Concessions the game could make in place of larger map size.

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

Let's talk about what EA could do instead of a larger map size, if it is indeed impossible (I'm not saying it is or isn't).

 

I was thinking about:

 

Dropping the distance restiction on some plops - for instance if you built a large trade depot there is a limit to how far away you can place the train yard/shipping port.  This is silly.  For HQ addons (which are too big and expensive in the first plae) you should be able to place the lodging division a few blocks or even across the city from the HQ.

 

Encouraging more sims to walk.  I have personally followed sims walking home form work and a few times they walked all the way back and forth across the city twice before finding a home.  These people don't need cars!  Increase the range sims feel comfortable walking!  Even a quarter of the way across this map should be reasonable for these sims!

 

Rewards for keeping your city small.  I have had great fun making tiny towns with under 5,000 sims and working without and city hall addons unless other people in the region have them.  The problem is there's no incentive or reward for this.  I'd like to see a "small town" achievement for keeping your population under 5,000 and still providing basic services to your sims (police, fire, health, education, etc)

[Xenocity 343]

Reduce:

• Total number of agents
• Graphics and frame rate
• reduce the number of cars and sims that appear on screen at once

The better but rarely used idea:

 

Require higher specs for larger maps and make them offline only...

 

The downside is the backlash from consumers and the media for fragmenting the userbase.

[xoxide 377]

Project Called "Cluster Enhancement 2.0" is a conceptual idea of expanding the interactions of the direct cities tied to each other via roads.

 

Those cities share a unique bond within the game vs just any city randomly to another separate from the map or region in play.

 

The idea was to use more than just general statistical information to enhance the capabilities of each cluster to work as a MEGA CITY.  This was an idea we tossed around before we even officially knew about the extended maps not really being possible announcement from maxis.

 

By increasing the communications and information shared between those cities within the cluster it would be possible in theory to create one large working city which would or could share R C I G S E U (Residential Commercial Industrial Government Services Energy and Utilities) using ratio and percentages if not 100% at all times.

 

As a result you would have basically 7 x 2k x 2k = 14k cities max with a GW tied to them possible 7 cities and 1 GW make up maximum allowed for one cluster.

 

Now take this idea and match it with the latest mods released and you do get a pretty new direction in game play.  However these changes would need a new way of handling cluster information and most likely would not be possible as a mod but needed to be done with enhancements to the core to increase the type of data and communications between cities possible.  Database of information generated upon startup and exit of each city to keep some sort of new balance on the local and or server environment

 

That's all I have

XoXiDe / Jeff

[elemental1100 50]

Waterproof tunnels would help. Tunnels add streets without taking up much useable land.

[xoxide 377]

venkat could not get them to work right with the engine as designed.  water tables always cause issues

[elemental1100 50]

And yet I think it's Skye's regional freeway mod that lets you draw roads underwater, and the cars can drive on it without any problems. At least I think that's what I saw in his video. Haven't used that mod myself.

[xoxide 377]

that's always been the case IF your road can get drawn under water but tunnels follow different properties.. Z axis is a strange aspect

[Gooner79 1]

We need more regional options to make region playing more user friendly.

 

For example from what i know utilities that get shared will get divided by the number of other active cities connected to the city sharing utilities whether they demand them or not. For me the split should only occur once another city actually demands the needed utility. Example you have 5 joined citys in a region. 4 of these citys have power plants but the 5th city dosn't and wants to get some power from the 1st city. The 1st city will only sell 1/5th of what he has to the 5th city even though the other citys have power plants and will likely never demand the other 3/5 available. I know that the 5th city could also ask for power from the other 3 citys kinda helping to balance this out a bit, but it dosnt make sence to me for a city holding so much power back just incase another city in the region may need it, instead of giving it all the the city that needs it here and now.

 

Freight and workers should have a similar regional UI to that of utilitys sharing or better still services sharing (ie fire trucks). And again not be divided eqaully until a city actually asks for them to be sent. This Option alone could actually make regional play to work as 1st intended and aleviate some of the pressure of people wanting bigger maps just by having better "managment" options.

 

For example city A has 3000 unemployed sims and city B has 1000 jobs available, the mayor of city B should be able to select an amount of workers he would like to employ to come into his city ie in this example he needs 1000 workers so he could select 1000 from the 3000 available and no more (kinda like we can already do with fire trucks etc). The exact same logic can be applied to frieght and even students if you wanted instead of these things being out of your control, and just as importantly these options could free up some of this insane traffic we see between regions as you will only get the traffic you allow/need.

 

These extra options for me would definately make regional play a much better experience and may even make regions work as 1st intended, maybe with these options you may finally be able to have that all industrial city that you could assign workers coming into the city and all the freight going out to all the right places. Also this could actually help reduce the strain on the engine not add to it, as we will not have the mass brawl of un-organised sims trying to get everywhere and getting stuck which must add a lot of uneeded weight on the engine.

[xoxide 377]

one of the original ideas was city planning all along.. people zone in huge chunks which is not how you play 2013 .. you also for ever 80 must have 50 residential 20 commercial 10 industrial or 5/8 2/8 1/8 R C I balance to keep a city working correctly if you grow slow and steady.

 

Most people do not play that way honestly.. they play by either designing imo.

 

not sure how things will evolve now that we have some new direction to look at and kind of observe.

 

I do know we as a community need more tools to take dxf's and make them useable within 2013 .. hope more solutions come along that is slowing down modding right now big time with new content ideas.

[USA_Pride 49]

They could keep the map size the same, but make everything else smaller...

 

Or, maybe tell the cops, ambulances, and firefighters that it's OK to drive in opposing lanes if you're responding to an emergencies, instead of watching a house burn down because emergency responders are inept at driving.

[xoxide 377]

Scale has been looked at.. Most everything is scaleable except for roads from all research done so far.  There are global scale values and individual model scale values which are modifiable