Diversity, Levels in Building Themes?

[Simulanten 681]

While creating different neighbourhoods in my Boston recreation I can see a pattern that I don't like: A newly built neighbourhood with a custom building theme quickly levels up and becomes uniform depending on the level I'm locking it with the building level up control mod (after a few game-years all the buildings have reached their max level). So while in the beginning of the cycle the neighbourhood looks interesting, diverse - but all the nice lower level assets are of no use because they are quickly being replaced by the next level buildings.

I know - I could limit the level of each building manually - but this is no option with a big city like Boston... Some of the asset series creators work with L1 buildings only because of that. But what do you guys think of that and how do you work around this problem in your cities? It's such a waste of time to create complex building themes and lower level buildings if everything ends up being the same anyway in no time... (And don't tell me to lower conditions for certain neighborhoods - even really bad areas have schools and parks and bus lines. And levelling up happens much too quickly).

Thoughts?

[Turjan 1,048]

1 hour ago, Simulanten said:

But what do you guys think of that and how do you work around this problem in your cities? It's such a waste of time to create complex building themes and lower level buildings if everything ends up being the same anyway in no time... (And don't tell me to lower conditions for certain neighborhoods - even really bad areas have schools and parks and bus lines. And levelling up happens much too quickly).

Heh, yes, I hardly ever limit the level of buildings because it has budget consequences. It may sound weird, but I see that my city of Cagayan stays profitable. Having huge swathes of level 1 areas makes that difficult, so I don't do that.

However, I make good use of the Building Themes mod's cloning tool. I just clone low level buildings that I want to keep seeing up to the level where they still make sense, often enough to the top level. That way, they still grow during upgrades.

Disclaimer: your game has to load many more buildings this way.

Edit: I'll probably add a CJ update later this week that illustrates this.

[Darf 1,439]

IMO the whole level up mechanic needs an overhaul. We need more levels, especially in high density/offices and more requirements for buildings to level up, so it will be impossible for a whole neighbourhood to be the same level. This way, the game gets more depth. I hope we get something like the equivalent of CAM someday, because I don't see CO adding much in the simulation anymore. Still, for that to happen, a lot more models are needed.

[Judazzz 1,936]

In less dense neighborhoods with lots of repetition I usually cap the wealth level at L1 (in the District info panel: all growables within that district will adhere to these caps) and only allow certain buildings to level up one or two levels. Buildings outside of the district's building theme(s) are usually eye-dropped (or plopped with help of the Asset Search Bar mod). Also, I often combine a few themes for a district, like low density Brooklyn assets in combination with a theme that consists only of growable houses and filler lots (with randomized props) and one that contains trailer homes, or one that contains high density US-style buildings.

Example (mostly L1/2, some L3 houses):


It's pretty time-consuming, but since I usually build just a small number of city blocks simultaneously (usually 4 at most) and also playing around a lot with props and landscaping, I don't mind it too much.

It does result in large neighborhoods that remain stuck at low wealth levels (L1-2 on average), which affects income, but I play with unlimited money anyway, so I'm not really concerned being knee-deep in debt (I'm currently 85.000 in the red, with 35.000 inhabitants :D)
Cloning could bring a solution, but I don't want to make my city for a good part dependent on the whims of a mod - clones only exist within the scope  the Building Themes mod, meaning that if you remove or disable that mod (for whatever reason), all cloned buildings will instantly de-spawn.

[Shroomblaze 320]

Clone tool is your friend, I made whole themes that clone all buildings. I only subscribe to level 1 assets if someone publishes multiple version and just clone that level 1 for the levels I need. This way the game doesn't have to load tons of assets and I get the themed look Im going for.

[boformer 3,169]

55 minutes ago, AJ3D said:

I know Boformer has also looked at detouring all of the methods that read the building level.

Its possible to totally hollow out the methods and rewrite the leveling logic.

Correct. The basic idea is that the building level becomes a simple property of a building instance, instead of being tied to an asset (or a clone).

[Simulanten 681]

Thanks everybody for the feedback. I really feel that this whole issue is suffering from all that weird balancing in C:S and makes things tedious. I remember in SC4 how I had to fight for the fancy stuff to pop up and how hyped I was by a level 8 building that finally appeared...

Curious about what you cracks have up your sleeves for mods dealing with this. So long I'll give cloning a try. Just not sure if I want to break down everything on Level 1.

[boformer 3,169]

The thing is that this is not only a visual problem. The wealth level of a citizen is directly tied to his home.

What I would expect is: You educate your citizens so that they can find good jobs and become wealthy. Then they move from the slum to a villa.

Here is what happens: When the sum of education of all citizens reaches a certain value, the building will upgrade and the new wealth level is assigned to all citizens living in the building.

[boformer 3,169]

Sounds nice.

[Turjan 1,048]

18 hours ago, Simulanten said:

Thanks everybody for the feedback. I really feel that this whole issue is suffering from all that weird balancing in C:S and makes things tedious. I remember in SC4 how I had to fight for the fancy stuff to pop up and how hyped I was by a level 8 building that finally appeared...

Yep, though even in SC4, leveling things up when your region crossed the 80k  limit was quite easy and pretty much necessary to keep your budget in the green. You had to put your residentials directly into dirty industry to keep them down, and even that was not a sure way to keep them from leveling.

Anyway, here's the promised example with Ullstrumpan's two "Stockholm Row Houses" themes. If you just use her themes as provided (here the one with narrow houses), you will get this rather boring result:

It's definitely life-like, though not overly interesting. I extended both themes with the cloning tool. If you use both themes at once (they differ in house widths), the result is already better, though the game will build mostly the wider buildings, with only occasional narrow buildings that will grow in leftover small gaps:

You will have to activate the theme with the smaller houses first to get these more frequently:

You can watch the small buildings pop up and activate the theme with the larger buildings later to get a mix.

[Judazzz 1,936]

I usually zone 2 tiles, then leave two open, then zone two tiles again, and then zone the open spaces once the previously zoned tiles are being developed. For added diversity I occasionally zone 1 or 3 tile wide plots instead of 2, and also throw in some 1-3 tile wide commercial buildings in the mix. With the Control Level Up up I decide to what level each house can progress, but only if I want it to differ from the wealth level baseline I have set for the district. To speed up things, I use the Force Level Up mod, and if the result isn't fully satisfactory, I unleash the bulldozers on individual plots so they can try again.
The above is applied to districts using Brooklyn- or Neo-eclectic Suburban-based theme(s).

Lovely screenshots btw, especially the second and third. Wouldn't mind using them in my city as well, but given the limited computing power of my laptop I unfortunately have to give these assets a pass  

[Turjan 1,048]

20 minutes ago, Judazzz said:

I usually zone 2 tiles, then leave two open, then zone two tiles again, and then zone the open spaces once the previously zoned tiles are being developed.

Yup, that's what you have to do if you want to have a completely uniform look (those Soviet blocks in my CJ are examples) . I just wanted to show that, if you want to have a 50/50 mix of the themes, it's not sufficient to just activate both themes. The game will grow buildings with a larger footprint almost exclusively until it runs out of suitable plots and only then switch to smaller lots. But yes, complete zoning control is always an option.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Don't forget that Wealth/Education should be different upgrades from Density/Capacity!