Percent of Water in City

[Cougar2004 127]

How can I find out the exact percent (%) of Water in my City?

 

The Marina requires 25% of the city be water before it becomes available. I know many people cheat to get it, but I'm doing a city that earns the rewards.  Is there a tool I can install that will display what percent of the city is considered to be water? Or is there a file or menu I can check to learn this?

 

Also, what are the ways to increase water % in an existing city that you do not desire to demolish or start over? Are there buildings to add that count as water? Can you just lower terrain below sea level and it immediately counts towards the water %?  Doubtful, but does the water ordinance affect the water %?  Or perhaps adding water pumps or pipes?

 

Thanks!

- Cougar2004

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you click on the menu for the marina, I believe it will give you the ratio showing the deficit.

 

If you want to carve out some of your shoreline to allow this to happen, simple use the Mayor Mode Levelling tool.  Call up the tool, and approach the shoreline from seaward holding down the shift key for better diameter.  If you turn on the grid (g key) you can actually develop straight lines along the shore which are also needed for many shore installations.  This shoreline was prepared in this way:

 

http://www.ezlink.ca/~jwinterton/Lontano.jpg

 

Takes a deft touch, and you may have to adjust the height carefully with this tool.

 

(would have posted the image, but something is wrong with the image tool).

[Cougar2004 127]

The Marina Menu Icon does not show me the deficit amount, it only states the general requirements.. which is actually 20% of the city needed plus some other things.  

 

It would be nice to know if I have over or under 20% water in my city.  Then I can use your advice to chip off some shoreline.  I'll definitely use your answer for that.  However, I'm still unsure how to find out what percent of my city is water.  Any other ideas?

 

There are modded game graphs, a census building that shows lots of data about RCI, and there is a regional display tool that shows other types of data, so it should be possible to display % of water in city in a way like those tools do.  if I could figure out where in the game it stores the water % it uses to determine if the marina qualifies, perhaps I could write a mod to display it, or simply add it to the water graph. Any thoughts anyone?

[docj101 99]

Can't you just look at the city tile as a whole and "eye it up"?  I mean you can't get exact % of water but you can get a close idea.  If it appears to be close to 20% water to you then just widen your river, or whatever, to create a little more water.  There doesn't really seem to be a use for knowing this water % for anything other then marina unlocking, I don't think this calls for a mod.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I don't have any good answer, but you could turn on the grid and compare the amount of water shown by counting squares versus the whole thing.  If in doubt, make more water.

[cogeo 960]

As far as I know, there is no such a query or mod. But it wouldn't be hard for someone to make one. It's not much work, neither it's hard, but someone who has the technical skill, the will and the time must be found first. What is needed is look into the game's LUA scripts, find the code that unlocks the marina and see what variables this code checks, and display them in a query dialog.

 

I too find the 20% requirement often hard to meet, and sometimes unjustifiable. I have a large city tile, of which one corner, roughly 1/4 of the tile's length is water. This would be a perfect place to build a marina (and some expensive properties around it). However, the area occupied by water is 1/4 x 1/4 = 1/16 of the tile's area, well below the required 20%, so I won't get the reward. Also for cities with just a medium-sized lake, or a river, the requirement is hard or impossible to be met, although the setting might be perfectly fit for a marina. So, apart from just displaying the water tiles percentage, I think it would be best to change the requirement as well, ie lower it significantly, to say 5%, 4%, or even 2%, and yes, 2% is more than enough (a large city tile with a small waterfront, or a river, hardly has more). Better yet, the requirement could d be changed to an absolute number, eg 500 water tiles, rather than a percentage, because of the different city tile sizes (a large tile is as much as 16 times bigger than a small one). The above mentioned 500 tiles is ca 12.5% of the area of a small city tile, but less than 1% of a large one. And it would be better to give the reward even for a small water coverage than not: if the player finds that a marina in a small pond might look ridiculous, he/she always has the option of simply not building it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I use both the Maxis default Marina and the PEG CDKM one.  The CDKM version clearly shows the requirements.

 

[Cougar2004 127]

A Nonny Moose:

 

You have a brilliant idea! I'll simply find this thing called CDK Marina and load it, and I dont even have to use it - then anytime i want to check a city, I'll just mouseover the menu icon and see how much water is in the city, since the person who created that item already included the code to display current % of City Water.  Its not the perfect solution, but it seems readily available and easy to use.  Thanks for posting that picture A Nonny Moose!

[yayaya1 22]

I am going to assume you don't know about this glitch/cheat, but if you hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift while you press the god mode button, you can terraform without restarting the city

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ Dangerous, and causes earthquakes if you are not very careful.  Better to use the Mayor Mode civil tools which have more local effects, if costly.