poll Which kind of SimCity 4 player are you?

[kellydale2003 2,276]

I'm more of a "Progressive Player" meaning I start out basic by plopping out farms randomly even if the roads don't align and then I have houses slowly eat up all the farm space. I then upgrade the streets into roads, into avenues and sometimes into freeways as the houses get replaced with higher density and eventually some skyscrapers (wherever they can economically be plopped). I do this while going through the building styles one by one. I start with the old and progress into the new.

When I say economically, I mean no tearing down a skyscraper to build a skyscraper. That's rare. I find the lowest density plot of land or tear down an older building to replace it with a taller more modern one like a real developer would do.

I also take into consideration city politics in real life like how there's movements and organizations to save historic buildings. So, when a historic district is crowded with historic buildings, its only logical that a developer who wants to build a skyscraper will move slightly outside of the historic downtown district or where there's more traffic, a better view, better infrastructure, etc. When a tower gets built, more developers are likely to build around that same tower.

I also avoid destroying buildings as much as possible. Doing this while aligning all the roads, avenues and freeways and growing skyscrapers is a challenge. 

Rather than designing a freeway without constraint, you're designing a freeway in the cheapest and least interrupted way possible -- just like real life city planners do. The result is usually a semi-chaotic city that is realistic in so many ways. This wasn't an option when I voted, so I just voted "other."

It takes me forever to build a city, but the constant replacement, recycling and re-organization of plots of land within a city make it feel realistic rather than just laying down roads and watching everything grow into skyscrapers instantly. There's so much more to city building than just that. There's decades of history in between and my 'progressive' way of playing embodies those old histories that define a city.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

7 hours ago, kellydale2003 said:

I'm more of a "Progressive Player" meaning I start out basic by plopping out farms randomly even if the roads don't align and then I have houses slowly eat up all the farm space. I then upgrade the streets into roads, into avenues and sometimes into freeways as the houses get replaced with higher density and eventually some skyscrapers (wherever they can economically be plopped). I do this while going through the building styles one by one. I start with the old and progress into the new.

When I say economically, I mean no tearing down a skyscraper to build a skyscraper. That's rare. I find the lowest density plot of land or tear down an older building to replace it with a taller more modern one like a real developer would do.

I also take into consideration city politics in real life like how there's movements and organizations to save historic buildings. So, when a historic district is crowded with historic buildings, its only logical that a developer who wants to build a skyscraper will move slightly outside of the historic downtown district or where there's more traffic, a better view, better infrastructure, etc. When a tower gets built, more developers are likely to build around that same tower.

I also avoid destroying buildings as much as possible. Doing this while aligning all the roads, avenues and freeways and growing skyscrapers is a challenge. 

Rather than designing a freeway without constraint, you're designing a freeway in the cheapest and least interrupted way possible -- just like real life city planners do. The result is usually a semi-chaotic city that is realistic in so many ways. This wasn't an option when I voted, so I just voted "other."

It takes me forever to build a city, but the constant replacement, recycling and re-organization of plots of land within a city make it feel realistic rather than just laying down roads and watching everything grow into skyscrapers instantly. There's so much more to city building than just that. There's decades of history in between and my 'progressive' way of playing embodies those old histories that define a city.

This very closely reflects the way I play the game as well, trying to develop cities in a way that's as organic and reflective of real life urban planning as much as possible. I tend to do the same thing where I start out with a handful of residential lots, plus large tracts of farmland, then slowly develop the city by upgrading lower density areas into areas of greater density or new zone types.

I've always liked the idea of trying to replicate the way real-world cities have developed over decades or centuries, though there are a few features of the game that make this difficult to do organically. For example, older industrial buildings can't be converted into commercial or residential buildings the way they are in real life, so if you want to re-zone an area, you need to tear it down completely and rebuild from the ground up. And there's a point where you need to start modding pretty extensively to reflect certain real-world conditions. If I'm using these kinds of mods, I try and make sure that they're realistic without throwing off the overall balance and difficulty of the game.

Because of this style, I try and avoid playing "God," with my cities too much (e.g., using a bunch of plopped lots rather than allowing neighborhoods to develop organically), and I try not to rely on game mechanics that don't reflect real-world conditions (e.g., placing heavy-pollution lots right at the edge of the map so that 50% of the pollution disappears).

As far as the amount of time it takes to build a city... It's definitely a time-intensive process, and I tend to have a tear-it-up-and-start-over mentality, so it's pretty rare that I'll get beyond 50,000 residents or so, and rarer still that I'll develop a region with more than one city tile.

[JojiTX 765]

Feels like I'm becoming a bit of a content creator, but for myself. I've been working on lot editing for the past few days and I haven't even really played the game outside of testing the lots since.

It's just addicting because now it feels like I have that bit more control over how my cities will look. Not just the roads and buildings but their entire lots and the flora that grows on them. It feels like now I can really make my city look how I actually wanted it to.

[Ct1999 4,198]

Actually I am not a really a  Skyscraper Junkies .

I am more like a guy who like to build a city with most of zone or district with middle dense building (the building with 2 to 20 floors ) and a few skyscraper in a small zone ( more like Los Angeles's Skyline ).