The central district of the Eldian capital Mitras, with the Royal Palace at its heart. The circumferential beltway marking the boundaries of the modern district traces the ancient Wall Sina.

Panoramic night view of Mitras’ skyscrapers using the 3d camera mod. That mod is actually what inspired me to return to this region after a long pause. Later I’ll come back and take alternate angles of my other older screencaps.

I’ve been playing SC4 on-and-off since 2008 I think: I would forget about it for several years then mess around with a few regions for a short while before forgetting about it again, yet I keep coming back to it even after all these years. This region is where it finally clicked for me how to reliably encourage those nice-looking commercial skyscrapers to grow, even on vanilla and hardest (3-star) mayor difficulty settings.

1. Pick a central city tile that will host the skyscraper district, then go to its neighboring cities and ramp up the CO$$ & CO$$$ taxes all the way up to 20 while maintaining or even lowering the same taxes in the central city, effectively concentrating the CO demand in that one city. In hindsight this would work better if the neigboring cities are staggered such that the central city will have 6 neighbors; in this region the city tiles are configured in a perfect grid without offset where each tile only has 4 neighbors.
2. Optionally, you could also do the opposite to the dirty and manufacturing industries: maximize the taxes in the central city to push them out to the neighboring cities, to keep the central city clean and pollution-free.
3. In all of the cities (central+neighbor), get as many sims - especially highly educated sims - as you can. At first they will look for high-paying high-tech industry jobs, then eventually when their spoiled children grow up and graduate from college/university they will start demanding for higher-paying cushy office jobs. This process will take a while, you can play this by the numbers - I believe there is a specific regional population threshold, but regardless of the exact value, the key here is patience. If I remember correctly, I started seeing commercial skyscrapers in the central city when my regional population reached 1M+, with significant percentages of highly-educated high-wealth sims in the central city and its 4 neighbors.
4. Once you’ve accrued a pent-up regional demand for CO$$ and CO$$$, pick a spot in the central city for the skyscraper district with all the amenities: water, public transport, police, fire stations, hospitals, schools parks, rewards, landmarks, the whole package. As you can tell this will take some hefty initial startup cash on top of recurring monthly expenses, so it helps if the central city is already moderately developed by this stage, with a sizeable treasury and healthy net monthly income.
5. Mix in some high-density residential zones so the office workers have the option to live in nearby high-end housing if they can afford it. But hold off on spamming high-density commercial zones just yet: now that we’ve concentrated the regional CO demand in this central city, we can concentrate it further within this city by zoning just a few plots of small high-density zones, so the CO demand will be forced to build upwards. You’ll know you’ve done it right and you’ve waited long enough if they immediately sprout up, if not that just means you’ll have to wait a little longer: most likely the regional population is not yet high enough to meet the threshold.
6. As the CO demand is replenished, continue zoning small pieces of high-density commercial zones around the starting cluster. Then when the commercial space in the central city is all used up, lower the CO taxes in the neighboring cities, or repeat the whole process in other groups of central+neigbor cities across the region, like what I did for the following screencap.

The city of Zacharius, where the southern terminus of the national high-speed railway loops around to “lasso” the central cluster of financial skyscrapers of what was once a frontier ranching town. Where their grandparents once wrangled market bulls, now their grandkids are chasing bull markets. Zacharius city also hosts the country’s largest meat auction, ensuring a stable supply of affordable meats.