Village Green Preservation Society

[Liz Hayes 25]

Hi! I'm having trouble getting the rural regions around my city to grow. I'd apprciate any advice, tips or cool mod suggestions. Thanks! x

P.S. I'm going for a North European/Scandi/British vibe so if you know of any good BATs or props I'd appreciate it.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

4 hours ago, Liz Hayes said:

I'm having trouble getting the rural regions around my city to grow.

There's a silly bug Maxis wrote into the game in which agricultural demand is seen to be fulfilled by other industrial and commercial growth such that after around 30k jobs of any kind, farm demand goes away.

Not to worry tho, @Jidan has created a fix for that in their Cap Lifter mod. I personally use only the one for I-R (Industrial Resource) which is what Maxis internally calls agriculture.

That'll give you an invisible lot in your Parks Menu that you can plop in each city tile and it restores the demand for farms.

[Liz Hayes 25]

Brilliant! Thanks sooooo much @CorinaMarie x

[Liz Hayes 25]

@CorinaMarie a quick follow up question - do you need to place multiple tiles of the CapLifter in each region to improve demand or is it just one tile? Also, do you need to place tiles in multiple regions or is the effect confined to one region at a time? Thanks! 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

@Liz Hayes It's one per city tile.

Consider it conceptually like a city ordinance where it needs toggled on (in this case by plopping) for each and every city you want it in. Also because the plop is invisible, I generally go to an empty corner with land and put it there. (This is so I could find it again if I wanted to.) You can even plant trees on it if you'd like to cover it up.

[Liz Hayes 25]

@CorinaMarie again, thank you so much!

[TheMurderousCricket 5,083]

Maybe it's silly of me to ask this, but you do use SPAM...?

[Liz Hayes 25]

4 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Maybe it's silly of me to ask this, but you do use SPAM...?

SPAM? Forgive my ignorance but is that the systems mod?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,083]

Nope. It's a standalone mod which completely overhauls the way agriculture works in the game. It never dies out, enjoys high desirability and offers jobs for all types of Sims.  What is more, SPAM farms provide significant variety of crops like corn, switch grass, citruses and many more. SPAM farms purportedly also improve air and water quality a bit, tough I never bothered to confirm it.

Summing up - it is a mod which makes farming a robust and economically viable option in SC4.

Be warned however that it does not work with CAM - Collosus Addon Mod. This tool has its own farming-enhancement logic. So you can have "either or". Here's a link in case you missed it:

 

[Liz Hayes 25]

Thanks @TheMurderousCricket this is really helpfull!

[Nite Owl 79]

@Liz Hayes

Be forewarned that SPAM has a great many add-ons that can go along with it. They all greatly enhance the original but are not necessary in order to use and enjoy the original. This is just a friendly warning that should you go down the SPAM rabbit hole you could end up at a rather lengthily tea party. However, the "biscuits" (be they plain or buttered) are totally worth the trip in my humble opinion. 

 

[Liz Hayes 25]

@Nite Owl -Yum biscuits. I'll proceed with caution...

[TheMurderousCricket 5,083]

9 hours ago, Nite Owl said:

This is just a friendly warning that should you go down the SPAM rabbit hole you could end up at a rather lengthily tea party.

Agreed. I have seen many addons for SPAM but just like you said, the installation instructions were so off-putting to me that I never gathered courage to give it a try.  I think the basic SPAM is still quite diverse. With a few planning and zoning tricks applied, it can provide user with a really interesting time.

[Propfam 2,295]

On 12/4/2024 at 12:40 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

it does not work with CAM - Collosus Addon Mod

I vividly remember there's a version specifically designed to be compatible with CAM. But it's a bit obscure. Some says it's a conspiracy by both BSC and PEG to not interfere with each other (cough seaports and prop pox). Personally, I don't believe all of that (and you should too). Anyone can give the link to that version?

Oh gosh, I found it. Tho it's more like tips than a mod:

and (the topic link's inside)

Hope it helps!

[SC4 gamer 74]

On 3.12.2024 at 6:40 PM, TheMurderousCricket said:

It never dies out

I have SPAM installed but at some point my agricultural demand still disappears. At first I thought this is due to some installation or compatibility error but I also tried it with a clean install of SC4 and only that mod. The demand still disappeared at some point in larger cities. Not as quick as in vanilla SC4 but still. 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

9 hours ago, SC4 gamer said:

The demand still disappeared at some point in larger cities.

Yeah, your install is fine. This is a deliberate built-in bug Maxis included.

They felt that peeps could use the farms to get some income going, but should soon switch to creating metalostraphy skyscrapers cities and so the jobs offered from growth of agriculture, industrial, and commercial all count towards a farming cap. When the cap is reached the demand for Ag completely dries up. That's at roughly 30,000 jobs.

The solution I use is the Agricultural Cap Lifter found in @Jidan's mod. It's an invisible 1 x 1 lot you can plot and then there's no longer a restriction on farm growth. (I don't personally use the others in that set, but they'd likely be good for city painters.)

Note: You only need to plop one per city tile.

[SC4 gamer 74]

11 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Yeah, your install is fine. This is a deliberate built-in bug Maxis included.

They felt that peeps could use the farms to get some income going, but should soon switch to creating metalostraphy skyscrapers cities and so the jobs offered from growth of agriculture, industrial, and commercial all count towards a farming cap. When the cap is reached the demand for Ag completely dries up. That's at roughly 30,000 jobs.

The solution I use is the Agricultural Cap Lifter found in @Jidan's mod. It's an invisible 1 x 1 lot you can plot and then there's no longer a restriction on farm growth. (I don't personally use the others in that set, but they'd likely be good for city painters.)

Note: You only need to plop one per city tile.

Weird thing is, I hear a lot of people say that SPAM fixed this bug but it obviously doesn't - so I wonder where this "rumor" comes from. 

I use those cap lifters, they are a great way to circumvent this weird bug / decision to make farming obsolete later on. I think farming should have played a much bigger role in the game, especially correlating to population count as in having to provide enough food sources for your Sims (meaning needing MORE farmland the bigger your population grows) but I guess that's more in the likes of the gameplay of the  Anno series. 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,083]

1 hour ago, SC4 gamer said:

Weird thing is, I hear a lot of people say that SPAM fixed this bug but it obviously doesn't - so I wonder where this "rumor" comes from. 

That is indeed strange. My current region (the one I play most often) has almost 500k citizens and so far I did not observe any dip in the agricultural demand... The only way to reduce it is through exorbitant taxes. 

[SC4 gamer 74]

3 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

That is indeed strange. My current region (the one I play most often) has almost 500k citizens and so far I did not observe any dip in the agricultural demand... The only way to reduce it is through exorbitant taxes. 

As soon as I hit around 30k pops it completely disappears in my game, even in a completely new installation with only that mod. No idea why that happens, I just "fix" it with the demand cap lifter. 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,083]

Are you sure you clean out both plugin folders? If there are leftovers in one of them, something may keep interfering with SPAM...?

[SC4 gamer 74]

5 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Are you sure you clean out both plugin folders? If there are leftovers in one of them, something may keep interfering with SPAM...?

Yes I had a completely clean installation of the game with both plug-in folders empty.