Questions about roads and layout

[chengda85 0]

hi all, I'm pretty new to the game,

when I upgrade a road and builds disappear, do they come back at the same level? for example if a bunch of level 3 residential buildings disappear, do they come back as level 3? if not would it be a bad idea to change layouts in an area where buildings have already leveled up a lot?

when I first start the city I built 2 one way 2 lane roads from the 2 high way connections, and they connect to other 2 way 2 lane roads, (see screenshot) but over time i find that the entrance gets congested a bit due to highway going to narrower roads and traffic lights. so should I upgrade build a highway "spine" through my entire city? or should I layout wide main roads right from the beginning to save hassle? that costs a lot of money and seems unatural though.

 

thanks

[hitzu 139]

3 hours ago, chengda85 said:

when I first start the city I built 2 one way 2 lane roads from the 2 high way connections, and they connect to other 2 way 2 lane roads, (see screenshot) but over time i find that the entrance gets congested a bit due to highway going to narrower roads and traffic lights. so should I upgrade build a highway "spine" through my entire city? or should I layout wide main roads right from the beginning to save hassle? that costs a lot of money and seems unatural though.

IMO the best solution is to buy another plot as fast as possible and build there another connection. Industrial area should have dedicated connections to the highway, because otherwise trucks tend to congest streets very quickly. Also train stations, ports and airports could reduce amount of cars and trucks entering and leaving your city.

[GC_Vos 714]

As a sandbox kind of player I prefer planning my roads ahead of time, which sometimes includes highways that might remain underused for years. It's expensive but always better than not being prepared.

For one I think having a highway end like it usually does for the vanilla maps is a recipe for disaster. Yes, you can come up with some kind of convoluted roundabout entrance, that might work for a while. The truth is it will always turn into a 'single point of failure'. The best way to avoid major congestion is to just add more connections. Give traffic more options. Two entrances is always better than one, and three entrances are always better than two. Like Hitzu said that would involve unlocking another tile and adding another highway junction.

Buildings which disappear disappear forever. The cims might leave the building and relocate elsewhere, but any new buildings will have to level up from 1 again. That is unless you use the Force Level Up mod (don't remember the exact name).

[Linoa06 1,374]

On 25/01/2016 at 1:01 AM, chengda85 said:

hi all, I'm pretty new to the game,

when I upgrade a road and builds disappear, do they come back at the same level? for example if a bunch of level 3 residential buildings disappear, do they come back as level 3? if not would it be a bad idea to change layouts in an area where buildings have already leveled up a lot?

when I first start the city I built 2 one way 2 lane roads from the 2 high way connections, and they connect to other 2 way 2 lane roads, (see screenshot) but over time i find that the entrance gets congested a bit due to highway going to narrower roads and traffic lights. so should I upgrade build a highway "spine" through my entire city? or should I layout wide main roads right from the beginning to save hassle? that costs a lot of money and seems unatural though.

 

thanks

They downgrade, however just changing the type of the road without changing the width shouldn't destroy your buildings at all. The buildings only get destroyed because the road grid changes.

However the buildings do downgrade when rebuilt, though if the conditions are right they should prop back right up to lv3.

[Ltw 401]

Making sure you have more connections to the highway is a nice thing to do. Unlocking new tiles is quite cheap and it has some great possibilities. Furthermore it is wise to take future expansions of your city into account. So for some roads that might be used more often because they are between residential and commercial/industrial zones it is wise to lay down a medium-sized road (two ways in each direction) at least. This way you can upgrade those roads without losing buildings. Next to that there are some great mods at the Workshop I can recommend: Traffic++ is a nice one which gives some more options in managing your roads. Furthermore I could really recommend the Network Extension Project. This gives you a larger variety of road-types you can choose from, which gives you a lot more options in upgrading road-types within the same width.

If you are getting more experienced with traffic and game mechanics a nice mod is Traffic Manager: President Edition. However, I don't recommend starting with that already since it is kind of complicated and includes advanced settings for traffic-lights etc. I only dared looking into it after months and even then I'm not using it in a lot of cases because of the complexity; Setting up a traffic-light (or in some cases series of traffic-lights) takes quite some time and consideration, which makes it a accomplishment if you solve traffic-issues with this approach. If you are having problems which can't be solved easily by upgrading it is nice to look at Traffic President. But I would recommend looking at the options within the Network Extension Project and Traffic++ first.

Good luck!

[DiArmada 16]

On 26-1-2016 at 9:00 PM, GC_Vos said:

For one I think having a highway end like it usually does for the vanilla maps is a recipe for disaster. Yes, you can come up with some kind of convoluted roundabout entrance, that might work for a while. The truth is it will always turn into a 'single point of failure'.

that's my experience as well. I like to connect the loose end of the highway on vanilla maps to the rest of the highway. that results in a "circular" highway through the city. this highway isn't just for in- or ex-port but it's become a vital part of the city street plan. having much local traffic on this highway saves a lot of traffic elsewhere.

at first I wasn't very keen on taking down things I'd built. but it's really no problem. it's like Linoa06 said: those lvl 3 buildings got such a high level because of the services in the vicinity. if those conditions haven't changed the level ups come quite quickly when the new buildings pop up.