'Disabling' region mechanics?

[greizer 0]

Hullo, fellow city maniacs.   First time poster here. The question I have today is as follows:

 

Is there are any way to 'disable' the Region mechanics in SC4? As I've understood it, you need to have connections to your neighbors in order to stimulate demand (and get skyscrapers) in your 'main' city. I tried it and found I immensely dislike the jarring transitions from city to city, building up each city in turn. I want to concentrate on one city only, neighbors be damned!

 

So, is there a mod that makes it so you can get full demands with only one city? Perhaps by building some expensive building, so there's still some effort to get the demand? I don't want to cheat, just ignore the neighboring cities.

 

Cheers,

Greiz

[Bdub01 201]

Well idk about mods however if your not into other cities, at the very least made a DI city that could take the garbage of your main city. You don't really have to have a lot of cities. Just a couple would go a long way in helping your demand for your main city. I'm not saying, I'm just saying!!!

[SilverCyric 130]

Well, I don't know if it's just the visual of the road just disappearing into the next tile, but the neighbor connections only stimulate 10% of the population of the adjacent tile. The only other benefit, besides things like neighbor deals, is that your industry and some commerce will get a boost with a neighbor connection. If I remember the info correctly, at the end of each month, the game sends out a job query basically, and all left over demand is shared to the neighboring tiles with some kind of connection. Subway, rail, or road... But only to 10% of the tiles populations, so say you have 400,00 in your main city tile, and 20,000 in a medium tile with an avenue connection. In the medium tile you have say 4,000 jobs, you'll have enough jobs for 8,000 people roughly, the remaining 6,000 will look for jobs elsewhere, but when the simulation calculates the odds, and because it will only send 2,000, (that's 10% of the 20,000) to the large city tile, leaving 4,000 people to put up no job zots

[Metalpuritan 160]

If you are absolutely dead set against playing more than just one city, I would like to suggest you download the SC4Mapper and make a single tile region.  It can be done.  This game plays as you wish it to play.  A successful(depending on what your idea of successful is(for those who are opinionated on this subject)) city can be made on a single tile with only connections to the Sim Nation borders.

 

I played just like that for the longest time.  Playing one city making it grow, watching it die a slow painful death at like 300-400k population due to the RCI caps, chasing jobless zots endlessly and destroying vacant and dilapidated buildings continuously and forever.  I eventually got tired of chasing my tail though and branched out, but not until I was comfortable.

 

I may be wrong but I would bet the last SC you played was 2k.  I went from 2k to 4 and I just could not get past the whole region thing.  To each their own though.  Best of luck to you.

 

Remember, get the new SC4Mapper(2013) this will allow you to create a flat region and arrange the tile/tiles anyway you want.  You could even make a region with several tiles that are completely separate from each other, isolated and such so that the only connections you can make will be to Sim Nation.  This will allow you to go from city to city without loading regions over and over again.

 

The link to the Mapper is here:

https://www.simtropolis.com/news/_/general-gaming-news/sc4mapper-2013-version-r314

 

I think, am not sure but I think all you got to do is download it and install it, this new version I think is complete in all aspects.  The old one we had to download some .dll files to get it to work on windows7 or newer operating systems.  This new one though, the 2013 version I think is extremely user friendly in that it does not require any extra clicking to get it working.

[cogeo 960]

Well. I think it doesn't make a big difference, if you play with two or three cities, instead of one. I'm talking about normal (developed -ing) cities, not "Garbagevilles", or "Utilitiesvilles" in general, which are still useful. If you make a Garbageville, just zone a medium-sized landill (eg 6x8 or 6x10) and let it run for a gamemonth or two, so that the game considers it "activated". Then you can sign deals with this city, at cut throat prices. This is actually a bug in cost calculations (concerns empty or almost-empty landfills), and exploiting a bug is a cheat, of course. You will need a road or rail connection to a neighbour, or even the "SimNation" (ie an undeveloped city, or the city/region border) if you want to develop industry (it needs some way to export their production); you can use ports instead, but they cost a lot. I;m not sure if connections to the "SimNation" actually do raise demand caps for C though; you can build an airport for these, but they cost a lot and take up a lot of space. but I think you can't make a big city with lots of skyscrappers by employing road connections and cap-raising-rewards only, most probably you will finally need an airport.

[.anonyman 28]

I have many cities without any neighbor connections and they develop just fine without any cheating. It's best to use a large tile, since you'll need room for cap-busting airports, etc. And using the easy setting helps. It will be difficult to have a huge population, as Metalpuritan said, but it can be fun. And it's so much more realistic for a city to deal with its own garbage and funding, isn't it?

[greizer 0]

Good day,


wow, that is a lot of answers (for such a quiet forum)! I guess not that many have asked this question before. It must be a weird request, seeing as many had specifically wished for interaction with neighboring cities in SC3000 (which only simulated it).

Thank you for the workarounds; if I've understood correctly, there has been (so far) no way presented to get the full demand with just one city? If I make a single-city region, it will stagnate at some point, not reaching its full potential with only SimNation connections? If that is the case, then it's unacceptable for me. Even though I like immersion, at the same time I cannot bear the thought of playing suboptimally ('gimping' myself). I know that SC is not at heart a competitive game, but it's a personal, psychological thing. Something to do with our cutthroat capitalist society, maybe?   Plus I just like the look of skyscrapers.

I guess I should expain myself a bit more. It's not the *concept* of neighbors or deals or increased demand from connections that bothers me, but rather the *implementation*. Imo, it's a horribly clumsy, gamey mechanic. I mean time *stops* when you exit a city and enter another... There are clicks and loading screens when you switch between cities (granted only 1-10 seconds with my computer)... Pollution doesn't go across city borders, enabling you to have smokestack wastelands right next to R$$$ towers!   These are all small flaws compared to the main one, though: to leave my city and tend to the others reminds me constantly that I'm playing a game, not managing a city in real life. It is a huge blow in the face of immersion. It's like taking a warm bubble bath and being forced to run through a cold room to another, smaller tub and then back, just because I somehow can't get clean enough from the water in only one tub!

If I could have a city tile that is the size of a region (even 2x2 Large cities), and could get the increased demand with no borders/switches between cities, I'd be perfectly content. If I understand correctly the map size is a hard-coded limit though; and in any case the region mechanics might not to be possible to simulate on it.  

I will await for further answers before biting the bullet and just making a few neighboring cities... Btw I had one up-and-coming island city and was really bummed out when I found out I must still make *road* connections to other cities in order to get enough demand. What were they thinking with that decision? Sure, I'll make a bridge that is 200 tiles long... Not like it breaks immersion or bankrupts me or anything.

Cheers,
Greiz

P.S. The last SC I played was SC3000, but back then I just couldn't really get into it; I don't remember the reason after all these years. I probably had a lot of other games to play, or none of my friends were into Simcity. I've never played SC2000, but I played the hell out of the SNES Simcity. Made it to 500k on the best tile (least water), but only just barely. I still consider it a better game than all the successors in some respects (well, I cannot really form an opinion on 2000, having never played it). In the SNES game you really cared about individual buildings, for one thing. It was a heart-sinking moment to see a 'top tower' (not sure what they were called in English) collapse into two single buildings! :0 In SC4 one building is not even a drop in the bucket; it's like a drip of a drop in a courtyard of buckets.

I've little care for graphics, but with the moddability of SC4 I simply cannot go back to an older version, so it'd be nice to have some solution to my problem. If it hasn't been done to date, can anyone say if it *could* be done, in theory? I've never modded anything in any game (beyond text file number tweaks), but if I find it continues to bother me and I get good instructions (not a problem in this place, I'd expect), hell, I might just take a stab at it myself.
 

[SilverCyric 130]

Well, I think it's amazing what some of these modders come up with, a guy the other day discovered how to make ploppable game water, at any height, he's still developing the modd, but it's pretty cool what he's done. I really don't see alimit to what these guys can do, when you think something can't be changed, someone will find away around. It's pretty cool actually. But as far as your desires for SC4, well, it sounds like you should be playing the new SimCity 2013. It's smaller, and will have mechanics much more akin to SNES version than even just a basic SC4 with only the NAM.

 

I personally enjoy the added detail of creating cities that are slightly specialized. I don't like trashville, connected to industry city, with Apartment town and Tower city next door. I try to get my cities to blend and flow naturally. A huge Metro Area in large tiles, surrounding by sprawling subdivisions in medium tiles. I enjoy the added challenge of blending the borders to hide the edges and to have a realistic power station, or county dump servicing the entire region. Lots of neighbor deals, but you learn to make corridors and it makes it much easier to manage...

 

As far as your point of time stopping between borders, well the game is 10+ years old. If they would have come out with SimCity 5, and not a revamped, relaunch, I'm sure the game would be able to add things like pollution across borders and such, which is something that had been added into the new game, but if you delete 90% of everything else, I mean you can't even run a highway with out hacking the game basically... Not an even trade IMO....

[greizer 0]

The new SC is a straight-up corporate ripoff, too bad to qualify for a bad joke imo. I mean always online? Broken traffic? 900k pop with NO JOBS or UTILITIES (just set taxes to 0% and watch them 'scrapers soar! )?! No thank you. Even if everything else were corrected (which it won't be), the cities are laughably small in that game, perhaps as large as a medium square in SC4. The Large square is just barely enough for me; about 4x that would be ideal imo.

 

I don't want a simplified, stripped down game; on the contrary, I appreciate the vast depth of (modded) SC4. I like the idea of region play but hate the implementation. If I could automate the neighboring cities and tell them to build industry or commerce, that would work too. It's the constant hops from city to city that bother me.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, here is a No neighbour connections are possible.  Just render it using the game renderer.  No external tools are needed, just use CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+r.

[Mootilda 76]

I've never tried this, but wouldn't some of the cap relief mods help in this situation?

[omnimutant 2]

I would think that just creating a 4 x 4 pixel (255) blue config.bmp and dropping it into a newly created region folder with blank land, should be pretty easy. Unless for some reason the game rejects it. You'll probably get non stop spam about how making neighbor connections are helpful though.

[greizer 0]

No offense people but I wonder if you read all my posts? I don't want to make a gimped city that can never have maximum demand, which is what a single-tile region does (or so I understood; if I'm wrong and it works differently I apologize).

 

I did search the STEX a little bit and found some demand cap mods that were close to what I wanted. The only problem is that they're 'cheat' mods that remove all demand caps altogether. I'm looking for a little more subtle approach, i.e. I only want to get rid of the neighbor deal related caps. The others can stay in place, so I won't get skyscrapers straight away. Fortunately it seems that what I want is indeed possible, if I read this correctly:

 

 

"TO be brief, The demand cycle is very segmented and allows a great deal of customization.

Ah and it´s worth to note that due to this segmentation, each demand type is a isolated variable and it´s possible to set the minimum and maximum values for each one at will (including regional demands)" :thumb:

 

I'll do some more digging, here and on the SC4devotion site, see if I can find a neat, ready-made solution. If not, I think I'll ask in the modding forums, since it sounds like it'd be an easy enough change to make.

Or I could try installing that mod and tweaking the files... We'll see how it goes.

[cogeo 960]

That 10% more growth (offered by connections and neighbour cities) isn't something you can ignore or give away.

 

My suggestion is play 2 or 3 cities in your map. You can minimize switching between cities if you don't specialize your cities (eg all-R or all-C), but instead have a mix of development in both (or all three) cities. And that development mix is R+C (I demand becomes negative as your EQ increases - initially i-D and later on I-M as well), not to mention that industry pollutes, eats up a lot of space, requires large power plants and those expensive purification plants, so it isn't sustainable for large cities).

 

I have been developing a region without industry or farms, only civics and commercial, and I have to say that it's very much possible and actually works! Initially, your sims are low-EQ and they all work in civic buildings (and i-D, if you want some industry as well). You have to provide full educational coverage, and as your EQ rises, you get demand for CO$$ and CO$$$, so you get CO$$/$$$ development, these extra jobs increase R demand, so you get more R development, which in turn results in CS$/$$/$$$ demand, and some development and jobs on this sector too, and thus some more R demand and more sims. Finally, when all R and C demand is satisfied (exhausted) all R and C demand bars will be around 0, but your city will have grown larger (with more jobs and residents). Running the city for some time (provided that you have full education and health coverage), EQ will rise again, increasing CO demand and initiating a new CO-R-CS-R growth cycle. I have links about this and I could post them if you want (or search my posts on this forum. The good thing is that once you have developed two or three cities to some degree, you can stick with one city and develop it as described here. I did this too, but at some point I'm getting bored and want to play another city tile. Believe me, it makes little difference to playing one city tile.

 

Another alternative would be to make a region with a big city tile in the middle and small cities around it (these can become Utilityvilles or "suburbs", or indudtrial areas).

[greizer 0]

Hmm so the caps aren't all there is to it? Is it 10% more growth per connection? So the fastest growing, biggest possible city would be a Large tile with many tiny neighbors? What a nightmarish proposition! I'm playing on a Tokyo map and I eventually want to have a huge megalopolis, so it'd nag in the back of my head if I knew I could get more people by having more neighbors, yet chose against it.

 

If all else fails, your solution is probably something I can live with. But are you sure that modding couldn't fix the issue? Couldn't you just make a building that simulated 10 neighbor connections for all intents and purposes (apart from trash deals etc.)?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You worry too much about caps.  If you build gradually and consistently, keeping your Sims happy with a balance of 2 Sims per job and holding the R$$$ to 15% or less, you really should not encounter any caps unless you run in Cheetah all the time.  Cheetah is really for burst mode development, and you should run in a lower gear to enjoy the full impact of the animation and other game features.  You cannot get an 'instant' large city full of skyscrapers, but you can do it gradually and with care and some fun.

 

The main point other than the artistic side of the game is that it is a gigantic exercise in problem solving.

 

And feel free to ignore neighbour deals.  You can change the advisors into llamas with the command dollyllama.  There are options to shut them up, but the best one is running in hard difficulty.

[greizer 0]

But can I get as much skyscrapers without neighbors as with them? If it just takes a longer time that's perfectly fine. But if I can get, say, 500k max without deals and 750k with them, then I will need to find some way around this. I enjoy aesthetics as much as the next guy, but the beautifulest thing imo is not gimping myself for no reason. Eventually I will want to have 100% R$$$, or as much as is practically possible. I want to fill the map with skyscrapers; once I've made one huge city, I can then move on to other, smaller experiments.

 

Btw - llama advisors? That's got to be a hoot! I hope they don't 'baa' at me all the time then (or whatever kind of sound llamas make; I'm not an expert).

[Bdub01 201]

If you want skyscrapers just download as many as you want and then plop them however you want your downtown to look...

[greizer 0]

But I want to grow them the normal way, so it takes some effort, and it feels like *building* a city, not simply plopping it down. That's why I didn't install the cheat mod. I just want the need for neighbor deals to go away, with no other changes. It's not a big enough deal that I'll *stop* playing the game if I can't do it, but it will sap, say, 30% of my current enthusiasm, which is a lot in my book.

[Turjan 1,048]

I know cogeo said this already, but don't worry too much about it. I'm not sure why it should be a deal breaker to just have a couple neighbor cities, if you hardly ever play them. If you really don't care, just draw a few different RCI zones, plop needed civics or utilities if you feel like it, let everything grow for a few months and then forget about these cities. Then you go back to the city you care about and make it look as you like. If you make these cities balanced, they won't skew the development of your main city, either. If you ever want to do anything more fancy with the other cities, the game doesn't mind if you tear stuff down and build it up differently. If you don't, it's good too.

[cogeo 960]

Hmm so the caps aren't all there is to it? Is it 10% more growth per connection? So the fastest growing, biggest possible city would be a Large tile with many tiny neighbors? What a nightmarish proposition! I'm playing on a Tokyo map and I eventually want to have a huge megalopolis, so it'd nag in the back of my head if I knew I could get more people by having more neighbors, yet chose against it.

Of course it's not just the caps, although connections offer a great cap relief. Each network connection raises caps. The more the connections the biggest the caps relief, although every next connection has a diminishing effect; connections beyond the 3rd one have practically no effect. I think connections are count separately for each network type (highways, avenues, roads, rail etc), ie you need up to 3 highway, 3 avenue, 3 road etc connections, only I don't know if this means up to 3 connections per network type to the same neighbour or in total (incl SimNation). You can download my Chamber of Commerece and Industry on the STEX (or the Cesnus Repository's Vault) to check caps' status. Then it will be easier to see what connections do. And that 10% doesn't have to do with connections (these raise caps), it means that the game somehow "thinks" that there are 10% more jobs (or residents?), for example, at the neighbour city, and this makes development of connected cities easier.

 

If all else fails, your solution is probably something I can live with. But are you sure that modding couldn't fix the issue? Couldn't you just make a building that simulated 10 neighbor connections for all intents and purposes (apart from trash deals etc.)?

I'm afraid you haven't understood what exactly modding is, and therefore what it can do and what not. WIth modding, we can change a parameter, eg find that "10%" (if it is somewhere in the game's .dat files and not hardcoded) and make it 5% or 20%, but we cannot change the game dynamics (these are mostly hardcoded). You can make a 1x1 park that raises caps to near infinity (or some set max value), and this could count as a million connections, but this will only raise demand caps, not demand itself. If your problem is not caps, the park will have no effect. You won't get that extra 10% if you don't have neighbour(s), no matter your caps status.

EDIT: one could easily make some "Super Demand Mod", which would nail R and C demand to the top, but that's clearly a cheat.

 

You worry too much about caps.  If you build gradually and consistently, keeping your Sims happy with a balance of 2 Sims per job and holding the R$$$ to 15% or less, you really should not encounter any caps unless you run in Cheetah all the time.

Moose, I don't agree about demand caps here. Caps have nothing to do with the game speed, they have to do with the population and jobs numbers; eg there is a cap for I-Ag at 30,000 farm jobs (no matter the game speed). Of course game speed shouldn't be high, so you can see what's going on, but this has nothing to do with caps. And why keep R$$$ to 15% (or any development type to any certain percentage, I would add), and not instead satisfy all demand you have?

 

But can I get as much skyscrapers without neighbors as with them? If it just takes a longer time that's perfectly fine. But if I can get, say, 500k max without deals and 750k with them, then I will need to find some way around this. I enjoy aesthetics as much as the next guy, but the beautifulest thing imo is not gimping myself for no reason. Eventually I will want to have 100% R$$$, or as much as is practically possible. I want to fill the map with skyscrapers; once I've made one huge city, I can then move on to other, smaller experiments.

You can definitely get more development with neighbours around, but you don't need a large region for this. I think a region of 2x2 large cities, and a row of small or medium cities at the one edge would do, ie a config.bmp sized 8x9 or 8x10. You can't have a very high percentage of R$$$ because you won't have enough jobs for them - demand for CO$$/$$$ is easily exhausted once you grow some medium or large offices or towers, and then you need a fresh load of educated workers, to get more CO$$/$$$ demand. These can't be "imported" (newcomers have a very low EQ), so you have to educate them yourself. Initially these will be R$ and R$$. Not to mention that only 15% of the CO$$$ jobs are actually R$$$ (65% are R$$ and 20% R$). For CO$$ the breakdown is 10-50-40%. Without these R$$ and R$ workers your offices will be faltering, thus endangering your R$$$ sims' jobs too! For CS (even CS$$$) it's even worse, but CS pays very high taxes, and of course the jobs they offer help you increase your R population (which you need to educate), without having to build polluting industries and farms, That's why I insist in satisfying all R and C demand (even R$ and C$), before zoning for more industry.

[SilverCyric 130]

Dude, the cheat mod, isn't really a cheat. It's a debug tool the develpoers used to test the game to it's limits before release... I guess EA used to do that??!? Bwhahahaha!!

It's handy for the drawpaths feature, lets you see the functionality of your networks, quite handy!! Plus, sometimes you're building for realism and you need a little extra money because the game is a game, there are certain elements about the finances that get a little hinky in realistic play. You can also plop any building, plus just plop them all, this is handy for checking for missing dependencies and such...

[greizer 0]

 

If all else fails, your solution is probably something I can live with. But are you sure that modding couldn't fix the issue? Couldn't you just make a building that simulated 10 neighbor connections for all intents and purposes (apart from trash deals etc.)?

I'm afraid you haven't understood what exactly modding is, and therefore what it can do and what not. WIth modding, we can change a parameter, eg find that "10%" (if it is somewhere in the game's .dat files and not hardcoded) and make it 5% or 20%, but we cannot change the game dynamics (these are mostly hardcoded). You can make a 1x1 park that raises caps to near infinity (or some set max value), and this could count as a million connections, but this will only raise demand caps, not demand itself. If your problem is not caps, the park will have no effect. You won't get that extra 10% if you don't have neighbour(s), no matter your caps status.

EDIT: one could easily make some "Super Demand Mod", which would nail R and C demand to the top, but that's clearly a cheat.

 

That's what the mod that I linked does, if I've understood correctly. But must the demand be maxed? Couldn't you just make it, say, 40% higher or something (to simulate neighbor connections)?

 

 

But can I get as much skyscrapers without neighbors as with them? If it just takes a longer time that's perfectly fine. But if I can get, say, 500k max without deals and 750k with them, then I will need to find some way around this. I enjoy aesthetics as much as the next guy, but the beautifulest thing imo is not gimping myself for no reason. Eventually I will want to have 100% R$$$, or as much as is practically possible. I want to fill the map with skyscrapers; once I've made one huge city, I can then move on to other, smaller experiments.

You can definitely get more development with neighbours around, but you don't need a large region for this. I think a region of 2x2 large cities, and a row of small or medium cities at the one edge would do, ie a config.bmp sized 8x9 or 8x10. You can't have a very high percentage of R$$$ because you won't have enough jobs for them - demand for CO$$/$$$ is easily exhausted once you grow some medium or large offices or towers, and then you need a fresh load of educated workers, to get more CO$$/$$$ demand. These can't be "imported" (newcomers have a very low EQ), so you have to educate them yourself. Initially these will be R$ and R$$. Not to mention that only 15% of the CO$$$ jobs are actually R$$$ (65% are R$$ and 20% R$). For CO$$ the breakdown is 10-50-40%. Without these R$$ and R$ workers your offices will be faltering, thus endangering your R$$$ sims' jobs too! For CS (even CS$$$) it's even worse, but CS pays very high taxes, and of course the jobs they offer help you increase your R population (which you need to educate), without having to build polluting industries and farms, That's why I insist in satisfying all R and C demand (even R$ and C$), before zoning for more industry.

 

 

But if I fill a few neighboring cities with commercial jobs, then isn't it possible to have one tile as entirely R$$$? Or the other way around - have a tile full of Commercial skyscrapers and the living quarters in neighboring cities? Does it work like this or is the demand increase always a flat 10%? (I should probably read a tutorial or two, this is a pretty nooby question.) I do have all the school buildings in my city, although they're almost bankrupting me even with the radius doubler and lowered funding.

 

Edit: Screwed up the quoting, but whatever; the blue text is mine.

 

@SilverCyric: Are you talking about the extra cheats dll mod? I still haven't installed that but I think I will soon. What I referred to as 'cheat mod' was the RCI utility thingy that I linked above, that maxes all the demands. I just want to raise them a little bit, not jack them all the way up. I meant to see about whether it can be done but I've been busy all day; I'll try it tomorrow.

 

EDIT2: Dem files (in the RCI mod) all be .dat type... Doesn't take kindly to Notepad, that type. Any ideas?

[NCGAIO 562]

Well, I think it's amazing what some of these modders come up with, a guy the other day discovered how to make ploppable game water, at any height, he's still developing the modd, but it's pretty cool what he's done.

This has to be understood as "put the same texture of the water of the game at any height ." This works the same way as the trick of rain per with the difference that you can directly plop texture without "making it rain"  but it's easier of bursting the texture of water above the plane earth and cover beyond the desired area.

There is no way to have more than one level of water in the same city for the game and despite being possible to modify it to any desired height through the fraud "Setsealevel"  he will always be replaced by mandatory parameter "Sealevel"  when you return to town. Levels between different cities were planned but not implemented.

 

(I should probably read a tutorial or two, this is a pretty nooby question.) I do have all the school buildings in my city, although they're almost bankrupting me even with the radius doubler and lowered funding.

 

 

I think the links below can help you, because it seems that doing some confusion about the growth of 10% more.

 

 

 

  - Tutorial:Demand, Supply and CAPs - read - Regional Extrapolated Demand

also

  - Tutorial:Stage Limits and Threshholds

 

 

EDIT2: Dem files (in the RCI mod) all be .dat type... Doesn't take kindly to Notepad, that type. Any ideas?

 -  iLives Reader 1.4 Official support thread

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You can never achieve 100% R$$$ without auxiliary cities, and even then it will be hard unless you are on a small tile.  R$$$ are executives, CEOs and the like.  15% of them is a great plenty to employ all the other Sims.  In later stages, I believe the game aims at many R$$ (middle class) knowledge workers with a good mix of R$ (labour class).  This game is not a representation of Brave New World (Huxley), which you should read.  It will open your eyes somewhat to the way classes work in society, but it is an extreme example.

 

You can't have a orchestra where everyone has the baton.

[cogeo 960]

My suggestion is to avoid demand mods, they cause unbalanced city development, and destroy the joy ( ) of simulation! They are OK if you want to zone and always get development, a "sandbox" kinda thing. But if you want to see the effects of education, population you should not install them (not even to "just counterbalance the effect of not having neighbour cities").

 

I also recommend against making very specialized cities, like all-R$$$. As said above, you need R$$ and R$ residents too, and if you don't make mixed cities, the R$$$ city will be overflowing with cash, but the R$$ and R$ ones will have troubles balancing the budget, esp when residential hirises develop. You will have increased health and education expenses, but your taxes won't be rising as much, because the bigger the buildings the lower the taxes per occupant - take a lool at also

 

If you are having troubles with health and education expenses, use the sliders and adjust funding so that capacity is just above the attendance. You can also use large schools and hospitals. They cost more to build, but you can reduce bus and ambulance funding, even to zero - the coverage radius is still large enough. This setting is best suited for high-density residential development.

 

Building C-only and R-only cities is possible, but requires frequent switching between cities. For example, if you are running the R city and your EQ rises, you will get CO demand, and then you will have to switch to the C city to grow a CO building or two (or upgrade an existing one), Once you get them (and you have eaten up all CO demand), running the C city further makes no sense (unless your budget is positive and you want to raise some cash), so you will have to switch to the R city to grow more R (as a result of the extra jobs in the C city and the demand they created), and when you get them too, switch to the C city to grow some more shops (as a result of the CS demand created because of the extra population), and so on. You can avoid this if you develop mixed cities.

 

As for that 10%, it's not 10% in general, instead its 10% of the (other) developed cities in the region, but don't rely a lot on this. When switching between cities you will find that demand actually "extrapolates" (it's the same in all connected cities).

[SilverCyric 130]

 

Well, I think it's amazing what some of these modders come up with, a guy the other day discovered how to make ploppable game water, at any height, he's still developing the modd, but it's pretty cool what he's done.

This has to be understood as "put the same texture of the water of the game at any height ." This works the same way as the trick of rain per with the difference that you can directly plop texture without "making it rain"  but it's easier of bursting the texture of water above the plane earth and cover beyond the desired area.

There is no way to have more than one level of water in the same city for the game and despite being possible to modify it to any desired height through the fraud "Setsealevel"  he will always be replaced by mandatory parameter "Sealevel"  when you return to town. Levels between different cities were planned but not implemented.

 

 

 

Actually, if you follow some of the development threads, you'll see I'm talking about game water that you plop and it has a height above where you plop it (ie. 6m high water & 20m high, on so on), the area you plop has to be surrounded on all sides by land of the appropriate height or it spills over and covers the entire map. It's not a texture or anything, it's game water, plopped at any height but it's still in the developmental stages, but I've seen some good in game pics of the tests...

Hence what I was saying, you never know what they'll come up with next. 10 years ago if you asked me if weather could be added, I was like no way!! But JENX did just that...

These are single examples of many available...

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Seem to have wandered far afield from the OP.  The only way I know of defeating the region stuff is to have a region containing only one tile.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

To my opinion, playing SimCity 4 without the region is not fun. There's so much you can do with it! Even if the region is small. Take my region for example, Schellingen-Stadt. Basically, it's a single city region, but spread over multiple tiles. Here's a region pic (disregard the agricultural surroundings, just focus on the center city):

 

Not only have I achieved this way to simulate a 10x10km city (spread over 10 4x4km tiles), but the center city tile, which is surrounded by only 4 other city tiles of which the largest is only 200K (other three are way less than 100K), has 800K inhabitants and is not maxed out. Not because it couldn't grow any further, but because I didn't let it grow further (my planning). Here's a pic during development when it already reached around 650K:

Now, if you look clearly, this city does not only have all the merits of a large city, but also the loads, like industrial pollution, garbage handling facilities, huge infrastructure. But also did I dedicate quite some space to things like parks and monuments. Actually, I do very little with neighbouring deals; this city produces it's own electricity and water, handles it's own garbage (and actually the garbage of its neighbours too) and offers enough jobs for everyone.

 

It's not that hard to handle 9 cities at once if you deal with them one at the time. Don't switch between cities while playing one day, just focus on one. It's very fun to make the bigger picture and this kept me playing this game on the long run. You might discover that there are other areas that are charming to you other than skyscraper jungles. For instance, I did discover in this region that rural areas are also quite charming (and I'm more a city person!)

 

Best,
Maarten

[greizer 0]

Thank you for the new answers. They're helpful even if they're not what I'm looking for. It seems there really is no way to do what I want... Unless I can get that editor NCGAIO linked above to work (fingers crossed).

 

i guess I'll do what some of you have recommended and simply play mixed cities one at a time. If there were a way to merge four Large cities, I tell you I might never see daylight again... Oh well. Perhaps in some future SC, or a clone if someone actually makes a worthwhile one.

 

Btw, I don't care that much what kind of people live in my skyscrapers, as long as they're tall and plentiful. (The people and the buildings)