Struggling to like NAM

[kentsfield14 0]

Hello all, I picked up SimCity 4 on Steam recently and have been enjoying it a lot. Initially I had a lot of problems with traffic because I didn't know what I was doing, but after doing a bit of research I was able to allieveate most of these. One thing I noticed while I was looking around the web is that everyone seemed to highly recommend getting NAM because it made the traffic simulator much better. So I got it, and installed just the traffic simulator (want to become more familiar with the base game before diving into the other mods.) I made it a point to put it on the Classic setting because I do not wish to disrupt the game balance.

 

Pretty much right away I noticed that NAM made traffic a lot easier to manage. This was nice at first, but soon I found my myself disappointed that the challenges of traffic management I was enjoying previously seemed to be no more. Traffic certainly behaves more realistically with NAM, but it also makes the game feel less "game-y." It feels like I can just connect all the roads to each other and let the sims do their thing, rather than having to guide them with a well thought-out network.

 

Now, I haven't gotten very far at all, my biggest city is only about 10,000 people, so maybe I'm missing something here and if I am please show me. My question is, is it possible to proceed far into the game with the vanilla traffic simulator? And if so, is there any other reason to use NAM if I'm enjoying the vanilla simulator?

[Tarkus 6,933]

First off, welcome to SimCity 4 and to Simtropolis!

 

The biggest difference in terms of the mechanics of the NAM simulator vs. the default settings in the game is that the default had the pathfinding heuristic was extremely undertuned.  The reason for tuning it down was for performance reasons--the game's listed minimum requirements were a 500MHz Pentium III (or equivalent) with 128MB RAM, running Windows 98.  The NAM's traffic simulation options tune the heuristic back up, to allow the simulation to run as Maxis originally intended it.

 

The effect of tuning down the heuristic basically blunts the efficiency of the pathfinding system, such that it virtually ignores network speed when calculating commutes, and goes for the physically shortest route, as the crow flies.  As a result, if you build a Street that's two tiles away from a much-higher capacity Avenue, if that Street is even slightly shorter, the game will funnel all the traffic onto it, even when the Street gets so congested it's blood red on the Congestion View and your zones are abandoning due to "commute time", while traffic will be nil (or at least next to nil) on that shiny, expensive Avenue you just built.  The NAM's settings essentially put network speed/capacity back into play, and allows the game to consider it as much more of a factor.

 

If you're finding things to be too easy with the NAM Simulator, there's plenty of options to dial the network capacities down.  The default setting is the "Medium" capacity level, which is a fair bit higher than the default settings for many networks.  But there's a "Low" and an even lower "Classic" setting, which come closer to the original capacity levels.  There's even the option using the NAM's Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool (TSCT) to drop things even further, if you'd like.

 

-Tarkus

[z1 566]

I made it a point to put it on the Classic setting because I do not wish to disrupt the game balance.

 

None of the simulator choices disrupt the game balance.  However, if you're playing with a small city, Classic may well be fine.  And as Tarkus points out, if you want even more challenge with the traffic simulator, you can use the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool to reduce network capacities to as low as 10% of Classic.  If you don't have the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool, you can simply rerun the installer and choose "Build a custom traffic simulator", or in the closing window of the installer, you can choose "Install/Start Traffic Simulator Configuration".

 

Pretty much right away I noticed that NAM made traffic a lot easier to manage. This was nice at first, but soon I found my myself disappointed that the challenges of traffic management I was enjoying previously seemed to be no more. Traffic certainly behaves more realistically with NAM, but it also makes the game feel less "game-y." It feels like I can just connect all the roads to each other and let the sims do their thing, rather than having to guide them with a well thought-out network.

 

This changes quickly as your cities get bigger.  Even with moderately-sized cities, you'll find that things get rather congested if you use Classic.

 

Now, I haven't gotten very far at all, my biggest city is only about 10,000 people, so maybe I'm missing something here and if I am please show me. My question is, is it possible to proceed far into the game with the vanilla traffic simulator?

The problems that Tarkus describes start showing up as your city gets bigger.  In a city of 10,000, the vanilla simulator works reasonably well.  But the bigger your city gets, the more you'll find that with the vanilla simulator, you'll have more and more problems with abandonment due to commute time; with the vanilla simulator, they're literally impossible to solve.  What started as challenges in a small city eventually become show stoppers.  So the vanilla simulator puts a limit both on the size of the cities that can be built and the quality of these cities.

 

And if so, is there any other reason to use NAM if I'm enjoying the vanilla simulator?

 

There are many, many reasons.  At this point, the NAM is really on the level of an expansion pack, at least as big in scope as Rush Hour.  Being the Network Addon Mod, the emphasis is on networks, but there are many other new features as well.

[Prophet42 1,503]

z1 and Tarkus are right, as your city gets bigger, NAM becomes essential to keep your city going.  Otherwise the traffic becomes unmanagable as the city grows.

[kentsfield14 0]

Thank you all for the replies! It sounds like I will need to use NAM at some point so I guess I'll just stick it out for now. Though I have heard of people successfully building large cities without it. Hmmm...

 

 

None of the simulator choices disrupt the game balance.

 

I find that hard to believe. If road capacities suddenly go from 1200 to 12,000 and congestion problems can be ignored until much later as a result, I'd say that's a prime example of disrupting game balance. I'm not really so much interested in building a city as I am playing a game, and I feel like the capacities and such were balanced in a way that forces the player to put thought into their transit networks in order to succeed with a larger city. The idea that an external addon makes this mechanic easier/ignorable feels almost like cheating to me. That's my concern.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

I find that hard to believe. If road capacities suddenly go from 1200 to 12,000 and congestion problems can be ignored until much later as a result, I'd say that's a prime example of disrupting game balance.

This is why there are five different versions of the NAM Traffic Simulator: Classic, Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. The lowest version (Classic) is the closest, in terms of capacity, to the original unmodified traffic simulator. All of the other simulators are meant for cases where higher capacity is actually desired, for cases where population is very high.

Actually, population is one of two determining factors when choosing a simulator; low population cities can get away with the lower simulators. The other determining factor is the amount of rails, which ironically requires one of the lower versions of the simulator. Small cities don't even need a road whose capacity is 12000. Very few people consider this freedom of choice (or availability) a cheat; it's actually more desirable for people who do have giant cities who find that the original traffic simulator is literally failing at its job, but it's not an incentive to force people who don't have giant cities to use the higher simulators. People who find that high capacity is not needed can fall back, at any time, to a lower version of the NAM simulator.

[blunder 1,080]

Well when you experiment with the unmodded game traffic, it quickly becomes apparent that it is absurdly unrealistic.  For instance with an unmodded game, you find that pedestrians walking only 10 or so tiles have a commute time of over an hour.  Considering that a game tile is 16m to a side, that means it takes like an hour for vanilla sims to walk about 500ft, which is just mind-numbingly stupid.  Also car traffic will hit a commute time of 2 hours on a tile with only minor congestion, which again is madness, and the vanilla road capacity is similarly crazy.  (numbers are approximate so check your own in game graphs; i haven't played without NAM in years) The NAM traffic simulator simply removes the game's weird handicap on commuters.  In the traffic simulation tool you can actually see the speeds various networks are set at.

 

But what it boils down to is whether you're playing to beat a game simulation or playing to for artistic satisfaction in creating a city.  Since you're new i would imaging you're still in that 'beat the game' phase.  But as time goes on you will have Been There, Done That, Got the T-Shirt, and the challenge of beating the simulation won't mean anything anymore.  When you transcend the game simulation and start playing full-sandbox mode to make the cities exactly how you want, the handicaps of the vanilla traffic become a hindrance, and NAM solves them nicely and with acceptably realistic numbers.

[greener07 8]

You will see massive street accidents without NAM.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Let me add my welcome.  Your tiny population of 10,000 is not much of a sample. 

 

I am currently running a region of over 2.5 Million Sims with the largest city approaching 700,000.  Recently I used the TSCT to increase some capacities of the simulator because I was getting too much congestion in my very large city.  This region has 48 city tiles of all sizes, and while some of them are excessively rural, a few of them are disgustingly urban and full of people and objects.  I created this region on my machine in September of 2012 so it is now 16 months old more or less.  Without the NAM this would have been impossible.

 

However, I do not load RHW, GLR, nor RRW sections of the NAM simply because my current gaming strategy for mostly rural, sparse populations does need them.  I do use Maxis highways with the option for dark textures.  I do not load project symphony because it means starting the region over. 

 

Use the NAM installer wisely and well, picking up what you are willing to use.  At your stage of development as a player you probably don't need much of it, and certainly do not need the complications of the civil engineering needed to use some of the more arcane features.  Learn to play to your satisfaction first, then expand your horizons.  I've been playing this game, by the way, since 2003 almost continuously except for a period around the time my wife passed away.  I'm retired, you see, so I have lots of time to play this in a leisurly fashion.

 

A word of caution about custom content in general.  After you have picked up the mods and lots that are actual bug fixes (most of them have the word 'fix' in their title) try to keep your plugins lean and mean.  Mine is just under 1 GB.  A huge plugin suite is for people who want the complications of managing it.

 

There is no rush for custom content.  The exchanges are not going away anytime soon.  The other problem with downloads is being sure you have all the libraries (dependencies) that go with any given set of new lots.  We BATters use the principle of object reuse to save a lot of code and downloading whenever possible.  You'll find that some groups have created large libraries for their productions.  Get the dependencies on first encounter, and don't be surprised if some of them have been consolidated into larger libraries.  When confronted with a large list of dependencies, I always check my Plugins to see if I already have some or all of them.  You'll find that if you get these when you need them that you will keep your Plugins space requirements small.

 

What's a Plugin?  Any file that has an extension of sc4lot, sc4desc, sc4model, dat or dll can be a plugin if it unpacks from an archive downloaded from an exchange.  These are the only files that belong in the C:\<your account>\SimCity 4\Plugins subfolders.  I keep mine organized basically by author where possible.  However, some plugins come as an installer (*.exe) which will create or use its own sub-folder within this. 

 

Many authors include other things in their archives (*.zip usually) on the STEX and other exchanges.  For this and maintenance reasons, I keep all my downloads in a separate folder structure away from the game and expand them there.  I only move real plugin files to the Plugins suite.  Since I download other things from other places occasionally, my main downloads folder structure looks like this:

 

Downloads
├── Archi
├── Blender
├── CNet
├── C++ReferenceCard
├── Dynex
├── Fluendo
├── GamersGate
├── irrlict
├── KernelDebug
├── Microsoft
├── mspaint
├── muse score
├── NAM Team
├── NTCore
├── OpenGL
├── Oracle
├── PHP Tutorial
├── Rivit
├── SC4RelatedDownloads  <--- SimCity 4 Plugin Archives and other related items kept here.
├── SunMicrosystems
├── Tony Leva
└── Virtucity

22 directories, 0 files
 

 

The SC4RelatedDownloads is a very large structure, and I won't show it.

[greener07 8]

I am currently running a region of over 2.5 Million Sims with the largest city approaching 700,000.  Recently I used the TSCT to increase some capacities of the simulator because I was getting too much congestion in my very large city.  This region has 48 city tiles of all sizes, and while some of them are excessively rural, a few of them are disgustingly urban and full of people and objects.  I created this region on my machine in September of 2012 so it is now 16 months old more or less.  Without the NAM this would have been impossible.

 

 

2.5 million sims... OMG..can you please show some screen shots if you have no probs...  I always wanted to see such a huge population and a huge city.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Note that this is a region.  The screen shot is from last week.

 

[greener07 8]

Thank you Sir Nonny

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Knighted?  When did that happen?  I didn't think Canadians could accept honours from the Brits without permission from the PM.

 

The biggest city on that region, Inner Harbour, is now approaching 600K residents.

[Jamonbread 222]

Ya 10,000 population is tiny! Once you need to move around 150,000 sims NAM becomes a lot of fun. It adds so much variety to what you can do, I think you have yet to exhaust the original maxis options so maybe the greater freedom is not yet apparent.

[greener07 8]

Knighted?  When did that happen?  I didn't think Canadians could accept honours from the Brits without permission from the PM.

 

The biggest city on that region, Inner Harbour, is now approaching 600K residents.

 

I see hahaah

Well let me know if you want Indian honors

 

Knighted?  When did that happen?  I didn't think Canadians could accept honours from the Brits without permission from the PM.

 

The biggest city on that region, Inner Harbour, is now approaching 600K residents.

 

I see hahaah

Well let me know if you want Indian honors

 

Its fantastic that you have million population... whatever I do... my population wont go above 6000 :E

[NCGAIO 562]

Seriously though ... impressive is the speed with which topics  with  doubts about the usefulness of the NAM are answered.

 

Congratulations ... this is what  might call maxim efficiency