Asking for help to develop agricultural tiles

[Tyberius06 12,189]

Hi!

I showcased this picture about my current region a few days ago. Here is an overview about NoirCity's three already developed/WIP districts - on the left handside is North Harbour, the right upper city tile is Suburbiana, the lower district is CounterPoint. 

I'm planing a massive agricultural area for next, above North Harbour and above Suburbiana and I need some help. I have a lot of I-R/I-AG stuff: SPAM, BSC agri stuff etc, but I don't know which one is compatible with others or not, I don't have any experience with agri stuff and I don't want to use the Maxis "gems". I would like to use functianal items in a big variety, canals/streams (but not the fency ones - I think there is a few ditch canal types out there, and SPAM has its own as well), and MMP as well (but first the functional items).

So I need some advice how to build up my agricultural plugin folder.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance!

- Tyberius

[twalsh102 1,601]

From a technical standpoint, you are going to have to make some choices, depending maybe on what you are already using elsewhere and/or are willing to do without.  Are you going to be willing to exit the game, and switch different content in and out of your Plugins folder (or maybe switch entire Plugins folder) every time you want so switch between playing agricultural regions and your existing cities?

First from a Mod standpoint:

SPAM and CAM are not compatible.  They make changes to many of the same exemplars affecting the simulation as far as Industrial and I-R are concerned.  For example, SPAM spreads I-R growth over 5 Growth Stages (leaving other Industrial growth with the default 3 Growth Stages), while CAM spreads all Industrial growth over 10 stages.  SPAM and CAM both modify the same Maxis farming and farming-related lots / buildings as far as Growth Stage, as well as numbers of jobs and/or residents (of course, if you're going to exclude/block Maxis I-R stuff any way, this last is irrelevant).  

SPAM and NAM are not compatible, as SPAM includes its own Traffic Simulator.  While you can install SPAM without its traffic simulator, I'm not sure what affect this would have on SPAM-specific network pieces.  I've never tried to mix and match before.

From a content standpoint:

Any SPAM-specific content will be spread over 5 Growth Stages, while all other custom I-R content (other than that developed to specifically work with CAM) will only be spread over 3 Stages.  Job numbers per farm lot will be inconsistent between SPAM-specific, and any other custom I-R content.    The vast majority of custom content developed for SPAM could probably still be used with CAM.  So, for most custom content it won't be a matter of being incompatible, as much as it would being inconsistent.

Hope this makes sense!

Tim

[Tyberius06 12,189]

Thanks, Tim! 

Yepp. You showed me already a possible headache with a SPAM-CAM incompatibility, however I already new that they are incompatible with each other, I didn't know why. So with SPAM I don't really need the I-R fix from CAM 2.0 if I understood well. I read the SPAM description/readme file, and I know about its own traffic simulator mod, which is incompatible with NAM, but as I know that's a separate mod and the SPAM is working fine without it. I'm building in region level (as the picture above shows that), but each or most of the city tiles are unique and represent one or two kind of building styles like European-English or European-Paris, or Polish stylish buildings, or US new york etc... I have thousands of mod, eventually I want them to see in my cities.

So yepp, I've already built up 3 different plugin folder (well there are a few common folders like NAM, terrain mod, some essential files, RTMT etc...) which I switch them between the cities, and this is the plan to build up a virgin plugin folder from scratch to the agricultural staffs.

What I don't know is, how the SPAM can be working with the agricultural NOT camified stuffs made by BSC team or other teams here and there over the exchanges...

Thank you for your help! 

 

- Tyberius

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

2 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

SPAM includes its own Traffic Simulator

That's scary. Do you happen to know what the file would look like, or is it buried inside something innocuous?

I've had CAM, NAM and SPAM all installed together since 2013. I know I jumped through some hoops to do that back then, but I have since forgotten what I did  :/

All I can make out is the load order: CAM then NAM then SPAM. If the traffic sim was a known issue in 2013, then I almost certainly suppressed SPAM's, but I should relearn the tech so I can verify it now.

[matias93 7,535]

10 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

That's scary. Do you happen to know what the file would look like, or is it buried inside something innocuous?

Are three files named as such, that at least the NAM saves on its own folder. You can use any of those or create another one with the traffic simulator application that comes with the NAM in any case.

* * *

For my part, I'm holding on the agricultural development in wait for the awesome and beautiful work @Fantozzi has done, that also has the advantage of being deliberately designed to be compatible with Maxis, SPAM and CAM 2.0 standards

 

[Tyberius06 12,189]

26 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

2 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

SPAM includes its own Traffic Simulator

That's scary. Do you happen to know what the file would look like, or is it buried inside something innocuous?

It's a misunderstanding I think. The SPAM mod is compatible with NAM, it doesn't contain any traffic simulator, however there is a PEG-SPAM Traffic Mod, which changes things and this Traffic Mod is NOT compatible with NAM. 

[Fantozzi 4,067]

To my knowledge SPAM and CAM aren't compatible. NAM is okay on both but should be installed last. I don't know the exact reason but If I use my own brain (caution!) only reason I can see are grow stages.

Grow stages can be defined by caps/rules like water access, current, police coverage, education coverage (IQ), park coverage, regional development city development and so on.  

On grow stages 1-3 those rules should be the same for all:  base game, SPAM, CAM.  Which means no matter lots were done for SPAM, CAM or base game - if done for the first 3 grow stages they should work anyway.

On grow stages 4 to 5 - if CAM and SPAM have different 'rules' (I didn't find information on SPAM) they will conflict. So that's most probably the reason why you shouldn't install both mods at the same time. But this doesn't affect lots/building models. Only the core of the mods.

CAM 2.1 says:

"Stage 4 Farms
These farms are larger than other farms. They may begin developing once the regional industrial population has reached 3,194. They are Water CAPPED and Fire CAPPED, so you have some control over where you want them to develop.
Stage 5 Farms
These farms are really large farming industries. They may begin developing once the regional industrial population has reached 8,562. They are Water CAPPED and Fire CAPPED, so you have some control over where you want them to develop."

So CAM farms for this grow stage should work on SPAM - but as I don't know the rules for SPAM I can't tell if SPAM farms for this level will work on CAM.- but my guessing would be that SPAM farms for grow level 4 and 5 work on CAM too.

In addition CAM offers also grow stages 6 to 10. Farms lotted for this stages will only work on CAM, they won't grow on SPAM. Until you fire up Reader and change grow stage on the lot exemplar (but you might need to change other data on the building exemplar too to have the lot grown more easily - you might have to adjust the stats according to the grow level)

So as SPAM farms can be used on CAM and CAM farms for stage 4 and 5  most probably can be used on SPAM - you would simply had to watch for the grow level of the lot - doesn't matter instead if it's called/named a CAM or a SPAM lot.

But then one had to watch out what the real difference are between SPAM and CAM regarding farming in practice apart from defining grow stage 4 and 5 different. To my knowledge the only difference regarding gameplay is that the SPAM did integrate farming into the BSC reward chain - so you can get reward buildings by achieving certain farming levels.

As far as I can tell - that's the only benefit of using SPAM core mod instead of CAM.

 

Hope this helps.