Stages, some questions.

[Spamoidutout 124]

Hi guys !

I have a few questions about stages.

If my region reaches stage 8 residential, what does happen to the lower stages buildings ?

I know there are some R$ stage 8 buildings, so it's not related to the $ level... are the stage 8 buildings just mixed up with the lower stage ones or is it some kind of different wealth level ?

 

And another question.

Are there mods to control stages ?? To remove them ? To allow only certain stages ? (I'm rebuilding my plugins folder and I would like to be able to test everything before starting a big new region, it would be very helpful to have such a thing, in conjuction with a demand mod)

Thanks for your expertise.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Stages always refer to the maximum stage a newly grown building may have. Of course, you'll still get single-family homes (stages 1-3) when your city is big enough to get stage 8 residential. The same applies to the other RCI types.

Stage and wealth are in no way related anyway. There is often confusion around this, but stage and zone density have nothing whatsoever to do with wealth. Nothing. You can get a low-stage, low-density, high-wealth building (e.g., a mansion) or a high-stage, high-density low-wealth building (e.g., a council estate block) without problems.

Stages are unlocked by regional population, so modding the stage progression itself should be tricky. However, each and every individual lot has a (minimum) growth stage assigned to it, so a perfectly feasible (if not very elegant) mod would be to manually block all lots pertaining to undesired stages. This will mess up your gameplay royally, though, unless you know very well what you are doing and apply your mods in a strictly controlled szenario. Otherwise, you may block the lower stages in a city that's not yet ready for the higher ones, thus eliminating all growth possibilities altogether - just one example of what could go wrong.

IMO, the best practical approach is to play with zone densities. A few examples:

• Want only low-rise residential? Well, use low density then. No mansions? Use smaller zones with gaps inbetween, make grown buildings historical, fill gaps with more zones => many small houses, low to medium wealth.
• Want mansions? Lay out larger low-density residential zones when R§§§ demand is good.
• Don't want commercial skyscrapers everywhere? Well, stay away from high-density zones then. You'll be surprised how big the biggest possible buildings on low-density zones actually are! The same applies to medium density.
• Want medium-density rowhouses? Zone intermittent 1x3 or 1x2 strips of medium and high-density residential so zones cannot be combined. Voilà, rowhouses! (1x3 will work at lower stages, 1x2 will require higher stages because it means higher population count per unit of area - this is basically what stages express.)

If you let us know a bit more about what you're actually trying to achieve and why stages are so important to you, we may be able to provide better help.

[Spamoidutout 124]

3 minutes ago, T Wrecks said:

If you let us know a bit more about what you're actually trying to achieve and why stages are so important to you, we may be able to provide better help.

My question about a "stage mod" was all about testing new custom buildings.

Let's say that I downloaded a bunch of stuff from the stex (or even that someone built a new one).

It could be nice to be able to have only buildings from a particular stage growing to see if the new ones look ok, and how they compare to others from the same stage.

Or maybe is it too much effort for not that much results 

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Oh, if you want to see what a newly downloaded building looks like, you should install buggi's Extra Cheats DLL and use the included "buildingplop" cheat. This will bring up a list of all available buildings. Simply search for the newly downloaded one, select it, and plop it. If the building comes with multiple lots, you'll even be able to plop all the lots side by side and see which ones you like best.

EDIT: You can plop all growable stuff, too. It should also work with reward lots, even those you haven't unlocked yet. Of course, plopped residential will abandon and not work properly, but that doesn't matter for testing purposes.

The same method can be used to plop stuff next to another in order to check for buildings that stand out in any undesired way (wrong scale, too flashy colours, whatever).

I use that cheat all the time to compare building sizes, assign plausible occupant numbers (well, plausible in line with the game's figures at least), check lot designs etc. without having to wait for it it all to grow finally.

Of course, this won't work if you're using a Mac because these can't handle Windows DLLs.