City limits

[cromabianca 158]

G'day all!

 

There's something I'm just struggling with ever since this game came out: how do you usually "end" your cities? Or, if you will: how do you transition from the very last building in your city to the vast wilderness oustide? I don't know how to make that transition. Do you have examples and such? Thanks

 

 

[Avanya 2,605]

Check out this video by Atys - it helped me alot getting those edges to look more natural. Also hop on Google Maps and check out how real cities end their road layouts.

[Rotype 121]

Google earth is your friend, especially since you can now tilt to get a more "game-like" view.  It obviously depends on the region but some places just oddly end.  If you have hills/mountains you can build up to a specific elevation (use the elevation mode to view the topographic lines).  That will give your outskirts a less straight cut and more curvy edge.  If you're trying to fade out into something flat maybe try to work into a grid and slowly decrease the density of roads within and forming the grid.  If you look in the midwest USA you'll see that kind of transition.

Specifically from your screenshot I'd suggest forming a grid starting maybe 10x20 (or whatever your block size is closer to the city, then a few blocks out going to 20x20 then 40x40 etc.  When you hit that little range of elevation cut each road at a specific level. See my super super ugly paint version.

[cromabianca 158]

Thanks alot for the suggestions: really appreciated!

 

@Avanya: Yes, I saw that video... a looong time ago: I must have forgotten it!

@Rotype: ok, you paint diagram is a bit crude, but the idea is very clear! Thanks! Also, I'm having a look at your YT series

 

[Rotype 121]

15 minutes ago, cromabianca said:

Thanks alot for the suggestions: really appreciated!

@Rotype: ok, you paint diagram is a bit crude, but the idea is very clear! Thanks! Also, I'm having a look at your YT series

 

You're welcome and thanks for the view(s)!  

I feel I should say the paint diagram is by no means representative of my actual in-game work.  I'm just in the office now and can't get in-game (or in-photoshop) to make something better. 

[TekindusT 3,809]

I think you might find this short article [link] useful. It's more like a real life explanation of how cities (especially in the US) tend to "end", how history and laws determined the kind of developments the cities would undergo, from their inner cities to different kinds of suburbs and exurbia. Quite an interesting read for your purpose I think.

[Judazzz 1,936]

The cities we build have such a size that in real life they would be agglomerations, which means a center (the city) and a periphery (satellite cities), which means you can build several more places on the outskirts of your main city. These can be anything from small towns to tiny hamlets, old or new (imagine how your city would have developed over time, gradually expanding from where it all started). In between all these different places you can do anything you want (industry, commerce, leisure, sports, nature, agriculture - you get the point), and connect them with rural roads and national highways. And the further you get away from the center, the more natural or agricultural things get.

In your case, why not expand towards a themed little town on the far end of the lake (water sports, outdoor activities, cute little historical center), industrialize the 'south' shore, farmland towards the top right - just thinking out loud here 

[Rotype 121]

I like your idea @Judazzz, but strictly speaking the cities we see a lot of here (many very large skyscrapers in downtown, multiple many lane highways etc.) would have immense urban sprawls.  A good way to check the scaling (not that the scaling in C:S makes any sense :P) is to open up terrain.party and move the tile marker over your favorite city.  You'll see even if you pick a small city like Indianapolis, IN (some skyscrapers, a decent size interstates nearby) you'll see that the 18x18km box is still mostly full with either urban core or sprawl.  In the US at least it's rare to see farms w/in 9km of skyscrapers.

That's not to say you can't build your city any way you want, and I'm certainly planning on putting farms a lot closer to my skyscrapers than they are in real life to add some variety.

[Judazzz 1,936]

@Rotype - you're definitely right that we'll never reach a scale of real-life cities: even if we'd have enough room (current maps are too small for a properly sized city), we'd run into all the built-in limits way before we'd ever get close to a realistic size.
So down-scaling is key indeed: most players build skyscraping downtowns, but compared to real-life even they are way too small. For example, downtown Denver or Pittsburgh, not really giants of cities, have downtowns that alone are larger than the majority of C:SL cities (if you include the old residential area's, warehouse districts, etc.). Same with major thoroughfares: big cross-town avenues in C:SL are typically just a handful of miles in length at the very most, whereas in real life they not seldomly go on for tens of miles (often eventually becoming national routes that connect smaller cities). And the same can be said about pretty much all the other types of neighborhoods, be it 19th/early 20th century row/terraced houses, garden estates, "projects", late 20th century cookie-cutter 'burbs, commercial districts, industrial estates, ....
So pretty much everything is (needs to be!) down-scaled in order to create a city that contains all the main ingredients of a big city. So when you go down that road and down-scale your entire city, why not continue that in the surrounding area's? At least that would give a complete picture of a city that slowly transitions into the 'hinterland', instead of abruptly ending - in the end, we (or many of us) try to build as realistic as possible, but it'll always be within the (considerable) limits the game imposes on us. Which means that despite the game's grandiose name, it's (in my opinion at least) way more suitable to build a small city (about 100.000 inhabitants) with some surrounding towns and villages, rather than huge metropolises with the eponymous skylines...

[cromabianca 158]

Wow! Thank you guys! Your replies are amazing! I love Judazz's suggestions!!! And, TekindusT, let me say this: the article you posted was such an interesting read! Thank you again! You guys are heroes!

 

[csSniper 1]

On 5/8/2017 at 11:00 AM, cromabianca said:

G'day all!

 

There's something I'm just struggling with ever since this game came out: how do you usually "end" your cities? Or, if you will: how do you transition from the very last building in your city to the vast wilderness oustide? I don't know how to make that transition. Do you have examples and such? Thanks

 

 

How do you transition going from land to water ?

[bitters 1]

As a rule I build an access road all the way around the city about 16u just inside the city limits.  I never zone out side the access road.