Casinos... for ocean side?

[Joel_The_Jackle 16]

Hey all,

I am currently playing on the Plantation Bay map by comdude21 which has a nice selection of coastline and I was thinking about making a casino boardwalk area in one of the regions. My major problem is I actually like to play the game and pretty much every casino I've come across is some variation of the money tree park. I don't mind if it gives like $80-$300  a month as it usually takes awhile to turn a profit post plop cost.... but the majority of the ones I can find are in the $25,000 to $1,000,000 range. I realize I could just use a landmark and pretend but I'm kind of OCD about wanting actual casinos for casinos. I already have a beautiful selection of hotels lined up and beach mods....does anyone know of which casinos are at least slightly more landmarkish and less simolean smelting factory?

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

If you've found a Casino you really like for the looks, we could edit the monthly income to be whatever amount you'd like. (There are tools you can use to do that yourself, but if you are new to that aspect, I don't mind to fix one up for you.)

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

One useful tool for quickly editing lot properties is the LEProp which is a simplified version of the Reader 0.9.3 tool.

Here's a sample preview of the LEProp user interface:

Here as highlighted with a $300 monthly income set for a ploppable lot.

[Joel_The_Jackle 16]

Thank you both! Cyclone Boom...that tool works perfectly...

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

4 hours ago, Joel_The_Jackle said:

...that tool works perfectly...

I'm glad to hear this. You'll be able to tweak a lot of custom content using that.

One thing to keep in mind is that any building which has sliders to adjust their funding individually (like schools, medical facilities, fire and police stations, and such) have a nasty potential pitfall. For those, if you are going to tweak the cost of either their regular funding or their coverage radius, be sure to bulldoze every single instance of them in every single city tile before making said adjustments with LEProp.

Now, this isn't a bug with the program, but it's just how the game works. When you plop one of those, the game records the maximum funding for each and keeps a running total of current funding. The problem which can occur is if you make a change to the building then when you open your city the percent of funding no longer matches its recorded amount and the game will start adjusting the sliders (either more or less) until it feels equilibrium has been achieved. It gets even more complicated if you bulldoze an old building while a modded version is in your plugins.

So, just be careful about that if you should decide to tweak those costs.

[Joel_The_Jackle 16]

That's really good to know. So far I have only used it to tweak 3 casinos that I did not have in game yet. I'm planning on building my water front tonight. I have one of the money tree mods that I used when I was first starting out so I could learn w/o constantly running for senator so I don't bash the people who use them or mega payout casinos but for me them and mods that make the game trivial kind of ruin the fun.  Man was made to struggle after all, as a wise man once put it.

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

15 minutes ago, Joel_The_Jackle said:

So far I have only used it to tweak 3 casinos that I did not have in game yet.

Cool. That works well. And just to clarify, my dire warning above would not apply to the casinos, or any other building, without a funding slider bar. Fixed cost ones will be fine for tweak-n-go.

 

15 minutes ago, Joel_The_Jackle said:

I have one of the money tree mods that I used when I was first starting out so I could learn w/o constantly running for senator ...

Quite understandable. I did the very same thing until I really got the feel for how everything needs balanced and even then I still have a cheat I made which I use all the time. It's one where the Agricultural pays five times more than the tax rate warrants. This lets me have full fire and medical coverage in a very sparsely populated area.

The key thing is you play how you are comfy and it's all good.

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

As Cori said, since SC4 has no end goals, in my view these so-called "cheats" really can be considered standard tools of the trade.

For each of us as mayors, it's completely our own decision how to play. Whether leaning more towards an unlimited sandbox style, or managing city finances and trying to sustain a surplus profit. With it a single player game too, there's no unfair advantage gained as it would for different types of games like in the online world with leaderboards. So absolutely, it's all about making the simulation most enjoyable to our own individual tastes. Tailoring specific gameplay aspects is all about the freedom of choice.