Playing against yourself?

[MarkShot 631]

CS and SC are basically sandbox games.  If you compete, then it is a against you ourself.

Are there any easy to use metrics per city per region?

Head count

GDP by Head count

Netwealth of city assets

Aggregated land vales

Goods consumed/produced

Happiness index

Average saftey and health rating

Mayor rating

Time to achieve

[MarkShot 631]

Let me ask this question.

If I decide to completely level a city to get a measure of its networth are upgraded buildings valued more highly as they upgrade (meaning cost more to demolish)?

Thanks.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, MarkShot said:

are upgraded buildings valued more highly as they upgrade (meaning cost more to demolish)?

It will depend on how it was modded, but in general, yes.

Property 0xE91A0B5F in the Buildings exemplar is the Building value. The cost to bulldoze (demolish) is set separately in property 0x099AFACD (in the same exemplar ) so they may or may not have a correlation.

[Prophet42 1,501]

I guess to really compete with yourself in SC4 you would have to set up a goal (your choice) and set up a time limit to obtain that goal (again your choice).  Another possibility is to have a friend (or other known human) create a city with some issue, give it to you to import into your game and then see if you can solve the issue within an agreed time period.  Of course for this to work, your plugin folder would have to match the other persons.

[kim026 298]

To make it a realistic setting for stories and to have a challenge, I setup several limitations and requirements:

- Food is a thing. With growing population I have to either ensure there is enough farmland or enough infrastructure and industry to import food. (I calculate it with excel spreadsheet)

- Not the entire territory of the region is available to me. Certain areas are restricted either because of terrain issues, nature reserve, government etc

- Climate plays a part. In my current project Delfoni, climate is tropical rain forest, it rains a lot throughout the year and it's prone to flooding, so I have to place storm drains in strategic areas

- Industry is a major player in my project, not just zones to grow stuff on for people to work on. I consider the resources nearby that are being processed, and I consider imports and exports, and make sure the appropriate industries are being setup, then connect them with road and rail infrastructure and they naturally want to be surrounded by people and businesses. I take inspiration from the train modelling community and rail simulators.

- The fictional world I'm building on has peculiar fauna (dinosaurs XD) which requires special considerations in security, and even farmland management. 

- Hydrology plays a major part in a region. I suggest the tutorial about hydrology and how to build a dam that has been published in the forum. Creating logical rivers and water bodies not only provides context and limitations and opportunities, but it is also a big challenge to realise.

- Politics and Economics in the bigger scale. If you spend a little time designing a few aspects of the nation the city is based on, like what kind of government, the current, past, and trending economy, and stuff like that, it can become a game of its own. 

 

You don't have to employ all these points to make it challenging, even just one of these is a challenge of its own. However, I find that employing these factors makes for a totally different playstyle than simply worrying what to build where. There are so many requirements by my sims with these factors that I am always merely trying to make them happy with what I have available XD

The beauty of SC4 is that you can make of it what you want. It's more than a sandbox. It's a fun factory!

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 09/07/2019 at 9:51 PM, kim026 said:

Food is a thing. With growing population I have to either ensure there is enough farmland or enough infrastructure and industry to import food. (I calculate it with excel spreadsheet)

Hi kim026, I shortlisted these agriculture mods to try someday.  Have you seen them yet?

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2691

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2249

... and I've also been hearing great things about the "SPAM mod", which delivers more interesting agriculture growables and agriculture diversity.

[kim026 298]

1 hour ago, Naomi57 said:

Hi kim026, I shortlisted these agriculture mods to try someday.  Have you seen them yet?

Hi Naomi! 

Great work on that CJ. Very interesting stuff.

Regarding the mods you shortlisted:

THe first one, the desirability mod, I have seen it before, maybe I have even tried it years ago I dont remember, but I use SPAM both to cover what this mod does and for other needs, and this mod isnt compatible with it so I dont have it (I think....)

As I said I have SPAM installed, and I do recommend it.

However I mostly plop agricolture lots and fields manually because I prefer to let the customer (the farmer or consortium in this case) choose the options they prefer. (which might sound counter-intuitive because why don't I just let the game decide? Well.... My customers aren't the sims in the game .exe. The game for me is like the database and program they use in the Council building of my city. Then the representatives come to me and express their clients' desires based on the option illustrated by the simulation (hence, sims) and I try hard to turn it all into reality, making compromise with the Natural Preserve Department, the Industry sector, the ambientalists, and Mother Nature's children the animals and plants - they are not to be underestimated when planning fields. Especially if you have to level a forest to obtain that goal. 

 

 

[powerfullshammy 81]

22 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

Hi kim026, I shortlisted these agriculture mods to try someday.  Have you seen them yet?

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2691

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2249

... and I've also been hearing great things about the "SPAM mod", which delivers more interesting agriculture growables and agriculture diversity.

SPAM has desirability mod within it if too much pollution sims will leave farms. You'll notice it in number of workers In my 1st use of SPAM i noticed why only 10/56 workers in my farm well it' too much polluted water