Copy Cities?

[tsarevitsj 2]

Hello, I'm wandering or there is an copy tool for p.e. a subway systeem from the one to the other empty city in SC4. I made a subway system with roads on it and subway stations as wel in an very big city. To avoid a lot of work I like to copy it to an empty city in the same regio and of courses without buildings and so on. I do hope there is an solution for it.

Thanks so far...

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Hiya, @tsarevitsj.

Nope, nothing like this exists. Once a city is started in Mayor mode all of the save files have a checksum calculated and embedded in with the data. This means even if one could read all the data needed for the subway system it could not be written to another saved city.

[tsarevitsj 2]

Oké, thanks a lot and have a nice day 

[rsc204 21,808]

There is potentially a way of doing this, but it's not exactly intuitive and could lead to problems.

In essence you can Import or "Move" a city tile created in one region into another. Because this is a move operation, you'd have to make a backup of the region first, move the tile to a new region then restore the save file for that tile to the original region. Having done this, you can import the now duplicated tile (in a different region) into the existing one, which in short would be a carbon copy of the original tile.

The issues come about because first the city size must be identical, S/M/L, but that's minor. However the entire city is copied, not just a part of it and if that means removing lots and lots of unwanted features, you may find the save file gets a bit iffy thereafter. The biggest issue though is that simply copying the same setups for city after city is surely a bit boring. If you are making a region, isn't it nicer to have different cities and transport solutions for them? If every city in a region used the same template for the networks, they'd all be identical layouts, which wouldn't appeal to me at all, although that's obviously something that won't bother everyone.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

In essence you can Import or "Move" a city tile created in one region into another.

That's a brilliant idea for this I hadn't considered.

Ofc, it'll prolly only work well if one is using a completely flat map with only land or at most lakes that do not cross the borders. If there are lots of hills and rivers and such they wouldn't match up with the adjacent city tiles.

[tsarevitsj 2]

Oké, I wil try these advise but of course it is not for a whole region, just for 2 or 3 cities to copy only the subway and the roads 

Thanks a lot...

[redfox85 659]

technical question..... couldn't one just use illives reader to copy over the network and network1 examplers ? (assuming those contain the roads etc)

[rsc204 21,808]

I'm not sure that's easier for most users. In theory you could do it I suppose, but I don't know if those parts of the save data are protected. Certainly altering save files is generally a non-starter due to the checksums in use. If you want to know if it works, I guess you'd have to try it. Warning though, make sure you've a backup before messing with them this way.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

This would really only work if one has a flat-earth region. And just where do you draw the line between the source network and the "copied" network? You might as well ask for a programmatic wiring of all connections coming into a sector whenever the population is still zero. Maybe we could instill such expertise into a mod, but there would be few who would want it.

Apologies, but maybe I am too mean 

[tsarevitsj 2]

Well, I gues I am one of the few who want it...