Show us your Highest Population!

[natethegreatforlife 3]

I'm currently building my largest city, New Columbia City. It has a population of about 190,000, and still isn't fully developed. Once it's fully developed, it should be just above 300,000 people. It could be larger, but I'm using mainly low and medium density housing and there are two large rivers ripping through the tile.

[tysonic 6]

After a couple months of trying different designs i finally hit 1.1m sims in a Med tile on hard mode:

 

 

And this is the final design I came up with, it fixed the issues I was having with subways and parks interfering with zoning 4x4 and 5x5 blocks needed to get the bigger skyscrapers:

 

So, 1.1m sims, no com or ind, no demand mods, RHW/NWM and Bullet train were used and it even looks good at night:

 

 

 

[9gruntsand1hammer 3,195]

Biggest city I made, 1 large city tile 810K, medium city tile 425K, small city tile 110K, and my biggest region was  6.5 million.

[Sabretooth78 808]

 

Clarkson, pop. 307,896 - Overview:

Incidentally, it's also the only city in which I have ever had a nuclear meltdown...

 

 

Close-up of downtown, featuring two art deco beauties I would love to see replicated in SC4:

 

Yeah, that's right.  SC3kU.  My largest SC4 city is long gone (lax computer upgrades) and probably wasn't even 50,000.  I'm going to make a run at ending that 11-year drought in my City Journal.

[CrybKeeper 32]

Still this one, I guess:

 

 

Not that I care for it much, as it is a test city. Nearly a quarter of the area is still unused. There's no subway and limited public transport (trains and bus).

That is not limited: The secret to higher populations in SC, is to choose the ONE most efficient form of public transport, which is buses

 

All my cities are grids and have had the large cities reach 1.2 million many times. This is with no cheats, or pop. mods and I also keep some of the cities green.

[Turjan 1,048]

 

Still this one, I guess: [snip]

 

Not that I care for it much, as it is a test city. Nearly a quarter of the area is still unused. There's no subway and limited public transport (trains and bus).

That is not limited: The secret to higher populations in SC, is to choose the ONE most efficient form of public transport, which is buses

 

The most efficient form of transport is subways, at least with the NAM. I would probably have to build a subway system to break the current ceiling for that city.

[Jorge_carrillo 140]

 

 

Still this one, I guess: [snip]

 

Not that I care for it much, as it is a test city. Nearly a quarter of the area is still unused. There's no subway and limited public transport (trains and bus).

That is not limited: The secret to higher populations in SC, is to choose the ONE most efficient form of public transport, which is buses

 

The most efficient form of transport is subways, at least with the NAM. I would probably have to build a subway system to break the current ceiling for that city.

 

 subway is good but expensive, I would rather recomend combination of Bus and Rail,

[CrybKeeper 32]

 

 

 

Still this one, I guess: [snip]

 

Not that I care for it much, as it is a test city. Nearly a quarter of the area is still unused. There's no subway and limited public transport (trains and bus).

That is not limited: The secret to higher populations in SC, is to choose the ONE most efficient form of public transport, which is buses

 

The most efficient form of transport is subways, at least with the NAM. I would probably have to build a subway system to break the current ceiling for that city.

 

 subway is good but expensive, I would rather recomend combination of Bus and Rail,

 

Right. I didn't really explain well. Buses are still best(Without the NAM) - Subway is too expensive and minus NAM, you want buses. The NAM is wonderful, for making a more realistic transit system.

[ncamferdam 1,490]

I'm bumping this thread from quite a long time ago, but it seems like the best place to showcase this. My main city has just recently passed 7 million residents, so I thought I'd share some screenshots of how dense things have gotten.

[Propfam 2,288]

I only get to about 750,000 and that's with all low-wealth blocks. For R$$ and R$$$ filled city, I only managed to 500,000 and that's with appropiate commercial buildings.

[ncamferdam 1,490]

27 minutes ago, chfzdn said:

I only get to about 750,000 and that's with all low-wealth blocks. For R$$ and R$$$ filled city, I only managed to 500,000 and that's with appropiate commercial buildings.

Well, I can't pretend like this was entirely my own doing. Besides the addition of high-density CAM buildings, I also have the NAM running at the highest allowable transportation capacity. Cheated myself some money at the beginning to immediately lay out my entire transportation network and civic infrastructure, used iLive Reader to boost capacities for some civics, etc. Plus, your Cap Lifter mod certainly helped. 

If anyone is interested, I can probably put together a list of all the mods I used tomorrow.

Also will probably post a breakdown of the transportation system somewhere. That's the part I'm happiest with and I think it's the main reason why the city got so big.

[ncamferdam 1,490]

So, two things.

First, here is the full list of "non-vanilla" things I did to get the city as large as it is:

• NAM 39
  • Medium-High Mass Transit Usage
  • Ultra Base Network Capacity
  • 2.0 Network Capacity Multiplier
  • 0.2 Intersection Effect Multiplier
  • 0.0 Vehicle Air Pollution
• CAM, with just about every CAMelot from here added in, along with a few more modded in with PIM-X (Washington Tower, 2 International Finance Center, SOMY Htin Tower, etc.)
• Cap Lifter, by @chfzdnonce I'd maxed everything out the normal way
• SimGoober Education Lots, modded with SC4Tool to increase their capacities after a while
• Paeng's General City Hospital, by @paeng
• AC Functional Airports, by @RippleJet
• Genzeo Co. Air Filter, by @genzeo
• Microwave Rectenna Plant, by SOMY
• Money cheat ("moolah")

Second, Al Burj finally showed up in my city, and we're just past 7.5 million.

That's the highest construction frame I've ever seen.

[asasnat 216]

The highest population city I've ever made in SimCity 4 was Sunville, a kind of nice city (except for the fact that it has terrible pollution), with a population of 70k:

An earlier screenshot:

However, the most populous city I've ever made in any SimCity game of any sort was Parksville, also quite a nice city, with a population of 225,222:

Unfourtunately the growth of the city seems to have stopped to a halt. There wasn't any significant spike in the Residental/Commercial demand for literally hundreeds of in-game years. I don't know how I managed to mess up that badly, but I had to somewhere. This is also why you can see a lot of abandoned buildings - I simply zoned too much of everything.

[ncamferdam 1,490]

Over 10,000,000 now. Just an absurd number of stage 15 buildings growing at this point.

[Propfam 2,288]

On 10/4/2021 at 1:27 PM, ncamferdam said:

Over 10,000,000 now. Just an absurd number of stage 15 buildings growing at this point.

10 million sims! You can fit the entire Jakarta population within the border or twice Singapore population inside!

What about the jobs? Are the jobs located outside the city? I don't think 3 million jobs sufficient in this city, so it must have a job city nearby.

[ncamferdam 1,490]

17 hours ago, chfzdn said:

What about the jobs? Are the jobs located outside the city? I don't think 3 million jobs sufficient in this city, so it must have a job city nearby.

Yeah, you're correct. I actually have nine cities connected to my main one, providing an additional ~4 million jobs in total. I've been focusing on growing my residential areas for a while, but now that I'm over 10,000,000 I'm focusing on commercial and industrial again. I think I can get to about 4 million jobs within the city eventually, but we'll see.

The commercial stuff is a lot more fun in any case because it just seems like there are more unique BATs available than there are for residential. It's a lot easier to avoid repetition and you end up with a much more interesting skyline:

[Haljackey 17,302]

A old, similar thread in the general discussion may interest you:

 

My post in that thread some time ago:

On 8/23/2014 at 11:29 AM, Haljackey said:

My largest city:

 

 

 

It peaked at 3.1 million, usually hovers around 3 mil.

I've since fixed all those brown boxes, and the population has risen to 3.5 mil. Region census info if curious:

[Propfam 2,288]

13 minutes ago, ncamferdam said:

Yeah, you're correct. I actually have nine cities connected to my main one, providing an additional ~4 million jobs in total. I've been focusing on growing my residential areas for a while, but now that I'm over 10,000,000 I'm focusing on commercial and industrial again. I think I can get to about 4 million jobs within the city eventually, but we'll see.

The commercial stuff is a lot more fun in any case because it just seems like there are more unique BATs available than there are for residential. It's a lot easier to avoid repetition and you end up with a much more interesting skyline:

I don't know why there are less residential varieties than the commercial. Maybe, tall residences aren't as prominent as commercial towers. Heck, the tallest residential tower is the NY's 432 Park Avenue, while the tallest building is obviously the famous Burj Khalifa with (will be completed) PNB118 right in the second. And, the largest building is also not a residential building. It's the New Century Global Center. Meanwhile, the largest is either the Turkey's Presidential Palace or Brunei's Istana Nurul Iman. Historically, the Royal Palace of Caserta is also the largest residence.

[Propfam 2,288]

16 minutes ago, Haljackey said:

A old, similar thread in the general discussion may interest you:

 

My post in that thread some time ago:

I've since fixed all those brown boxes, and the population has risen to 3.5 mil. Region census info if curious:

How can you sustain such population with negative region vacant jobs? Do you have high-jobs civics?

Also, I guess your region is developed and large enough that you only need like 500K industrial jobs. I do have a city with 300K educated sims and I can achieve almost-commercial city.

[ncamferdam 1,490]

13 minutes ago, Haljackey said:

My post in that thread some time ago:

Yeah, that looks awesome. Going super-packed has been fun, but yours is definitely the city aesthetic I'd prefer going forward. I'd like to make use of other custom content, besides just custom growables. This city is basically just designed and organized like you would in vanilla SimCity 4, only with really big buildings. I've barely made use of all the NAM options for example, and I'd really love to make a more realistic-looking transport system with RHW and such.

Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if at a certain point the transportation engine in this game just breaks. I've got the NAM traffic simulator running at max capacity, but even then I would expect my city to have to be like 30% roads at this point. But after like 5 million residents it seems like it all just stopped mattering. That's a separate topic, but just something your city layout made me think about.

[Haljackey 17,302]

9 hours ago, chfzdn said:

How can you sustain such population with negative region vacant jobs? Do you have high-jobs civics?

Also, I guess your region is developed and large enough that you only need like 500K industrial jobs. I do have a city with 300K educated sims and I can achieve almost-commercial city.

I can't answer the vacant job question. All I do is make cities and they develop so things must be going ok in my game lol

My region has some pockets of industrial areas- nothing too massive. My highest population city is not such a location.

9 hours ago, ncamferdam said:

Yeah, that looks awesome. Going super-packed has been fun, but yours is definitely the city aesthetic I'd prefer going forward. I'd like to make use of other custom content, besides just custom growables. This city is basically just designed and organized like you would in vanilla SimCity 4, only with really big buildings. I've barely made use of all the NAM options for example, and I'd really love to make a more realistic-looking transport system with RHW and such.

Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if at a certain point the transportation engine in this game just breaks. I've got the NAM traffic simulator running at max capacity, but even then I would expect my city to have to be like 30% roads at this point. But after like 5 million residents it seems like it all just stopped mattering. That's a separate topic, but just something your city layout made me think about.

Try running the NAM simulator on low, that's what I do!

I like the challenge of tackling the insane traffic problems that gives you in large cities. I used to run on medium but made the swap to low for more carnage. Heavy use of subway is a must in any densely zoned city like the one above. Once you get to medium density, you can survive without subways with good planning.

[Endakol 15]