Creating aesthetic farms

[monkeywater 910]

I have not really got into the farming aspect of the game before and would like to.

 

Does anyone have a list of mods they use for nice farms?  I have the SPAM but that is it. 

 

I see great images of farms in the 'show us your' sections but mine never look similar

 

 

[gwada971 1,891]

Hi you can have a look here by Fantozzi (farms up to stage 10 with CAM)

 
Here also by Simcoug

See also JMyers on LEX and to embellish all this, the Girafe (VIP) packs

[Cyclone Boom 16,851]

A lot of it comes down to technique of zoning and placement of streets and/or roads. Using the SAM dirt and gravel provide a massive transformation to the visuals of a rural area. Also making use of the curves as well, to wind them around the landscape and between fields. Many people like to use the SPAM which adds additional field types among other things too. This can complement the MTP items as well for extra details in a rural environment. What the SPAM provides is a different style than the Maxis fields, since they use props for the crops. Using some MMPs might be worth looking into also. Of course, it does depend on personal preference on both those fronts.

For inspiration of ideas with the methods of creating pretty farms, I highly recommend looking through a thread Cori and I compiled.

As follows:

Most of what Cori creates with her farms is to use the Maxis offering, and then blocking the dirt fields and Pedriana plants (the only Stage 3 Maxis farm). Notice especially how she delightfully designs the zoning layout to vary the sizes of the fields, and then filling the edges with precision planted trees or specially made filler lots.

[RobertLM78 1,597]

SPAM is a must IMO.   And yes, good zoning and road layout are key to yielding appealing results:

 

[CorinaMarie 29,568]

There's also oodles of information in @Daeris's thread:

 

[City_Slider 2,716]

Hello,

maybe this Tutorials are helpfull:

This arent Mods but good ;-)

Greetings

[RobertLM78 1,597]

7 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

There's also oodles of information in @Daeris's thread:

I still have that thread open in a tab.. seems a wealth of good stuff there.

[Daeris 1,116]

@monkeywater Hi monkeywater. As others have said, some good forum posts to help with this, and my recent thread (which Cori so kindly linked) has been - for me - a great accumulation of the best information contained in many of those other forum threads.

A few mods that @The British Sausage brought to my attention that instantly helped me create better looking farms and rural areas:

Diagonal fillers- https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1197

RRP fences- https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1888

 

As others have said, using tricks to place streets where you want the actual farm buildings to grow is pretty darn important imo. Also, I tend to try and keep the farm zoning on mostly level land, with perhaps some rolling hills if they aren't too drastic. If the elevation changes too much, I might level that area out and create a new farm there for example. I believe in one of the other threads listed above, Cori discusses her street/zoning strategy (which was helpful for me). As a crash course here, basically you only want the agricultural zones initially touching street/road where you want your farm buildings to grow. So what I'll do is create a little driveway off of my main street/road, and then I'll zone the farm to only touch portions of the driveway where I want the actual farm building to grow. After the farm building and its actual field grows, I'll then go in and use those mods linked above to create a perimeter of trees and/or fences around the farm. You can also use various MMP trees to paint a perimeter around your farms if you like that look.

 

Best of luck to you on your creations. 

[RobertLM78 1,597]

2 hours ago, Daeris said:

Also, I tend to try and keep the farm zoning on mostly level land, with perhaps some rolling hills if they aren't too drastic. If the elevation changes too much, I might level that area out and create a new farm there for example.

Same here.  Although I'll leave slopes that are too drastic alone completely (usually leave the forest there).

2 hours ago, Daeris said:

Cori discusses her street/zoning strategy (which was helpful for me). As a crash course here, basically you only want the agricultural zones initially touching street/road where you want your farm buildings to grow

I'm sorry i missed that too...i only came up with that idea on my own about a year ago.  Really important too if you plan to retain any of the farmland later on and you have street to avenue widening to do.

[Daeris 1,116]

43 minutes ago, RobertLM78 said:

Same here.  Although I'll leave slopes that are too drastic alone completely (usually leave the forest there).

This is actually more what I do, I must have just explained it wrong. I meant that I might level out an area on a higher or lower elevation for another farm (if there is enough land that I feel it will look natural and good). If not, then I absolutely just keep a foresty feel there as well!

Btw, really cool pic above with all the diagonal farms around the city. 

[RobertLM78 1,597]

2 minutes ago, Daeris said:

Btw, really cool pic above with all the diagonal farms around the city. 

Thanks....!  That's from a "mega-region" (10x10 large) I've been working on for several years.  Been taking a break from it working the "natural but organized" region for the last year and some change, but that there picture is one of the more populated places of the part of the region I call "Ruralia" (the valley in the northeast of this map)