Natural Growth Philosophies / Mindsets

[Ducio 285]

On 5/1/2021 at 7:11 AM, Oidaas said:

This is from a region i decided to rebuild for realism sake. I've built farms around the rivers. This is because the rivers will fertilize the fields in case of floods, due to this i've decided to place the residental ares on higher ground. Now the region has around 4000 inhabitants i will continue this stratgy further inland.

Good start! What map is that? Those rivers look really natural.

Do you guys ever think about what animals live in your regions? (Besides the horses, etc.).  I feel like that region would be full of capybaras. 

 

[Pille0503 33]

This topic is very interresting. In this context I have a question regarding those players who make use of the cheats plugin. Let's say you set your money count e.g. on $100 million (or an other high number) at the very beginning of a new map, so you don't have to worry about bankrupting your city. Do you still start playing this map like you'd have your normal budget ($250 k)? Or do you rather play 'for the looks'? Like you had an idea which you cannot imply in another map, so starting a new map immediatly gives you full control of how you realize your idea? I am specially talking about bigger projects like customized airports, highways etc. Or do you play the whole game how 'it is meant to be' - i.e. building residental/commercial/industrial zones, leave enough space for some ideas in the future, wait until your budget is high enough and, finally, start realizing those ideas?

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

40 minutes ago, Pille0503 said:

I have a question regarding those players who make use of the cheats plugin.

While I don't get my extra money in the game via the Moolah cheat, I do use my own mod which makes all my farms pay five times as much as the tax rate would otherwise produce. (This doesn't affect the demand as it's an after the fact calculation.)

So, from a money cheating standpoint, I feel I can answer with my own perception. I do like to work within a budget which needs to remain balanced to keep the city coffers from running dry, but I also don't like the pure vanilla way because it would force me to have way more residential than I like in my rural regions. See, I provide full fire and health coverage, but I've not used any custom content for those which could increase their radius and/or decrease their cost. This means I couldn't normally afford all the fire stations and health clinics.

What it boils down to is how each individual likes to play the game. My method is only one of dozens (or more) ways to go about it.

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 22/05/2021 at 8:04 AM, Pille0503 said:

I have a question regarding those players who make use of the cheats plugin. Let's say you set your money count e.g. on $100 million (or an other high number) at the very beginning of a new map, so you don't have to worry about bankrupting your city. Do you still start playing this map like you'd have your normal budget ($250 k)? Or do you rather play 'for the looks'?

I do exactly that, with a  moolah  "startup loan" of $5 million, $20 million, or $50 million, depending on city size and ambition.

That doesn't give me the capability to do anything at all I want, financially, because I also have a goal of achieving a positive cash flow, and repaying my  moolah  "startup loan", usually inside the first 50 years, without using any economically unbalanced mods or exploits, not even toll booths.

My  moolah  "startup loan" lets me ignore capital expenditure, so I can build all the bridges I want, and I can build and destroy them willy-nilly, along with any other lackadaisical capital expenditures,  but I watch my monthly expenses very, very closely!  In case you don't know about it yet, the Health & Education Master Lists are exceedingly useful for coaxing a city to a positive cash flow, described in this link:

• https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/758813-show-us-your-SimCity-4-quick-tips-twitter-style/?tab=comments#comment-1725498

A focus on monthly expenses encourages a gradual roll out of services and facilities.  I mark out spaces for hospitals, schools, plazas, parks and airports, using 1x1 street plops, signposts, and trees, or in this case, a pile of Logs for my hospital, and a copse of Broadleaf Tree for my Large High School.

While I plan and terraform large portions of the city in advance, the districts I zone and grow in one go tend to live inside the radius of one or two Deluxe Police Stations.

The screenshot above was from the humble first district of the first city of my current region in New York.  If you'd like to read about the economic factors I used to build it, I go into complete details in this SC4 tutorial:

• https://community.simtropolis.com/journals/entry/29044-tutorial-for-building-your-first-city-in-a-brand-new-region/

Growing districts one at a time, makes it easier to segregate classes, with separate low wealth, medium wealth, and high wealth residential districts, which is also useful for managing transport networks and commute distance to workplaces that employ low wealth, medium wealth, and high wealth sims of the relevant education levels.  I've started using @CorinaMarie's No Kickout mod to preserve the character of those districts.

• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/34027-coris-no-kickout-lower-wealth-mod/

On 22/05/2021 at 8:36 AM, CorinaMarie said:

I do use my own mod which makes all my farms pay five times as much as the tax rate would otherwise produce.

That sounds perfect for the agricultural communities you like to create, Cori!

I get the impression SC4 wasn't really designed for agricultural regions.  For myself, I use SC4 vanilla agriculture more as an ornamental addition, rather than being any contributing part of the economy.

[Kloudkicker 4,563]

On 5/21/2021 at 6:04 PM, Pille0503 said:

This topic is very interresting.

Yes it is, because mine is completely different.

My style of play is usually based on the idea that no mayor is going to last forever. A mayor wont see a village grow into a city and than a megalopolis.

With that notion, I like to start with a center point and pre build a very large megalopolis. This city will be focused on commerce and residential, naturally the way most cities are now. While making a transportation network spanning outward. I will spend time looking at the regional view, imagining how I would like the region to evolve. Than slowly work the surrounding cities terrain and tranpo networks. Than zone the major areas and municipal buildings. But leaving room for growth later. And like Naomi57 does, I mark where the rewards are going to go, once the are achieved. Some terraforming is done in god mod before starting each city, but just a few tiles at a time. I love spending my time designing the transport network and getting the utilities set up. Money cheat is needed to get this done. Doing final terraforming as I go and MMP work. All before I even run the simulator on the cities. I get a bunch of cities built up and then play them, one by one. Starting at the center, I run the cities until things become unbalanced or things are stable for a bit. I'll move around cites getting them to help each other and share resources, like jobs. Tweaking each city as needed and aiming at getting a balanced budget. Budget is important to me but I can play like real politicians play with our real money -- spend more than you have and let the next person worry about it, and repeat .

I have many cities set up ready to go and never played. Sometimes I will move on to a new region, like I am now, and copy and paste them into the new region and work them in. Its hard to let all that time and work go. But this is easy to do when the cities are started in a flat region and all of them are the same elevation to start. I think I will be getting a pre made map my next go around.

[Daeris 1,116]

On 5/21/2021 at 6:04 PM, Pille0503 said:

Or do you play the whole game how 'it is meant to be' - i.e. building residental/commercial/industrial zones, leave enough space for some ideas in the future, wait until your budget is high enough and, finally, start realizing those ideas?

Hi @Pille0503. Sorry for my late reply as I haven't been around as much.

I haven't played with this style as much as many others, but so far I'm just going without money cheats. If I run into any snags, I'm sure I'll trick ask Cori to linking me to her mod, which sounds like a great way for small rural communities to make needed money. 

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

8 hours ago, Daeris said:

If I run into any snags, I'm sure I'll trick ask Cori to linking me to her mod, which sounds like a great way for small rural communities to make needed money. 

/me randomly has an urge to post a linky to the aforementioned mod, but doesn't actually know where it is. (We'd need to trick ask CB to find where I attached the AgPay5x.dat file via its post association in the database.)

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

We'd need to trick ask CB to find where I attached the AgPay5x.dat file via its post association in the database.

/me arrives after seeing a  "CB, please do this. Or else!"  note Cori left for him, and so after some scavenging in the database, he found it...

[Linky]

[JojiTX 765]

On 5/21/2021 at 5:04 PM, Pille0503 said:

This topic is very interresting. In this context I have a question regarding those players who make use of the cheats plugin. Let's say you set your money count e.g. on $100 million (or an other high number) at the very beginning of a new map, so you don't have to worry about bankrupting your city. Do you still start playing this map like you'd have your normal budget ($250 k)? Or do you rather play 'for the looks'? Like you had an idea which you cannot imply in another map, so starting a new map immediatly gives you full control of how you realize your idea? I am specially talking about bigger projects like customized airports, highways etc. Or do you play the whole game how 'it is meant to be' - i.e. building residental/commercial/industrial zones, leave enough space for some ideas in the future, wait until your budget is high enough and, finally, start realizing those ideas?

I basically give myself a huge loan and fund all of the projects and planning I want to do, and then see if it turns a profit around when I'm finished with the tile. Eventually it does, but if I'm honest I do play more for the looks. It is cool to run a city, but some things annoy me about this game that prevent me from trying to play fair like commute times. These issues bunched together sort of make me pass on trying to work for everything legitimately.

For example. In the real world, lots of people can/will commute 15-20 miles or more for work. Here in San Antonio I know people who live here and work in Austin and vice versa. That's 90 miles. Meanwhile residents in this game get upset if their commute is more than 2 miles. Pretty annoying when you're trying to create square miles of realistic suburbia.

Another example is, well, the looks. Generally when the areas I live nearby are zoned and planned out, they all have a certain look. In this game, it decides whatever it wants. Zone for something and you get a bunch of unwanted junk until what you really want grows in. It gets super costly deleting houses, apartments, factories, shops etc bc it took 50+ bulldozes to get what you wanted.

The one thing I will say is setting a budget for roads is something I'll do though. Seeing how the budget run in San Antonio is pretty poor, I'd like to replicate it in game where they can't keep up with the growth of the city. Tons of neighborhoods with lots of traffic all linked together via tired, old farm roads that take a decade to be widened. 

[BartonThinks 3,416]

This book might be old news to some of the other users on ST (it's one of the top-selling books on US architecture), but I wanted to quickly recommend A Field Guide to American Houses, which I picked up a couple days ago and have been devouring ever since.

Most of the book is dedicated to different styles of American houses and how to identify different styles as a layperson. However, the first 100 or so pages is a gold mine for anyone who's interested in naturalistic North American-style city building. There's a section on how different types of American neighborhoods developed over time, with illustrations showing how these neighborhoods were plotted at the street level, as well as how they changed the shape of the typical US city over time.

I'm including a couple sample illustrations below for anyone who's interested. Both of these illustrations are available as part of the preview on Google Books, which includes a large section of the fist 100 pages.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

I'd like to share another tip (observation actually) that might be interesting for Daeris and others who seek natural growth philosophies. Here goes.

I begin to create a national park area. As such, it should be relatively free from the evil contraptions of civilization.

My idea is to just build a road leading up to the national park area and nothing else. No big deal? Easier said than done! 

Because when I build a road, I then have to build a parking lot. And once that happens I feel compelled to add some more amenities! And then the ball starts rolling...

"How about a few little shops for the visitors' convenience?".

"How about a small police station to keep the shops safe?".

"How about a water pump so that these people can actually go to the loo?".

And then a point of no return comes:

"Awww heck, these people have too far to get to work. Let's build some houses for these handful of workers".

And the next thing you know, you have a town right next to your national park. Which is not such a good idea. At least not always.

The thing is that even the tiniest development usually encourages early urban planners to build even more.

Long story short, there are basically two options to choose from.

The first option is when you bluntly say "no more" and keep the development to minimum, thus, favoring unchanged environment. Of course, this option requires considerable power of will... 

The second option is when you cave in to the urge of building more. In this case, a natural area becomes a small town. Maybe even a tourist trap, but certainly not as pristine a place as it was.

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 12/07/2021 at 12:49 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

And then a point of no return comes:

"Awww heck, these people have too far to get to work. Let's build some houses for these handful of workers".

And the next thing you know, you have a town right next to your national park. Which is not such a good idea. At least not always.

I totally get this.  It's exactly what happened to me for years and years on SimCity 4.  
This actually occurs in real-life, too ... unless there are legal consequences.  

There's a few different approaches I use to make me STOP and reconsider.  Click on the images to expand.

1. Strategically place my Police Stations.  This makes me reluctant to zone outside that radius, because placing another Police Station is a big monthly financial commitment.

2. Terraform to create a marsh.  Any square in the grid, with a corner below a certain elevation is unusable, not allowing roads, zoning, or plops.  Similar can be done with other natural features such as canyons, rivers, mountains and ridges, which are natural barriers to urban development.  Cori does some truly gorgeous farm scenes by observing natural agricultural boundaries in the landscape, because it's rather difficult to farm on slopes, and retaining a tree corridor as a windbreak is good soil management.

Of course, having secret God-like powers through Ctrl+Alt+Shift God-mode, I can flatten the terrain anytime I like, but in my mind, I still think of land reclamation as a major public works project, which makes me reluctant .  Beautifying the marsh with MMPs at and below the waterline (my favourite use of DBE) makes me reluctant to alter it, too.

3.  Beautify my nature reserve.  The more effort I invest in making my nature reserve beautiful, the less likely I am to pave paradise.  

 

@Lucario Boricua did some amazing Earthworks Tutorials, which pursue this completely different element of the game.  When the pursuit of the aesthetic eclipses the pursuit of other gaming goals, then your wilderness becomes a creation you want to protect.

• https://community.simtropolis.com/tags/Earthworks Tutorial/

____________________________________
Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
Then they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot

 

[VetinarisClerk 271]

I tend to put road+power+water to the edge of the park, and two low-density comercial buildings, one on each side, on the end of the road. And that's it. One's a restaurant/cafe,  the other is a souvenir shop. Done.

[Propfam 2,295]

On 7/7/2021 at 3:12 PM, BartonThinks said:

This book might be old news to some of the other users on ST (it's one of the top-selling books on US architecture), but I wanted to quickly recommend A Field Guide to American Houses, which I picked up a couple days ago and have been devouring ever since.

Most of the book is dedicated to different styles of American houses and how to identify different styles as a layperson. However, the first 100 or so pages is a gold mine for anyone who's interested in naturalistic North American-style city building. There's a section on how different types of American neighborhoods developed over time, with illustrations showing how these neighborhoods were plotted at the street level, as well as how they changed the shape of the typical US city over time.

I'm including a couple sample illustrations below for anyone who's interested. Both of these illustrations are available as part of the preview on Google Books, which includes a large section of the fist 100 pages.

I'm under impression that rural development in SimCity 4 is a post-WWII car-centric suburb, especially with Euclidian zoning. Speaking of agricultural city, can you give me some example of walkable neighborhood in that type of city? Personally, I can't imagine that city will be in my mind especially with Euclidian zoning and I don't think public transit will be feasible in that area. But I could be wrong.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

15 minutes ago, chfzdn said:

I'm under impression that rural development in SimCity 4 is a post-WWII car-centric suburb, especially with Euclidian zoning. Speaking of agricultural city, can you give me some example of walkable neighborhood in that type of city? Personally, I can't imagine that city will be in my mind especially with Euclidian zoning and I don't think public transit will be feasible in that area. But I could be wrong.

That's somewhat true in SC4 -- most of the Maxis stage one lots look more appropriate for suburbs than countrysides. That said, there are some custom low-density lots out there that have a more "rural" feel. I'm currently planning a series of Stage 1 residential lots for my next project that will have much larger lot sizes and will feel more at home in rural settings.

As for walkable neighborhoods in an agricultural city, I think that would basically be confined to pre-WWII villages and small towns that developed in rural areas -- at least, those are the only types I can think of in a North American setting. You're correct that these areas don't usually support public transit, and once cars became widespread in the U.S., people more or less stopped building walkable small towns.

[Naomi57 2,985]

8 hours ago, chfzdn said:

I'm under impression that rural development in SimCity 4 is a post-WWII car-centric suburb, especially with Euclidian zoning. Speaking of agricultural city, can you give me some example of walkable neighborhood in that type of city? Personally, I can't imagine that city will be in my mind especially with Euclidian zoning and I don't think public transit will be feasible in that area. But I could be wrong.

@CorinaMarie has some marvellous walkable hamlets, with a bare minimum of public amenities, using just heavy rail and SAM streets.  If the city population is small enough, you don't need police access, so you don't actually need to connect your streets up to each other.  Click to expand and arrow around.  

        

Cori's approach is primarily aiming for aesthetic appeal.  If you're wanting maximum practicability, I would see walkable agricultural hamlets comprising:

1. A small cluster of houses.
2. A couple factories, Manufacturing, not Dirty!
3. A heavy rail line with a small rural railway station.
4. A couple small 1x2 shops next to the passenger railway station.
5. Streets linking rail station, houses, farms, and factories, but no road access to other hamlets.
6. To export freight, either have all the farm buildings and factory lots touching the rail line, or plop a freight station to transfer freight from truck to rail.
7. No offices, no highways, no police, no fire, no medical, no schools ... maybe just an "agricultural" museum, for it's city-wide effect.  
8. If your population is big enough to need garbage collection, Cori's technique is to designate one hamlet as the "garbage hamlet", no road access required, as garbage teleports to the landfill site.  Minimum requirements: one house, one workplace, connection to electricity, and the landfill site, with a minimum of two tiles of street between them.  

For realism, some horse and buggy automata would be just the ticket!  
There's also some great country railway stations and freight stations that would fit right in:

• https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3384
• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33186-sm2-global-freight/
• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33158-sm2-limington-station/
• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33137-sm2-greenwood-sunken-station/
• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33181-ortho-rail-bus-and-subway-station-transport-hub/
• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33006-diagonal-rail-glr-bus-and-subway-stations/
• https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2702
• https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1241
• https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3577

If you're wanting a series of touristy retail centres, with a few farms just for decoration, replace the heavy rail with ground light rail (GLR) tram line.  The trams cannot haul any freight, so the farms become merely decorative, but light rail (whether ground or elevated) is truly awesome for encouraging mass-transit takeup, and for generating Customers for commercial lots adjacent to the GLR tram line.  

[Propfam 2,295]

4 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

A couple factories, Manufacturing, not Dirty!

The problem is the lack of demand due to no one is educated at the start. Sure I can lower the tax to an extreme, but it's not economically sustainable. I have to have farms in large amount and consolidate more and more resident into a small urban area with schools. Then, we use those residents as the base of I-M.

Also while I-M do generate a lot less pollution than I-D, they're still incredibly destructive to the environment especially in large amount. While I think this only effects if you consolidate lots of factories, clean I-M from IRM is the best answer. No additional education is required. I haven't installed IRM in my revisited old setup, tho.

What do you think? Let me know.

[Naomi57 2,985]

1 hour ago, chfzdn said:

it's not economically sustainable. I have to have farms in large amount and consolidate more and more resident into a small urban area with schools.

It's definitely not economically sustainable if you seek to provide your hamlets with 5-star education.

The hard reality, is that farm workers (in SimCity 4) don't need an education.  OTOH, in real life, agriculture is increasingly a technological field!  
Assembly line I-M factory workers don't really need much of an education, either.

If you have no police, no fire, no medical, no schools ... then you've got no circles hemming you in.  Zone some residential anywhere that has electricity.  Mains water supply is another luxury that's not necessarily required.  I lived for a year without mains water.  We collected water off the roof for our house, and we had dams for irrigation.  Very fortunately, we also had a septic tank.  

If you find you've got the budget for it, there's some vanilla ordinances that help a little, with city-wide effect:

• Free Clinic Program
• Pro-Reading Campaign

If you've got a bit more money, you can plop a Museum.  No circle, so it helps your sims city-wide, in learning to read and write, add and subtract.

Admittedly, Cori does have some money mods installed, but I think that has something to do with her predilection for plopping Mayor's statues, and large swathes of carefully manicured grass.  

1 hour ago, chfzdn said:

Also while I-M do generate a lot less pollution than I-D, they're still incredibly destructive to the environment especially in large amount.

Farms are also very destructive to the environment, water pollution.  

I-M produces air pollution, but a couple factories are okay in my experience.  Yes, the air pollution is bad for the farms, but I haven't noticed any real problems from just a few I-M lots.  You can also grow some trees around them, to help reduce the air pollution.

The plants for fixing water pollution would probably be outside your budget, unfortunately.

Make sure to keep your water towers far, far away from polluting farms and factories!

1 hour ago, chfzdn said:

What do you think? Let me know.

It's a different way of playing the game — very, very different to what I've seen of your style so far.  You could do it as an experiment, and see what happens.

9% tax is generally a good way to start.  Only lower it a tiny bit if you need to.  These kinds of cities don't need much demand, because their population is small.

If you're doing this without any money mods, be very, very frugal.  Even plopping a water tower or zoning some landfill can be a serious monthly expense, and you might decide that paying for rail, stations, and streets, are higher priorities than water.  

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

@Naomi57, @chfzdn what you say is true in any area that you wish to actually develop. But let me briefly go back to the initial point of having a national park as such.

Clearly, you don't need any education out there (except for "put your dust in a dustbin" ). You can, if you want, put a police or fire station there, but it's just for aesthetics really.

As far as the budget goes (which will obviously be in the red) I like to push the regional play to the limits.

What I do is to establish a contribution system in my region.  In this system, better well-off districts are responsible for financing smaller communes and natural regions.

How is it done technically? Moolah!

1. I enter my rich city and deduct some money through moolah cheat.

2. I enter "in the red" tile.

3. I use moolah again and add the same exact money quantity I deducted from the first city.

Everyone's happy. The small commune / national park has enough budget to consume over the next few years, while large city is no poorer. This solution also adds an interesting financial aspect to the game and encourages you to play in your big cities (cause you need to earn this contribution money somehow, right?).

______

Edit: I should probably mention that I discourage myself from buldozing trees and nature lots by setting high prices for such operations.

As a result, a 3x3 forest lot costs $763 to remove in my version of the game. 

[BartonThinks 3,416]

2 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

@Naomi57, @chfzdn what you say is true in any area that you wish to actually develop. But let me briefly go back to the initial point of having a national park as such.

Clearly, you don't need any education out there (except for "put your dust in a dustbin" ). You can, if you want, put a police or fire station there, but it's just for aesthetics really.

As far as the budget goes (which will obviously be in the red) I like to push the regional play to the limits.

What I do is to establish a contribution system in my region.  In this system, better well-off districts are responsible for financing smaller communes and natural regions.

How is it done technically? Moolah!

1. I enter my rich city and deduct some money through moolah cheat.

2. I enter "in the red" tile.

3. I use moolah again and add the same exact money quantity I deducted from the first city.

Everyone's happy. The small commune / national park has enough budget to consume over the next few years, while large city is no poorer. This solution also adds an interesting financial aspect to the game and encourages you to play in your big cities (cause you need to earn this contribution money somehow, right?).

There's an old lot/mod on the LEX that does the same thing without requiring the Moolah cheat.

This lot: https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=417

Plus this mod as a dependency: https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=416

I've had this lot bookmarked for a while so that I can mod it for my own cities, since transferring funds from one city to another allows you to replicate the way larger cities (i.e., those that span more than a single tile in SC4) handle municipal taxes, or how the residents of a city might pay federal/state taxes to fund other public services -- like national or state parks.

Here's another example that I haven't tried yet, but would like to at some point. There's a region I'm planning where I'd like to develop some smaller, mountain villages within the region, which would be too small for fire services. To have as much realism as possible, my thought was to do the following:

• Create a "Fire Watch" tower that has a small coverage radius for fire suppression, but which can be used to dispatch the firefighting airplane (that is, it won't stop fires from happening, but it gives you a way to put them out if they appear in the city tile)
• Mod the "Fire Watch" tower reward lot that's only available if a fire station with an airfield is present somewhere in the region (this step might be too much trouble)
• Set up a fire station with an airfield somewhere within my main metro area to serve as the official dispatch center for firefighting airplans
• Place Fire Watch towers in the tiles with mountain villages
• Use funding transfers so that taxes in my main metro area fund the Fire Watch programs in the smaller villages

There are other ways this could be used, as well. For example, you could do long-distance busing for elementary and high schools by creating a bus stop lot that acts as a school for the town, with funding provided by the city where the school itself is located.

With all that said, the Moolah trick seems like a much easier solution than using the lot from the LEX. So long as you don't fudge the numbers, it's more or less the same thing. I guess the only appeal of using the lot/mod combo is that it makes the money transfer feel more like an in-game feature.

I'd also love to take a look at the neighborhood deals for power/water/waste to see if there's a way to repurpose these transfers for a similar effect. That would probably mean sacrificing one of these transfers, though -- e.g., no more sending waste to another city tile.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

If someone asks me, if I want this or that, I always get the nagging feeling they try to trick me into something like those air hostess asking me "do you want coffee or water?" Well, they have everything in their cart, tomato juice, brandy, wine but making things black and white they hope I decide amongst the cheapest beverage they have.

But what would be if your meaning of the word "success" is already limited to this thinking in black and white? What, if a successfull city can mean a lot of different things?

And what do you think about Swiss Lterature? It's even a good idea to study swiss literature, because there aren't that many famous writer and so not that many books to read.  So you can be expert in no time.

But a few were really, really brilliant. Like for example Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

He said: “A story is not finished, until it has taken the worst turn”

Well, that's the way evil despot major Fantozzi likes to play: a city isn't finished before there isn't the maximum amount of chaos reached. 

And you know, like in real life, a gouvernement will need really much moolah to get there.

And don't tell me this isn't the ideal sense of 'natural growth' - chaos! Instead it is.

[Naomi57 2,985]

13 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

Well, that's the way evil despot major Fantozzi likes to play: a city isn't finished before there isn't the maximum amount of chaos reached. 

I did do that just a couple times, set off several disasters which took out electricity and water, and then tried to nurse the city back to health.  I wasn't game to save, though!  

16 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

What I do is to establish a contribution system in my region.  In this system, better well-off districts are responsible for financing smaller communes and natural regions.

That Daeley BLS Shady Banking mentioned by @BartonThinks looks rather cute.  Another option to achieve this as an automatic monthly transfer, is to plop a Business Deal to generate monthly income in the poor city, and plop an equivalent monthly expense in the rich city.

e.g. Plop a CSXNature - PEG Hunters Cabin or a CSX Nature - PEG Hotspring to generate §250 per month in the poor city, partnered with:

• An overzealous Museum in the rich city, with the funding slider hiked up.
• A Main Library in the rich city.
• Big Ben (1x1) and Faneuil Hall (2x2), together adding up to §250 per month in the rich city.
• Independence Hall (2x2) and Rotes Rathaus (4x4), together adding up to §250 per month in the rich city.
• Independence Hall (2x2) and The Alamo (3x2), together adding up to §250 per month in the rich city.
• Coit Tower (3x3) and Washington Monument (3x3), together adding up to §250 per month in the rich city. 

There's a list of landmarks on the https://strategywiki.org/wiki/SimCity_4/Landmarks list, each with their own very generous monthly direct debit values.  

14 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

And you know, like in real life, a gouvernement will need really much moolah to get there.

I've heard some Mayors routinely turn on the Legalize Gambling ordinance, and maybe even build a Casino, as a money spinner for low income cities.  The increased risk of crime that results is a minor issue (or even if a non-issue) as long as the population remains small.  

15 hours ago, BartonThinks said:

Create a "Fire Watch" tower that has a small coverage radius for fire suppression, but which can be used to dispatch the firefighting airplane (that is, it won't stop fires from happening, but it gives you a way to put them out if they appear in the city tile)

I like that idea!  

[BartonThinks 3,416]

2 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

That Daeley BLS Shady Banking mentioned by @BartonThinks looks rather cute.  Another option to achieve this as an automatic monthly transfer, is to plop a Business Deal to generate monthly income in the poor city, and plop an equivalent monthly expense in the rich city.

That's another option I've been thinking of doing. You could even create a set of custom rewards or landmarks that have mirrored costs/income. E.g., a landmark with a $500 monthly cost and a business deal with $500 a month in income.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

Ordinance costs/income would be another option so they could easily be toggled on or off with no need to bulldoze anything if the scenario changes.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

I found a clever way to gather income where there is none. I'll let you in on this secret. 

When playing with my natural reserve, which generated a $20 monthly loss, I suddenly realized that the tables have turned and I got actual income. That was because some buses started to pass through a small stretch of road that connected two cities to the north and west from the nature preserve. This happened without even a single bus stop being placed in the nature preserve tile. Have a look:

And guess what my next step was... 

 

I heard there is a big party going on in the Jackson City City Hall. They no longer have to finance the national park! 

[Lucario Boricua 7,048]

On 7/15/2021 at 2:36 PM, TheMurderousCricket said:

I found a clever way to gather income where there is none. I'll let you in on this secret. 

Pro Tip: players can set a charge on the distance traveled by any transit type on the Traffic Simulator, in units of cells (16m increments). Some players choose to do it for cars and trucks, equivalent to fuel taxes. Careful not to overdo it, unless you specifically want to cheat the game off the financial challenge of setting up cities!

[younghappy 308]

This might be a bit of an aside, but who here is familiar with the book A Pattern Language,  by Christopher Alexander?   I've only recently heard about it, but not yet read it.  I've not studied architecture or anything, I suppose this book, and others in his bibliography, offer an alternative to modernism.  Purely as an intellectual exercise, it could be interesting to apply this pattern language to SimCity and see what kind of results can be achieved.

[Naomi57 2,985]

I just came across this great video, that I thought our good Mayors on this thread might appreciate.  It covers village placement, agriculture, and dwelling placement with respect to hydrology, biomes, resources, and risk.

5 Best (and Worst) Places to Build a Home or Village | Andrew Millison (10½ minutes)

[younghappy 308]

2 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

I just came across this great video, that I thought our good Mayors on this thread might appreciate.  It covers village placement, agriculture, and dwelling placement with respect to hydrology, biomes, resources, and risk.

5 Best (and Worst) Places to Build a Home or Village | Andrew Millison (10½ minutes)

Nice! Could be fun to start a new region with a wide variety of landscape and river features and decide where the ancient villages and farms set up shop and then see how that might develop into the modern era.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

First statement about this thread in general - without reading much:

I always found philosophy boring when you end up with a solution. A solution is a cul-de-sac regarding thinking.

I always found philosophy exciting when you end up with a kindergarten of question all begging at the same time: pick me first, pick me first!

 

If I find time to read more, maybe my statements get more qualified.