Region as one city mod (For SimCity 4)

[Karter 3]

Hi. I am recreating the Metropolitan Detroit area in Southeast Michigan. Here's a map of it:

I used SC4Mapper to put the map into the game, but it did so as a region. I researched if you can do a region as one big city, but I don't think you can. So I was wondering  if anyone or someone they know can mod the game to the point where you can play a region as a big city. Thanks. 

 

(P.S., please reply as soon as possible.)

[rsc204 21,866]

There are no mods to increase the size of cities and frankly if there were you’d be in trouble. Game performance on a modern high performance system in a large city with many hundreds of thousands of sims can already be problematic. The number of calculations required to work out commutes being the reason why Regions exist, so you can have a larger city, but you can only work on a ‘segment’ or tile at one time. In other words, you can consider the entire region as one city. The one drawback is the External Commuter bug, which creates problems if you have neighbour connections between tiles that include routes that allows for a loop of commuters back to their original city. So, some compromises would be needed to actually make this a reality. 

[Karter 3]

Ok....? But if I do each segment and drive it, if you come to the boundaries, you have to stop what you're doing, save the city and exit and go to the next one, which could be a little "annoying"

[Karter 3]

Is there a way we can keep the regions but make them invisible (automatically go to city mode after going to a region but since the regions are invisibly there, there wouldn't be any bugs, right?)

[Haljackey 17,398]

8 minutes ago, Karter said:

Is there a way we can keep the regions but make them invisible (automatically go to city mode after going to a region but since the regions are invisibly there, there wouldn't be any bugs, right?)

How would the game know what city to pick? You need to chose the city you want to load in region mode.

You will have to save a city and exit to region, and then chose the next city in region mode to load it. I'd recommend going for a region with all large tiles.

[Karter 3]

50 minutes ago, Haljackey said:

How would the game know what city to pick? You need to chose the city you want to load in region mode.

You will have to save a city and exit to region, and then chose the next city in region mode to load it. I'd recommend going for a region with all large tiles.

That's not what I meant. I meant when you go to a region it won't go to region mode; the whole region will go to city mode. Would a mod make the region grids invisible and not have a SimNation popup? (When you put a street near a border.

[Haljackey 17,398]

Perhaps you are looking for a region viewer? There is a region census that might be useful for you

https://sc4evermore.com/index.php/downloads/download/30-gameplay-utilities/17-sawtooths-region-census

Here's an example of my region using that. No names, borders or UI.

[Karter 3]

When I open it it says: 

 

"c:/program files/maxis/SimCity 4/simcity_1.dat was not found.

Fill empty tiles will not be avaliable.

Use Edit->Preferences to set your SimCity install location.

 

 

[kSlank 152]

Regions can have infinite tiles

[rsc204 21,866]

22 hours ago, Karter said:

Ok....? But if I do each segment and drive it, if you come to the boundaries, you have to stop what you're doing, save the city and exit and go to the next one, which could be a little "annoying"

 Perhaps, but so is reprogramming the entire game to work differently.

22 hours ago, Karter said:

Is there a way we can keep the regions but make them invisible (automatically go to city mode after going to a region but since the regions are invisibly there, there wouldn't be any bugs, right?)

What specifically do you mean by this, it's a little ambiguous.

21 hours ago, Karter said:

That's not what I meant. I meant when you go to a region it won't go to region mode; the whole region will go to city mode. Would a mod make the region grids invisible and not have a SimNation popup? (When you put a street near a border.

The Region gridlines and city names can be switched off in Region View, there are options for this.

So yes, the region can look like one big city, but you still need to load each tile as required to work on the whole in parts. Likewise, you probably could suppress the SimNation popup, but how would you know you had built a Neighbour Connection if you did this? Again, I can not stress this enough, you can build an entire region as if it were one giant city, but you can only load and play a small part of it at any one time. If this really bothers you, then Cities Skylines may be something you want to look into, because you can work on the entire region at once. That said, regions can not be as big as SC4 overall and the game is IMO both boring and broken so it's not like I'd highly recommend it.

Bottom line here, there is no way around the Region/City behaviour because it is literally how the game was designed to work. Of course, one could redesign it, but with our current level of control, even DLLs, such a thing is simply beyond practical.

Do you know why all City Simulators after SimCity 4 sucked so hard?, it's because they have to calculate 'real' sims, but it always proves too much for computers to keep up, eventually compromising the game. I.e. as soon as things grow beyond a certain point, the game essentially doesn't function as it should because no machine can keep up with the exponential number of calculations required to do so. Maxis used the Region system, so players were not limited to playing single tiles, whilst for the most part keeping each city in its own silo. Therefore as the region expands, it doesn't have to do everything at once, it only needs to calculate what's happening in each loaded tile at any given time. Of course there are drawbacks to this approach, but considering it works and the other approaches I've seen used don't, I'd say Maxis made the right decision.