Show us your Hard Mode cities

[TPB 562]

Hey all, lets see your Hard Mode cities' images! And lets discuss sound city management practices!

 

So, you may be wondering what Hard Mode actually does.. well, there is a video that looks at the code and explains it very clearly.

 

In essence it:

 

1. Increases building and maintenance costs by 25%
2. Increases relocation costs
3. Halves demolition refunds
4. Reduces RCI demand, possibly ~20%
5. Increases difficulty of leveling up buildings and increasing land value

 

      Rules:

• All images must be from cities played with the Hard Mode mod enabled.
• No unlimited cash or unblock all mods.
• Include at least ONE image with Icons(UI) on, so we can gauge how you are doing

 

     Lets be honest guys since there is no way to enforce the rules otherwise

 

 

 

 

^This one was taken a couple of days before the rest, fires raging!

 

 

That is Wirikuta, population 13k. I had a wonderful time today playing in hard mode and I gotta say I loved the increased challenge, had to use loans twice and just barely got the budget balanced before bankruptcy. Only major issue I've had so far was overeducation (lol), my forestry and farms industry kept getting abandoned until I built a satellite town with no schools. No high density so far, nor public transport but I've managed to keep smooth traffic for the most part  And I got massive amounts of cash!

[MINIggy03 227]

I started my first city on hardmode and it was quite the challenge in the beginning.  It seems from my experience that hard mode would benefit from building fast early on and not taking your time with a small town that you spend far too much time watching!  When you're new to the game, there's just far too much distraction when you're losing money, lol. But I accept the challenge!

 

There was one moment where I didn't think I could make it through.  Just the required basics were putting me in the red and I wanted to enjoy this cute little town. I felt like I had to be quick to bring the town into a surplus because the coffers were draining faster than I anticipated,

 

At this point I had balanced the budget but I was only raking in around $20,

 

I thought the services required at this level were getting a little rediculous and I was still (because I liked to grow slowly) having a hard time bringing in big bucks, (it probably didn't help that I liked building parks)

 

What really helped begin to grow the surplus was when I purchased a tile and put the highway to use, building a new industry town (what I like to remember as the "boom" period, the beginning of their own little industrial revolution),

 

Here it is currently, (I'm sitting on 3+ million with $5,000+ surplus.  I have moderately high demand for industry but nothing else really)

[TPB 562]

Yeah it is quite challenging, takes a lot of tweaking the budget to pull through.

 

Looking great man, nice to see someone else's results. I really like how your city is turning out btw Great realistic layout.

 

Note to others: I changed the rules after he posted, but from now on lets include a icons shot if possible.

[MINIggy03 227]

Sorry I didn't have any UI shots!  I tried to at least describe what was happening at the time. 

[89James89 1,169]

My CJ is in hard mode so I can count that yay. Here's a image with the income and pop bits on them as I generally edit the images as their for my CJ.

 

 

 

 

 

Didn't post many more images here as you can see the whole story in the CJ.

 

Cheers

 

James

[TPB 562]

That's brave of you Did you dive into it in hard mode from the start or played in easy first?

 

Nice town. Is that water pollution all around the residential?

[89James89 1,169]

Dove straight in on hard. I've also got a half speed agent mod that slows people and vehicles to half their speed and am looking at a mod that stops cars from despawning.

 

Cheers

 

James

[Yorpie 1]

Hello

 

This is Riverview, my first city so far in Hard Mode and also my first city on this game.

 

 

 

As you can see on the screens, I'm doing pretty well. Land values are high, peaple are happy, money is flowing in. 
Not much earlier I had 10 000 cash income instead of 4 000, this changed due to me lowering taxes from 13% to 11%. Furthermore I created more parks and city services so my land value went up and I started to have level 5 building pop up.

Furthermore I have a good fire, police, EMS and education coverage. 

 

The city also has a subway system and bus lines covering each district. 

 

I also made some changes. For example the 'Evergreen Village' district is not allowed to have the highest level of buildings, so I have a good flow from suburbs to the center of the city.
'Snob Hill' and some other districts also have a prohibition on trucks.
 

Traffic itself is also doing fine. I recently created a new highway going past the downtown area and the industrial area, connecting two parts of the already existing highway, so I have good delivery times for my power plants. The city also has a cargo train station.

 

The city however still has a long way to go. There will be suburbs at each side of the inner city once done and I am going to do my best to keep all my citizens happy.

 

Any other questions about my city? Just ask.

 

Some more screenies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TPB 562]

Hello

 

*snip*

 

 

You are using the wrong button to add your images I can only see links...

[Yorpie 1]

 

Hello

 

*snip*

 

 

You are using the wrong button to add your images I can only see links...

 

 

Yes me to. I am using the 'Image' button. I just tried again and the picture shows up but it doesn't save my changes, I'll try again.

 

EDIT: It kinda works now, but I get a message that I'm not allowed to use the image extension, so i'll fix that first.

 

EDIT: Fixed

[TPB 562]

And I am glad you did! It's looking awesome!

 

Personally I am having a hard time with traffic  in Wirikuta Still got to learn how to get that right.

[Yorpie 1]

And I am glad you did! It's looking awesome!

 

Personally I am having a hard time with traffic  in Wirikuta Still got to learn how to get that right.

 

Yes, traffic can be a pain. It will never be perfect. Riverview is doing alright, though there are a few 'red spots' when showing the traffic filter. I try to make good use of public transport, because it helps.

Further I have 3 roundabouts, two of which are for functionality and one for decoration, because I'm trying to avoid getting the usual 'grid city' which I tend to make.

I also make use of the highways, having multiple exits. The one way roads are good to.

 

It is hard, but trust me you will learn. I just started playing yesterday, had quite some flaws, still have, but it gets better and better, you keep finding new things you didn't know about before. I wish you the best of luck.

 

And thank you very much for the kind words I do my best to make a good functioning city, which remains fun to look at. I have made some progress since last screenshots. A nuclear power plant has been added to a small nearby island, providing all the electricity the city needs for now. (I have all budgets for city services set to 150%). I also have expanded the suburbs, added a small town up to the north and a industrial zone which is specialized in forestry. The power plant did an amazing job, since it gave me the freedom to remove all my other power plants. As a result, my income has increased to 15 000+

 

Wirikuta looks very cool, I like the roundabout layout. I have created a small section in the suburbs like yours myself. Perhaps I should call it 'TPB district' xD. Also thank you for the tip about the 'satellite town', it gave my forest industry all the men(and women)power it needed.

 

I will post more screenies as my city expands, I hope to see yours expanding to. Best of luck!

[hugo_prado 4]

Started to play on hard, it's really more hard to do anything, but I'm progressing

 

 

[TMRaven 2]

 

 

 

I was actually struggling to retain a surplus of a weekly balance up until about 15k population when I decided to implement recycling and up the residential and industrial tax rate to 10%.  Those incineration plants are a killer!

 

Currently at 33,000, refraining from using any high-density zoning until I hit 100,000 on the region.  Currently in the process of slowly moving my industrial to cross-river.

[TPB 562]

Nice transport system you got going there hugo_prado!

 

TMRaven, Fantastic layout...it's got a real life feeling to it, love those pictures.

[1131989 223]

 

 

 

I was actually struggling to retain a surplus of a weekly balance up until about 15k population when I decided to implement recycling and up the residential and industrial tax rate to 10%.  Those incineration plants are a killer!

 

Currently at 33,000, refraining from using any high-density zoning until I hit 100,000 on the region.  Currently in the process of slowly moving my industrial to cross-river.

Mother of Sprawl Up close looks like a real American or Canadian city!

[BlakeMW 84]

This is my Hard Mod(e) city of Overramps.

 

 

I'm afraid it is a grid city. Although it's a grid city with a twist, the basic grid unit is 4x4 block squares, but most squares are subdivided into two rectangles, with the rotation being chosen completely at random. This gives all the advantages of a grid without looking nearly so gridly as when all roads run parallel to each other. I don't know if the random angles of the grid squares partition roads helps or hinders traffic flow, but I have a theory that some reduction in symmetry is beneficial.

 

The grid is sacred and holy, it even overpasses the interstate. The grid is built using some useful constraints. When I started the city I determined to only ever use the standard 2 way road (decorated varieties are okay) for the grid squares. This invariant, that the grid is always composed of 2-lane 2-way roads, is very helpful when laying bus routes, never any pesky one-ways confusing bus routes. It also offers cims a consistent shortest path to get from A to B, when A and B are nearby, reducing funneling of traffic. The high grid connectivity means highways are strictly high speed bypasses and are never required to get from A to B. There are *no* 4 lane or 6 lane roads in the city, and essentially no one-way roads, although the one way road is used with ramps in a few places (i.e. for a turning lane when joining a road). The lack of one way roads means the city only has the one token roundabout - the highway roundabout. (my opinion is that one-way roads and roundabouts are massively overrated - I use an overpass when a simple intersection is congested, turning traffic can always find another way).

 

The city features a highway running down the middle.

 

Yes, that is a double-ramp highway heading north. When I first built the internal highway, it was an elevated ramp highway, one lane in each direction. Eventually (about 30,000 pop, when I got a cargo port) it started feeling overloaded, so I upgraded it to a Highway. Then at about 40,000 pop I ran into a serious case of lane-merge killing the capacity of the highway. I had done everything right in terms of on ramps and offramps to distribute traffic over multiple lanes, and the highway had been working well, but ya know, when those cims decide they all want to drive in the same lane, their ain't nothing you can do. I resolved the issue by replacing the highway with a double ramp highway, the double ramp, despite being 20km/h slower, offers a much better distribution of traffic, allowing for greater volumes - one of the nice things about ramps is that the lack of lane change, combined with high speed merges (where vehicles can get up to 80km/h before entering the lane) can give almost bumper-to-bumper traffic travelling at full speed. It's even cheaper than a real highway.

 

The traffic is high, but flows cleanly, there are zero sets of lights:

 

I would like to add that I have so far refrained from adding any mass transit other than bus. I know that Metro is awesome, it also turns great profits, I've run very successful metros in my past two cities. This one, I'm holding off on metro for as long as I can, not because it's a strategically sound move, but to try running a city without metro.

 

What the city does have, is a very comprehensive bus network.

 

There ain't no point in having a grid, if you don't exploit it to make the best bus network in existence. Blue lines run North/South, and Red lines run East/West, running on grid roads only, almost never on partition roads and never on highway. When going North/South, every street has buses going in both directions. The city could probably use some more red lines, but anywho. Bus fares generate $4800/week, constituting a fair percentage of net profit. To reduce congestion bus lines never share bus stops, if a cim wants to change from a blue to red line, they have to run a short distance around the corner.

 

I find RCI interesting, so here is the RCI map of the city:

 

The CBD is basically in the middle of the city, at the weird highway roundabout thing. There is an industrial park at each end of the city, one has a cargo port, the other a train station, and the highway connects them and provides distribution of goods, there are also a couple of small farming and forestry districts. I kept all of my low density residential as I don't see any reason to replace it. 

 

The city is highly profitable. A little while ago I added a heap of services to upgrade my building levels to maximum, and the city became even more profitable, going from about 15,000 to 20,000 per week, despite all the added service costs. The city doesn't feel any less profitable than my normal difficulty cities, although I know I've been stingier on the services. The key to the sick profits is at least in part due to the grid and buses, by avoiding all the wider, much more expensive, road types, and by making cims pay to get around (by bus) I get a much better profit than if I had wider roads for better car traffic. Of course it's also in part due to careful capacity matching for education, garbage and corpses, the views are really helpful for making sure that I'm getting value for money out of those investments.

[TPB 562]

This is my Hard Mod(e) city of Overramps.

 

*snip*

 

 

I really liked your reply Grater, it looks like you know what you're doing. Thank you for sharing with us and for the insights provided by your detailed explanations. Awesome.