How to have Fun?

[teddyschim 0]

Uhm well, i have a region with 865.000 people but the game seems to get kinda repetitive any help to change this?

[Bdub01 201]

Sounds like a time to make the movie Volcano come true at the same time UFOs decide to invade from one direction and a robot attack from the other side

[bcnurse247 33]

You could add custom content. Or more custom content.

There's no shortage of that here.

 

Or how about posting some pics or starting a City Journal?

 

There's a lot of material and ideas on this site, more than can be gleaned in a short time frame.

You might want to take some time to check it out.

[Metalpuritan 160]

I have taken it upon myself to edit the lots I have downloaded to only grow on specific tilesets.  I do not like the default configuration of New York, Chicago, Houston and European.  I started with a plugin folder with only that which I wanted to grow, unfortunately the lots I had downloaded grew on all four tilesets.  This made it so that I can only build one type of city over and over again.  What I am doing now is I am taking in new lots, only this time I am editing them using the SC4 Plugin Manager(SC4PIM) to change what tile sets they grown on.  I am making CP's 19th century residentials and SimCoug's residentials grow on the houston tileset(for that rural feel for farm country style building).  I am also taking the Mattb325 residentials and the Jmyers residentials grow on the New York tileset for a more modern suburban style.  I will be getting a whole set of European residentials and making them grow on the European tileset(of course), that way I can have a European style cities as well.  I am making my Chicago tileset all Wall to Wall(W2W).

 

i will being the same thing for commercial as well.

 

This is of course taking an enormous amount of time for me to do and is quite laborious, kind of like a job really.  But in the end I believe it will fill that gap I usually get when building cities, I just get bored of recreating the same city over and over again.  When I am finished I should be able to switch city tiles and building styles whenever I feel like it with a click of a button, this, I think, will bring back some life to the game for me. 

 

Changing what grows on what tileset is EXTREMELY EASY using the SC4PIM, so easy I was able to figure it out almost completely without any form of outside help including not reading the readme(LOL).

[Prophet42 1,500]

You can always rennovate.  Look over every city and change things you don't like.  Maybe, set a goal for your city and then make the changes necessary to achieve it.  Or maybe, like Bdub01 suggested, create a disaster and see how fast you can recover from it.

[metarvo 710]

If you're bored with your current city, why not start a new one with a different method of building?  Perhaps you could try to build a recreation of your hometown or another RL location.  That can be a fun way to play.  Of course, you should keep your old city should you want to play it again.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Four ways to keep SimCity 4 more fun:

- Download new fresh content to add more diversity into your city, or in some cases, add new construction possibilities

- Build, review and re-construct. While browsing through other City Journals or through RL cities, you can learn some things and see that there's something to improve in your city. This can result into some seeming odd conclusions, like tearing down skyscrapers (to make your city less dense and more realistic) or rerouting a motorway because it doesn't make sense that it goes right through the old city center.

- Try to go for a certain style. It may be harder to build cities in let's say and old-European fashion, but with enough custom content you can manage it and create some real beauties.

- Share it with the community! They can give you feedback and you can show them your creation, your gallery of your cities for all to enjoy.

Best,

Maarten

[docj101 99]

Its a sandbox, be imaginative. 

 

Try to create on a regional scale first of all.  This allows you to specialize cities from dirty industry towns with slums, to entirely high wealth residential cities with boutiques.  Building up and figuring out how to get the different classes to separate can be a challenge.

 

You can always experiment with ideas...

 

"can I build a city without roads using only mass transit?" 

"do these pedestrian mall tiles I downloaded let me build zones on them?" 

"if I change the capacity of a monorail to 500,000 and it's speed to 900 do my sims basically teleport around town?"

"the game says my road is maxed out at 65,585 cars when I query it even though capacity is set higher, is it lying to me?"

"speaking of which.. how do I change the capacity and speed of my transportation networks?" 

 

Which bring us to downloadable content; which there is an endless supply of to toy with, read about, use to create, etc.

 

Then there is the purely visual aspects you could go for.  Make forest towns using a different tree controller, dirt roads, different textures, different lots, ploppable ponds, streams and waterfalls. 

 

Seriously, endless amount of ideas, as far as I'm concerned.  If you can't come up with entertaining ideas, reading around this site or browsing the STEX would be good places for inspiration.  And, of course, good idea asking for some ideas in forums.

 

You want to challenge yourself without downloads or imagination?  865,000 people.. c'mon lets see 20 million in that region!

[Cdesigner 8]

Hey

 

I have recently started a new region and it is coming along well, I am going to built it in four stages, first step is just to get things up running. Than I will go back working on the details, after that I will try to MOD and BAT some my self, before the last step where I will go in and work on the polishing. Maybe if you think of it this way you will see you still have a lot of fun and a lot of Things left to work on.

 

Good Luck!

[docj101 99]

I just had another thought after reading the thread title again. 

 

Your not a member of the SimCity 2013 development team are you? 

 

I know they need ideas and help understanding what made sc4 fun, lol.

 

just kidding

[libellibicus 396]

^^^Hahahaha.LOL

[teddyschim 0]

Thanks for all the help guys !!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I keep several regions on the go at once.  Currently, I have three rural ones and some of the cities are getting to be quite large, merging the towns that occur on the same tile.  I am thinking of starting a new region to get some more variety since all my tiles currently are occupied and the game now for me is tweaking existing tiles.

 

I think I am going to hold out for NAM V31.1 then play with some of the stuff I haven't used for a while, like RHW.  This will clearly need a new region of all large tiles.  I'll generate it using Landscape Designer then tweak it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I have three regions similar to this one.

 

 

Today I am working on Newcastle and I think I am going to add a new commercial port facility.

 

Oops.  Seems I have a double post.  Probably because of the fumble fingers on my keyboard.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

If your bored with the game go find some other game.

 

Otherwise, starting a new region is always a good idea, or try to expand/renevate your current one.

[Bdub01 201]

If your bored with the game go find some other game.

Otherwise, starting a new region is always a good idea, or try to expand/renevate your current one.

Ha I was just going to put that. I know if I play every single day I get bored. So don't play it for 2-3 days then come back to it with new thoughts and ideas.

[Gurning_Chimp 398]

Go to your local major city and just have a wander. Whenever I go into Manchester city centre I find myself really inspired when I get back to Sim City. 

 

I'd also recommend looking at your cities and seeing areas that are in need of gentrification. Or perhaps shake up your playing style. Instead of attempting a massive financial capital, why not try a dingy, inner city ghetto? Or a farming community? (get SPAM!), or even a seaside town?

 

The possibilities are literally endless.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I do play other games.  A large suite of games comes with the Linux distro, but most of them are 2D logic games.  However, one of them is GNU Chess, and that has a 3D version that is quite nice.  For fun and relaxation I run the LOTR moderate graphics role play game called Angband.  Not very good on Windoze.

 

Sometimes I do not play SC4 for a few days, because I get up to there with it, but I always come back.

[jabezscratch 159]

Definitely add custom (i.e., non-Maxis) content.  Simtropolis and other SC-related sites offer so much extra in terms of buildings that the only limit is your imagination.

 

Also, a region of 865,000 (in my humble opinion) is not particularly large.  I have individual cities over 900,000 in my region that I have been building on for over eight years.  I have always played "regions" as one big "city" where the middle large tile is the downtown corporate-commercial core and the surrounding areas are suburbs.  Maybe try that.

[Turjan 1,048]

I'm constantly trying out new stuff I downloaded somewhere. It's always nice to see what happens. Even those plugins that have problems are at least interesting. I can then decide whether I like it enough to try and fix it or whether I will remove it again. The days are not long enough for this . And then I just open up a city I haven't touched in a while, and often enough, things just change without me doing anything. Sometimes for the good, and sometimes I have to think about how to fix the fallout . You see, I'm not really at the stage yet where I get bored.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

@JabezScratch:  What have you got in that Japanned box? (s. Daniel Webster).

[teddyschim 0]

Definitely add custom (i.e., non-Maxis) content.  Simtropolis and other SC-related sites offer so much extra in terms of buildings that the only limit is your imagination.

 

Also, a region of 865,000 (in my humble opinion) is not particularly large.  I have individual cities over 900,000 in my region that I have been building on for over eight years.  I have always played "regions" as one big "city" where the middle large tile is the downtown corporate-commercial core and the surrounding areas are suburbs.  Maybe try that.

Thats what im trying to say: im not even far yet and im already bored

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you are bored, there are some cures:

 

• Run in turtle and enjoy the animation at LOD 4 or 5.  There is a lot more going on than just building.
• Don't work on just one city.  Work regionally.  Many towns with different aspects makes a better experience.
• Work some neighbour deals and keep playing these cities to be in sync.  Fun keeping the deals current and intact.
• Give yourself a temporary goal.  One way to do that is when you click on a city to open it, note the ratio of Sims to Jobs.  For the regular game without the CAM, this should be on the order of 2:1.  For a given session set a goal to make this happen.
  Another trick is to shake up a balanced city by adding a major feature like a seaport (use a rail enabled one), and work to force all freight onto rail terminating at the port.
• Work on creating a set of rural towns all on the same large tile.  You don't have to have a big city, but it all runs from the same budget.  Can be a neat balancing act.  For this kind of thing you might want better farms.  Try the SPAM.  SPAM has a lot of extensions, and you might want Simgoober's ditch set to extend the life of your I-Ag demand.

 

Building big cities does get boring after a while, but this is a canvas on which you can express your creativity in many ways.  Imagination on, please.

[Turjan 1,048]

Thats what im trying to say: im not even far yet and im already bored

 

Of course, there's always the possibility that you are not really into sandbox gaming. If you don't enjoy building things in many different ways, watch them grow or fail and don't find any of the suggestions that have been made in this thread enticing, the game might simply not be the right one for you.

[Ltw 401]

Definitely add custom (i.e., non-Maxis) content.  Simtropolis and other SC-related sites offer so much extra in terms of buildings that the only limit is your imagination.

 

Also, a region of 865,000 (in my humble opinion) is not particularly large.  I have individual cities over 900,000 in my region that I have been building on for over eight years.  I have always played "regions" as one big "city" where the middle large tile is the downtown corporate-commercial core and the surrounding areas are suburbs.  Maybe try that.

Thats what im trying to say: im not even far yet and im already bored

 

You could also make it harder for yourself by adjusting the street/road/avenue capacities in the NAM, you can do that when you install it, you can also promote walking, traveling by car or by mass transit. You could play a little bit with that idea and see what you find challenging enough. Promoting traveling by car gives you massive problems at your roads, streets and avenues and promoting mass transit could give you problems with station capacities and so forth.

 

What is also a good tool to make your cities more interesting is the lots, bats and mods available on the STEX and other Simcity4 sites. You can download almost anything you need/want and if there is something that doesn't exist yet you can build it yourself (with some 3D modeling skills and patience). If I had to look at all those Maxis-buildings that are appearing in every lot available I would get bored too, custom content helps a lot!

[teddyschim 0]

ohh yea anoher question how do you get nabour deals and all these thing below that

[Bdub01 201]

It depends on what deals you want. To set up most deals make sure you have road connections to each city. For electrical deals run power lines from the selling city to the receiving city, with water, pipes need to go to each city. As for garbage deals, well all deals actually, make sure you have enough of a product to sell. For garbage make sure you have enough landfill area. For the receiving city make sure they have enough simoleans to buy the goods. I like having one "dirty city" that takes all the garbage and sells electricity to surrounding cities. It's usually my DI city.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

For power and water deals, the lines/pipes have to be connected to consuming point on both sides.

[.anonyman 28]

Selling electricity to a neighboring city requires at least 1k UNUSED megawatts, so make sure your power plant's capacity is that high before trying to establish a deal. Garbage and water deals are more incremental, so you can sell even a tiny amount of capacity.

[Bdub01 201]

Too bad one couldn't sell prisoners to other cities. I'd love to have one huge prison for the whole region. Then have a tornado tear it down and all the prisoners riot and cause trouble