Tips for building bridges

[47ply 1,100]

I am working on region where most of my shorelines are at sea-level witch makes for awesome beaches but building bridges seems to be a problem as it seems to take at least a 25 to 30 meter height increase to make the bridge functional for boats but with the slope mod there seems to be at least a mile long approach leaving so much wasted space is there someway around this?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There is an option in the NAM that puts bridge approaches at sea level.

[rsc204 21,814]

To make nicer bridges a bit of terraforming in preparation makes all the difference, you can completely do away with approaches with this method.

Find a good level part leading up to where the terrain starts to dip towards the water. Place a single road/rail "stub" on this spot, then continue in the direction of the shore, keep going until you are only one tile away from the last tile of land. You want to keep the last tile of land at the lowest elevation possible before it would be water. Now the hard part is mirroring the exact same height on the other side of the water, to make the bridge look as good as possible we need to terraform another embankment at exactly the same height.

If you have Buggi's extra cheats.dll installed, press CTRL + X and enter "terrainquery" into the box and press enter. Now select the query tool and hover above the first embankment, note the "y" value or height of the terrain, hopefully there will be a tile on the other side at the same level when levelled, if it's bumpy it will change when you level it. Using digger/raiser lots here can be helpful, so we can find anything that's within .5 of the first value too, and through a combination of raising/lowering by the difference get a match. For example side one is 300m, side two is 288.5, we can raise it 27m (15, then 12m), and lower it by 15.5 (-7.5 then - 8 and it would be exactly 300. Once you've got the right height, fill out the second embankment.

Now remove at least 3-5 tiles nearest the water and then drag your bridge across starting on the last of the embankment tiles (not the 1-tile gap). You should get a perfect bridge, with the supports all perfectly placed and absolutely no approach whatsoever.

You could also make the terrain heights by making/demolishing a land bridge from the first embankment if that's easier.

[Chesh 173]

i have the same problem. quad-deck ferries or what?

[BlakeMW 84]

It's tough if you have a low-lying map, the slope mod, AND, want to permit boat under bridges. Unfortunately the only raised bridge is for roads and it's not available for any other network type, not even one way roads.

 

So possible solutions are:

1) Only use the raised road bridge and don't have any other bridge types.

2) You can remove the slope mod temporarily while you place your bridge, allowing for a steeper approach. Then reinstate the slope mod.

3) You can just deal with the mile long approach, building up land on the sides to make it look nicer.

4) Some NAM transit types can be placed underwater, it's meant to be for 'causeways' but that is not enforced as such. You can build diagonal bridges and such that way. I'm not very experienced with the limits and possibilities of this technique though you'd have to experiment.

 

I personally would probably use a combination of 1 and 2.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I think I saw recently that the NAM team is working on ferry clearing bridges.

[xonedl 341]

I did it this way, put some walls mod on the slope =/

- level up the ground with ground raiser tools

- smooth one end with train tracks

- decrease / increase the length of slope as you like

At most it take up 4 x 15 squares...

 

[Pobs 24]

^^^^ that. That I like. A lot.

[DomoTheRussian 68]

^^^^^

^^^^^

Dat powerlines.

[47ply 1,100]

thanks for the advise everyone im just going to deal with the long approaches and hope like Nonny says the nam can fix the ferry's

 

and xonedl that bridge and power lines look great

[Sowester 4]

I had a difficult time getting bridges to work as well.  In the one depicted below, I graded my highway approaches at around 300 meters height on both sides (50m above sea level).  It doesn't have to be at 300m height per say, but the approaches should be at the roughly the same height on both sides of the river, or other area being crossed.  Normally having equal highway approach heights was good enough to make the bridge build, but after installing NAM, this was no longer sufficient to make the bridge build happen, and id usually get an error.   Now, since NAM, the bridge building requires a bit more precision in terraforming, but once you get the hang of it, its not too bad.  So, after grading the approaches at an equal level on both sides of the river (using the 300m height in this case), I then laid a level pad of 3 tiles x 4 tiles, just above sea level, at about 253m, or 3m above water level (standard sea level is 250m in SimCity 4 ) on each side of the river, just at the end of the approach.  You will note in the final picture, that once the bridge builds, it fills in the earth over top of these pads, so they appear to "disappear" once the bridge is built.

PS, i also use the SimCity 4 extra cheats plugin for precise height measurements:  Once installed, press CTRL + X and enter "terrainquery" into the box and press enter.  I'd never be without it now!

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Bridge-building is severely restricted (or not restricted at all) by your "slope" mod. Because each exemplar per network has SO many parameters that are so much a matter of personal taste, I have been advocating for years that each and every player customize his/her own "slope" mod. Then you may set not just slopes but tunnel entries, bridge sensitivity, curvature, range of smoothing, cost of earth moving, embankments... there are about 20 parameters for each of a dozen networks (no wonder no prefab "slope mod" fits your style!).

Get iLives and get modding 

PS: Someday, the NAM will include "slope" modding as a tab in TSCT. Until then, every SC4 player should learn iLives 0.93 and edit the network placement exemplars for him/her self.

[Hal917 22]

My challenge has been building avenue and highway bridges. I have waterfront stretches on both sides where I can build road bridges, no sweat. But it won't allow me to build anything four-lane.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

14 hours ago, Hal917 said:

it won't allow me to build anything four-lane

Each network type has its own "slope" exemplar with limits on parameters like bridge height diff between ends. It's entirely possible that your road exemplar is looser than the avenue's or highway's. First get a "slope mod", and then get in there with iLives and see what all is limited by those exemplars. Then tune them to suit your own need for aesthetics versus ease of placement (prolly best to play with them in a sandbox before exposing a "real" region or city to experimental settings).