Starting a new city using CAM v2.1

[Cliffs of Dover 0]

Hello everyone! I have some problems about CAM v2.1 (extended version).

About a week ago, I decided to give a try to this mod as it promises a more realistic experience. I started a region with hard difficulty and after playing for 50 years, the population got stuck at 8k while having enormous demands on residential population (all of them are around 30k). I built a neighbor city  to increase the region population, also I've experimented on the main city by zoning residential to almost all empty places. After having 14k population in the main city and 2.5k at the neighbor, the buildings did not change at all, only stage 2 buildings I had.

I uninstalled the mod and run the vanilla. Opening the main city at 8k pop, I saw that I got some apartments after a few months. This enraged me a lot because I wasn't looking for a harder simcity experience at all (as hard is quite hard for me).

The threshold values for stage 3 development are 3410, 5114, and 6818 according to the CAM manual. However, the values are taken from CAM v1.0, says InvisiChem. If the values have remained approximately the same, I should've got some small apartments.

My question is: is this what CAM does indeed? If yes, how can one build well-developed cities by using this mod?I don't want to make the game harder or easier. To make a successful region, game takes too much time already. If this is the case, I guess I will go with the vanilla.

I also want to say that I've installed anything but NAM.

Thanks in advance!

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

3 hours ago, Cliffs of Dover said:

I also want to say that I've installed anything but NAM.

To clarify, I assume you are saying the only other mod you have installed is NAM.

 

I don't have any answers for you. (I just started with SC4 several months ago now that I have comps that'll run it decently.) But, rest assured when InvisiChem sees this you'll find him pleasant to chat with and helpful with answers.

Good luck.

[APSMS 1,892]

@Cliffs of Dover I assume your city is properly watered and powered?

Stages up to three don't require water (typically), but some buildings do require water even at that stage. Also, no higher development will develop without water (I'm assuming you knew this already, though).

What do the desirability maps look like with the CAM 2.1 installed? What is your city's EQ, Health, Avg Age, etc. ? What kind of jobs do you have, and how is your pollution levels?

Residential demand is greatly influenced by all these factors, and the CAM makes these more important because of the way it divides the stages and makes city development more fluid. Stages often have more uniform building distribution, but that means that demand limiting factors like education, health, and garbage are more pronounced, and you will notice their effects on your city more clearly.

I recommend downloading the Census Repository mod (download both files below), because this will give you info on your development CAPs, which it sounds like you are hitting. Note that CAPs are independent of demand, and that even if you had 100 000 demand, but maxed out CAPs, no buildings would develop. Parks will also serve well to raise demand and life development CAPS, and the act of plopping either building below will automatically give you 10 000 CAP relief, which should tell you right away whether or not CAPs are the problem here.

 

[Cliffs of Dover 0]

Thanks for the answers. The problem is about the thresholds because my city has every service with great quality. I included new parks but nothing changed until I increased the population by zoning new areas (which I don't want to at the moment).

I tried other installation options for CAM such as Normal and Skyscrapers versions. The former one did not change anything, but, the latter one provided apartments quickly. For the Extended version, I saw apartments after 22k residential population. I think this is the way how CAM implemented, not for my taste probably. Also, in the inCAMpatible Mods section of the manual (which I skipped to read since I only have NAM), InvisiChem states that "hard is extremely difficult. Even extremely experienced players find themselves strapped for cash when playing in hard mode". This explains why I had such difficulties while building my city.

I'm still not sure whether to use the Skyscraper version or vanilla.  If you guys have any further suggestions, I'd like to hear your opinions. Thanks again.

[APSMS 1,892]

If you are looking for decent game play, I'd recommend the normal version. Extended mode is probably for people like Cogeo, who appreciate playing the game as a game rather than as a city building canvas (which isn't wrong, but certainly different from the focus of most mods). You will need a significant region base to grow large cities, or be content with smaller towns otherwise (in extended mode).

Vanilla is probably better if you don't want to deal with the burden of a well developed region for growth.

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

1 hour ago, APSMS said:

... is probably for people like Cogeo, who appreciate playing the game as a game ...

Add Cori to that list.

(I'm tweaking my NAM to get it back to how the speeds and capacities are in plain vanilla, but I also modified NAM's Zones Data View to remove trees like vanilla does while adding in some other cool things I discovered.)

[Tarkus 6,931]

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

(I'm tweaking my NAM to get it back to how the speeds and capacities are in plain vanilla, but I also modified NAM's Zones Data View to remove trees like vanilla does while adding in some other cool things I discovered.)

One thing to watch out for with those speed/capacity tweaks--if you're planning on using the NAM's Network Widening Mod (NWM) option at all, the vanilla speeds/capacities will actually cause problems with the NWM networks--namely, the seven-lane Avenues will end up having less capacity than the default four-lane ones  The NAM does include an option (the "Classic" simulator) that is designed to be closer to vanilla specs, but still with the necessary modifications for proper NWM functionality.

-Tarkus

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

1 hour ago, Tarkus said:

One thing to watch out for with those speed/capacity tweaks--if you're planning on using the NAM's Network Widening Mod (NWM) option at all, the vanilla speeds/capacities will actually cause problems with the NWM networks--namely, the seven-lane Avenues will end up having less capacity than the default four-lane ones  The NAM does include an option (the "Classic" simulator) that is designed to be closer to vanilla specs, but still with the necessary modifications for proper NWM functionality.

-Tarkus

Thanks! That'll help me with my question here. I c & p'd your quote into my post there so as to not further drag this CAM thread off topic.

[APSMS 1,892]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Add Cori to that list.

(I'm tweaking my NAM to get it back to how the speeds and capacities are in plain vanilla, but I also modified NAM's Zones Data View to remove trees like vanilla does while adding in some other cool things I discovered.)

Cogeo modded the game so that he would start with 0 money on Hard mode (made easy now with the moolah cheat--just put 0 in for total money), and then he'd have to take out a loan for the first 20 or so game years and all the sims would have to work at the powerplant or the school or the 2 or 3 commercial businesses that showed up. This would go on for a while, as he was able to build proper cities without the use of a single industrial building. No cheats, loans up the yin yang, and no industry of any kind in sight. Also lots of government jobs.

Very commendable feat, but hardly something most players are really interested in once they start exploring CC.

[Lost Realist 762]

9 hours ago, APSMS said:

Very commendable feat, but hardly something most players are really interested in once they start exploring CC.

Which really just made it more commendable if you ask me. His patience was craaaazy.

[InvisiChem 121]

The stages for extended are basically the same as Standard, just doubled. Also, the populations are per type, so not the total population you see at the bottom of the screen. This is all three together.

R$ Stage vs. Population in Extended

1. 0
2. 2000
3. 3410
4. 7464
5. 16010
6. 33560
7. 69358
8. 140074
9. 277268
10. 537926
11. 827484
12. 1261591
13. 1906348
14. 2855020
15. 4237794

Understand that these are just the thresholds. This is for the minimalist chance that a R$ building of this stage will grow. With that said, if you want the basic ability for a stage 8 R$ building to grow, your R$ Sim population will need to be 140,074 for a 1.1% chance of growing a building of this stage during tract development/redevelopment.

Extended is built for very realistic growth throughout a region. This means that you will likely be able to fill out an entire medium sized map and never have large buildings until other parts of the region start becoming developed. As always, this is very dependent on the style of play and balance you have achieved between all 12 developer types, desirability, network development, etc.

From my reading of this, it seems you like a faster style growth, so stick with SkyScraper. This should give you results much faster and outside of the realism the rest of the mod is aiming for. The thresholds for R$ in SkyScraper are

1. 0
2. 0
3. 0
4. 846
5. 2030
6. 4714
7. 10593
8. 23031
9. 48459
10. 98669
11. 194418
12. 300046
13. 456357
14. 684048
15. 1010497

As you can see, In the same scenario, stage 8 here would require a R$ population of 23,031 for a 1.5% chance to grow. Very big difference and much speedier growth. The stalling you are experiencing in Extended is usually caused by trying to persuade the use of commercial above industrial in early development of the region. Try to utilize IR and ID extensively and desirability for commercial services to back up the industries. All PlayStyles have this same setup really, just SkyScraper moves to commercial much more quickly and won't show this stall as prominently.

[InvisiChem 121]

I'm reworking certain aspects of this right now. RL and building the cross platform installers is taking a lot more time than I anticipated. This should help handle some of the stalling issues and the massive change in demands from vanilla. The demand changes will still be there, just not as extreme. Also, the workforce bug will no longer have any possibility of rearing its ugly head.  

I thank you guys for your patience on these matters and am very diligently working on things and progressing them. Still a newer face in the development world here, so some ideas are a bit grandois and I have to change things as I move along.

Yes, hard mode is truly hard, but this is a benefit. Move down to the medium difficulty until you get used to this new style. Medium is much like the old Hard mode. Easy is exactly the same.

Thank you everybody for your input and help as well. These guys have given you very good answers and I hope I have helped to clarify them a little more for you. Any other questions, please feel free to ask and I will be more than happy to help.

[parallelworlds 0]

On 6/6/2016 at 3:08 PM, InvisiChem said:

The stages for extended are basically the same as Standard, just doubled. Also, the populations are per type, so not the total population you see at the bottom of the screen. This is all three together.

R$ Stage vs. Population in Extended

1. 0
2. 2000
3. 3410
4. 7464
5. 16010
6. 33560
7. 69358
8. 140074
9. 277268
10. 537926
11. 827484
12. 1261591
13. 1906348
14. 2855020
15. 4237794

Understand that these are just the thresholds. This is for the minimalist chance that a R$ building of this stage will grow. With that said, if you want the basic ability for a stage 8 R$ building to grow, your R$ Sim population will need to be 140,074 for a 1.1% chance of growing a building of this stage during tract development/redevelopment.

Extended is built for very realistic growth throughout a region. This means that you will likely be able to fill out an entire medium sized map and never have large buildings until other parts of the region start becoming developed. As always, this is very dependent on the style of play and balance you have achieved between all 12 developer types, desirability, network development, etc.

From my reading of this, it seems you like a faster style growth, so stick with SkyScraper. This should give you results much faster and outside of the realism the rest of the mod is aiming for. The thresholds for R$ in SkyScraper are

1. 0
2. 0
3. 0
4. 846
5. 2030
6. 4714
7. 10593
8. 23031
9. 48459
10. 98669
11. 194418
12. 300046
13. 456357
14. 684048
15. 1010497

As you can see, In the same scenario, stage 8 here would require a R$ population of 23,031 for a 1.5% chance to grow. Very big difference and much speedier growth. The stalling you are experiencing in Extended is usually caused by trying to persuade the use of commercial above industrial in early development of the region. Try to utilize IR and ID extensively and desirability for commercial services to back up the industries. All PlayStyles have this same setup really, just SkyScraper moves to commercial much more quickly and won't show this stall as prominently.

Thanks for the above, it was really informative.  Quick question - how do you check the total regional capacity by RCI type and wealth level?  I can see the total regional residential capacity via Region Census, but not sure how to get down to a specific R$/$$/$$$ number.

I'm asking this because I currently play a region with 18M R pop, but in my core city I keep getting Lyre Plaza spam because my R$$$ doesn't seem to go above stage 10.

[markussaage 762]

I am playing with CAM 2.1 Extended and Hard Mode for quite a while now, with NAM 34 und SPAM/IRM on a huge map now. I don't have any problems in my cities to get R§ buildings. My demands are high as well, it's all running fine. I don't think, it's a CAM related problem... I have only a few stage 8 or 9 skycrapers in one city yet. That's more than ok I guess.

Kind regards!

[InvisiChem 121]

Install the Census Repository Facility by RippleJet. That will give you a full breakdown of the different types. Only one thing doesn't work in this query since CAM 2, the IR CAP status. There is no variable in the game capable of tracking the new version of CAP relief. So, after installing the facility, don't read that one single number. Everything else works perfectly.

[Bombardiere 591]

CAM 2.1 hard is ... well ... hard. But it do not feel it is impossible and it gives me nice challenge. One of teh problems with SC4 that after 100 000 population, I usually get too much money and it is "fun" to have shoestring budget.

 

I post couple pictures of a city I am playing with. I am barely on black, even that I have Federal Prison, Army base and a business deal I made myself. I have bad garbage problem and I can afford only one school. But my play has been far from ideal and I have wasted money on road etc. and I really should double my population. So if I would smart and increase population and only after that expand infrastructure, I should be okey.

 

P.s You can see my tax rates. I am really making my sims pay

 

 

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 7/18/2016 at 8:13 AM, parallelworlds said:

15. 4237794

Holy crap! CAM extended would require 4,237,794 on a single section before I could get big buildings to house them??? That's crazy talk! Even with a perfectly flat, green large tile, anything much over 1.25 million would be a challenge (for me). I'm working in the SF Bay Area with loads of water and hills. I doubt that even the skyscraper setting will give me skyscrapers where the real SF has real skyscrapers (the sections are too small).

Based on what I'm reading elsewhere, I'm also starting to worry that SFO airport, about 6 sections away from (but connected by highway to) the CBD, is not going to contribute its cap relief. Ugh!

I have to keep reminding myself that reality is a poor guide to design within a game 

[rsc204 21,804]

31 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Holy crap! CAM extended would require 4,237,794 on a single section before I could get big buildings to house them??? That's crazy talk! Even with a perfectly flat, green large tile, anything much over 1.25 million would be a challenge (for me).

Demand is regional, not local, provided your cities are connected to each other through neighbour connections. CAM and it's various options is not for everybody after all, (I don't use it myself), but the changes it makes are something that has proved desirable for many users. It all depends on how you want your game to work, if those numbers don't work for you, perhaps you should consider using a different CAM setting or whether the CAM mod is right for you.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Quote

Demand is regional, not local, provided your cities are connected ...

Ah, that's much better. I guess that's something that "everybody knows", so it isn't mentioned often.

Since most (all?) vanilla caps and relief depend on what's in a single section, the messages above looked as if they were giving thresholds for local population. I like the idea of developing an interconnected region, so CAM is exactly what I want. Even the 4+ million doesn't seem so bad (not when I have dozens sections to develop).

Is an international airport also a regional cap-buster, or does each CBD need to place its own locally?