micro-management

[CosmicSpeed 28]

So I don't have any pictures of the beginning of the city other than this:

 

But in this city I really, REALLY tried to micromanage and make things compact. I started with Single-clicks of R, waiting until the WHOLE lot was full and then plopping a single-click C. So essentially it looks like a green and blue checkerboard. However, this takes some deleting and deleting and deleting to get the desired homes to appear. What I mean by this is that sometimes a house may only take up 3/4 of a space with not enough for another populated home so it will plop an indiscriminate R zone like a fence or doghouse. Those are not what you want and can take up valuable space. Sometimes you can get 2 populated R homes in a single low wealth click. 

 

Also, you can fool the zone system occasionally by dezoning and rezoning. This usually works when units dont take up the whole space and you can essentially rezone the space to where the actually layout of the building zone lies and then plop another, different zone closer. Now this only really works if you truly care about micromanaging your city but take a look at this example:

 

I have close to only about 1/3 of the map complete and have a funny combo of buildings that I think looks quite nice. I have OUTSTANDING happiness and very rarely do buildings fall into disrepair. Traffic is low due to everyone basically being surrounded by commercial, civil buildings and parks. 

 

But it is not without its near-disasters. A Meteor shower rocked the town and set a few buildings ablaze but no real harm done other than ground pollution at the impact zones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tiny Industrial section, needs to grow just slightly:

 

[perafilozof 143]

Yeah, I have been dealing with this "problem" since my first city. The creators gave us tools that are equivalent to broad brush strokes but for a city to not only look good but function properly it requires a pin prick size tools for micro-management.

 

What annoys me the most is the change from low the medium density sees the most changes happen in zones because the footprint of buildings not only varies wildly from wealth level to wealth level but also inside those wealth levels buildings with or without parking lots can ruin any plans from zone placement.

[Board_Marshal 104]

Yeah, I have been dealing with this "problem" since my first city. The creators gave us tools that are equivalent to broad brush strokes but for a city to not only look good but function properly it requires a pin prick size tools for micro-management.

 

What annoys me the most is the change from low the medium density sees the most changes happen in zones because the footprint of buildings not only varies wildly from wealth level to wealth level but also inside those wealth levels buildings with or without parking lots can ruin any plans from zone placement.

 

   Ya, I have to constantly run out short road stubs which overlap the building I want to move by an amount approximate to the unfilled area on the opposite side so that when it tries to rebuild it will shift over.  I may have to do it 2, 3, 4 or more times to push it over to beside the next building, each time deleting the road tab, drawing it over just a little, waiting for the building to start, etc, etc.. 

   If I push it too far then I have to move the road back the other direction and repeat.  This has to be done again when I move roads or add new roads, decide to move buildings up in density, decide to place ploppable buildings, etc.  It gets tedious but there's really no choice given the smaller than desired size of the city plots.  Also, since I like to have some curvy roads I'm already introducing space utilization inefficiency and makes getting buildings tighter together even harder to do.

   It would be nice if at some point they made the blue connection points more fine in their gradient, i.e., more blue dots than before in the same length of road.  While we don't seem them being used by the zoned buildings I think they use them as well.  A greater number and closer together dots (snap points, whatever) would make me happy.

[CosmicSpeed 28]

Those "DOTS". Don't get me started on those dots.

 

Countless times I have cursed at those dots because on either side of my perfectly placed avenue/road 4-way intersection, the long parks dont line up closest to the road!

 

sdk^%#JHVJK(*^HGKJHV!!!!!!

 

I am so OCD sometimes over aesthetics and this drives me mad. I have gotten to the point where I just accept it.

 

I do wish zoning was locked into place by specific RCI zones, regardless of road density. That would allow more control of when and where we could place wealth zones. But that was one of the major changes between 4 and 2013. At first I liked it but now you really have to change your play style.

 

I find myself going back to zoned areas once they have grown in size and adjusting the type of zones based on building size/location/type. I still keep the checker pattern if I can, just the zoned areas are now quite large. Having R directly next to C DRASTICALLY reduced your traffic issues. Sims love to walk if they can.

[TuPhat 27]

My 2 cents.

 

I was micro-managing things to a greater detail but I got tired of it, now I just zone residential and commercial in chunks of 4 clicks.     Zoning chunks of R/C in 4 click blocks usually gives you a proper medium size building and 8 blocks a high density building.    I usually zone in 2R:1C ratio and enough I to fulfill workers until no longer needed.   8 clicks green, 4 clicks blue, repeat.  Check workers and dezone/zone I.   I may throw in a bit more C somewhere if needed. Though its not perfect system, it seems to work well enough for most builds.   Usually a little short on commercial at low density, but balances out better at medium high density.

 

I blindly follow the above pattern in all my cities now and rarely look at the population details panel to balance (except for workers).   With proper road layout and transit options, I usually end up somewhere in the 90-95% approval rate and very close to being balanced. 

[tnobles 38]

Also, you can fool the zone system occasionally by dezoning and rezoning. This usually works when units dont take up the whole space and you can essentially rezone the space to where the actually layout of the building zone lies and then plop another, different zone closer.

 

That works pretty good, thanks for the tip. You can get a ton of medium density that way.

It seems that there different sizes of  high density residential but, it takes an act of congress to get it to place the smallest (three clicks). there are three (at least) sizes of high density commercial, as far as I can tell, and it is much easier to get it to place the smallest ones. The place holders or whatever the garbage is that it places (the fraction of a zone that doesn't show on mouse-over) can mess up your placement also.

In the screen shot, I can get five high density commercial in the same space as two residential. Again, thanks for the post.

Bring back the 22,000 res high rise of SC4! 

  Edited May 3, 2013 by tnobles