Keep! The size! As it is!

[Terring 6,476]

There is a problem that I've been fighting since my very first day in SimCity some 11 years ago. This problem is game's bad habit of breaking my zones into smaller ones, with the result of an ugly chaos of small buildings. What I want to built is a beautiful and well organized building block, but in many cases I end up with a chaotic mess. Here is what I mean. In this example, I want 3X3 medium density residential buildings. So I use the Control button to lay 3X3 zones in order to get some pretty apartment buildings.

This is what I want. Fewer buildings that houses plenty of Sims in a well organized pattern. Something pretty, elegant and neat.

And then the game decides to troll me by breaking a 3X3 zone into three 1X3 zones. By itself! And before asking, I have plenty of lots to cover a 3X3 zone, no matter the building stage and it's wealth status.

Now try to imagine an entire building block with a messy clutter of smaller buildings and you can feel my fury of billions of supernovae I feel anytime I see... this!

Stupid game, this is not what I wanted. If I wanted plenty of 1X3 lots, of course I would had lay 1X3 zones. But now I zoned for 3X3, so I demand 3X3. Stop breaking my zones into smaller ones, stop wasting my time fighting this situation every single time, and stop forcing me to mark every building as historical! I want a 4X4 skyscraper, not two 2X4 smaller buildings. And stop breaking my 2X2 industrial zones into 1X2 ones!

Keep! The size! As it is!

I hope that now you can understand what I want. A mod that prevents the zones to break into smaller ones or fuse into bigger ones. A mod that allows you to zone whatever you want, no matter the size, and keep this size no matter what. Something like @CorinaMarie's No Kickout Lower Wealth but for the size of the lots. No more automatic cutting a zone into smaller ones, no more automatic merging smaller zones into a bigger one.

Is that possible at all?

[xxdita 1,097]

It would probably be easier to find and remove any 1x3 lots Res you may have in your plugins, and to block all instances of 1x3 Maxis lots. 

[Terring 6,476]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm afraid that taking this route and making this process anytime I want to do something in the game is not as easy and efficient as it might looks like. I prefer controlling my zones during the game, without removing and adding plugins every single time.

[mattb325 28,890]

In addition to the Maxis blocker, the simplest option to have your custom content that is 1x3 as per your picture is to change the tileset on all 1x3 lots to, say, the Chicago (or similar) and all of your 3x3 lots to the other tilesets. It will involve some effort on your part in the SC4Tool, but that will give you the ability to zone and control growth as you see fit.

[infamousjbe 593]

 forever the plague.....       I feel the pain Terring.

 

as for my 2 cents on the subject. in my experience with SC4 and the way I "feel" about it, is that it tends to happen more often when the demand isn't really high on the graph. This is not me implying that you don't know about demands or have the proper R demand, just that if the bar isn't say over 2k demand, it tends to satisfy with the smaller lots (again, in my experience). As a suggestion, drop the tax by .01-.03 for the time you want the larger buildings to pop up, then put them back to where you want them. 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Zone less. Be patient. Even if the developer breaks the only zone, it will eventually be pressed into building it up.

[Terring 6,476]

Thanks for the suggestions, folks

@mattb325: Don't forget that the 3X3-to-1X3 situation is just an example of all of this madness. You zone for a 6X6 factory? You'll get 2 3X6 factories. You zone for a 4X4 apartment building? You'll get 2 2X4 smaller buildings, and the list goes on. So I'm afraid that using different building sets will be not enough for such a big subject.

@infamousjbe: That's true but sometimes it does that even when I have very high demand. On low demands I can understand it and I can even help the game by breaking the lots into smaller ones by myself, but in high demands it's just ridiculous. Also, I always have my taxes at 0%, to keep my Sims happy and the demands high... and to simulate a futuristic post-scarcity society that has overcome the need of money.

@jeffryfisher: That's what I do, not only to minimize the problem but also to prevent dropping the population too much. But it still minimize it.

[xxdita 1,097]

Your city has to be ready for these things to grow properly. Regional capacity determines the highest growth stage possible at any given time. Demand and desirability must warrant such buildings to grow. 

Zone for the buildings you want to grow at Stage 8 (15 with CAM). Don't worry too much about what may grow there (or how) in earlier stages. Once you reach the higher stages, the buildings can take over the entire zoned area from street to street if they need to. 

Of course there are limits to this. a square of 4 3x3 tiles can become 2 6x3s, 2 3x6s or 1 6x6, but never a 4x4 with 4 2x2s, unless you rezone for such. And once it does become a 6x6, it will never return to a lot with less depth. Areas zoned for larger lot configurations will not grow at all until you reach a stage that you have something that can grow in that zone, and may never upgrade into anything else after that, unless you have higher stage lots that same size. 

To get a 7x15 lot to grow, you can either zone it in full, or in half with a 7x8 and a 7x7 backing each other. Either way, as these are all unusual lot sizes, you may never see any growth until that 7x15 you've zoned for decides to grow there, and it will likely never upgrade to any other buildings. 

[Terring 6,476]

I always make sure that my cities have more than enough population and demand to support such large lots, but even then the game will do whatever it wants. However this situation doesn't happen only in large cities with high density zones. Sometimes I try to build low density neighborhoods with 2X2 family homes. I put the zones, watch them grow, go to somewhere else, come back and see that my 2X2 homes have been replaced by 1X2 homes. And no, I didn't ask for it. I know that the only way to get this is by marking every single building as historical but that's a time consuming chore. If I wanted denser neighborhoods I would had put more and smaller zones and let the game go. I'm just a control freak who want to decide which city block will be pretty and organized and which one will be a crazy mess, not to give epic battles with the game itself for every single city block.

[Haljackey 17,385]

Oh man, I feel ya

The worst thing is when I zone say a 4x4 space that's at a road curve. Only one or two tiles of the zone actually touch the road. Then, 2 4x2 buildings go up... Obviously one of them doesn't have a road connection so now I get an annoying zot and an abandoned building.

It's annoying, but I guess I've learned to live with it. All I usually do is dezone and rezone, hoping what grows next time takes up the full zone size.

[Lucario Boricua 7,048]

Here's my thoughts on the topic:

• How to cope with the issue: normally I distribute my zoning in two variant areas. Parts of my cities use a lot of small and thin zones, usually the areas I want to develop a medium density. Here I'll make various combinations of lot sizes including 1x1, 1x2, 1x3, 2x2 or 2x3. I'll also make another area meant to be less dense, usually to cope with the sprawling acre-sized mansions, where I'll put 3x4 and 4x4 zones. This allows me to develop some separation of buildings by size. Interestingly enough, my issue tends to be more with small lots grouping together as I increase density, which can be partially offset by the No Kick-out mod  (no gentrification changing the lot sizes by grouping/breaking apart) and selective application of historic status.

 

• Mod-light alternatives: ever considered the relative sizes of your custom buildings? It's possible that @Terring's buildings include a lot of narrow lot sizes, giving the game more options to partition wide lots. Pairing the Maxis Blocker with a carefully selected mix of custom buildings that excludes as many narrow lots as practical would give the algorithms in charge of determining lot size changes a hard time to do its mischief, thus reducing the occurrence of lots being partitioned or consolidated.

 

• Ideas for modding: now that we have users figuring out how the game save files work, I can see an opportunity to develop mods to control lot sizes. One idea that occurs to me is making buildings grow as historic by default, such that players would have to selectively revoke the historic status to allow additional development to take over. Another idea (might be more difficult given that it might be linked to the .exe files and thus require DLL-based mods) would be to create a zoning tool to apply/remove the historic status on a large number of lots at once. Thirdly, we'd have to look at the algorithms.

 

 

[Edvarz 1,985]

Man, I hate when the game does this!!!

There's also this annoying glitch (?) that occurs when you have a building modded to grow in a corner, the game will split a, say 3x2, 3x3 or 4x3 zone and it will build multiple instances of that corner building in the inside of the block

Whenever I get a building I want, I just make it historical, but it's still requires a ton of patience and sometimes you forget. Whilst managing development to go along with demand it's certainly the first step, i'ts just not enough. Sometimes it's also due to badly modded old content that doesn't work according to the game's mechanics; that requires going into the PIM or the Reader to manually fix things, and not every player is an obsessive control freak like yours truly.

[matias93 7,535]

In fact, it seems that deaggregated lots always result on a group of corner lots, further restricting the kind of buildings that can appear there. In my experience, this happens frequently with 3x4 residential mid-height lots that end deaggregating into 3 1x4 lots, all of them filled by Jason's Charlotte Apartments. My guess is that those are, jointly, more population-capable than any 3x4 lot available in the same stage, so the game prefers them.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

There is an interesting property in the same exemplar where NKO is set. It really looks to me like it ought to do exactly what @Terring and the rest of us would love to have.

^ Note: You need Reader 1.5.4 cause 0.9.3 won't see all these properties.

But no matter what value I've tried for that Tract Developer Redevelop Size Threshold, my nice and pristine 3x2 low density houses still get broken up into three 1 x 2 lots. I've explored all the various exemplars and nothing else looks like it would help. I'm guessing now that one above is for when the game looks to combobulate a bunch of small lots into one larger and that serves as the breakpoint. I believe we are all stuck with the workarounds already mentioned.

Thankfully, I develop my city tiles slow enough I don't mind the occasional historical click to prevent them from being sliced and diced.

[xxdita 1,097]

Another idea is to compare the lots you want to grow with the ones that are actually growing. This will give you a better indication of just why one is growing more frequently. 

You can fine tune the occupancy of the buildings, or adjust the growth stage to make lots grow more or less frequently. Whatever works for how you want to play. 

 

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

It does seem how the ability to prevent zones from splitting would probably require a significant modding endeavour, possibly entering the territory into Lua scripting perhaps. But even still, it's knowing how to hook into a function that controls this aspect of the growth simulation. This certainly is something which has been an inconvenience to me also when zoning, and how ideally when allocating a lot size using Ctrl and it should keep that as such.

Marking lots as historical can be incredibly tedious, and also easy to forget doing so too. While I was chatting with Cori earlier, we came across this topic at SC4Devotion as pioneered by @CasperVg who created a DLL function, allowing the historicalness of all RCI lots to be toggled. We've not tested this yet, but it seems like a massive timesaver for the simplicity of how it can be done in one fell swoop. Also with a new cheat command AutoHistorical which processes lots automatically each game month.

Unrelated to that, but also Casper added keyboard commands to instantly add/remove $100k of funds, along with an auto-save ability. With this being developed and only recently released, it might not be too well known about yet either (especially for those of us who only frequent the ST forums).

So, here I am mentioning it as a another possibility to pursue.

[infamousjbe 593]

2 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

@CasperVg who created a DLL function, allowing the historicalness of all RCI lots to be toggled.

OMGOMGOMG....    Can it be true? After all these years this function might actually be a reality!!!! HOLYUYA! IT'S A NEW DAY, A NEW DAWN!!  Time saver indeed.

 

[Edvarz 1,985]

On 18/12/2019 at 4:46 PM, matias93 said:

In fact, it seems that deaggregated lots always result on a group of corner lots, further restricting the kind of buildings that can appear there. In my experience, this happens frequently with 3x4 residential mid-height lots that end deaggregating into 3 1x4 lots, all of them filled by Jason's Charlotte Apartments. My guess is that those are, jointly, more population-capable than any 3x4 lot available in the same stage, so the game prefers them.

Yep, that also happens. As an example, let's say you have a stage 6, 4x3 CO$$ mid rise. Since the simulator is always looking to upgrade zones to higer stages, you may end up with three stage 7 1x3 copies of exactly the same building. It works as intended, but still, it can mess up already developed areas.

I've always had problems with the chaotic way the game develops zones,  it works for filling up large areas with low density housing and commerce in more or less an organic way, but at higher densities, no city in the world would allow such a messy, uncontrolled redevelopment.

[Terring 6,476]

So it seems that we can't have a mod that prevents the lots to split into smaller ones. That's pity because this kind of mod would help many of us a lot. However the idea of making all buildings historic reminds me a common strategy of many Anno 2070 players of deactivating automatic upgrade to control the development of their cities.

[TheCrybKeeper 301]

@Terring My lots break up also, initially anyhow. But they rebuild into larger 3x4 lots rather quickly, due to my using the proper access to higher traffic buildings. I noticed in your image, you used a street(two lane, black), as your main access? Bigger buildings require avenues(four lane, black). Unless, you are using a traffic mod of some sort?

Also, good traffic planning will get HUGE buildings, almost immediately.

[Gn_leugim 858]

Hi there

Having fun with Cori's NKO mod, I like the degree of control it gives to one Mayor

But you know what would also be nice? to have the game not splitting your lots, like when you zone a 2x2 lot, it grows a 2x2 lot and latter regrows as 2 1x2's...

Do you know if there is any property in the developer or other game simulator exemplar that would perform this task?

Carlos

  Edited November 25, 2020 by Cyclone Boom  
Added link to Cori's topic after merging to here.

[Terring 6,476]

19 hours ago, Gn_leugim said:

But you know what would also be nice? to have the game not splitting your lots, like when you zone a 2x2 lot, it grows a 2x2 lot and latter regrows as 2 1x2's...

Do you know if there is any property in the developer or other game simulator exemplar that would perform this task?

That would be epic, but sadly it's not possible.

  Edited November 25, 2020 by Cyclone Boom  
CB Note: This was posted before moving these replies over to the current thread. ;-)

[Gn_leugim 858]

(after reading this thread) SOooo we are stuck with a careful planning of the lots we have in our plug-ins.

I am building a excel chart to keep track of all lots I have, their capacity and their stage..  and assure that each lot size has a stage progression and that that stage progression is more favourable than splitting the lot. (oh god, the work ahead...)

one question remains, what is the "more favourable" factor here? capacity? building value? I can try to mod that, to the point of minimizing the splitting the lots

  Edited November 25, 2020 by Cyclone Boom  
CB Note: Edited for context of being in this thread now after moving these posts to their new home. ;-)

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

15 hours ago, Gn_leugim said:

one question remains, what is the "more favourable" factor here? capacity? building value?

I believe it could be either capacity or building value, but capacity seems more intuitively logical to me.

That could be determined by first blocking all other content from growing in the the category you want to test. Residential would be the easiest to begin with. Then mod so you have two different homes each on two different lot footprints that can grow. Have all the building stats identical except one variable you are testing.

Set both larger lots to stage 1 so they can grow immediately. Set the smaller lots to stage 2 so when you reach that threshold the splitting will start happening. If you test building value first, then have one home with twice the value as the other. If they grow relatively equal in stage 2 you'll know that's not the factor. Repeat the test with the capacity double for one home.

But, there is a separate developer property that lets even less desirable lots grow so be sure to test enough that the data are conclusive.

The following not needed now that we've moved in with @Terring.
Btw, your post (that I quoted from) and this one of mine would prolly go much better over in @Terring's thread so it'd be on topic. We can split these off and move them over there.

  Edited November 25, 2020 by CorinaMarie  
Post moving done. ;-)

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Btw, your post (that I quoted from) and this one of mine would prolly go much better over in @Terring's thread so it'd be on topic. We can split these off and move them over there.

Sounds a good plan, and I've completed the posts splitting procedure now.
 

@Gn_leugim

Just make sure to re-follow this thread (from the top right option) so you'll be notified of new replies.

Also I just performed some small surgical edits:

1. Your initial post so it refers back to Cori's thread as being the subject of what the mod you described was.
2. In your 2nd reply so it makes known how we're in this thread now.
3. On @Terring's post an edit note to confirm how it was posted beforehand, and removing the link to this very thread.

[Propfam 2,295]

Impossible without blockers but I have a problem: I'm using Maxis buildings and I'm using some bypasses for buildings I like and blockers for the rest. However, there are buildings that are sharing lots. For instance, mansions have 3x3, 3x4, 4x3, 4x4, and 4x5. I want to only exclude 3x3 from the blacklist but I can't: it allows everything from 3x3 to 4x5. I'm using Reader navigator feature to create patch. How do I create a specific exclusion of lots?

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

1 minute ago, chfzdn said:

How do I create a specific exclusion of lots?

The easiest way is to set the lot's Growth Stage to 0xFF.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I want little lots much of the time, so I can't afford to block them. But sometimes I really need a large lot where there's limited road access, like where a 3x3 hangs off a diagonal avenue by one tiny corner cell. I also sometimes zone wide to reach around RTMT bus stops. When the stupid planner breaks the lot apart, some of the fragments end up with no road access. Then I must bulldoze the whole group and zone it again... and again, until the planner finally fills the whole site with one lot, and then the whole thing magically has road access through its touching corner.

If we ever discover that the planner uses Lua code to decide how to break a big lot into smaller lots, then my wish would be for a mod that tests each smaller lot for road access before allowing the split.

[11241036 5,108]

If I am allowed to make a little self-advertisement: It is entirely possible (although, mildly expressed, very time-consuming and complicated) to control at least partly which lots can grow and which ones cannot. I wrote a tutorial on this:

I've been playing with this strategy since I found it out years ago. At least with residentials, I couldn't find any real caveats whatsoever. (With industrials and commercials, it still doesn't work out well if there's low demand.) Also, at least in my opinion, it actually saves more time than you think: If I can wait one hour for the game to develop a zone in a way I want it, I can also spend one hour moving around plugins. You don't even need to move them: Just pack them into a zip/rar/7z folder, the game can't read them.

Also, there's a small trick helping you at least a bit: Maxis residentials are usually programmed in a way that low-density lots can also grow on zones with medium and high density. This is by no means something which must stay like this: You can restrict lots to only grow on low-density residential zones (by setting the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes property to only 0x01).

Basically, all you need to do is planning it cleverly to only allow lots to grow with the same size. Or allow 2x2, 2x3, 2x4, 2x5 etc. simultaneously, but not 2x2 and 3x2.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

2 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

If we ever discover that the planner uses Lua code to decide how to break a big lot into smaller lots,

I can say with certainty this won't be discovered. (I've read every single line of Lua code and there's nothing like this in there.)

 

16 minutes ago, 11241036 said:

If I am allowed to make a little self-advertisement:

Absolutely allowed! Since you wrote it, you are the most familiar with when to post a reference to it.