If there was a SimCity style game being made...

[Tubthumper 499]

Easy...SC4 as it is now with one addition - elevated water.  Have a nice mountain stream running downhill, or a lake higher up, or anything. All else can stay the same. Basically let the modders continue their great work.  What rocks about SC4 is the mod community. I look at Mod more as "modular" than "modification" - as in, a modular game I can add onto what I want and disregard what I don't. I think that is why SC4 is still relevant to this day.

[catty-cb 4,413]

6 hours ago, preitman said:

Easy...SC4 as it is now with one addition - elevated water.  Have a nice mountain stream running downhill, or a lake higher up, or anything. ...

Yes I would love that in SC4 or even Banished come to that .... we have one mod in Banished called Waterfall which is animated and is designed to sit next to a hillside

[Simizen 1,100]

So, I've got loads of ideas for SimCity (and tbh, would love to implement them in my own game, but, mine would be absolutely massive, lol).

Forgive the following post, but, it's a lot.

On 11/8/2021 at 12:44 PM, DCottrell said:

What do you all think about the zones themselves, should there be more options than just he regular 3 Tiers?

We should definitely have more zones. The 3 we have are great, but, they're limited, and really only useful for starting the game now, not for a full featured system like we can program today. That said, we do still need to keep them, but, with some extra features:

-Mixed use zoning: hybrid homes/businesses would be wonderful, cause, I can't recreate the historic downtowns of the cities I grew up in. Plus, just useful in general for cramming way more people into a city.

-Seaport zones: playing the past SimCity games extensively (1-4; played 5, but, not enough to have significant experience with it), seaports are really the only port that can actually benefit from having a zoning option. People say airports should go back to being zones, except, logically, it's not something that can be "zoned" in the same way. It's often a pre-planned layout that needs to conform to strict standards to function properly. But, seaports can be easily and quickly repaired and expanded, and that's best reflected in zoning it much like the classic RCI.

-Offices: this one pulls from C:S, where they've got an office zone. And, personally, I think this should be something implemented in the game. While it's not necessary, as it can utilize the standard commercial zones, it becomes problematic when people want to have smaller sections of commerce in a neighborhood, and then you've got a dozen different offices and no grocery or general stores. Sure, I can walk to the corner to my local dentist, but, that means I've still gotta drive 10-15 minutes out of my way to get food. Dedicated office zones would be helpful, as we can implement low density office zones in these areas, alongside low density commercial zones.

-Readjusted Industrial zones: @T Wrecks's Industrial Revolution Mod has done wonders for improving the game, and alongside the BSC Farms and SPAM, the industrial zones were massively improved. However, the catch is, there are limits to each of them. The IRM has to condense the dirty, manufacturing, and high tech industries into 2 densities (medium and high), and it's component mod the IRM-W2W, requires work around patches to be dropped in/out as needed. Rather than doing this, having either 3 or 4 densities for industrial would be great. And, in this instance, they should also be "reversed", as in, low density is often cheaper for zones, but, that would be bad for industry, as low density would be wonderful for high tech industry (the big money; $$$), thus leaving the higher density industry being dirty industry. If giving it a 4th one (separate from agriculture, which I'll get to shortly), this can allow room for the W2W structures.

-Agriculture: should be given it's own category (much like the Office zone mentioned previously), this way we can expand on it, as the densities can help to separate the kinds of farms that are built. However, one key feature to this, would be for utilizing them as other industries, rather than just farms. Like, if I want, I'd love to just zone for logging camps, and mines and such. Not specifically for the supply chain system, as mentioned in a previous comment, but, just for building the more broad and low density industries that exist. To me, having such things spawn in while surrounded by factories makes zero sense. I've seen some pics of @Lucario Boricua's cities, where he's got oil wells directly next to steel production plants, and IRL, that never happens, as oil pumps are often "farms" in their own right.

-Military: kinda on the fence with this one, but, I see no reason not to have it. This would be great for being able to set aside a good chunk of land for a military base of our choosing, and if mixed with a seaport, can give us a nice navy/marine base. Near Augusta, GA, they've got Fort Gordon, and it's effectively a self contained base. You could live there, work there, and shop there, without trouble, and that's just not really represented in SimCity. Though, that base may be an anomaly, it's a nice feature to have. Plus, if we pull the concept from SC2K, we can have a wider variety of bases to choose from, such as the missile silos (which would be useful for some people, as I'm sure there's plenty of Stargate fans wanting to recreate Cheyenne Mt., lol).

On 11/3/2021 at 6:20 PM, DCottrell said:

Question regarding the graphics, would you all be interested in it becoming 3D or preferring the isometric art style it is now?

Personally, I'd prefer 3D, simply cause then you can break the camera free from the classic isometric system and just explore your city. Something I'd absolutely love to do. Now, with this, I feel that we should be able to lock the camera view, so, if we're scrolling around and trying to do something basic, we should be able to do it via the classic isometric viewpoint, but, I've had plenty of times of trying to sort something out in a city, and been unable to get a clear enough view, without just destroying a building (that I want no less) just to see what's actually going on. Some of the data views are helpful, but, not so much when you're still trying to figure out what's going on with a certain lot that may be blocked by other, taller buildings.

Plus, there's the fact that the modders (as in, it's not just limited to the original developers who control the look and feel of the game) are building things in 3D, so, for it to be crammed down into a half-broken set of 2D images, seems rather pointless. Why make something in 3D if it's simply going to be in 2D the whole time anyway? Just either make it all 2D or, all 3D. Obviously some things will likely still need to be in 2D, and that's acceptable (certain props come to mind), but, the structures themselves should honestly be in 3D.

On 11/8/2021 at 11:58 AM, Dutchdragon said:

All in all I'd like to create pre-industrial cities, or at least cities that don't require a dictatorship of cars, electricity and exclusionary American zoning laws.

Completely in agreement with this (and the rest of the post honestly). And something I'd love to go alongside this, is, let us start at about 1800 or so. In the older games, you could pick a specific year to start in 1900, 1950, 2000, and 2050 (2k only); and this was great, cause you could limit yourself as much as you want, and aim for a certain aesthetic. But, with 1800 being the earliest date, many people can just start with their cities, and not have to worry about highways and railroads as much, until they make it to their appropriate dates. Though, if we do go with 1800, I'd suggest having 1850 as another date to pick from (giving us 5 or 6 years to choose from). Though, maybe we should offset it by a year, to make them make more sense (1801, since that's the proper start of the century for example). But, this would also allow us to have other things to work with, given that electricity wasn't a widely used system until closer to the 1900s.

On 11/15/2021 at 5:49 PM, Henry Crun said:

My first wish would be for a region-wide"Play" button.

Wholeheartedly agree. But, I suggest something better: when I hit the play button, all cities should run. Why's just the one I'm in the only one running? It should have the whole map running so it can keep on top of things. And, thanks to multi-threading, the main threads can actually focus on the current city tile, while the others simply juggle all the extra work of bringing the other maps to date. And, this is fairly easy to implement with some things. The date can very easily be updated upon exiting to region view, at least, for all the untouched tiles. So, if I've got 3 cities, but 4 empty tiles nearby, if I play one city for say, 50 years, then, the 4 empty ones can simply be brought up to speed by jumping them up by 50. The other 2 would be where the updates would need to be run. This of course can become problematic later as some regions will be filled considerably with massive amounts of Sims, buildings, etc, so, I would imagine that there would be some natural slow down in the game at a later point.

On 11/15/2021 at 5:49 PM, Henry Crun said:

Second wish would be for all the fantastic NAM work to be properly integrated.

Absolutely. IDK why we couldn't have had like, half this stuff properly implemented in the game. But, a more refined version of the NAM being naturally integrated would be wonderful. Essentially, it would be ripping the traffic ideas from both 4 and 5 in this instance. Also, improved subway design. IDK why, but, like, 90* turns for a subway is ridiculous, when the el-rail and railroad networks require a 45* minimum radius.

On 11/15/2021 at 5:49 PM, Henry Crun said:

Third wish would be for totally functional ploppable lots.

While I'm not the kind of person who does this (or at least, I certainly don't do it often), people playing this game love to design their perfect cities. We should just have this. If I can do this and build an incredible city in C:S, then, I see absolutely no reason for why I can't do this in SC4. Let the artists enjoy their medium.

On 11/26/2021 at 4:50 PM, DCottrell said:

What do you all think about multiplayer type gameplay? I know its a hot topic and Im not talking about the dropbox nonsense I mean full on games going on where somebody could hop on and hop off anytime while playing with another person. That or is city building just for single player?

So, this one's super tricky. Personally, I think it would be great to have a multiplayer component to the game. Cause, let's be honest, no 2 cities IRL have the same mayor. Even if you account for "city merging" there's still other factors at play. New York's mayor doesn't govern how I live, anymore than Augusta's mayor governs how some one in LA lives. That said, I think the multiplayer aspect needs to be built up separately from that of the single player aspect. Now, obviously, the single player side needs to be sorted out first, but, that doesn't mean that the multiplayer side should be accounted for during SP building. Due to the regional system, and having access to extra city tiles, players should be able to have an online portion that lets them govern a city, while a friend handles another one. We should be allowed to make deals and do whatever we want, and just see what happens in general when multiple cities cooperate.

Much of what SC5 does, is actually really neat, such as the epic works projects, but, not sure if that's something that should be added in all honesty. It's a rather niche thing in the grand scheme of things, but, could still very well be doable. However, there's a significant issue in regards to what happens in 5. If multiple people play a region together, but, then one mayor just opts to leave, the other players are in trouble, cause now, nobody's governing that "lost" city, and it just breaks the game, and irritates the players. So, having a way to override the mayor in any instance like that, should be allowable. This should be done through a simple voting process IMO. This way players can free up a slot and invite a new player in to take their place.

========================================

So, for new ideas:

Bigger city tiles. Assuming we're continuing on with the regional play (which is a wonderful concept and I actually love this a lot), we seriously need access to bigger cities. Current default regions are at about 10x10 miles (16x16 km or 4x4 large city tiles), which was the same basic default size of the largest city tile in 3k. This is great, except, many people aren't particularly fond of the super small (1x1 km) tiles. There's not all that much you can do with them honestly, so, it can be troublesome to really get anywhere as a result. Now, I think they should still be allowed to exist in the game, as there's tons of people who want the smaller sizes, for any number of reasons, and as such, they shouldn't be penalized for it by being forced to live in bigger tiles. Plus they make for great challenges for the more experienced players attempting to make a region wide city.

So, my proposal is, at least a larger tile that's 2x that of the largest currently. Each city tile is already double that of the previous, so, it shouldn't be much of an issue. And, it can be represented by using any of the secondary colors in it's config file (magenta, yellow, cyan) These larger tiles would then be 8x8 km (~5x5 miles), giving us significantly more room to work with. Though, with size comes processing cost. So, these larger sizes will likely come at a significant speed/draw cost for players. This will inevitably bump the requirements up pretty high.

Additionally, having city tiles even larger would be cool, but, again, would be a huge performance cost. So, these wouldn't be best for anything below The Powers of God machines. But, a full on 10x10 mile (16x16 km) city, and a ~7.5x7.5 mile (12x12 km) city would be fun to have. And, given that it's a pretty large region, we can have a lot more going on. But, of course the whole reason for 3k's maps not able to be imported, comes from the fact that the map's scale was drastically changed (again, the region's large enough to handle it, but, the cells are horribly scaled in comparison. 3k's cells were 1x1 acres; 4's cells are 1/16th that).

Terrain Generator. SC3K had a great terrain generator, both in-game and externally. Take these two, and combine them with 2K's terrain generator, and we can have much, much more control over how we want our cities/regions to look. Plus, it would be great for those not interested in finding and importing their own maps and terrains, when all they want to do is just play the darn game. Now, I do think we should allow people to import their own terrain maps, but, this is for those who aren't interested in searching through hundreds of pages worth of maps to find something they like. They can just press the "Generate" button until they're satisfied.

NPC Neighbors. In 3K, we had NPC neighbors. And that's great to have, cause then we can do whatever deals we want, and not have to worry about various things. While it wouldn't work for having them control the actual neighboring tiles, it would be great to have when we're on the edge of the region and opt to connect to SimNation, out in the void. There's nothing out there, and one of the great advantages of NPC neighbors is letting the game deal with the garbage. XD But, seriously, it'd be wonderful to set up a city in the middle, that's got access to a seaport, and then just trade with any number of neighbors who can just take the garbage for me. Or, maybe I'm on a chunk of land that's isolated, except for the void, and want power, but, don't care to have any power plants. Importing it would be wonderful. And, speaking of utilities...

Daisy Chaining Utilities. More specifically, I want to be able to have my city in the bottom left corner to sell power to everyone, including that tiny town, way off in the top right corner opposite them in the region. Of course, there's going to be natural limits, but, having access to utilities in multiple cities, further away from the source would be wonderful. In the Augusta area, they pull much of their power from a dam, further up the river, and that particular dam serves like 20 counties and dozens of cities/towns. Being able to replicate that would be wonderful. Same thing should happen with water and garbage. Though I'm sure water has it's limits, the garbage would be a good thing to have daisy chained, given that landfills often service multiple cities. Plus, would be good for those people who aren't interested in their void neighbors taking things away at their (the player's) expense.

Modules and Upgrades. Modular structures would be wonderful to have. I want to be able to increase the effectiveness of various buildings by being able to just plop another piece right next to it. I saw @rob_mtl in one session, have to plop down 20 coal plants to power the city. While I'm sure having their production be increased is a great way to fix most of those issues, having the structures be modular would be great. This would help players improve the production, while avoiding having their plants all just be clones. And, if given enough modules, even 2 cities using the same basic type, won't even have identical plants.

Upgrades would be quite beneficial as well. In SC4, the airports, seaport, and city hall are all upgrade-able, but, that's effectively it. And, from just studying the game, it seems as though they were intending on making other buildings upgrade-able, but, just never got around to them (take a look at the police and fire stations, and you can kinda see what I mean). This would be wonderful, as we can then upgrade these structures, and, combined with the modular system, we can upgrade each component as needed, thus, keeping some of these buildings around for quite a bit longer. Ex: if I have a coal plant that has 3 parts to it, I can upgrade each part (say 3x), and I'd only need a small amount of money to do so, but, it can go from lasting 50 years to 100 years, before needing to figure out how to replace it. And, lord knows everyone's got issues with the way the hospitals and clinics work in the game, so, having modular/upgrade-able medical buildings would be a godsend for most players.

This would also work to our benefit in regards to mass transit, as then, we can upgrade each of the stops to include other types as needed. Though, I feel that some of these should inherently have features added, as you add more transit options in the game. Having an el-rail station is great, but, it should automatically include a bus stop function when you start placing bus stations in the game. And, if you run a railroad next to it, should automatically adjust to having a passenger station, but, this one I get as being rather complicated.

Bus Stations. Seriously, we need this. We should be allowed to control how many buses exist in a city, and be required to upgrade them as needed for bigger and bigger cities. Bus stops are great, but, they constantly spawn buses, and sometimes, feel like they do so excessively. We don't have to pick the routes they take like we do in C:S, but, we should at least be allowed to determine how many buses exist in the city, so we can add more when needed, but, remove them if we're well above capacity.

Controlled Disasters. So, I'd like to have a large selection of disasters (and grab all the ones from the previous games alongside the ones from 4). But, the thing I want is, better control over them. I would love to have them happen randomly, but, I'd like to have the option to turn on/off certain disasters. Some areas of the world have to deal with hurricanes, but, others, that are further inland don't. So, why's my city still getting hit by it, even though I've got a tiny lake/river in it?

Improved Data Views & Charts. So, why do we need 4 separate charts for keeping track of pollution in the city? Literally, it's been proven to have multiple options on a chart/view as seen in the transportation view. So, why can't we have the more related aspects together? Most of the civic stuff can be combined too, like Fire, Police, Health, etc. would free up a bit of space in that menu I think.

Tab Ring Menus. So, having mods is wonderful, until you're scrolling for an hour looking for a specific park to place in the city. Having access to the tab/alt+tab ring function would be wonderful. Not just for default stuff, but, for all the modded items too.

Power Grid. Semi-related to a few previous suggestions, having a power grid would be great. Let me build a plant, and the resulting substations, transformers, and related structures. But, also, Give us improved power lines. So, like, give us the crazy high powered transmission lines that go from the plant out to the substations, and then the lower ones to the initial transformers, and again to the ones on my corner. @RobertaME's done an amazing job so far of implementing a power grid option via her AMPS mod, but, it's still limited by the game engine; as well as what she's got access to in regards to mods and base game equipment. And, it's a great mod, but, could be so much more powerful than what it currently is, and can only get there without the limitations the game imposes on it. (No pun intended there btw.)

Expanded Styles. So, US gets 3 options (Chicago, NYC, and Houston), but, Europe only gets the one? Now, I love using the US sets personally, but, I know there's tons of people out there who would rather have their own sets. I mean, none of them can really show the beauty of the Orient, or Brazil, or anything like that, with just those 2 options. And, in all honesty, even Europe can't really show the beauty of their continent, as their particular selection was from 1 nation out of like 30 out there. France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and England, do not all have the same culture, style, politics, society, etc, so, why are they all forced to share the same basic style in the game?

Expanded Gameplay. So, I know this one's rather vague, but, hard to really describe what I want in only a few words. But, essentially, give us the equivalent of CAM. CAM let's us have the building levels go up to 15, to give us more realistic metropolises. So, having this as a default would be wonderful. Now, I'm aware that tons of people would rather not mess with this, as they're fine without it. But, the idea here, is to let people basically just choose what they want. In CAM 2.1, we can pick from about 4 different growth rates, from slow (for rural), to accelerated (for early skyscrapers). Now, how to do this without having to manually select it per city? Not sure. Though, this may need to be chosen at the regional start, for this work more effectively. But, having this implemented and letting players pick their style would be wonderful.

Combine this with the concepts from the IRM and SPAM mods, and you've got an incredibly well built game. Granted SPAM and CAM are traditionally incompatible, creating a brand new game from the ground up that implements the basic ideas of both, can easily over come this. Especially since you could improve the slower growth model by giving players access to considerably more farms from something like SPAM.

Also, fixing the farms would be great. Cause, while they do pollute some, they should be able to improve over time with increased education, to have them pollute less, as well as be more productive in general.

Efficiencies. So, this one is a weird one, but, effectively, there should be a way for the game to just improve the various structures in the game over time. So, like, if the education is really high, then we should see something like a 20% boost in efficiency for example. So, like, say you start with a coal power plant. Well, it creates a ton of pollution, but, is also not all that productive early on. So, as education (and technology) improve, so should the power plant. While it's fine to leave it as is, the next coal plant you build, should be cleaner, and more effective. This would reduce the need for having 5 coal plants, when you can simply replace it over time to give it a newer version. And, this method is super simple to do. Create a chart of efficiencies, and then, have the game pick a year at random, from say, between 5 and 10 years, and when that year comes up, it randomly picks a level of efficiency, say from 5-30%, in increments of 5. Since this won't be tied to anything but the education level (and/or year if we allow players to start in a preferred year), it can increase the efficiency of buildings without the need for people to make newer models just to add more options. And, the beauty of this is, they can still improve, even if your education is low, simply cause, the technology outside of the city/region will continue to improve, so, you'll get even the most minimal of improvements, even if you decide it's more fun for your Sims to continue to work the farms and mines.

And, sorry for the 5 page essay. Probably should've written this in like a text file and just uploaded that for y'all.

[gviper 922]

On 11/8/2021 at 10:05 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

Of course!

Bringing back the seaport and airport zones would be a good starting point. This way they could have that nice, modular look, rather than just being some lifeless concrete blocks.

If I remember right, somebody has also discovered that SimCity 4 has, in fact, two unused zone types - military zone and spaceport zone. Not sure if I'd like to use these two but... who knows, maybe it would be a fun option.

I would generally appreciate the possibility of building marinas, seaports, airports and parks as modular structures rather than one-time plops. That could make building these entities really exciting.

Wow! I wonder what they were going to possibly do with those zoning types. Was Rush Hour the only planned expansion or were there others?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

6 hours ago, gviper said:

Was Rush Hour the only planned expansion or were there others?

I think it was. Otherwise we would have got it through GOG.

[Tubthumper 499]

14 hours ago, gviper said:

Wow! I wonder what they were going to possibly do with those zoning types. Was Rush Hour the only planned expansion or were there others?

According to an interview by Will Wright, there was talk of other expansions, but nothing ever came.

[Tubthumper 499]

I just thought of 2 other things I would like to see (in addition to the post I made before...)

1) hex-based grid instead of orthodiagonal

2) a revamp of the region and city tiles...basically a "bleed over" system.  What I mean by that, and it is easy to picture but hard to describe....

So you have your region, right? Instead of the normal defined city tiles it is just a blank region map.  You can choose to build a city and choose your tile size (small/medium/large/whatever) and you decide where on the map you want to place it.  Now you have a nice big 4km x 4km map.  You start building it up and it starts to reach the end of the tile.  Instead of seeing a blank area, you see like 10-20 grids that are kind of fogged out.  You can build your roads (AND STREETS! Please for the love of all things let us have street and oneway street neighbor connections!) there to continue expanding your city out and even develop it with zones...you then switch to your region view and select another city size you want and plop it down.  When the city loads you will see the area that was developed by the other city, as well as 20ish tiles of that city on your border. 

Point 2a) when it comes to utilities...if City 1 provides water/power/etc to the structures/zones in their border area it is fine.  When City 2 loads up, they will see that those buildings are watered and will even see the utility lines.  They can link up to it, but they wouldn't have the water/power unless they make the neighbor deal.  This would also allow continuous power without a stupid 3 grid power line randomly set up somewhere...Police/fire/Health radius would also extend to the other city, if the schools/hospitals become overcapacity in the other city, you would get a notice, and one of 2 things would happen - 1: if the other school/ hospital has the capacity to take more, you can accept to be "taxed" and the school/hospital in the other city would go up to meet the demand (much like a neighbor deal). If the school/hospital is at max capacity, your city would end up losing coverage. On the topic of radius, make the radius actually match the grid, so you have a clear understanding of what is and isn't covered.

This will allow the ability to build a seemless region.  I mean how many times have you had a region and then there were just like 3 or four grids on another tile that couldn't really be developed due to terrain, and when you look at the region view you have a major city and just a small sliver of untamed land that looks misplaced? Or how often can you clearly see the city tiles even if you have borders checked off in display settings? How many cities in the world actually have that???

[Simizen 1,100]

10 hours ago, Tubthumper said:

1) hex-based grid instead of orthodiagonal

would really love to see how this would work in the game. Sounds very interesting. Would make the traffic networks an interesting system to code

[Tubthumper 499]

3 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

would really love to see how this would work in the game. Sounds very interesting. Would make the traffic networks an interesting system to code

I think this shows it well...basically each hexagon is made of 19 points.  And the roads would work to connect two points on two different hexes.  So a straight road would go from point 8 to point 12 on one hex, the next adjacent hex would be point 17 to 19, then 4 - 7, 13 - 16, 1 - 3, then back to 8 -12. That would be a straight road across 6 grids.  Obviously that would end up being the center li e of the road, and the road width would run parallel.  A hex like this would allow for some pretty awesome road and street paths.  I think the hardest part would be modeling the different intersections.  I am not a programmer at all, so I don't even know if something like that would be feasible 

[TogaMasterJohn 711]

On 12/18/2021 at 4:11 AM, gviper said:

Was Rush Hour the only planned expansion or were there others?

From what I have read here on Simtropolis, it sounds like there was an expansion pack planned after Rush Hour that focused on nature and the environment side of things (salt water and desalinization plants from SC2K and SC3K, anyone?).

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

Thinking about this topic a little more, I'd certainly would like to see an extra traffic preference key - the safest route.

Maxis key was the shortest route, NAM gave us the fastest route option. I wouldn't mind to have another option then.

Theoretically, one could also assign probability percentage for all these travel styles, just like we do when it comes to MT-car preference in the TSCT.

I imagine that the "score" could be calculated according to the number of safe road infrastructure along a sim's route. Viaducts would count higher than level crossings. Avenues separated with "green belts" could receive better score than single-road, multi-lane roads. Come to think of it, even low-speed street intersections should be receiving better scores than roads intersected with streets.

To bewilder things even more, I believe one should probably also get an opportunity to make correlations between travel styles and education quotient...

The most stupid citizens could stick to the shortest route scheme, disregarding the fact that shortest does not always mean fastest.

The most healthy and educated would prefer to either choose fastest (because they are busy, successful individuals) or safest (because they respect their own lives and health) routes.

Hope you get my point. Just my two Euro cents. ☺

[Ledzepnut 34]

What I'd like to see is different ages of the game by having the ability to choose what time period you'd like to build a city in, for instance, create a city in 100bce, or 900ce, maybe have a game where you can purchase an upgrade for the different eras. I think it would be a blast to build your own roman city, no cars or trains, just horses and chariots, or build an old west town that has horses and wagons for travel and an old steam engine, or how about starting a game in early America around 1600ce, create a seaport that has the old ships with sails. I think having that ability would change everything about the game and make it viable in todays market. In all honesty I wish there was a way to create a mod for SC4 that could do something like that, it would be awesome!

I know there are games like Age of Empires or Empire Earth, but those are war games. I'd like to just build a city and not have to prepare an army for war.

[Tubthumper 499]

On 12/18/2021 at 2:21 AM, Ryuu Tenno said:

Daisy Chaining Utilities. More specifically, I want to be able to have my city in the bottom left corner to sell power to everyone, including that tiny town, way off in the top right corner opposite them in the region. Of course, there's going to be natural limits, but, having access to utilities in multiple cities, further away from the source would be wonderful. In the Augusta area, they pull much of their power from a dam, further up the river, and that particular dam serves like 20 counties and dozens of cities/towns. Being able to replicate that would be wonderful. Same thing should happen with water and garbage. Though I'm sure water has it's limits, the garbage would be a good thing to have daisy chained, given that landfills often service multiple cities. Plus, would be good for those people who aren't interested in their void neighbors taking things away at their (the player's) expense.

For what it's worth - I kind of found a work-around for this exact issue, and I tested out in a sandbox, and seems to work...

I used @BurroDiablo El Nuke power plant and modded it to provide a ridiculous amount of power...and I mean a ridiculous amount.  Placed it in one city and ran some power lines out to the neighbors.  In each neighbor city I used @Kloudkicker transformer station or two - one for incoming and one for outgoing power.  This transformer provides 400MW of power, so each city has 400-800MW of native power.  From then on, it is all about making neighbor deals.  I have one city aptly named 'reallybru' that is 6 tiles out, it is importing 13000MW from 'farside' which is importing 31000MW from 'wayout' which is importing 58000MW from 'midway' which is importing, which imports 71000MW from 'dibsonfirst' which is importing 82000MW from 'powerbaby'

One note to make, ensure you pause your city before you leave it to go to a neighbor city, or when you return to your original city you may be facing angry advisors and rolling brownouts.  Plus a good idea to go to your power city every once in awhile to check on your plant's capacity.  Right now my El Nuke is at about 25 percent, and it is power a lot of cities in my sandbox. 

The key is to have some sort of powerplant in each city.  I just like the transformer stations because they are small and add a bit of realism.  I have some other ones that are a bit smaller and no powerline hookups I can use also.  I just wish there was a way to buy/sell power without having to have 3 tiles in each city reserved for a power line...just looks silly...

El NukePlant Lot - Lots - Simtropolis

KK-Transformer Substation - Lots - Simtropolis

[rsc204 21,868]

On 21/01/2022 at 6:38 PM, Ledzepnut said:

In all honesty I wish there was a way to create a mod for SC4 that could do something like that, it would be awesome!

Are you aware of SimMars? It's totally possible to do something like this, just a ton of work. Say at least a couple hundred new models just for the buildings, then add props and Automata and everything else and it's a huge task to completely re-style or re-skin the game.

Aerden (Mayor Diary) is one of the best examples of how if you customise everything, you can completely transform the game, I swear you won't see a single pixel of a Maxis texture or model anywhere in this region. But it takes a lot of dedication to pull something like this off, however the results are a realistic medieval region within SimCity 4.

[Barroco Hispano 26,973]

On 21/1/2022 at 12:38 PM, Ledzepnut said:

What I'd like to see is different ages of the game by having the ability to choose what time period you'd like to build a city in, for instance, create a city in 100bce, or 900ce, maybe have a game where you can purchase an upgrade for the different eras. I think it would be a blast to build your own roman city, no cars or trains, just horses and chariots, or build an old west town that has horses and wagons for travel and an old steam engine, or how about starting a game in early America around 1600ce, create a seaport that has the old ships with sails. I think having that ability would change everything about the game and make it viable in todays market. In all honesty I wish there was a way to create a mod for SC4 that could do something like that, it would be awesome!

I know there are games like Age of Empires or Empire Earth, but those are war games. I'd like to just build a city and not have to prepare an army for war.

This is quite doable to do. I have several buildings from ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome. I also have many props and buildings that can be used to make medieval cities or Marsian and lunar bases.

The problem is the lack of time and interest (I have to work ).

[Ledzepnut 34]

13 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Are you aware of SimMars? It's totally possible to do something like this, just a ton of work. Say at least a couple hundred new models just for the buildings, then add props and Automata and everything else and it's a huge task to completely re-style or re-skin the game.

Aerden (Mayor Diary) is one of the best examples of how if you customise everything, you can completely transform the game, I swear you won't see a single pixel of a Maxis texture or model anywhere in this region. But it takes a lot of dedication to pull something like this off, however the results are a realistic medieval region within SimCity 4.

I was going to edit my post about someone creating futuristic cities with flying cars and many other features, or even something on other planets, with it having many possibilities , the universe being the limit.

That's interesting about the SimMars game, I look forward to it getting past the beta stage and becoming a new look for playing SimCity. It would be so advantageous to have the help from a major software company because of their resources, then releasing upgrades for different eras, but as was discussed, they would take over and ruin everything because their only goal would be profit. I wish they'd go back to the public having the option of purchasing games outright instead of internet play and pay only, that ruins the fun of playing games when you're forced to play them online, then have to pay to get anywhere, it should be a choice rather than mandatory. SimCity 2013, where you're forced to play online, and SimCity BuildIt, where they try their best to get you to pay an expensive price for fake money, are 2 examples of how unenjoyable those games are.

I actually play BuildIt, as boring as it is, I call it my cr@p game, I only play it while I'm .... uhmmmm ... doing other cr@p, and I've yet to give them a dime. (If what I just said is against the community guidelines, let me know and I'll edit it out, I'm still in a learning stage for this site, it took me a minute to figure out how to quote someone lol)

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

45 minutes ago, Ledzepnut said:

(If what I just said is against the community guidelines, let me know and I'll edit it out, I'm still in a learning stage for this site, it took me a minute to figure out how to quote someone lol)

(Looks fine to me. I see nothing you've said which violates site policy. Crap can be spelled out and still slip under the radar.)

Also, there's a linky in my sig which leads to some tips and tricks to site features (such as the selective quoting you found).

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

@Ledzepnut

Yeah, basically it's the difference between language when used for emphasis, as opposed to directed at someone abusively (or some people).

There used to be hard line rules which pretty much governed strict forbidding policy for any swear words whatsoever. While we still absolutely encourage politeness and common courtesy, just know that if using such language for a way of expressing a point one is making, it's perfectly acceptable. This relates to one of the first things Cori and I took charge of for our adminship, in making Simtropolis less of a police force with regards to the approach of staff moderation.

This newer part of the site guidelines refers to this:

Quote

Excessive swearing is part of the zero tolerance policy. And more specifically any abuse towards another member is not allowed. It does not definitively prohibit minor swear words in the proper context. This includes those subtly used as a form of emphasis, appropriate for the subject being discussed.

 

[rsc204 21,868]

6 hours ago, Ledzepnut said:

That's interesting about the SimMars game, I look forward to it getting past the beta stage and becoming a new look for playing SimCity. 

You shouldn't, despite the word Beta it's very usable as it is and the project has been dead a long time, I don't think it will ever get updated frankly.

6 hours ago, Ledzepnut said:

it should be a choice rather than mandatory.

It is, do what I do and refuse to engage.

The sad reality here is that people like me are a minority, ergo the world moves on without us rather than alters to meet our desires. Even big corporations only interested in money won't flog dead horses, so in the end this crap is seemingly what the people want, go figure.

6 hours ago, Ledzepnut said:

SimCity 2013, where you're forced to play online

They have long since removed that requirement, however the game is so hideously flawed and broken, whilst it can start enjoyably, I never found myself able to finish anything since it just stops working at a certain point. A shame because I genuinely think it has potential to be a great game if you could just make it actually work, i.e. sims and resources can actually get where they are supposed to go, in addition to making city tiles big enough that you can actually build a bloody city!

[Ledzepnut 34]

Something else I think would be beneficial is to have a better organization of the game layout, like having many pull down menus for different themes, terrains, props, buildings, road and rail networks, etc. It'd be nice to have many terrain styles to choose from while playing the game rather than having switch out one style at a time in the plugin folder, including rock, trees and water mods. The different styles of buildings and RCI types having their own categories rather than most of them under one tab would be so helpful. A Real Highway that has ploppable interchanges, it takes hours sometimes to try and figure out what goes where in order to get an interchange to work, (the finished product typically takes up so much space once a person figures it out, and it can look horrific), especially for someone that's new to the game, you finally just give up and use maxis highways, which I end up doing almost every time once I give up on trying to get it to work (it can take hours upon hours just trying to figure what piece works with what piece and it ends up being nothing like you intended it to be, it's more like, "this will have to work" rather than "this is exactly what I wanted". I can go on and on about what I'd like to see with a new game, but it's taking away from my organization time, which has taken away my game time lol