Realism--what are the essential/best mods?

[Marc Collins 36]

How does one sift and sort through the zillion mods available?  Is there a trusted community source for quality control?  Which mods are the essential ones if you want to create realistic cities?

  Edited July 31, 2015 by Marc Collins  

[wallacet 336]

Shroomblaze has posted a good collection of fantastic mods/buildings on Steam. I would start there. Just search for his name and his mega-collection should show up.

[boformer 3,169]

The game is not really realistic, especially the growable building leveling mechanic is quite unrealistic.

sadly there are no mods to replace that mechanic

the game works as it is. I would not install mods which alter the simulation.

[Marc Collins 36]

The game is not really realistic, especially the growable building leveling mechanic is quite unrealistic.

sadly there are no mods to replace that mechanic

the game works as it is. I would not install mods which alter the simulation.

You don't think it can be modded or re-programmed to be more realistic (the way SC4 was over the years)?

[idcaf 65]

The game is not really realistic, especially the growable building leveling mechanic is quite unrealistic.

sadly there are no mods to replace that mechanic

the game works as it is. I would not install mods which alter the simulation.

You don't think it can be modded or re-programmed to be more realistic (the way SC4 was over the years)?

To my knowledge, in some aspects, a modded C:SL already is more realistic than the modded SC4. 

I'm talking about realistic building occupancy&workforce capacity, which was a sad joke in SC4. I remember completely giving up on any modder to try and fix that so i did it manually myself. 
Out of the box, SC:S failed similarly as SC4, but thankfully mods such as PopBalance mod helped reduce that issue somewhat. 

[TPB 563]

*Semi-Lurking Mode*

There are several mods out there that tinker with the simulation in various ways in an attempt to make it more "realistic". I'm trying out a couple myself as I write this. 

For me the trash production was way too high and unrealistic, so I got a Slow Trash (Configurable) mod and set the rate to 1/4th. Working like a charm! I just hated having to create such big dumps for such small cities.

I also got a Realistic Population and Consumption Mod (Also configurable) which changes the amount of people that live and work in buildings to be more realistic as well as utility consumption rates and a few other things.

I'm also testing a Configurable Slow Citizen Aging with a 1/10th modifier to make my cims live longer. This one also makes educating citizens a much harder and slower process, which for me is ideal since I always tended to end up with an over-educated population.

Another aspect I found annoying was how the Ore and Oil would run out so quick so I got me a Infinite Oil and Ore mod to address this.

Now time to play with them and see how they work, got to 4.5k pop so far and seems like everything is working fine, will let you  know if I find any problems

[Marc Collins 36]

These are great and exactly what I was wondering about.  I wonder if someone will package a bunch of these together into a "Realistic City" mod (configurable, of course)?

 

Are there any resource mods that just slow the consumption (presumably to something more realistic) rather than making it infinite?

  Edited August 3, 2015 by Marc Collins  

[Azurespecter 506]

How does one sift and sort through the zillion mods available?  Is there a trusted community source for quality control?  Which mods are the essential ones if you want to create realistic cities?

Holy smokes! Did you buy the game Marc?!?

[Marc Collins 36]

How does one sift and sort through the zillion mods available?  Is there a trusted community source for quality control?  Which mods are the essential ones if you want to create realistic cities?

Holy smokes! Did you buy the game Marc?!?

Somewhat reluctantly.  It was on sale, so I caved.  My first impressions are that I should have waited another year or so or for v2.  But I am hoping that someone will mod lot size soon given the impressive nature of many of the mods already available.  A vastly faster pace of change and improvement than SC4 ever had.

At the end of the day, I doubt I will invest much time in it and I still think it has several fatal flaws.  However, I am not choosing between groceries and this game, so I usually end up supporting titles that are at least sincerely trying to do something I am interested in.  I even buy multiple copies of some titles just to be supportive.  

[Fearlessmayor 44]

I'm an sc4 player and the limited realism in the buildings and cars has been bothering me a bunch, as I've said in a few posts. I downloaded a few color modification mods which I'm preferring right now to make my cities appear realistic:

- Oldish

- LUTBlockbuster

- LUTFall (fall-themed)

-Chewbot WinterLUT (winter-themed)

- ChewbotTrue

I don't want my cities to look like Pixar, nor super-realistic.  the point of building a city in a city building game for me, is to look beliveable, but not like real life, you can step outside and see a real city if that's what you want, what I want with my cities is to look a little nicer than real life, but still realistic.  for that the only thing close I could find are the ones above.  Or something a little more vibrant without being cartoonish is:

- HeartWarming. 

I don't know what kind of monitor you have, so I would just "subscribe" to the color correction mods you like, and test each of them out during gameplay.  stick with the one you like.  just type in "color correction mod" or "color correction" in the steam workshop.  they even have black and white and futuristic if that floats your boat =)

 

 

 

 

[Azurespecter 506]

How does one sift and sort through the zillion mods available?  Is there a trusted community source for quality control?  Which mods are the essential ones if you want to create realistic cities?

Holy smokes! Did you buy the game Marc?!?

Somewhat reluctantly.  It was on sale, so I caved.  My first impressions are that I should have waited another year or so or for v2.  But I am hoping that someone will mod lot size soon given the impressive nature of many of the mods already available.  A vastly faster pace of change and improvement than SC4 ever had.

At the end of the day, I doubt I will invest much time in it and I still think it has several fatal flaws.  However, I am not choosing between groceries and this game, so I usually end up supporting titles that are at least sincerely trying to do something I am interested in.  I even buy multiple copies of some titles just to be supportive.  

Well I'm glad to have you on board either way! Career goal complete. Marc bought the game =)

I'm still pushing for bigger lot sizes. The battle rages on. A modder did make larger lot sizes for ploppables though, and it has some great potential if you're interested: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=472128528&searchtext=ploppable

Hope you can find some enjoyment from the game as it is. Also, we are releasing an expansion soon, not sure if you already heard.

  Edited August 8, 2015 by Azurespecter  

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Keep pushing Azurespecter! We really need bigger growable lot sizes. The lot size doesn't matter if poly count is the concern. You can have a 20x20 lot with a very low poly box on it. So why the limit? It's the detail that brings up tri count. I can model a 2x1 building with 10k+ tris.

[Marc Collins 36]

How does one sift and sort through the zillion mods available?  Is there a trusted community source for quality control?  Which mods are the essential ones if you want to create realistic cities?

Holy smokes! Did you buy the game Marc?!?

Somewhat reluctantly.  It was on sale, so I caved.  My first impressions are that I should have waited another year or so or for v2.  But I am hoping that someone will mod lot size soon given the impressive nature of many of the mods already available.  A vastly faster pace of change and improvement than SC4 ever had.

At the end of the day, I doubt I will invest much time in it and I still think it has several fatal flaws.  However, I am not choosing between groceries and this game, so I usually end up supporting titles that are at least sincerely trying to do something I am interested in.  I even buy multiple copies of some titles just to be supportive.  

Well I'm glad to have you on board either way! Career goal complete. Marc bought the game =)

I'm still pushing for bigger lot sizes. The battle rages on. A modder did make larger lot sizes for ploppables though, and it has some great potential if you're interested: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=472128528&searchtext=ploppable

Hope you can find some enjoyment from the game as it is. Also, we are releasing an expansion soon, not sure if you already heard.

Yes, keep pushing.

It's really the most important feature that prevents so many other mods from being created that would improve the gaming experience for those who want something reasonably realistic.

I also notice odd zoning glitches around intersections of differing sized roads.  These irregular squares need to be able to be overwritten with a zoning tool (that can assign them to one street versus another, or, regroup them as necessary.

On-street subway entrances are another for built-up areas.  The SC4 mod worked well for that eons ago, so surely it must be possible here.

What is the expansion for/what does it include?

I look forward to your real career goal achievement of C:SL truly replacing SC4 because there is nothing significant in SC4 that isn't in C:SL.  In the vast majority of cases it should be better and easier to do things in C:SL, so let's all work toward the official retirement of SC4   I am seeing higher quality/resolution buildings already, so not surprisingly someday there will be building sets of similar detail.  Just a few fundamentals to crack into shape and it will all fall into place.

 

 

[ReneXL 16]

Skylines seems to no doubtly when decision making catering to those with low end specs, no matter what requested. I'm ok with lot sizes it doesn't bother me much, and bigger textures would just be a drag for some. But while all that might be true, it's also true that almost half the players cannot build as big cities they'd want (because of the caps).

Some mods that I use and think are essential:

Advanced Road Anarchy - to be able to exceed the limited road & rail tool intersection possibilities, it really helps. Can also make radical stuff but I keep it as realistic as possible.

Advanced Vehicle Options (AVO) - a must have for even small configurations, let alone bigger.

All25Areaspurchasable

Automatic Bulldoze

Building Themes 

Bulldozer Elevation Control AND Moledozer

CityStatisticsEasyAccess

Control Building Level Up - loving the district possibility

Disable Clouds

Dropouts - industry will get workers

Employment Details

Enhanced Zoom - a must have

European Buildings Unlocker

Extended Public Transport UI

InfiniteOilAndOre

IPT - Improved Public Transport

Metro Slope Mod

MultiTrackStationEnabler

Precision Engineering - makes planning roads easier

Show Zones with Districts

SimpleClock

Slow Trash Production configurable - 1/2

Terraform Tool - better brushes should be in-game

Traffic Manager + Improved AI - best traffic mod (I heard it's going to be the new Traffic++ but just not bulky)

Traffic Report Tool - this was a feature in SC4 and CXL

 

So there  A few  

[Linoa06 1,374]

The game is not really realistic, especially the growable building leveling mechanic is quite unrealistic.

sadly there are no mods to replace that mechanic

the game works as it is. I would not install mods which alter the simulation.

You don't think it can be modded or re-programmed to be more realistic (the way SC4 was over the years)?

It can be, that particular user just doesn't like mods.

[ReneXL 16]

With Control Building Level Up one can control per building and/or by per district the rate of building leveling.