My Personal Questions.

[Tristy100 31]

Thanks so much!  I was also wondering, and benefits of over-funding the roads?

[matias93 7,535]

None at all; underfunding though can lead to potholes and cut roads, which really cause havoc. Not recommended at all.

[Tristy100 31]

Thanks! Anyone know any good flat maps? I'm starting to like them more after installing this slope mod Thank you.

[Tristy100 31]

I have another question. Does anyone have tips for keeping land-value consistent? I want to make middle-class suburbs across multiple large cities, but I end up with some low-wealth people in one city, or high-wealth in another. I wish there was a mod where when you placed residential, you specified what wealth-level develops on it. If anyone could create this, it would be great, but in the mean-time, anyone know of tips to keep it consistent? I'm also having issues with education. Once you place a plenty of libraries, schools, and museums, it gets jumbled as your building, and lose track of where your high-school serves vs. where it doesn't. Anyone know how to be less confused about it?

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

1 hour ago, Tristy100 said:

I wish there was a mod where when you placed residential, you specified what wealth-level develops on it. If anyone could create this, it would be great, ...

You might want to give mine a try: Cori's_No_Kickout_Lower_Wealth_CAMpatible.dat

It's not exactly what you requested, but I find it helps my play style and I use it all the time. Basically this means whatever grows initially will not be replaced by higher wealth levels even if the land value changes. Buildings can upgrade to the highest in their wealth class and zoning density, but will not get Kicked Out by the higher wealth levels. This'll only apply to zones as they are now and new ones you zone. None will be retroactively put back to their previous wealth level.

 

1 hour ago, Tristy100 said:

lose track of where your high-school serves vs. where it doesn't.

If you click on the High School with the Query tool you should see green radii of all your educational facilities (minus the ones that cover the whole tile like Colleges and Museums). With the High School centered on the screen and zoom out a wee bit, you'll prolly be able to see which radius applies to it. If it's still confusing, adjust the buses funding a bit and watch which circle expands or contracts.

[APSMS 1,893]

You know, I first hated life when I installed a slope mod. Because I didn't want to start a new region, a lot of the roads in my current region couldn't be connected to because I'd drawn them on too steep of a slope and getting a new connection required redrawing most of the networks to let the slope mod work its magic. It was a pain, it was ugly, and I still never managed to redraw everything.

Then I thought I'd uninstall it and see how that worked out...

I couldn't do it. The undulations in the roads, the super steep (45 degrees) hill slopes, the bumpiness and wonkiness of the terrain wreaking havoc on my rail lines...

Once I had gotten used to the slope mod, I couldn't go back. My roads were too ugly for me to handle. Maybe your experience will be different, but I've not stopped using hilly regions just because I have a slope mod installed. Now, I've modified my slope mod quite a bit to get it more to my liking (still not perfect though), but I have a very hard time finding a flat region interesting to play on, even if the sandbox options that it opens up might allow me to be a little bit more creative when it comes to zoning and parkland (being able to use canal pieces seems to be a primary advantage that I can't do in a non-flat region).

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

12 hours ago, APSMS said:

I've modified my slope mod quite a bit to get it more to my liking

There are so many parameters in a "slope" mod (the network placement exemplars), and they're so much a matter of taste, that I wish they had a built-in screen in-game for tweaking and saving. They don't, so I strongly urge anyone and everyone who can get over the Ilives learning hump to open up a version of a slope mod, explore it, and start experimenting. Like APSMS said, once you enjoy the benefits, you won't be able to play without it.

[Tristy100 31]

I do still have it installed, and I like it. One issue though is I never got Real Highway working. I flipped out after trying to build a simple overpass for about an hour. I uninstalled it, and got back the normal highway's with NAM intersections and add-ons. It looks nice now, I'm currently recreating Windsor, Ontario. I'm NOWHERE near you, with the fancy hills and turns with puzzle pieces and over-passes. One thing I have an issue with is trying to be realistic. My hard-drive is quite slow, leading it to take FOREVER to save or load a region or city. Everything else is fine. Also, should I render with Software or Hardware? If software or hardware is my Graphics Card, then would it let the game perform better due to my CPU not having to render as well as load the info from the Hard Drive? Thanks. (by the way, APSMS, looks magnificent.)

This is what I'm most proud of, and as you can tell, it was made without a slope mod.

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

7 minutes ago, Tristy100 said:

Also, should I render with Software or Hardware?

Hardware is the ideal choice. It uses an older version of DirectX. Some video cards are recognized automatically when you select it and others need some coaxing. Take a peek at: How to configure SC4 to work with your new hardware if it doesn't work right off the bat.

[Tristy100 31]

What is Hardware and Software? One uses CPU and one uses GPU, which is which?

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

1 minute ago, Tristy100 said:

What is Hardware and Software? One uses CPU and one uses GPU, which is which?

Hardware uses the GPU. Software the CPU.

[Tristy100 31]

Thanks! Also, I know your suppossed to constantly flip through cities, and grow each one slightly to make a realistic region. Any other tips relating to making a realistic region? (Not individual cities)

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

Since my regions are mostly farming with some dirty industry and commercial each tile is essentially self contained so I don't have any good advice, but I'm sure the experienced players will have.

Also, did I mention the Less Abandonment Mod? It's the one that keeps the game from getting too enthusiastic about growing buildings that the city isn't really ready for and which will abandon in a short time after growing.

[Tristy100 31]

23 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Since my regions are mostly farming with some dirty industry and commercial each tile is essentially self contained so I don't have any good advice, but I'm sure the experienced players will have.

Also, did I mention the Less Abandonment Mod? It's the one that keeps the game from getting too enthusiastic about growing buildings that the city isn't really ready for and which will abandon in a short time after growing.

I have! I haven't ever had issues with that though. Any tips on keeping land value consistent? If I want only middle-wealth people to move in, any way I can regulate that?

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

1 minute ago, Tristy100 said:

I have! I haven't ever had issues with that though. Any tips on keeping land value consistent? If I want only middle-wealth people to move in, any way I can regulate that?

I personally use the tax rate for this. I'll incrementally tweak Low and High Wealth Residential taxes upward until the demand just drops below the zero line on the main RCI graph (the expanded one, not the little 3 bar only tiny one) and then zone the res zones and let the medium wealth grow.

Once they are in place I lower the taxes back to where they were for the other wealths. With the No Kickout those medium wealth homes will stay that way forever. If you zoned low density they will remain as little houses. Do keep in mind if one grew as a 2x2 (for instance), the game might later split it into two 1x2 homes as it likes to maximize density whenever it can. Medium density might grow low density first and later upgrade to apartments. Short apartments might upgrade to taller ones. High density can start as small homes or apartments and later sprout up to large towers.

The cool part with the No Kickout is they stay within their initial wealth class forever. (Unless you bulldoze them. Then whatever is most in demand can grow there.)

[rsc204 21,836]

You do also have to bear in mind the game can not support a single wealth type, you should strive for some balance that allows for R$ / R$$ and R$$$, with R$ being the predominant type.

Regarding region play, there is a great tutorial here that should help you to better balance a region, with cities doing specific things.

[Tristy100 31]

I have yet another question. Whenever I go to zone long distances, it restricts me to only zoning 2 residential lots (1x3, total of 2x3) before putting a street there. I also noticed NAM isn't automatically placing turn lanes on normal roads at 4 way intersections, only avenues. Anyway to fix this? It takes awhile to go through and do both of these things.

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

37 minutes ago, Tristy100 said:

Whenever I go to zone long distances, it restricts me to only zoning 2 residential lots (1x3, total of 2x3) before putting a street there.

While I don't have an answer for this, here's the largest the game is willing to do for low density residential in one drag. Beyond this either direction it turns all red.

 

So, I'm guessing yours would be about half filled with streets when trying to do the same thing?

[Tristy100 31]

33 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

While I don't have an answer for this, here's the largest the game is willing to do for low density residential in one drag. Beyond this either direction it turns all red.

 

So, I'm guessing yours would be about half filled with streets when trying to do the same thing?

What I try to do is build the roads and streets to my liking first, for design's sake, and then I zone along them. When zoning low res, it restricts me to 2 small 1x3 lots before placing a street. I don't want that street, and it requires me to have to go down the row doing 2 at a time, wasting lots of time I could be using for something else. Anyway to get around this? Is there a faster way to do NAM intersections?

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

8 minutes ago, Tristy100 said:

Anyway to get around this?

Ah. So with your streets in place it's making the wrong decision for you. Try holding Shift while zoning. Ctrl or Alt do different things. (You can combine for other layouts.)

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

5 hours ago, Tristy100 said:

it restricts me to only zoning 2 residential lots (1x3, total of 2x3) before putting a street

Hold down the shift key.

[Tristy100 31]

Another particularly dumb question: Is there a 6 or 8gb ram patch? I want SC4 to use the entirety of my PC. Are there also any other performance related mods? Thanks!

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

1 minute ago, Tristy100 said:

Is there a 6 or 8gb ram patch?

Nope. The 4gb is the only one for that.

 

2 minutes ago, Tristy100 said:

Are there also any other performance related mods?

Have you heard of DatPacking your plugins folder? That's supposed to help speed things up. Then there's a hardware solution. I've seen it highly recommended to run the game from a solid state drive.

[rsc204 21,836]

4 minutes ago, Tristy100 said:

Another particularly dumb question: Is there a 6 or 8gb ram patch? I want SC4 to use the entirety of my PC.

The 4GB patch is really nothing to do with SC4, although patching SC4 with one can help performance. All this does is add a flag to the .exe that Windows sees, it then alters the memory allocation which allows SC4 to use the full 2-3GB a 32-bit application can theoretically have.

To make use of more system memory than this, SC4 (or other apps), need to be native 64-bit applications. A 64-bit application can in theory use more memory than most computers have today. However, that isn't really necessary for SC4, since it's very unlikely you'd ever come across a situation where 3GB wasn't sufficient.

An SSD will help performance, because if you don't have one, likely the HDD is the slowest part of your system. Because HDD technology has barely evolved in the last 10-15 years, that's pretty much why SSDs exist.

[Tristy100 31]

On 3/6/2018 at 12:41 AM, CorinaMarie said:

Have you heard of DatPacking your plugins folder?

Does this require anything special?

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

6 minutes ago, Tristy100 said:

Does this require anything special?

You need to download SC4DataNode and it'd be advisable to read the included SC4DataNode.pdf document. It's not a trivial task to use, but there are lots of experts here who can help with questions. If you've applied the IH missing $$$ jobs fix (update!) using the Tutorial: Applying the I-HT Bug-Fix correctly then you're already on your way to understanding the program.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

5 hours ago, Tristy100 said:

On 3/5/2018 at 9:41 PM, CorinaMarie said:

Have you heard of DatPacking your plugins folder?

Does this require anything special?

Yeah, you need a DATPacking app. It will need some (free) public DLL files (redistributable function libraries from the dev tool used to write and compile the tool). Do not fall for scam sites asking you to pay for them.

My own time measurements showed ~25% time savings on both game start and first-city load after packing (-25 seconds launch, -45 seconds 1st-city).

[CorinaMarie 29,773]

3 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Yeah, you need a DATPacking app.

Good call. I linked to the wrong program!

[APSMS 1,893]

Regarding the automatic payment lanes on roads, the new FTL system is much better (although it uses Flex starter pieces) but if you want the easy solution, you'll need to click (just a click, no dragging) the One-way Road tool on every road X road intersection that you want the Automatic Turning Lanes to show up on. 

If you do use the new FTLs, they are dynamic (unlike the old static TuLEP Puzzle Pieces) and will adjust to any changes in the roads leading up to the intersection.