What Type Of SimCity 4 Player Are You?

[brianc1327 161]

My goal is to be a "giant of governing gifts".  Actually, my goals change.  At first my goal was to be able to make a city that made money without having to resort to the business deals that you get offered when you lose too much money.  Well, I can do that pretty well now.  Most recently I did my "education experiment," and if I think of another experiment, I will make up a new region and perform that experiment. 

I started developing the region called Fairview ("Fairview: Linux vs. Windows") to experiment with neighbor deals, but have since decided that since managing neighbor deals is a pain in the royal butt, I have put a Cosmic Neutrino power plant and a Hyperspace garbage incinerator on each property and cancelled the neighbor deals, and am now using it to develop public transit (the type I have now is a subway system that connects all the cities, but I might try others in the future) .  I am also developing each of the cities as a single zoning type (all R, C, or I), or at least i kinda am.  I got a mod that makes the skyscrapers into CO$$$ producing buildings, and generally put a bunch of those in my residential cities.

So I guess in terms of the categories that were originally proposed, I guess my classification would be a "playing the game" player.  I am certainly not a purist since I use mods all over the place (the CO$$$-skyscraper mod, the infinite money park, the cosmic neutrino power plant,  the Hyperspace garbage incinerator, etc.).  I have even use the "you don't deserve it cheat," but that was more to see what would happen if I used that cheat such as in my "education experiment."

I also used the "how dry I am" (or whatever the cheat is for not needing water), and it worked in that it removed the requirement of needing water, but I also was constantly putting out fires.  I seems that using "ctrl-x" cheats will get you something (not needing water) that you are not "supposed" to have or sooner than you actually "earn" it (such as the private schools), but that some sort of penalty is also invoked (spending a lot more of your time fighting fires than actually building your city), at least sometimes.

Hmm...I meant for this to just be a "pithy" joke about my goal to become "a giant of governing gifts," but it turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it would.

Brian Christiansen.

[citycowboy 183]

Sandbox. SC4 is a 10,000 piece puzzle I have never put together yet. 

[Haljackey 17,380]

5 hours ago, citycowboy said:

Sandbox. SC4 is a 10,000 piece puzzle I have never put together yet. 

Technically a large tile is up to 65,536 puzzle pieces (256*256) that can be put together virtually infinite ways.

[Wheezy 23]

100% sandboxer.  Plop cheat all day.

[blade2k5 1,523]

Playing the game player is what I am.  Before playing, I spent a few years making real world maps for fans of the game to build their cities, towns , rural areas on if they so desired.  Then all of a sudden, all my map making tools just stopped working and I never did figure out why.  So I gave up map making and went to actually play on some of those maps.  Right now I'm working on a map of the Congo River with one of it's tributaries flowing into it.  A 44km x 44km map.  Also have about 7gb worth of plugins as well when playing.  here's google image of the area I'm working on at the moment....

[Prophet42 1,503]

I would say "playing the game" player.  I tend to try for realistic growth.  Meaning I first develop my regions as mainly farmland interspersed with small towns.  As the small towns grow, the farmland is eaten up and the towns merge into a megapolis.  I also try to respect the landscape.  An example would be that sometimes (IRL) it easier to go around the mountain than over it.

[TheCjm1999 11]

I'm an "objective player". 

[Lost-In-Sofia 20]

Recently became a "purist", after being a mod hoarder a long time ago, I got back and started to play it again with no mods (except the NAM of course).
I love it, the looks, very 2000s. You can say I'm trying to live life back then again (hence my profile name, hehe).

Here's my recent region. I know, it's kind of bare. But it took such a long time to micro-manage little aspects of a city!
Eventually little by little all that blank spaces will be filled with farms in order to feed the future metropolis for sure! 

[Electricbassguy 1]

I am mostly a "Playing the Game" player. I try to build good cities but I don't follow a strict plan that will guarantee the best results. I also like the part of making each city terrain. It's nice when I'm able to actually create a realistic territory that looks like it could be a real place. I do kind of miss the older games where you could automatically generate terrain based on specifications but I guess with the region instead of one city, you can't do that anymore without some mod or external software.

 

[YNM 2]

"Playing the game" + "Sandbox" I guess.

 

SC4 was always interesting (until the new one pops up and until the next great thing comes up). It's the first time I have such things, so I went around the tutorials and such. Started out by staying with the tutorials, big city experience from such things first. I only had 1 successful city (not even a region !) from scratch, there was a second one but it have some money trees I think. Still the same over to Cities:Skylines - only one successful city, the rest is just empty freezing failures. Haven't had the time (or comp. power !) afterwards.

If there's anything to miss it's the agriculture plots. None of the newer ones have the ability to do large functional fields... Kind of change back the way I grow cities !

[kim026 298]

Hi everyone.

 

Interesting topic that got me thinking hard on what I actually want from my SimCity...

 

I'd say I'm "Playing My Game" but on a Sandbox Match. I mean that I create my own world with my own rules, balance, events, personalities, story, and mod freedom (yes, the more stuff I have the more things I can create, basically, but too much stuff means spending hours in the landmark and park lists). 

Once I've done creating the world, I start the settlement and play as if I was a sim myself. I don't plop. I observe the landscape change in time. I don't look to "complete" the city tile, but I describe how in the course of history it mutates and possibly expands until it communicates with the next. I don't just post pictures of CBDs with dozens of skyscrapers and the hundreds of thousands of inhabitans and automata traffic, I haven't even got past middle ages yet. 

In fact I started my main region, Branny, from scratch (coming soon in CJs), mainly because of terrain (I wanted to make my own), and also because of more history (I wanted to explore what happened at the very very beginning. Day one)

It will be an adventure that will last for years, and this is what I always looked for in a game, since Tomb Raider II in 1996, or Resident Evil 2, for that matter: ADVENTURE.

 

So:

Playing the Game player on a sandbox map, would be me.

[monkeywater 910]

Step 1:  try to build the perfect city, full education, no abandonment, looks sexy, no pollution.

Step 2: Build it and realize a limitation.

Step 3: Rage quit

Step 4: try again 6 months later.

[timmie 988]

I'm definitely a sandbox player. I know perfectly well what I want to realize, so I plop, demolish, plop, demolish, plop,... until it looks just right (with unlimited resources). While playing I often realize that what I want cannot be done with the plugins I use, which often leads to a long search for more (often without success, since there are not always plugins available for every specific wish).

I do care (a bit) about how the game works, though. I never plop residential or industrial buildings (it involves a lot of demolishing when the wrong building grows, and a lot of 'make historical'), but I do plop commercial. I try to have a somewhat normal traffic system, educational system + job market.

Illustration:

[radgeRayden 10]

I'm figuring myself again (both in the game and in real life). I used to min-max a lot, trying to get every nook and cranny of the map taken, the tallest buildings, etc. My English was at a very beginner level back when I played (7 years ago), so figuring the NAM out was... a challenge. I avoided the CAM altogether because I couldn't make sense of it too. Now I'm back, with different perspectives and having lived in different places.

My desire is to create a region that looks good and plays well, so I'd say half-sandbox, half playing the game. I want to make it feel good to live in, and I will sacrifice a lot of real state for pretty parks and good traffic options. Fortunately, I have an enormous region to work on! I don't shy too much from mods if I feel like they fix things that make the game unfair, but I don't want my simulation broken. I also love seeing the buildings get built (seriously, if a game has buildings being built I am sold. Banished was such a pleasure.), so I avoid ploppable commercial and such, zones all the way. Except for the lego-like park plopping minigame, of course.

As I think and plan out how I'll build my city I catch myself being inspired by the places I lived in and visited, and it makes me surprised but happy at the same time. I don't have the patience for a realistic project (like copying a city) but I enjoy trying to think like a real urbanist.

[Joey Auburn 150]

I'm a sandbox player.

[Tristy100 31]

Definitely a Sandbox player, and an objective player. I love to simulate real city growth, it just feels so great going from a zero-population, newly discovered area on earth, to a multi million population country/county/city (depending on size.) I focus mostly on looks, and try to simulate growth as well as I can. Playing on a sorta lower-spec computer now-a-days, has put me into my own hell, having to load up a new city every 5-10 mins depending on what I'm doing. I do use mods like job quadruplers, and super demand, and various money cheats, so I can focus on just creating stuff and having fun.