Ways to add Challenge to SC4

[Ukir 0]

Well, first off, I've been lurking for a long while without registering in here. I simply had no reason to say something, until now.

 

Anyways, I've been feeling the game has been extremely easy or hard as of late. It's extremely easy on easy, and extremely hard on hard, if I don't use cheats, to be exact.

 

That, of course, is because of only one thing. I overuse the money on hard, whilst on easy I have enough to use all I want and still have some remaining.

Basically I try to make the layout of the city before letting it run(paused). While it is a good idea on easy, and makes the game extremely easy since I can simply design what I want and let it grow without having to change much afterwards, it's not good on hard with the normal budget.

 

The purpose of this topic, is to find a way to add challenge to the easy difficulty without changing my play style, OR finding a way to fix my playstyle on hard, not in the sense of changing it completely, but rather adjusting it to not do a huge project from day 1.

 

The latter technically should be up to me, but it isn't that easy to fix a bad habit, and it has become a habit, so my question would be "What can I do to fix that issue?" Not in the sense that I want someone to find out a surefire way to fix it, but rather tips on things I could do to gradually fix it.

 

As for the former, I would like to find out ways to make the game challenging even on flat terrain(with or without rivers, I don't like mountain cities because they become a bit -too- hard). So things that would make designing the city in one-go possible, but not definitive. As I've went so far, I simply have to adjust a few times the amount of power/water the city is generating to sustain bigger buildings. I don't feel any challenge in fixing issues, besides the pollution. And that part is more of an annoyance than it is a challenging part of the game, for me.

 

Another thing that would be good would be mods to make issues of other sorts. Things which would make the game challenging despite having no money issues, and no terrain/pollution issues... Other sorts of issues. I like building whatever I want, but after building it, it's become more of a movie than a game, since I barely have to fix anything. Of course that's only on easy since I have money to do what I please for the most part.

 

I'm sorry if I wasn't descriptive enough, but right now this is the best way to explain what I want I can come up with. I hope it's enough.

 

Thanks for reading and hopefully someone will enlighten me on this matter.

[Compdude787 916]

If you want a challenge to this game, try downloading the Network Addon Mod (NAM) and using the Real Highway (RHW), which is one of its components. This is a substitute (but not a replacement) for the default Maxis highways, and you can build custom interchanges, have highways that are just two lanes wide to big-city 10-lane freeways. The RHW, as well as the rest of the NAM, can take a while to learn and can be frustrating, since there is so much to them. However, if you are looking for a bigger challenge to this game, the RHW is it. Even experienced players can find the RHW challenging to work with, but it's still worth it. The NAM is pretty much an essential mod to have for this game; it's like a second expansion pack to SC4 because it adds so many features.

 

Personally I think the most fun thing that you can do w/ the NAM is to make diagonal streets, draggable Fractional Angle Roads (instead of having to plop down a bunch of puzzle pieces), and smooth curves with a click or drag of the mouse. This allows you to make a more realistic street layout for suburbs. No more boring, unrealistic grid layouts in your suburbs!

[Ukir 0]

If you want a challenge to this game, try downloading the Network Addon Mod (NAM) and using the Real Highway (RHW), which is one of its components. This is a substitute (but not a replacement) for the default Maxis highways, and you can build custom interchanges, have highways that are just two lanes wide to big-city 10-lane freeways. The RHW, as well as the rest of the NAM, can take a while to learn and can be frustrating, since there is so much to them. However, if you are looking for a bigger challenge to this game, the RHW is it. Even experienced players can find the RHW challenging to work with, but it's still worth it. The NAM is pretty much an essential mod to have for this game; it's like a second expansion pack to SC4 because it adds so many features.

 

Personally I think the most fun thing that you can do w/ the NAM is to make diagonal streets, draggable Fractional Angle Roads (instead of having to plop down a bunch of puzzle pieces), and smooth curves with a click or drag of the mouse. This allows you to make a more realistic street layout for suburbs. No more boring, unrealistic grid layouts in your suburbs!

Well, I did install NAM recently, and it is interesting...but I don't know, it doesn't feel as much like a challenge as it feels like new content.

 

Sure, it adds variety, and is complex, but complexity is not necessarily challenging. To me the NAM is more of a way to design the way I want to, than a way to add more challenge to the game.

 

What I'm looking for is a way to change the difficulty of the game to the ideal "not too hard nor too easy". Whether that is done by modding the game, by changing settings, or by something else, doesn't matter much to me.

 

I just feel SC4 feels always the same. It does get "challenging" depending on some factors, but not in the good way but rather on the "chore" kind of way.

 

I'm hoping there is a mod or something else out there which brings true challenge to the game, not just "stuff to do", but actually having to think more carefully about how to build the city.

 

At the same time, however, I want it to be something that won't become just stressful(basically anything that is too hard is stressful to me). I want to have to think more carefully about how to build the whole city, not just a few things, such as roads, but everything. However I am frustrated the MOST when I fail. So I want something which I can do, but which wouldn't be easy and make me bored.

 

So yeah, it's tough since I have absolutely no clue on what kind of mod or setting changes would have the effect I want. That's why I posted here, hoping someone will help me out with that, even if slightly.

 

I already am using CAM and NAM, plus a few custom lots. I know about most big mods, such as CAM, NAM, SPAM, JRP, and so on. Most of them add content to the game, but they don't change anything big.

SimMars is interesting-ish but doesn't seem to change anything difficulty-wise as far as I know.

 

I'm hoping there is a mod out there that changes the game in a way I have to think carefully on how to build my city, but at the same time is forgiving to errors(that's one reason I hated the new SimCity, the 3D factor made it very, very hard to make the road system actually be effective, and misclicks and such would bring big issues sometimes).

 

If the forgiving part is asking too much, I just hope there is a mod that makes me have to think more on the city design. Currently the only thing that limits me is my budget. I can pretty much make a city any way I want with enough money.

 

But that, while being fun in its own way when I started, currently is only being too easy and somewhat boring.

 

Again, sorry if I didn't explain well enough on the first post. I should have added that I don't want new content, but rather a way to make the game challenging as it is, such as a mod that makes it a REALLY bad idea to add, say, residences near anything that has pollution, or a mod that makes it a REALLY bad idea to make commercial zones far from residences. That kind of thing.

 

Hopefully someone knows such a mod or even some changes to the game's settings which would result in such a thing.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Pick up the extra cheats dll.

 

Play on hard, and if you are running a large tile, try using the moolah cheat to set your treasury to 500000 when you start a new city.

 

This is not totally necessary, but it makes it OK for the first while, anyway. 

 

Now, no initial layout.  Pick a spot and lay down a couple of orthogonal streets.  Zone some low density C lots along these streets, 2 x 1.  That requires manual zoning, by the way.  You will need a power plant.  Use the windmill.

 

These should start to build.  Then add some streets of R 2 x 1 above them, add a water tower, a cop shop, a fire station, and a school.  Layout enough piping to water everywhere (you get better buildings if they are watered).  Look at your budget and you will be in the red.  This is the first challenge.

 

Keep zoning more R 2 x 1 until you get into the black.  Do a save and exit to region so you can see what your jobs:Sims ratio is,.  You'll have to calculate this by hand.  This should be 2 Sims per job.  This is the next challenge.  Try to make it happen while staying in the black.

 

You can add farms, industry, medium and high density lots (slowly), and take it out of turtle into Rhino.  Running on Cheetah misses all the animation.

 

The ongoing challenge is to build your region this way, connecting up the city tiles, and slowly growing the whole works into a metropolis.

 

Have fun.

[jmsepe 2,038]

Using the RHW and creating awesome yet efficient interchanges is a real challange. Trust me.

 

How about try to recreate a city, that is also challenging. 

[Ukir 0]

Using the RHW and creating awesome yet efficient interchanges is a real challange. Trust me.

 

How about try to recreate a city, that is also challenging. 

 

I thought about trying to recreate a city, and that does seem challenging, but I honestly have no idea on how to do such a thing. I guess I'll look up to see if I can find any kind of information on that. Thanks for reminding me.

 

And well, RHW seems nice and all, but I honestly don't like to make those highways. I usually prefer to make avenues or roads, or even railroads...The Highways simply seem off most of the time, on the cities I make.

 

If I made a replica of a city, that would probably fit well though, if it's part of the city, so I will try mixing the two of them, once I get the hang of it. So thanks for both of your suggestions. 

 

If anyone has anything else to input, then by all means post it. I'm still looking for good ways to make the game challenging. The ones mentioned are good, but I doubt they are the only good ones, after so long since SC4 was released, there ought to be something else.

[jmsepe 2,038]

Hmm.. Recreating a city is not an easy job but hey, there are even some that tried to recreate multiple cities. For a starter, I suggest searching your way through the city journals in this forum for some recreation journals and see how they do it. Select what style you want to create and download the things you need for it. To be honest, some sc4 players even use google maps to see how accurate their recreated cities are. The road to recreating a city is long but if you reach the end, the efforts will be worth it.

 

Some recommended recreation city journals:

1. The World by ilikehotdogsalot

2. Tokyo by Neonsim

3. Recreating New York by Kelistmac 

4. Hong Kong by TowerDude

and others...

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

Depends what level you want to try to re-create it on.  Many re-creation CJs seem to be just "inspired" by the city.  The closest you could realistically come would be to copy the road map as best as possible, along with zones, parks, water and terrain, civic buildings and major landmarks.  Obviously you can't get all the buildings.

 

Use Google Earth, measure distances, make a lot of maps and charts, and slowly build it.

[Compdude787 916]

I think if you do what A Nonny Moose suggested and didn't start out with any sort of plan for how you'd build your tile and just do organic growth, then it might end up being a lot more fun. For me, what I enjoy most about this game is dealing with traffic issues. I'm an aspiring civil engineer, and I like to draw road maps of made-up cities, mainly focusing on their layout of roads and freeways.

You could also re-create a city. You could make it exactly the same down to every street, or you could take a region of your city, use the same sort of landforms, but redesign the roads and neighborhoods to how you think they should be. I would love to do something like this with Seattle, which is where I live. All the roads here are over-capacity IMO. I would fix that and make wider freeways.

[APSMS 1,892]

Hmm. Cogeo should have something to say about this as he finds the game easy even on hard.

 

His solution was to play on Hard and start with no money at all (forced to take out a loan) and start the first few years surviving only on the jobs available in the municipal buildings (schools, fire station, city hall etc.). This would certainly force a certain play style. You can set your money to any number with the moolah cheat available with the extracheats.dll.

 

A thing I'd be wary of when recreating a city is the urge to include every. single. street. road. and. avenue. This is because of the fixed unchangeable game grid, which causes roads to occupy space that will eat valuable space in other areas of the game, especially if you want to recreate an old city like London or Berlin or Paris.

 

I've been reinterpreting San Diego, and the temptation to include everything is strong, though the map is ever so slightly underscaled, and this makes it extremely frustrating to do so. I've resorted to trying to capture the major roads and boulevards and the general feel of the region, though even this is proving difficult. I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with how some parts are turning out, but it's definitely a challenge, and this is even with me not worrying at all about using money cheats etc. Even with all the trouble I used to have with balancing the budget, I find cosmetics in SC4 even harder. Trying to find the right look or feel of an area can be very hard, even with practice and precise plugin control (something I lack); if you want a challenge, trying to achieve a certain look could certainly be the way to go.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

In case it wasn't obvious from my previous post, I tend to produce cities as they were originally created.  You start with some excuse to have more than just a big farm (a village) and go from there. 
 
If there is a sea coast, start with a fishing village.  You need some lots that are not default to do this.  I have a lot of stuff from the Pegasus site to get this going.  Eventually you can build your little village into a thriving port complete with container docks, break bulk docks, etc.  Here is an example:
 


You can see that this town is not very far along, but you can get to a huge city if you wish.

[Ukir 0]

Hmm. Cogeo should have something to say about this as he finds the game easy even on hard.

 

His solution was to play on Hard and start with no money at all (forced to take out a loan) and start the first few years surviving only on the jobs available in the municipal buildings (schools, fire station, city hall etc.). This would certainly force a certain play style. You can set your money to any number with the moolah cheat available with the extracheats.dll.

 

A thing I'd be wary of when recreating a city is the urge to include every. single. street. road. and. avenue. This is because of the fixed unchangeable game grid, which causes roads to occupy space that will eat valuable space in other areas of the game, especially if you want to recreate an old city like London or Berlin or Paris.

 

I've been reinterpreting San Diego, and the temptation to include everything is strong, though the map is ever so slightly underscaled, and this makes it extremely frustrating to do so. I've resorted to trying to capture the major roads and boulevards and the general feel of the region, though even this is proving difficult. I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with how some parts are turning out, but it's definitely a challenge, and this is even with me not worrying at all about using money cheats etc. Even with all the trouble I used to have with balancing the budget, I find cosmetics in SC4 even harder. Trying to find the right look or feel of an area can be very hard, even with practice and precise plugin control (something I lack); if you want a challenge, trying to achieve a certain look could certainly be the way to go.

 

After reading your reply and some others, I figured I'd try something a bit more ambitious. Of course, I'm not sure whether I can pull it off. But there's fun in that as well. 

I'm going to try and replicate Tokyo in an ambitious manner. Basically I'll use a Region with the Tokyo landscapes(NOT Japan landscapes) and attempt to make the whole region become Tokyo, which grants some opportunity to make it as accurate as possible(and probably not as far from the real population Tokyo has).

 

Of course for that I'll need plenty japanese buildings, and to remove maxis buildings probably. I also think I'll try starting it slowly like a real city would. I'll probably attempt the 0$ Hard difficulty start for the first area in the region. If not, at least start on Hard with normal funding.

 

Thanks for the helpful posts, everyone. While I still don't know how to do it, I'll try. It's certainly better than worrying about failure before starting.

[jmsepe 2,038]

Woah. Good choice. I'll be waiting to see that.