Numerous questions

[xoham 2]

I've a number of questions, and rather than issue them separately which might be seen as spam, I'll list them here.  Thanks in advance.  Note I am using some older version of NAM.

1. I'd like to find some packs of modded building that go with vanilla.  Some I've seen are unbalanced, i.e. they support way too many people for what they are like a Home Depot store that employs thousands (it probably isn't more than 100 for real).  I'd like some that fit the game.  Can you recommend some?  It would be great to get many at a time given the manual nature of the installation process.
2. Can you make a region that is largely high tech and mid to high wealth everywhere?  I'm trying but it is slow going.  
3. Are there any plausible I-HT growables that I can download that have higher employment?  I want the added water and power costs too where possible.
4. I want to get as much CO$$$ as possible to build skyscrapers.  I'm sure I'm the first one.  Do I need the international airport in my biggest city tile to do it?
5. Do monorails work better than standard rail, i.e. more desirable or moving gobs more people or something?
6. Does NAM cause rail stations to get greatly overused?  Mine are.  Many are more than 100%.
7. What factors most limit the growth of skyscrapers?  Do I need a region with x people?  A certain amount of R$$ and R$$$ in the region?  Assume I have crime, and pollution way down.
8. One of my mod shows me the cap numbers, but I don't what they mean.  Is it basically a numerical version of the RCI bar chart?
9. Some sims inside the radius of a fully funded hospital have lower health.  It seems they are the furthest from the hospital.  Should I place overlapping clinics?  Since I have low pollution, I don't know what their problem is.
10. Is there a site that shows pictures of all the vanilla buildings?

Thanks again.

[Superbacon 380]

2. Yes you can, but it will require very high EQ levels across the region. And "saturation" of your cities to build R$$ and R$$$.

3. Don't know about water and power costs, but there is no shortage of I-HT growable lots on the STEX or LEX.

4. Airport, stock exchange, convention center, ect, are all needed. As well as high EQ and lots of R$$$. You can download CO$$$ towers on the STEX and LEX. The Maxis CO$$$ skyscrapers aren't very impressive.

5. Monorail is considered rapid transit. They don't necessarily work better, though. Since they can't carry freight. But they work as well as heavy rail for moving people around.

6. Not particularly. Depending on your NAM settings your sims will be more inclined to drive, walk, bike or take mass transit. You can download more rail stations with higher capacities. Especially ones that can handle around 50,000 sims.

7. Garbage, crime, fire protection, traffic congestion, road capacity, EQ, R$$ and R$$$ population, airport, pollution, certain rewards, desirability. Industry also plays a pivotal role in how your commerce develops.

8. I don't know what you mean by cap numbers, please post a screenshot. Unless someone else knows.

9. This is normal. Over time, all the sims in the circle will become healthy. Placing overlapping hospitals and clinics will speed up this process. Although I would recommend downloading some higher capacity hospitals. The Maxis hospitals tend to be overrun quickly in dense urban environments. 

[z1 566]

First of all, you should get and install the latest NAM from SC4D.  The NAM now has stations that are specially modded to fit its networks.

 

5.  Monorail is significantly faster than heavy rail - 225 kph vs. 140 kph.  It and its variations (such as the High Speed Rail Project and the Bullet Train Mod, both included in the NAM) are the fastest forms of transport in the game.

6.  The NAM traffic simulator causes everything to work better, which means more traffic.  All the stations in the NAM have much higher capacities to reflect this.  When used with the NAM, even the standard Maxis stations have much higher capacities.

8.  The cap you're referring to is the demand cap.  The demand for each of the RCI categories is capped at a certain level.  If you hit that level, you'll have no more demand for that category.  But there are many things (rewards, neighbor connections, airports, etc.) that raise your demand caps, so if you build a healthy city, they're generally not a problem.

[Ro-Bo 183]

1. For this, ilive's Reader is your friend. You can change the occupancy yourself.

 

2. Yes you can. It is slow because the game was made for a balanced city/region. There will be going to be a lot of vacant $ jobs. For example, 20% of jobs at CO$$$ buildings are reserved for R$, 10% for I-HT(12% if you apply the I-HT jobs fix). And did you apply that ? Important if you have lots of I-HT jobs.

[cogeo 960]

Well some members here have answered your questions, and I both agree and disagree with them. My suggestions:

 

1. Indeed, much of the uploaded content is badly modded, eg they may consume a lot or too little power or water (or produce garbage). These can be embarrassing, but the biggest problem to me is that they are often grossly unbalanced, eg paying too many or too little taxes, employing or housing too many or too few people, or have a growth stage not in line with the lot size and/or number of occupants, and not in line with the Maxis stuff, causing them to be too hard to grow (sometimes nearly impossible) or instead too easy (overtaking your cities). I always review custom content before installing it, and if something is not in line I'm fixing it. By "Vanilla" you mean the non-RH SC4? If so, my suggestion is get a new copy of RH (or Deluxe, which is SC4+RH). It might seem a little wasteful to buy a 10yo game (esp now that the successor is up for sale), but you can find deals for less than $/€10. I think it's not worth the inconvenience (and all the goodies you are missing out). Most (almost all) custom content requires RH, or at least was developed on machines with RH installed and never tested under a SC4-only one. Very little uploaded content is for SC4-only, and almost all of it was developed years ago and never revised since, so yes, they can be unbalanced or buggy, and they look rather "abandoned".
2. I do not agree here, as even CO$$$ employ a good deal of R$ (20% of the workforce) and R$$ (65%). For CO$$ the mix is 40%$/50%$$/10%$$$. That is, without the R$ workers your office buildings would not fare very well. But it's not just that, the problem is that growth will finally stagnate because of lack of demand. Demand for CO$$/CO$$$ is determined by the presence and availabilty of highly educated workforce. It can also easily be exhausted ("satisfied", as CO$$/CO$$$ development takes place). Your demand will then flat out, and no new offices will be developing. To continue growth, you need new (additional) educated workforce, and this unfortunately cannot be "imported" (newcomers by default have a very low EQ). You need to import them (uneducated) and educate them. It takes some gameyears, but then you will have CO$$/CO$$$ demand up again. The problem is how to attract and employ them until they get educated. So my suggestion is satisfy (exhaust) all R and C demand (even R$ and C$) and provide them with full education and health coverage (elem+high schools and libraries localy, college/university and museum for the city). Industry won't go far, it's only good for cick-starting your city (it pollutes, takes up a lot of space for providing relatively few jobs, consumes a lot of power, and demand for it will drop as your EQ rises). If you exhaust all R and C demand, 50% or more of your sims will be R$, but demand for CO$$/CO$$$ will be on the rise (noticable even from month to month) if you provide them with good education and health, ensuring a continous growth. And if you are concerned about the space R$ and C$ may take-up ("waste" or "sacrifice" to your perception) take a look at (also my post at the end of the thread), to see how many of them you can cram in how little space.
3. There are some "doubler" and "quadrupler" mods, but I don't know if they work for non-RH SC4, neither I have checked them (balanced stats, taxes etc). As I'm not very much intersted in industry, I haven't bothered. Check out the
4. As explained above, the essential requirement for CO development (esp "much CO$$$ development") is educated workforce. However growth may be constrained by demand caps. Several rewards provide demand cap relief. Road/avenue/highway/rail/subway connections provide demand cap relief too. So do the airports. Check out my (or the original Census Repositoty) to determine whether you have hit a cap (or you are close to). Please note that all the above structures provide demand cap relief, not demand per se (if you have not hit caps, they have no effect).
6. Maxis MT stations have low capacities and are easily congested. Download some custom content here, or use the higher-capacity stations included with the new NAM.
7. Again, the determining factor is demand, fueled by highly-educated workforce, even highly-educated R$ (yes, they do exist). On top of that, caps may be an issue, and of course pollution and crime may keep skyscrapers from growing (they have a "local" effect) although you may have the demand. A favourable condition is high traffic (to Maxis this means "customers" - true for CS, but how about CO?). Also put some plazas (not parks) nearby, or landmarks, or rewards with "Landmark Effect" to boost C desirability.
8. What mod are you talking about?
9. Not indeed (although I don't know what's the case with thr non-RH SC4), sims within the area covered get an equally good health service; only fund them so that capacity is equal or slightly above patients - i usually reduce bus funding. The problem may instead relate to newly arrived sims (they have a medium-low HQ by default). The only bulding featuring an attenuating effect is police stations. Their effect near the periphery is almost zero (it attenuates from 100% at the center to 0% at the periphery), so yes, these one SHOULD be overlapping. Placement of police stations is my biggest headache when planning a city. I mostly use large and deluxe stations in a "honeycomb" arrangement, with small ones at some small/remote places, to fill the "gaps".
10. There is such a site for SC4/RH, not sure about non-RH SC4. You can see the buildings and lots available using the Reader. Open simcity_1.dat and use the Navigator Tool to get the lists (you can previw them as well). You will be surprised to see how poor the Maxis collection is.

 

Hope this helps.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This is a general remark on both the questions and the foregoing replies.

 

You cannot easily create such a region.  You have to build it up over time, and there is no royal road to this.  The main key is balance.  You should always try to keep the number of jobs at about one-half the number of Sims.  Momma Sim stays home and raises the kids.

 

You can never not have any R$ Sims.  They are the worker bees in the game.  If you have all high and medium wealth Sims, you won't have anyone to sweep floors, run copiers, or take out the garbage.  There are usually more workers than supervisors (R$$) and only a few CEO types (R$$$).  Strive to keep the R$$$ down to around 15% of the total population.  You can do this best by careful zoning.  Trying to do this will taxes is like taking a sledge hammer to a gnat.

 

While you can use your tax rates to exclude some items like I-D, you do need them at the beginning before your Sims get smart enough to work at I-M and at CO buildings.  You also need burger joints (CS$), and lots of them.  Look around you and see how many low wealth, high-volume low return businesses are present in your real city.

 

The basic algorithms in the game drive towards a CO$$$ core business district, but it takes a long time for this to happen.  Keep the high-density CBD small.  Maybe start it off the only a cross-roads in the middle of a not very big business patch with a good mix of density. 

 

The general demographic seems to be Silicon Valley, California.  The programmers wrote what they knew from real life.  The basic aim at the beginning is single family dwellings on huge lots.  It is better to have lots with more frontage (2 x 1) than depth (1 x 2).  1 x 2  lots back to back make for premature consolidation into 4 x 4 lots for unwanted R$$$ mansions which abandon because there are not enough jobs for R$$$.  Keep the lots down to 2 x 1 and 1 x 1 (later), and you won't have any mansions springing up unless you zone a big lot for them.  There really isn't any need for Hollywood type mansions as the game starts up.

 

I've been playing this game for over 10 years now, so I give this for what it may be worth.

[xoham 2]

Well some members here have answered your questions, and I both agree and disagree with them. My suggestions:

 

1..... By "Vanilla" you mean the non-RH SC4?

No I have RH.  I mean non-CAM.

[xoham 2]

Also,

 

• Some CO building will go dilapidated and say "low wealth".  What does that mean?
• Will CS grow in any density?  It seems my high density zones favor CO, even though I have a lot of CS$ and CS$$ demand.

[cogeo 960]

• Some CO building will go dilapidated and say "low wealth".  What does that mean?
• Will CS grow in any density?  It seems my high density zones favor CO, even though I have a lot of CS$ and CS$$ demand. 

 

- This happens when desirabilty drops below the threshold for dilapidation. It then employs or houses more sims, but at a lower wealth level, eg your CO$$$ office becomes CO$$. It can happen if a crime incident occurs in the lot, for example. Then the crime indication (yellow, orange or red) slowly fades, and the building may become CO$$$ again, but... it may also not! You need to increase desirability (above the required threahold), and you also need to have high demand for CO$$$ and low demand for CO$$ for this. You can install the Less Abandonment mod by Bones1. It is a brilliant mod, not cheaty, and actually makes it harder to get $$ and $$$ development, but then they can tolerate some drop in desirability and the cities become more stable. Read the documentation carefully to make sure that you understand what it does, and if you really want it - it can make buildings harder to recover.

- There are buildings/lots of all wealth types and all densities. Low- and medium-density zoning limits development to a certain size. For example, on low-density zones you can get only small boutiques (some 9 CS$$$ jobs) or small offices (some 15 CO$$$ jobs). CS$$$ cannor be changed (upgraded) to CO$$$, neither the opposite. They also can't merge, eg a 1x3 CS$$$ boutique and a 2x3 CO$$$ small office won't merge to form a 3x3 CO$$$ medium office.

[xoham 2]

 

• Some CO building will go dilapidated and say "low wealth".  What does that mean?
• Will CS grow in any density?  It seems my high density zones favor CO, even though I have a lot of CS$ and CS$$ demand. 

 

- This happens when desirabilty drops below the threshold for dilapidation....

Turns out I was exporting my garbage, but as the city grew, some built up at that location.  Thanks.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

When you have neighbour deals at all, you pretty much have to monitor them regularly.

[Omehenk 9]

How do you do that?

 

but the biggest problem to me is that they are often grossly unbalanced, eg paying too many or too little taxes, employing or housing too many or too few people, or have a growth stage not in line with the lot size and/or number of occupants, and not in line with the Maxis stuff, causing them to be too hard to grow (sometimes nearly impossible) or instead too easy (overtaking your cities). I always review custom content before installing it, and if something is not in line I'm fixing it.

[Turjan 1,048]

How do you do that?

I always review custom content before installing it, and if something is not in line I'm fixing it.

 

A relatively easy way is to automatically recalculate values in SC4 PIM, also called PIM-X. Read the support instructions to get it to run if you have a modern system, and then read the good documentation. Don't follow the suggestions for growth stages if you don't use the CAM.

 

PIM-X prevents you from changing some things, so use for everything else. There's a newer version that's somewhat easier to use available, but unfortunately it quite often creates corrupted outputs, so it's better to stay with the version I linked.

[cogeo 960]

I'm a little sceptical about PIM-X. Not that the program is bad or what, and ofc ourse the idea of providing a standardized way for setting the stats, according to the building size is absolutely worth, but the are two points I'm concerned about:

- The stats are not based only on the building's size (volume), but on a some user-supplied "Coverage Factor" or "Density Factor" (can't remember the name exactly) parameter as well. It's supposed to be the ratio of the actual bulding's volume to the volume calculated from the building's LODshell dimensions (W×D×H). For example, a building with a broader (than its "main" body) base, and an antenna on its top has an actual volume much smaller than what the W×D×H formula calculates, and would thus require a density factor much less than 1. Now that "much less" is left to the user, and you can imagine the margin for error.

- The "default" stats (as suggested by PIM-X) are mostly for use with CAM-compatible lots. CAM, in addition to extending growth stages) changes the ingame buildings' stats as well, sometimes significantly. Here I'm not judging whether the CAM setup is better or worse, but the fact is that the two sets are different.

 

Many custom content creators boast that the stats of their upload were created with the PIM-X, as a certificate of correctly-set stats. Often (I would say "typically") these buildings/lots pay more taxes, house or employ more sims and are of lower growth stages, than their Maxis counterparts of similar building/lot size. Especially the combination of more occupants with a lower growth stage, causes these buildings to grow more easily, and their Maxis counterparts very hard to get. The game will never "upgrade" these lots to the Maxis ones (although they are one growth stage higher), because they have fewer occupants! So the only chance for these Maxis buldings to grow is only as new development, or upgrade from a lower-wealth lot, and only when demand conditions are right. They won't grow as an upgrade from a lower-growth-stage of a same-wealth-level but lower-growth-stage lot (the simulator will grow the custom content instrad).

 

So the best way to check wether a building/lot is in line with the ingame stuff is use the Reader and compare its stats to similarly-sized Maxis buildings and lots. All Maxis buildings and lots are located in simcity_1.dat (use the reader's Navigation Tool to get the lists).

[Turjan 1,048]

I'm a little sceptical about PIM-X. [snip]

 

Well, yes, there is certainly some truth to everything you said. PIM-X is definitely a tool that has been developed for CAM use*, and the, in my opinion, unfortunate and obvious limitations that have been built into it are only explainable from the program's actual purpose and make sense that way. However, I see the tool as invaluable for having a quick glimpse at those stats of modded files that determine a building's success within the game, for good or bad. I know lots of mods that are so completely off in their stats that they either never grow or completely ruin your economy. I could easily identify a few buildings that I used that paid 500 times more tax than they should, mostly by clicking one button and see the numbers jump. It doesn't mean I have to accept everything PIM-X does religiously. Most of the time, if I find things off, I just look at the result and don't save. I then use the Reader to make adjustments.

 

I don't see the use of the filling factor as as bad as you make it sound, or at least I don't see a problem in that it is user-provided. Your guess is probably still better than taking the default 0.5. You can also make adjustments for cases like warehouses or many-story manufacturing buildings by using good judgement. You should have a look at the recommended occupancy values for agricultural buildings . So, within the logic of PIM-X, I see this user interference as a good thing. If anything, PIM-X doesn't allow for enough of that.

 

I certainly concur with your observation that stats that are "correct" according to PIM-X seem to favor specific buildings that are just "better" than their counterparts, just because of the building dimensions the creator chose, which allowed him to (probably unconsciously) place the building at the top end of a stage range. This also leads me to the principal beef you have with the PIM-X approach. A strict set of recommended stats for a certain stage of building, regardless of its size should serve better if you want to have equal footing for your buildings in the growth competition. That's basically the reason why you have growth stages. By the way, this is also true for Maxis buildings, some of which you will never see, while others behave like pests, just because Maxis didn't follow their own stat guidelines very well, either.

 

If you want to use PIM-X as intended for all buildings and want to see some Maxis buildings, you certainly would have to use the CAM values for Maxis buildings, too. The stages above 8 are not that big of a problem, as there aren't many Maxis buildings you will find there. Still, a rigid table with fixed values for parameters that influence growth for certain stages, etc., seems to be a better approach for how the game works. Nevertheless, I will still recommend PIM-X for an easy glimpse at relevant stats . Which is why I mentioned it .

 

*I should probably add that I don't use the CAM.

[KevinPaul06 57]

Too avoid many post on forum I'm just gonna ask it here. 

 

Is these an artificial water mod or an official one?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, it is not the default water.  Looks like someone's mod, but not the one I use (brigantine).