My sim-gaming skills suck

[catpower165061 5]

I have been interested in learning how to play SimCity 4. I feel like my sim gaming skills honestly suck though. I don't think anybody will understand. I find out that I lack the ability to observe and pay attention to details. 

Now, I have SC4 installed on Steam without any mods, so it's plain vanilla. I want to know how to properly lay out my roads and zones. I don't want any abstract answers, I want more or less how much detail, you know. I hate sucking at this game, but there is too much detail going on at once I hardly enjoy it.

[mrsmartman 200]

Play the Tutorial. SC4 is much easier than CSL if you like precision and grid.

[rsc204 21,866]

In short, start by following the in-game tutorials (region: Timbuktu) first. This will help get you comfortable with the basics of playing.

Then its time for a link to my favourite tutorial. This one explains how the cities in a region interact with each other, along with many other important aspects of play.

1 hour ago, catpower165061 said:

I find out that I lack the ability to observe and pay attention to details. 

No one can help you with that one, sorry. If you can't focus on what you are learning, you are unlikely to succeed. SC4 is not a simple game, it's deep but also very rewarding. You seem really determined to try, so the best advice I can give is don't give up.

No one can answer expansive questions like "tell me everything" in forums like this. If you find a specific problem or question along the way, come back here and ask. Not only will doing things step by step be better for the learning process. But it also avoids all the answers being thrown at you from becoming so overwhelming, you can no longer see the woods from the trees.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

5 hours ago, catpower165061 said:

I find out that I lack the ability to observe and pay attention to details. 

I'm playing 7 years now and I always played one region so far. I build - destroy - rebuild - destroy again. I want to build the perfect region and failed maybe fifty times.

I think it's not necessary to read much at the beginning or to worry to much about failing. Instead just play and gain some experience. To fail is part of the game, as to learn about managing a city, a region is mainly to observe - to see why things get out of balance, to understand causes. Advisors will always advise simple strategies. If they would give you clever strategies they would kill a part of the fun. As the fun on strategy games is to find strategies. You can't learn much  about that if you don't fail or if you never get in troubles.

If your problem is you're running out of money you can think about getting  the extracheats plugin and use the 'moolah' comand, which makes things easier on the start. As with more money you have more possibilites to correct things. You can experiment more.

If it doesn't give you fun, to develop/thinking of stratgies to solve issues, to change them and trying to build cities in a different way each time  to see and find out what works well - it maybe possible that sc4 isn't the right game for you.

Me, I would never write a tutorial 'how to play sc4 successfull' as to me to find out is the main part. It's like you start reading a detective story and your friend, who alread read it, tells you who's the killer.

Sometimes not to know, not having the knowledge makes things interesting. Now our fantasy is unlimited. But soon they will discover extraterrestrian life. It will be some lichen. No legs on it, no teeth, no paranormal abilities. Won't even talk. Almost as dumb as the stone it grows on. We will be so disapointed that they don't have a hyper space ship.

So maybe your problem isn't a lack of understanding/observing but a lack of fantasy/creativity?

4 hours ago, rsc204 said:

No one can help you with that one, sorry.

Well, yes, not here ... or ... maybe ... also here ... f.e. to take part in the forum games might help? Don't know.

I have to guess blindly as long as you don't develop your 'case' a little more precisely.

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

6 hours ago, catpower165061 said:

I don't want any abstract answers

How far along are you so far in playing the game?

6 hours ago, catpower165061 said:

I want to know how to properly lay out my roads and zones.

 So you have got as far as building a new city, laying out roads, zones, power and water?    What have you successfully constructed so far?

[APSMS 1,893]

6 hours ago, rsc204 said:

In short, start by following the in-game tutorials (region: Timbuktu) first. This will help get you comfortable with the basics of playing.

I am perpetually amazed by the number of games which possess excellent tutorials that players ignore. I play Insurgency, which is a really simple FPS shooter, and there's only one Single-Player element, and its a 15-minute interactive tutorial that tells you everything you need to know, and the number of times players have asked how to pick up objects in that game (something covered in the first 2 minutes) is mind-boggling.

There are tons of games that have tutorials that suck, or they're just a bunch of reading. For all its faults, SC4 is not one of those games. No nuanced gameplay, perhaps, but more than enough to figure out what's going on.

[catpower165061 5]

I have played the tutorial where you have to cut budget first, then continue playing with making a population of 20,000. I don't know if I can do it. All I'm doing is making residential and industrial zones. But it's hard to keep up with the RCI because it can change every month. That is one of my problems.

[Yarahi 1,823]

36 minutes ago, catpower165061 said:

*snipped* But it's hard to keep up with the RCI because it can change every month. That is one of my problems.

Maybe it would be a point to slow down? Sounds like you are playing the game at cheetah speed. If you switch to turtle , and only use short stretches of cheetah it is easier to watch the RCI

Also; you are not supposed to keep RCI at zero at all time... there will almost always be deman.  
In fact - you should be more worried when you don't have demand

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

2 hours ago, catpower165061 said:

I have played the tutorial where you have to cut budget first,

So you are playing the tutorials in Timbuktu and also playing without anything installed in either plugin folder that alters the game mechanics?

The Timbuktu region with the tutorials also has several empty tiles/cities that you can experiment with starting a blank new city.  If you delete one of the city tiles you will get a plain blank flat tile where you can start just building one road across the tile.  Put some industry and a coal power plant at one end, a bit of commercial in the middle, and residential and a water pump at the other end.   Start with something simple and small and use the budget panel to get to the point where you are making a profit.    So, my suggestion is to build one major road first and connect it at both ends to the region.

To focus better on the game it will help to disable the auto-goto, the urgent advice, the U drive-it, and enable daytime only.   Also when you start a city it will give you time before any fires or riots start and before garbage piles up --only place things when they are necessary, and the early game will tolerate high taxes so you can get some cash in the bank.

[catpower165061 5]

I guess I have very little creativity. I'm still into getting to learn it though. 

How do you even get demand above a certain level? It seems like if all I do is build zones, it may just shift the demand. Maybe there are things going on which I don't understand.

How can I even play without "fear of failing"?

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

8 minutes ago, catpower165061 said:

I guess I have very little creativity. I'm still into getting to learn it though. 

How do you even get demand above a certain level? It seems like if all I do is build zones, it may just shift the demand. Maybe there are things going on which I don't understand.

How can I even play without "fear of failing"?

Creativity is not absolutely required in terms of making beautiful cities, you can focus on management and make functional cities that have some beauty only as required.   In gameplay, demand will fluctuate and at certain thresholds demand will drop significantly as you are required to build more infrastructure to deal with increasing population, pollution, and the needs of industry and commerce.   I would say, don't fear failing, the game is constantly on the verge of failing, so the challenge really is to succeed over and against the odds of failure.   You may be already on the right track and don't know it     We cannot know exactly how the game was programmed as the source code is yet locked, and the mystery is what keeps interest in the game alive. 

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

Here's my take on how to get started and get a feel for the game. (Disclaimer: A lot of my philosophy doesn't match what other peeps say, so feel free to ignore it.)

Start in the middle of a large city tile. Plain, flat terrain with no trees is fine to begin with. Then do:

• Play in Vanilla with no mods of any kind.
• Name your city to get into Mayor mode.
• When the first new month rolls over, enact the gambling ordinance to get 100 income per month.
• Draw a plain, light gray street about 20 tiles long.
• Do not make any neighborhood connections.
• Plop a Wind Mill along side it toward one end of the street.
• Crank the speed up to Cheetah.
• Zone a 4x4 Farm. It should develop right away.
• Zone another 4x4 Farm leaving a one tile gap between it and the first farm. It too will develop quickly.
• Keep zoning 4x4 Farms one by one until finally the last one will not grow.
• Check your detailed demand and you will see Low Wealth Res wants in.
• Zone one 1x2 Res. It'll grow immediately. Wait and see if your empty Farm grows.
• Zone another 1x2 Res. It'll grow. Watch the Farm.
• Keep zoning 1x2 Res intermingled with the Farms until the empty Farm zone grows.
• Then zone another 4x4 Farm when it does.
• Extend the street when needed. Branch out in any direction.
• Always keep at least one zone of farm that won't grow before you zone more Res.
• At some point toss in 1x2 Commercials one by one. (Watch the demand.)
• Keep this up until you've filled the city tile.

Since there are no neighborhood connections you won't have significant traffic to worry about. Running at full speed means things grow immediately when there is demand for them. Check your power graph now and then or just wait for the red blinking message saying you are getting close to capacity. Add another Wind Mill when needed. If you have a fire start, plop a fire station nearby and put out the fire. Then bulldoze the fire station. There's no need for schools or medical right now. These Sims live in the dark ages and a life span of 50 years is just fine.

The whole idea is to get a feel for the very basics of the demand thinger without adding all the later complications. And you won't have any air pollution to worry with either. You will have a lot of water pollution, but it doesn't matter since we aren't providing the Sims with a water connection. Eventually garbage will start to pile up. Zone a landfill for that. If that landfill overflows, zone a new one not connected to the first one.

Watch and see that you can make a seriously decent profit this way. Failure is impossible because we don't care about achieving some high population threshold nor how happy our Sims are. Then, and only then imo, start adding things to make them happy. Plop a small medical clinic in a cluster of residential. Turn the ambulance slider all the way off. Adjust the budget so it's just barely more than needed for the number of patients. You'll see you can add these throughout the tile and get their life span above 90 years and still be making a profit. (Btw, adjust each clinic individually. Never use the one in the overall budget panel.)

It's all a matter of not trying to learn everything all at once. Start with the basic basics and master those first. If you keep your yellow and blue zones satisfied to the point that one more new zone won't grow then your Res demand will be high and that's good. You won't have the dreaded unemployed suitcase zots over bunches of homes.

[MeMyself&I 379]

I agree with @RandyE about creativity not being necessary to make great cities.  You can certainly micro-manage your way to a great city without having a lick of artistic creativity at all if you simply follow logic and basic mathematics.  It may not be pretty at first but, chances are, that as your city starts to grow and develop all on it's own you will find that success suits you and your inner artisan will come out.  Soon you will start planting trees and making neighborhoods a little bit nicer, bit by bit.  @CorinaMarie  has some great advice (as always) on starting out with basics that is a surefire winner in terms of early development and you should follow her design plan and just see what happens.  Her method above is almost a surefire recipe for early success.  It really is that simple to start out.  I definitely agree with the farms being a must-have at the beginning, especially in vanilla SC4.  Plain grey streets for residential connecting to a single main road with some light commercial lots and power are the essentials for a village or town center to start.  It will grow.

 Also, don't ever underestimate the effects of a well placed park or playground in a slowly developing residential neighborhood or a small plaza in between a couple of commercial lots.  You don't need a lot of things like that at first but once your Sims start moving in plop one in a housing tract and just see the difference it makes in growth.  Sometimes even a couple of trees will start residential and commercial zones growing and it will switch something on for you at some point and you will see how the game moves and flows.  The real key is to not spend too much, especially at first.  Let things grow and, like Cori said, keep it on cheetah speed to build up funds but only as long as you're making money.  If you are NOT making money every month, turn the simulator speed down to turtle so you can rectify the situation and then turn it up again once you get back in the black.  Keep your zones on light density and keep your industry separate - but not too far away.  A few blocks at most.  Sims don't want to travel too far to work.  Keep any landfills away from residential and commercial zones with a longer single road leading out beyond your farmlands.

 Another thing; don't let your advisors bully you into dropping money for something you don't need.  They can be sarcastic and snippy and downright mean but it doesn't mean a thing.  Don't let their neurosis sway you if the numbers aren't right.  Just because they say you need an airport or a bigger high school or a zoo doesn't mean you have to build one right away.  Accept any upgrades or rewards you're offered but you don't have to build them right away either.  Wait until you have the money and the right place in your city for them first.  You won't lose them if you don't use them immediately.  Free rewards should be used ASAP though because they will only benefit your Sims and make them happy and they don't cost anything other than a few bucks a month for upkeep.  Some don't even require that. 

 Just let it all grow and be patient until it does.  Don't start going crazy with zoning new areas just because the ones you have aren't taking off right away.  Try adding a park or a patch of trees first.

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

7 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Here's my take on how to get started and get a feel for the game.

Its interesting to read In point form how someone else goes about playing the game with their own interests.  Gradually my own interest in landscaping and the natural environment has come to the forefront as we've discussed here and on my CJ your focus on agriculture.  For anyone who also might want to try an agricultural SC4 gig, without the farming desirability mod agricultural demand will drop to 0 if not started at the beginning of the game, and it stays at 0 no matter what.  As well, without the Farming Jobs Multiplier mod there are few jobs available on farms that can take up a lot of space.

So, I posted a reply here rather than bumping my CJ which has already enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame worth.   I'm going to work on a large tile with the mods installed and develop as high a population I can using as much area for agriculture as I can.   I'll use the 50x multiplier and look for agricultural lots to add from the STEX.   That will serve as my next CJ entry and hopefully an inspiration for you to start one as a lot of people would probably enjoy seeing your developed tiles.

5 hours ago, MeMyself&I said:

 Just let it all grow and be patient until it does.  Don't start going crazy with zoning new areas just because the ones you have aren't taking off right away.  Try adding a park or a patch of trees first.

Both you and Cori gave some easy to read, friendly and personable replies for getting familiar with the basic play of the game.   Its  nice to know that there are actual people out there who play and enjoy the game in a variety of ways.   The game is more 'current' in today's gaming culture than even the most recent version of SC (2013). 

I like especially your mention of the ' inner artisan'.    I doubt there's any such thing as a human without an inner artisan somewhere buried under all the stress and anxiety of life in this world.   And what a better world it would be if everybody discovered their 'inner artisan'.  We could all play SC4 and share these points of view and figure out how to deal with industrial, civil and environmental issues in RL.

Back to the game... You mentioned the parks, I would only add that even the grass area park and the small plaza can make a lot of difference in growth and stability of residential and commerce.  As well these can determine the growth and stability of high-tech industrial.

[APSMS 1,893]

There's nothing like getting fully acquainted with the base Vanilla game (Rush Hour, that is) to make you fully appreciate the difference that mods make. Spent about 5 years playing the game Vanilla. Then discovered the NAM just after v30. Game changer, that.

Still, making the Vanilla game work properly is no easy feat, and I would suggest that mastering it will allow you to accommodate for any curve balls that modding the game might throw at you. At the very least it forces you to think how the game requires you to, which is not only a feat in itself, but generally necessary to achieve the desired results once aesthetics become the most important aspect of your play, since the game often does not do what you want when you tell it to, and as has been demonstrated numerous times (not least with my recent experiences with FAPL that had been of course discovered by others), the game is surprisingly complex with a lot of moving parts, not all of which are important.

Learning to filter the clutter is necessary, and this is easiest in the vanilla game. Like others have said, take it slow. My favorite speed is Rhino, since it runs fast enough to move the date, but not too fast that you can't enjoy the animation and correct the simulation before too much harm is done (if a problem arises). Cheetah is often too fast to correct if you're still learning and something goes wrong.

[MeMyself&I 379]

 

14 hours ago, RandyE said:

Its interesting to read In point form how someone else goes about playing the game with their own interests.

This is exactly one of the main reasons why I love this site!  Everyone here loves this game as much as I do and I really enjoy reading and seeing everyone's ideas and creativity and strategies.  I have been playing SimCity in all it's manifestations since it first came out wayyyy back in the 90s (do you guys remember the original???)  It was the greatest game!  I'm very experienced at the vanilla game and explored pretty much every option available in as many different ways as I could figure out and I don't regret a single minute of time I gave to it.  I love the game that much!  I'm pretty new to the mods though and, as I stated in another post regarding the NAM, once I discovered it I felt "born again" and it's true, just as @APSMSsaid in his post above.  I love mapping - always have.  Maps, terrains, mountains, rivers, streets, roads, etc have always been a passion for me.  I used to draw hundreds of detailed maps by hand back when I played D&D many moons ago.  My friends loved them and it inspired me to make even more.  Sim City has always been all that x100 but it's so much more than just maps too.  It all comes alive and moves and breathes and you can make something blossom and grow from you maps or you can watch them wither and die or simply blow them up in a perverse impulse.  But you can always start again and that's so cool!

 You are absolutely correct in pointing out about agriculture not doing anything if you don't start with it and after a while it will stop developing.  Like Cori, I have an affinity to small towns and rural development, being a small town kid myself.  I have been using Pegasus' SPAM for a while and I really enjoy it, both for the functionality and the aesthetics because I do like farms a lot and they're a must have in almost every city I build in some way.  It's huge and some of it is hard to figure out but I like it.  I haven't seen too many other AG or farm mods but, then again, searching for something isn't always easy here which is why I tend to follow some of the more experienced players and modders who have interests similar to my own.  It's easier than searching sometimes unless I know exactly what I'm looking for.  It is getting a little bit easier to navigate since I started though.

 

13 hours ago, APSMS said:

Still, making the Vanilla game work properly is no easy feat, and I would suggest that mastering it will allow you to accommodate for any curve balls that modding the game might throw at you. At the very least it forces you to think how the game requires you to, which is not only a feat in itself, but generally necessary to achieve the desired results once aesthetics become the most important aspect of your play, since the game often does not do what you want when you tell it to

 This is the ultimate truth!  Even as an experienced SC4 vanilla player I've had some very frustrating moments with it, both in vanilla and with the mods, but I definitely agree that the mods are easier to deal with if you know the basic game really well.  There's simply no disputing that.  I'm still learning a lot and I spend a lot of time here just reading.  I read everything I can and I don't find any of it boring or dull.  It's fascinating to me what can be done and especially what HAS been done!  I don't really know just how intimidating it would be for someone to come here and try the mods unless they know the game itself really well.  I suppose that the game's innate tendency for disobedience is some of what endears itself to us though.

 I also agree with you and @Yarahi about slowing the speed down.  I normally use turtle or rhino myself but when I'm starting a city I use cheetah a lot in the beginning when I'm in the black to build up money faster.  Once it's starting to flow I keep it slower because I do like to watch everything develop.  When I'm building something big I might even pause the simulator for a while until I can get the pieces together.  I've found this to be almost imperative at times with the RHW especially.

 

14 hours ago, RandyE said:

I like especially your mention of the ' inner artisan'.    I doubt there's any such thing as a human without an inner artisan somewhere buried under all the stress and anxiety of life in this world.   And what a better world it would be if everybody discovered their 'inner artisan'.  We could all play SC4 and share these points of view and figure out how to deal with industrial, civil and environmental issues in RL.

  You said what I feel in that statement and I couldn't agree more.  Doesn't it seem like it really should be that simple IRL??  What is the difference, after all?  Maybe we could start a new "League of Nations" or something to that effect where you have to play this game and share it with everyone else.  I like that!   if only it WERE that simple.

[f3cs 1,063]

Here's my 2 cents:

See real world cities and ask this questions:

What kind of terrain do you have? Do you a see a theme created by the terrain? (Port Cities, Island Paradises, Rural Development, Big cities in the contryside). What terrain defines on the evolution of the city?

How the urban area looks like? Little and Planned like Brasilia? In eternal expansion, like São Paulo?  

How the cities interacts with roads? What is the goal of them? When do you need a Expressway/Parkway/Highway?

What you do when you plan the roads to grow?

How zoning acts in a city? What happens when the CBD is far from the people? What happens if the CBD is surrounded by Residential environment? How About Industrial development? How about 2 CBDs Like Rio? If you don't even have a CBD? 

The city have a historical area?

What kind of mass transit they use in each movement? What happens when you use a type of mass transit which has capacity bigger then the demand? and when the capacity is lower?

Subway in a industrial area? How about LRT in CBD? Rails in suburbs? About suburbs, in your concept, have rich or poor people? 

How the major city interacts with minor cities? How the major city depends on the metro?

The major city have industrial development? Or leave this paper to the other cities in the metro and keeps commercial?

How industrial development helps in the other developments?

The city metropolitan area have a countryside?

Parks? Beaches?

Anyway...

Read this: https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=12096.0

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

2 hours ago, MeMyself&I said:

 You are absolutely correct in pointing out about agriculture not doing anything if you don't start with it and after a while it will stop developing.  Like Cori, I have an affinity to small towns and rural development, being a small town kid myself. 

I'm glad there are people here that do come from more rural-based backgrounds.   Generalizing from experience having lived in both very urban and very rural environments, cities are fun to build, but not the easiest to maintain.  Even when you tone down all the crisis situations in the city simulator, it does require a sense of constant attention to maintaining a balance.   I've now started a region in which I'm going for both high population, and only agriculture which doesn't make immediate sense in that everything we build requires manufacturing and heavy industry, massive shipping of materials and products.     The first tile experiment is with mods and cheats installed, kind of like training wheels, the next large tile will be the challenge of making it work in vanilla mode with all plugins removed.

So this is a big part of the fun of using SimCity, exploring different mechanics and properties, setting up experiments, and then interacting with the simulator, finally, sharing the results with other players as we're doing here.  

I'm operating on the basic premise of advance of technologies that reduce the trend toward more massive urbanization and industrialization.

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

On 11/5/2016 at 8:24 PM, RandyE said:

I've now started a region in which I'm going for both high population, and only agriculture which doesn't make immediate sense in that everything we build requires manufacturing and heavy industry, massive shipping of materials and products.

In my imagination the industrial goods and such come from outside my region so all I need in any of the city tiles is farms, sims, and trading posts. Since I haven't looked for CC to actually represent buildings in the dark ages I still get good ol' Maxis stuff, but that's ok.

Here's the tile I'm really happy with cause in my (sim)world the trees are basically sacred. (Primarily the dark green ones, but the others secondary.)

^ So down at the river I plopped a ferry and I pretend it's where outside goods come from. The main road up to the farms deliberately skirts around the sacred dark green trees and the farmers don't fell them either.

 

I laid out the roads between the tiles first so I could reserve room as I expand.  None of them actually connect to other tiles atm. I'm playing on the Hard Setting and I'm keeping the demand balanced without the extra influence of neighborhood connections.

 

And here's how it looks so far:

 

 

On 11/5/2016 at 8:24 PM, RandyE said:

The first tile experiment is with mods and cheats installed, kind of like training wheels, the next large tile will be the challenge of making it work in vanilla mode with all plugins removed.

My cheat is one simple tweak to the Budget Exemplar I extracted from Simcity_1.dat. I made it so I get five times the income from Agricultural. This let's me afford fire stations to cover everything without going broke. I'll attach it in case anyone would want it. Or just use iLive's Reader and make your own.

AgPay5x.dat

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

My cheat is one simple tweak to the Budget Exemplar I extracted from Simcity_1.dat. I made it so I get five times the income from Agricultural. This let's me afford fire stations to cover everything without going broke. I'll attach it in case anyone would want it. Or just use iLive's Reader and make your own.

AgPay5x.dat

Your method of making grayscales results in the gentle ripples that are suited to your ag tiles, giving the map a natural fabric-like appearance.  The whole map looks sufficiently realistic in texture and form.

Without droning on with too much artsy analysis, good enough to say you're 'inner artisan' is operating and your posting here looks like a CJ entry to me, the reader can relate to a real person telling a story with graphics.

Your approach to SC4 keeps reminding me of role playing gamers.  In combination with a city simulator, people could play the roles of the various managers/advisors in an online interactive game.  

Thanks for the ag income dat file.  I can now just use the farming desirability, the ag jobs multiplier and your income adjustment to get a better focus on the objective of max pop + max ag.  Region connections even without any other developed tiles seem to have some default effect.

About the buildings, I still intend to look for ag specific buildings.  I'll start with the massive collection of disorganized zipfiles I already have downloaded.  So many possibilities of Shoppe threads.

[MeMyself&I 379]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

So down at the river I plopped a ferry and I pretend it's where outside goods come from. The main road up to the farms deliberately skirts around the sacred dark green trees and the farmers don't fell them either

I really like this map, Cori!  You are very good with greyscales, as Randy mentioned, and I've seen a lot of your other stuff too including the greyscales from clouds.  That's simply brilliant imho!  Maybe I just haven't been around long enough but I don't think I've seen too many people use them like you do - and make them work!  Very nice!  The sacred trees are awesome, btw   I'm very interested in seeing what develops with this because I really love the whole concept. I also agree with Randy that this would make a very nice CJ, especially with the story being told the way you imagine it.  I would like to see and hear the whole thing.

 Thank you for the ag pay.dat file too!  That will definitely help a lot with the vanilla farms

 

1 hour ago, RandyE said:

Your approach to SC4 keeps reminding me of role playing gamers.  In combination with a city simulator, people could play the roles of the various managers/advisors in an online interactive game

 I'm glad I'm not the only one who does this.  I'm an RP Gamer and I tend to fantasize and get "involved" in whatever game I'm playing.  I relate very well to imagination and I really enjoy when people tell a story with their pictures which is why I like the CJ entries a lot.  You have a lot of really good ideas.  I would love to see a city builder/RPG!  That would be a blast!

 

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

4 hours ago, RandyE said:

Your method of making grayscales results in the gentle ripples that are suited to your ag tiles, giving the map a natural fabric-like appearance.  The whole map looks sufficiently realistic in texture and form.

Thanks.

I'm an official member of the Not-Flat-Earth-Simciety. Where I live (IRL) all the farms are on gently rolling land. When I go to and from work I can take the interstate and get there in 25 minutes or (I do this a lot) I can take the county back roads and drive thru the farm and wooded lands and get there in 30 minutes. So up and down the gentle hills and around S curves and this is what I want my sim worlds to look like.

 

2 hours ago, MeMyself&I said:

I really like this map, Cori!  You are very good with greyscales, as Randy mentioned, and I've seen a lot of your other stuff too including the greyscales from clouds.

Thanks.

Btw, this is one of my other stuff from clouds maps. I attached the grayscale to this post in my map making thread. Then I also edited in the details of how I did it to the bottom of post 1 there. Basically I used the Burn Tool along side the rivers to proportionally lower the land to simulate the effects of previous centuries of occasional flooding.

 

4 hours ago, RandyE said:

Your approach to SC4 keeps reminding me of role playing gamers.

2 hours ago, MeMyself&I said:

I'm an RP Gamer and I tend to fantasize and get "involved" in whatever game I'm playing.

Yeah, the whole time I'm playing there's this imaginary movie going on in my mind. It started early with me playing with dolls and playing make believe, ofc. Then when my neighbor girls and I got into playing D2 on my lan we didn't play it right at all. At least by anyone else's standards. We'd play in Act 1 Normal for months. Back before one of the patches you could lay stuff out on the ground in town and it'd stay there for the whole game session. We'd each have our own little fashion shoppes of things we had found like Arctic Furs or self repairing rare boots or whatever. We'd also each find a house to live in out in the wilderness. So, all that to say that my SimCity playing is RPG in my own little fantasy world.

[MeMyself&I 379]

7 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Btw, this is one of my other stuff from clouds maps

 I realized that right after I wrote that last post.  The river fork looked familiar and I remembered the clouds.  It definitely fits your city tile visage nicely, huh?  You were probably way ahead, visualizing the farms on the hills before you even got it to greyscale