While modifying datas and values. Keep an eye on the IDs of the data/file that you're going to modify.

Ex : Want to mod a vehicle.

1. Note down the IDs of the original file in Notepad and specify what does that refers to.

2. Make "Export to .package" and create your own folder that you'll use for modding. (I highly recommend to not use the game folders to make mods, it could break the game).

Do people still play this game? I do, and it's fun with mods. I discovered this game in 2018!