Would you consider ploppables "cheating" ?

[mayorlucario 20]

This might sound like a silly question, but is using ploppables considered cutting corners when it comes to building a fantastic yet "legit" city? I have a feeling that aside from the stray landmark or so, most of the buildings in my city should be grown rather than plopped. I mean, I don't use a demand mod so I still have to work to get the demand for them (as in the case of CO$$$, for example). However, as of late I've been getting the same exact commercial office buildings and it's causing some unsightly repetition in my city. In addition, it's becoming impossible to grow lots of dimensions bigger than 4x4, so I'm considering using ploppables. I did use them in my other city (Sigmar City) but for this time around I wanted to build a more "natural" city.

 

An alternative question is, do you use ploppables in your cities? If not, how do you prevent the same low-to-mid skyscrapers from appearing every time the office demand is sky high? Is it just a matter of how many buildings of similar job stats I have? Or is there another way to get those 7000+ lots without ploppables? Because every time I try to grow a skyscraper, either a 3500 or 4000 job skyscraper appears rather than the other, higher job count ones. 

 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

In a word, no.  You can't cheat in a single player game.  Who is being deceived?

 

Ploppables are fine, I use them sparingly, but then I don't present any CJs.  I think to create a CJ you are pretty much forced to plop stuff.

 

It is a pity that Residential plops don't work.

[mayorlucario 20]

It's just that I feel like I should earn that skyscraper's presence in a city, and that includes manually zoning it and watching it develop. I do muster the demand for it regardless; it's not just some space filling landmark.

Well I have seen some cheat lots on STEX that magically remove air pollution and garbage. Also the money tree and garbage chute over the edge.

Now that I think about it, plopping is actually realistic in that a real life mayor does have some say over what exactly gets built in response to commercial demand, or at least some part of the city council which a simcity mayor has dictatorial control over. Unless that's really not the case.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Yup, I understand what you mean. I also like that rewarding feeling when that spectacular skyscraper finally pops up. Using growables only also teaches you how to "channel" demand onto a few high-density lots to get some skyscrapers going.

 

Does plopping equal cheating? No and yes. No because what our resident moose said: You're not playing in a competition with others. Yes because you cheat the game mechanics. Instead of careful zoning, good playing and that particular bit of good luck, you just click a few times, and there it is.

 

I'd go so far as to say you even cheat yourself because you'll miss out on the rewarding feeling mentioned above. Then again, this aspect depends on your playing style: some prefer organically growing everything, being challenged with surprising developments, and managing a living city, whereas others focus on creating the most accurate manifestation of their idea of a visually pleasing sandbox city. The choice is yours...

 

IMO, considerations like "in real life, the mayor would have a say" don't really apply. SimCity strays from RL in so many ways (no elections, no lengthy negotiations, you can immediately bulldoze anything, you have god-like powers) that 1:1 comparisons between game and life just don't cut it.

 

Personally, I only use static "eye candy" landmarks, and only very sparingly. In fact, I use fewer than I like. I would like to use them to accentuate certain corners of my cities - say, one to three landmarks per city tile (not just skyscrapers, mind you, but also low-rise stuff and bigger monuments), but I somehow tend to forget all about it.

 

As for repetitive buildings, yes, that's mostly a matter of too few competing BATs (buildings of similar size and category).

[danathomas 7]

 i do think a lot of the mods would be cheats. For instance the cheat i use is the black hole waste management. I justify it by saying to myself that a regionwide landfill is not allowed in the game, therefore it must be outside the region. I dont think that money cheats are really cheats, because the money doesnt matter much. But anything that changes the desirability i would consider a cheat, because its distorting the regions balance, but i think its all a matter of preference.

  Personally i dont like to use anything with an effect because it alters the balance too much, and i too feel like i did not earn it. I also think that its a little easier to manage my downtown without them, because the you can get the game to balance slowly with the region without giant falls in demand elswhere.

[MushyMushy 3,617]

Yes and no.

 

Yes if you are playing the game to try to build a city with the vanilla game's mechanics, which means letting everything grow normally.

No if you are making a CJ. It's basically a given if you are making a CJ, as you quite simply cannot make an area look as nice with growables as you can with ploppables (in any reasonable period of time, at least).

 

I guess it really depends on your goal. If you wanna "play" the game, then ploppables could technically be a cheat because (as said above), it sort of plays with the game mechanics. On the other hand, if you want total control over the appearance of your city (i.e. for CJs), then you'll want ploppables, or else you'll be sitting there for 5 years trying to get a specific 6k capacity CO$$$ tower to grow.

 

I personally use ploppables very heavily in CBDs and industrial sectors, since it is a huge pain to wait for massive capacity buildings to grow, even if you have a demand mod on.

[Compdude787 916]

I'm an organic growth person when it comes to just letting buildings grow, but when building transportation networks, I like to plan it all out first. When I download a building that comes w/ a growable and a ploppable version, I always delete the ploppable lot and only keep the growable in my plugins folder.

[cogeo 960]

I don't really regard ploppable RCI (well, C&I only, and basically C) buildings as cheats, and this because you can't get more growth with ploppables, as demand is determined by your workforce and population. CO demand is determined by the existence and availability of highly educated workforce. If you have fewer CO jobs than your workforce/EQ suggests, you will have positive CO demand, and CO developmemt can take place (if desirability, incl traffic=customers allows it). If a CO building grows, CO demand is "satisfied" (reduced by the amount of jobs created). It can finally be flattened, and then a fresh load of highly educated workers is needed, for the demand to rise again. If you have full educational coverage (elem+high schools, libraries, college/university, museum and finally the Opera - get the fix) even for R$, this can happen in only a few months. On the other hand, CS demand seems to only be determined by the R population, and this works separately for each wealth class (eg more R$$ residents - not necessarily workers - will increase CS$$ demand, it's linear).

So demand (and therefore the number of jobs you can create) is determined by the workforce and the population. Using ploppables still "satisfies" (reduces) demand, so you will simply not get the growth from the growables. That is, with ploppables you just "commandeer" development, but you don't get more growth finally. If you plop too much, demand will turn negative, and some of your growables or even your recently built ploppables may be abandoned, reducing the number of jobs to the number determined by your workforce or population (unless you switch to a residential city immediately and try to attract more residents - the extra jobs created should drive R demand up - and/or educate them).

Furthermore, using ploppables has some negative (in my view) consequences:
- Costs a lot of money (although certain custom content developers may have set the price too low)
- It's unknown what happens with the simulator. For the simulator they are "Civics", and are therefore not included in the RCI count. The simulator decides whether to grant you a certain bulding based on the demand and the growth-stage mix of the current development and the stage of the lot(s) in question (the higher the population the more likely to get bigger buildings). You need a certain number of small and medium buildings before you can get bigger ones, so satisfying a considerable portion of your demand through ploppables reduces the total number of lots, and therefore the chances to get bigger growables.

As for the repetitive buildings, yes it's true, but the only true solution here is just install more custom content, esp small and medium ones, so you really get more diversity. Only check if they are correctly modded, otherwise they may be growing all over the place (or instead be hard to grow), paying too many or few taxes, etc etc). It's not a pleasant task, but you have to do it.

You may be interested in some techniques to get certain buildings to grow. Take a look at my posts and (nfortunately these are old posts and the imageshack site has changed its policies since then, so the images can only be downloaded, not viewed directly). The city appears to feature a nearly "controlled" or "arranged" development (and it actually does), only this was done using growables exclusively.

[.anonyman 28]

Yes, I consider it cheating, but I don't mind a bit if you guys cheat.

 

If you want to grow a skyscraper with 7k+ jobs, the demand bar needs to be pegged at the top. Even then, the game may satisfy that demand with 1-2 'smaller' office buildings. Have you tried this: 1) pause 2) fully prepare the 4x4 lot with trees on it and amenities nearby 3) bulldoze a couple of mid-level, boring office buildings 4) unpause. This sometimes tricks the game enough to work.

[dogma555 187]

Sometimes you just can't beat that organic growth look.. some of my favorite areas are like 90-95% organic and its certainly interesting that it just happened to grow that way.. but other times, you really need to be able to plop that certain skyscraper in the right spot of a CBD, and there's nothing cheating or even unrealistic about that.

 

Plus the word "cheating" isn't really the right way to put it.. as SC4 is not a game you play to WIN and BEAT.. it's a game you play to keep it going! Especially considering the game ALLOWS you to open the landmark menu and plop from a laundry list of buildings.

[Jasoncw 11,839]

It's been so long since I've gotten a proper city going, but I tend to just let things grow, make the things I like historical and things I don't get demolished. When I tend to plop things is when there's a set of buildings that form an ensemble, or when there are buildings with very specific lot designs that really need to be manually placed somewhere they make sense. 

 

I feel like I have enough manual control over the important parts of my cities with just plopping civic buildings. 

 

Although if I were more serious (making a CJ or something) I might plop more aggressively. 

[Compdude787 916]

As for the repetitive buildings, yes it's true, but the only true solution here is just install more custom content, esp small and medium ones, so you really get more diversity. Only check if they are correctly modded, otherwise they may be growing all over the place (or instead be hard to grow), paying too many or few taxes, etc etc). It's not a pleasant task, but you have to do it.

Yes, that's what I do whenever I want to reduce building repetition--download more buildings!

[MandelSoft 2,769]

You can use plopables to cheat by skipping growth stages, but they can also be used the other way around: limit growth in some areas. For instance, although I like skyscrapers, I don't skyscraper jungles. I can use plopables to determine where I can put skyscrapers and where I can put medrises, or when I can plop skyscrapers or medrises with a footprint larger than in-game zoning allows.

 

There are also a few instances where plopables can actually be pretty helpful (usually this is for the looks):

• Historic and wall to wall districts:

  

• Deliberate repetitiveness (especially prefab buildings):

  

• Fillers. Fillers can actually limit the area you can put development on (which makes it actually harder to satisfy demand), but they look aestetically pleasing).

  Before filler usage:

  

  After filler usage:

  

So, in some cases they can make the game harder instead of easier. It's still a pretty delicate job and I still grow a lot in my cities (especially suburbs, industry and farms). You just need to find the sweet spot...

Best,

Maarten

[Casper3141 60]

Well, you cant really recreate a city from real life without ploppables depending on the city. If you were to attempt it with Growables you would be counter playing yourself I mean, San Francisco no Transamerica Building would be odd if the city is laid out as it is in real life, same goes for say Los Angeles, New York, London. Even if your making a fictional city based on a real life one.

Manhattan would look odd with all 1-2 story houses and no skyscrapers or a Los Angeles sized area with nothing but giant residential blocks and skyscrapers, just the way I look at it

[mrsmartman 200]

More attention and work are required for ploppables.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

All things considered, I prefer the game's fantasy lands to trying to make an RL city.  That's just too much like work for my retired old mind.

[mayorlucario 20]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

 

The main reason I want to use ploppables is because some high capacity buildings are simply impossible to grow. And as a city gets larger, it becomes more agonizing to wait for that skyscraper to grow. Trust me, I already know how to get skyscrapers by reaching the minimum growth cap and create desirable surroundings. Also, it helps to break the monotony of what skyscrapers DO decide to grow. 

 

Since I do play for aesthetics, I'd say that ploppables then are okay for the purpose of diversifying a landscape (and getting those precious skyscrapers to finally appear! I can't waste those microjoules necessary to download the building and wait for it to appear).

 

 

Yes, I consider it cheating, but I don't mind a bit if you guys cheat.

 

If you want to grow a skyscraper with 7k+ jobs, the demand bar needs to be pegged at the top. Even then, the game may satisfy that demand with 1-2 'smaller' office buildings. Have you tried this: 1) pause 2) fully prepare the 4x4 lot with trees on it and amenities nearby 3) bulldoze a couple of mid-level, boring office buildings 4) unpause. This sometimes tricks the game enough to work.

 

I do this each time the demand in my main city has skyrocketed, but it isn't as effective for lots greater than 4x4, or more custom lots like 3x5, 6x3, etc. Because of this, I'm hesitant to download buildings higher than 6x6 or any of those larger lots. 

[MushyMushy 3,617]

<snip>

 

I do this each time the demand in my main city has skyrocketed, but it isn't as effective for lots greater than 4x4, or more custom lots like 3x5, 6x3, etc. Because of this, I'm hesitant to download buildings higher than 6x6 or any of those larger lots. 

 

Yeah, larger lots (of any RCI type) are a huge pain to grow, which is why a ploppable (functional or just a LM) is usually included. It tends to irk me a bit when the big (massive capacity) residential towers that get uploaded that are odd sizes don't have a ploppable nonfunctional LM version (since I've yet to learn the art of plopping residential lots (the cheat mod-thing) without them abandoning).

[mayorlucario 20]

Some of the lots I have come only in ploppables, and they're pretty nifty so I'll probably put them in the city eventually. 

[Bdub01 201]

I like to think of it as playing solitaire. It is cheating if you turn over a card your not really suppose to, but your cheating yourself so who cares. Some may say starting on easy with half a million simoleans is cheating. I don't use any of the pollution or garbage or water etc cheats. I like having to build that stuff and figure out how to place them.

When it comes to ploppables I will use them though rather sparingly. Now some things like say a Micky D's that's eye candy only I have no problem putting to add variety to the city. Even when I was playing just the vanilla game I would put one or two of the freebie buildings they give you.

Now here's a question... Could the NAM be called cheating since it makes the game easier to play? Just wondering what others think bout that.