BRAD'S SC4 American Series M-1

[Brad 343]

Hi, a quick introduction. I'm Brad from WOB- World of Banished. been posting map blogs there for the last 7 years. the Banished sites have slowed down a lot in the last couple years. sadly , i think the lady who got me into blogging there has past away. she has not been heard from in  too long.  I figured it was time to break out the old SC4 game.

i spent the last few months going thru my SC files and reloading dependencies as well as adding more mods. have played SC4 off and on but never completely filled an entire map. i still consider myself a greenhorn or new player compared to the work of many others here at Simtropolis.  due to the limitations of my computer, i don't plan to use NAM or CAM. i know there is lots to learn, and more mods to download, but i am anxious to get this map started.

there may be some similarities from these maps to reality. with the scale difference and the water table limitations of SimCity,  they won't be replications.

 

this is the PA map. like the true Pennsylvania, it does have hills and several rivers. a river borders it to the east. along that river to the south, a port area is planned. i did add an island  to the southwest.

the map was made with VIP Alpine terrain and the Cascadia tree controller and blendapenna water. the next step that I have planned is to run some railroads and highways thru the entire region. mainly just to connect some of the tiles and to the world. then i can reset the clock and $$ value and start building.

 

 

 

[catty-cb 4,392]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

Hi, a quick introduction. I'm Brad from WOB- World of Banished. been posting map blogs there for the last 7 years. the Banished sites have slowed down a lot in the last couple years. sadly , i think the lady who got me into blogging there has past away. she has not been heard from in  too long.  I figured it was time to break out the old SC4 game.

Hi @Brad

Nice to see you over here ... it's been a while since I updated it, but I was posted updates to a banished village here, as WOB has been having a problem for a while with attaching pictures to posts

Was also doing a number of topics on playing banished here

Nice SC4 map 

[Brad 343]

well, I found out my fancy tree planting didn't work well. with the seasonal trees, the game has to play forward on the time. I had tried advancing the dates and planted trees, then set the date forward a couple weeks and planted more. trick didn't work. all the trees are considered planted at the same time. found it out as i went to reset the dates to JAN start date. now I have to decide rather to leave all the regions as they are or replant more trees. either way, I'll have to run the map til the leaves fall and synchronize the dates for all the regions. what a mess.

 

i did get highways and railroads ran. not a lot, but enough to connect the main metro regions and to the world as well. i did decide to set the  start funds for the small town sections to $250,000 and large to $750,00. leaves the mediums at $500,000. the funds will be set once i get everything synchronized to a start date.what do you call the map sections? i am sure i have it wrong. is it regions or tiles? to me a tile is 1 square tile of a grid.

 

 

[catty-cb 4,392]

On 15/06/2023 at 8:30 AM, Brad said:

is it regions or tiles?

Regions 

[Brad 343]

O"K, i wanted to do an update bout once a week. did  have a couple issues slow things down. with the seasonal trees, the game date for every region had to be set. I planted all regions with trees and let each run til the leaves died off, then reset the start dates. also set the start $$ values. $250,000 for small,500 for medium, and 750,000 for the metro city regions. i also made a chart to name each region. while running a test, I found the info graph wasn't working. took time to figure out the glitch. the ordeal with the seasonal trees delays the graph anywhere from a few months to a year.

list of what is done- terrain, trees planted, main highway and rail lines ran. chart for region names. and set start dates and $$ values.

 

I have a plan. want to run each region for 1 year. get the utilities functioning, move some people in, connect each region to the main transport lines, and hopefully show a profit. from year 2-5, the plan is to build services such as fire, police, schools, and churches. from 5-10, plop some buildings and decorate a bit and build populations. 

I started with the northeast corner. it is a very rural area. worked south to a railroad town to connect with the highway and railroad.mostly farmland with some light industry. map population is 10-15,000.  will continue working west across the top of the map.

this led me to the next dilemma. taking pics of the main map doesn't show much. hard to see with the city names in the way. taking a pic of each region will be a lot of pics 9 just for this corner. and the pics won't show a lot zoomed out far enough to see the entire areas.  not that there is much to see at this stage of the plan anyhow. have a long way to go before I get to the big cities. 

 

 

 

[catty-cb 4,392]

Start is looking good, am pretty certain .... thru I could be wrong as it's been a while since I took any SC4 pictures .....that it's possible to take a picture without the city names being included

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

On 26.06.2023 at 5:59 AM, catty-cb said:

Start is looking good, am pretty certain .... thru I could be wrong as it's been a while since I took any SC4 pictures .....that it's possible to take a picture without the city names being included

Yes. One can toggle both the names and city borders off.  Top menu of the region screen.

[Brad 343]

with the holiday weekend here, I wanted to do this post early. where do I start? has been a busy week.

 

had a fight with a beaver gremlin. he ate all the trees in 1 region in February. as the month changed, all the nice trees i had planted disappeared. did a bunch of testing to narrow it down. was a bad save file not a mod conflict. had to rebuild from  a prior save. ended up being clear back to the terrain before the trees were planted for that region. grrrrrr  saved the terrain but everything after had to be re done. thankfully it was only 1 region. 

I continued the work across the top of the map. naming and zoning regions westward. 2 project areas were worked on. a mine region and the port of Lake Erie. both look decent. keeping with my Banished roots, LOL, everyone is fed and we made it to a trade post. people have moved in to settle across the entire far north of the map. population 40,000.  lower than i had hoped. all except about 2 or 3 regions are making a profit. 

I decided to continue posting and adding pics this way while i establish all the regions on this entire map.  when I go back and build services for each region, I'll take pics of them individually. will do some extra pics of projects and the metro city regions.

next area to be worked on is south of Erie and west of the 1st metro region. this will b this map's oil area. as I stated before, this map isn't a perfect copy of the state of PA.

 

[Brad 343]

had a busy week. goal was to set up the oil region. Bradford will be the hub of it with the refineries. on this map, it is south of Erie. in RL, it is east of Erie. with that completed, I moved on to the east of Harrisburg.  the area transitions from rural small towns to  larger railroad towns with some Amish farm communities. I also managed to get the small regions along the south border of Harrisburg done. they forma  break between Harrisburg and Scranton. a lot of area covered, but mainly small communities. most are producing profit.there are about 5-10 regions that are not showing profit yet. no major projects finished, but several small ones are WIP  

population more than doubled to 88,700. huge gains overall for the week. won't be long and I'll be at the huge metro areas to the far south.

 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

This indeed looks busy and I appreciate the amount of time you invested into this plan. There is something nice about how the waterways look.

But in all honesty, the pictures look quite blurry, so it is hard to make out edges and shapes of individual structures due to that.

[Brad 343]

thanks for stopping by and the comments. yes, the pics sux. the satellite images look foggy. and the travel/zone images are very plain. I've tried a couple things to improve them, but didn't help much. hard to get the SC$ camera to size up well. the  rectangle wouldn't fit the areas well without being too large. 

 

I have a plan. will continue this way with the pics for the rest of Phase 1. I will most likely need to do some region pics when I get into the metro areas. in Phase 2, I'll take pics of each region individually. will have to do updates every day then.

 

i can do this so you don't get lost.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Ahhhh! Okay, sorry, I somehow thought that these were city-view shots! In that case it is clear that you simply wanted to zoom in onto region view... I get it now...

It's a pity SC4 doesn't have a mechanism that would let one close in on a part of the region. It could, for example, have at least two zoom levels for the region view as such!

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

6 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

This indeed looks busy and I appreciate the amount of time you invested into this plan. There is something nice about how the waterways look.

But in all honesty, the pictures look quite blurry, so it is hard to make out edges and shapes of individual structures due to that.

If you're trying to get pics off the region screen, forget it. All you'll get is pixel mush, even when using the isolation feature. Only way to get a good region shot is by going into each tile, snap a pic and start pasting them together. I'd recommend getting rid of that blue grid background. I use a solid black, in tile and in region. Gives the image a little more focus.

[Brad 343]

population over 125,000 before I start harrisburg or the metro areas to the south. 2 Amish farm regions, a  3rd mine region, several railroad or industry regions, an Ag processing region, and several small rural regions. Coal Center can emply around 4000 workers to the mines. that will keep Pittsburg supplied with ores.

Harrisburg didn't get the pop growth I had hoped. there is plenty of room to expand in phase 2. it does take us to just under 130,000. i did re-play Harrisburg a couple times, but without much gain.

moving south- plan is to use the Utility region to supply 3 metro regions and Hershey.  I tried a few different things to get more population boost. Philadelphia has buses and some parks.  Scranton  has a school and fire dept.  Allentown has a police station. I tied to zone the Industry larger than the residential. my attemots did gain some but not as much as I expected. together they added over 10,000 to the map's population.

the beaver glitch that ate the trees returned but only affected 2 metros. instead of rebuilding everything, I changed the time back to Sept., replanted trees, and let the 2 regions re-run to Jan.

Hershey-the Chocalate Factory is built and a campgound. enough people moved in to support the factory. this region will be a project.

Utility-2 power plants, a landfill and recycling center, and a huge water resevoir with a pump were built. I ran this region after the 3 metros and Hershey were ran a year. then returned, increased exported allotments, and played the region. when power ran short, a 3rd power plant was built. just to be safe, i enlarged the landfill at then end of the  year. there should be plenty of power, water, and garbage capacity to support the surrounding  regions.

map population 147,000.

[Brad 343]

 pics- map west and east views.  Harrisburg. Philadelphia, Scranton, Allentown. Hershey east and west, and the Utility region.

[Brad 343]

the plan  is to build the airport and use this region to supply power and workers to the mall region to its north. there is plenty of room to expand the airport and warehouse districts. the Mall region has 1 mall and a restaraunt row. this region does have a police and fire stations, but no housing.

[Brad 343]

  

Pittsburg grew to over 12,000 population to support its factories.

I reversed the port and navy regions. the Military region has a military base and a town to support the tank, jeep, and humvee factories. in time, this region will grow to include a navy. the Port region also has room to grow later on. together, they took the population to just under 175,000 for the map.

 

[Brad 343]

YEAHHH, FINALLY PHASE 1 IS FINISHED. that was a project.  population is lower than i hoped. there are a few glitches and some missing dependency files.  I do wish there was a mod manager systemand a better way to organize everything. SC4 is the most modded game ever but also the most confusing with hoe each file depends on several others.

I realize it doesn't look like much yet. will start Phase 2 . to add services and hopefully get all regions to make profit. most are, but a few are not. services being police, fire, medical,  churches, and some rewards. will add some zoning to increase $$ to afford them.  I want to add them over the next 2 years, 1 region at a time.

[Brad 343]

ERIE- start pop 5000, funds $261,000 Profit 300/mth, our Great Lakes port and main city of the north.

 took a few attempts. didn't go very well. I tried to organize the region's mod folder. game didn't like it. had to load a back up copy and then add some mods to it.  My original goal was to just use the profit, earn it back, and then use that profit to build more. Needed more $$ for zoning and it took too long to get the payback. trial and error with some different ideas, but it worked out.  did have a lot of water pipe breaks while the city tightened the budget.

services added-grade school, high school, 1 small and 1 huge private schools, hospital, fire station plus the dock fire and rescue, and 1 large and 2 small police stations. education, safety, and health are built.
The city also has a radio station.

population over 36,000. holding funds to $200,000.  $1400 profit per month. 
everyone seems happy except the water company. they will get an increase but still be a little short of normal funding level.

did not add any churches or a bus route yet. I want to run the other regions then come back. so Phase 2 will be 2 parts.
 

[Brad 343]

we head east across the northern border. Warren will be an industrial town. schools, fire and police stations, and a hospital were built. the population tripled. even with a late push, it still needs more people before more factories can be zoned. it is profiting over $2,000 per month.

[Brad 343]

PHASE 2- the northern sections are mostly small rural regions with some towns mixed in. some maple syrup production, some farms, and some logging. along with the Sullivan mines, there is some natural gas fracking and transmission stations. a couple areas are tight but all are making some profit. we do have some added costs from the rural settings mod. it doesn't work well with the super water pipe mod.
all regions have a fire, police, medical, and school services. not much is being plopped in, with the exceptions of train stations, sawmills, and the mines. 

so far the population has increased by 94,000.

pics- Corry, McKean, and Potter. 2 logging regions and a farm region.

[Brad 343]

pics- Eldred, Tioga, and Bear Lake. 2 small farm regions with some industry to keep the workers busy. and the retirement, upper class town that the game took in its own direction.

 

[Brad 343]

pics-Genesee, Knoxville, and Sullivan.

[Brad 343]

pics- Gillett, Troy, Dushore, Athens, and Towanda
 

[Brad 343]

pics-Springville, Mehoopany, Montrose, Wayne, and Pike
 

[Brad 343]

with the northern sections completed, we head to the 3 railroad regions to the east. these increase the population by 22,000. 1 will build the engines and train cars, 1 will build and maintain the tracks, and the 3rd will be agricultural support.  all 3 have police, fire, schools, and are making profit.

I added a lot of mods to build these regions. though the write ups say they add jobs, many of the menus do not show how many when clicked on. I have o idea why.

3 pics each for Lackawanna, Lehigh, and Moosic.

 

 

 

[Brad 343]

the oil regions to the west added another 39,000 to the population. pics of the small regions surrounding Bradford.

 

 

[Brad 343]

pics of the 2 medium regions south of Bradford and Bradford. in RL, Bradford is home of Zippo lighters and does have a museum.

[Brad 343]

This map's 1st large metro region- Harrisburg has grown by over 15,000 Sims.this 1 does have buses to help move the workers. it has skyscrapers and lots of space to grow yet. Fire, police, a hospital, and school system were added in this phase.

[Brad 343]

East of Harrisburg,-mixed in the small farm towns, we have Williamsport home of the Little League Championship. so far it has 7 ball fields.