japerson

I would love to see the "RH Plopmodd Final" expanded. Or maybe just the two lots I was hoping were in there. I love to build huge industry zones with either tons of 1x1 Steel Shed or Chemical Tank lots. But it takes forever (and lots of money) to bulldoze all unwanted built lots. Then making the lots historical once they are finally built. I was hoping the RH Plopmodd Final would finally solve my problem, but it only has these two lots as 1x2 lots which cuts the workforce in half. I also did not see any of the various 1x1 (DI) Yard lots which I love using as well in that set either.

Dude! Where's the door?

I was just browsing when I came upon this thread and found it very interesting. I am one of those players that have played forever, but still don't get it. And yes, I have read all the tutoring posts, but they too don't help. When it comes to slums, I can build some real nice ones, profitable ones too. In fact, that is all I seem to be able to build. As soon as I educate my slummies, they build these big fancy houses and stuff, only to abondon them, leaving my city even slummier than before, but with a dropping population and a now dropping budget. It sounds from what I need to do here is to leave my first city a slum, maybe even my first few as slums, and then I should have better success with my higher educated cities. Is this correct?

I have not seen this issue addressed anywhere, so forgive me if I am posting a common question that has been answered elsewhere. I had a pretty cool (for me) city developing when this hunk of concrete arose: So I am getting all excited (yes, over just that) and decide I better check all my graphs for any problems this building may have caused when I come across this: I did not add anything to cause this spike. It had to be the developement of this new apartment building. Is it common knowledge that bigger buildings cost me, the mayor, more to maintain? And if so, where is the advantage of having bigger buildings? I thought the added population would bring in more money, not cost me more. I suddenly do not understand even the basics of how this game should be played.

Date: 2/4/2006 5:33:39 AM Author: Peorth japerson, no offense, but I think you have to know/learn more about the game . . First of all, zoning in high density outright is a bad idea. It's expensive and you will not utilize the need for density until the city is more mature. Second, expense spikes don't appear spontaneously (unless you have a weird bug); expenses are solely under your control. Third, the probable reason you're having trouble with upper-wealth sims is an imbalance in their their number and the jobs available to them, especially for R$$$'s. Fourth, I see no problem at with managing cities with skyscrapers. Traffic can become a nasty issue but you need advanced planning to handle it when your city becomes large. quote> My cities usually are in the black before the first year ends. So investing ahead of time seems wise as it should save me money in the long run. I mean, I am going to eventually zone high density anyway, so why not get a head start? I agree with the imbalance with upper-wealth sims. That was one of the reasons I was using water restrictions to control their growth, but it would make more sense and be more realistic to control that by zoning low density at the begining. That way they can have their water and stay small at the same time. So maybe I'll change my stradegy on the next city and see how it goes. I think I solved my traffic problems. Again, in an unrealistic way, but as I learn how to better build, I'll try to be more realistic about things. As for growable buildings not causing expense hikes, I guess I have some sort of wierd bug or just completely forgot something.

Can this be done? And if so, how is it done? I'm talking about no cars, no buses, no subway, no ferry boats, no monorail, passanger train or even freight train, not even one frieght truck. Zippo, nada, nothing but 100% old foot power. With no use of mods either. Eh? Do you think it is possible? My answer is yes. I am not saying how yet. I just want to see if anyone else has done this too.

Aurthor: jglei701 Have you tried it with more dense zones? What's the farthest distance (number of tiles) that it will work? And how about from one city to the next?quote> OK, I finally tried this city-to-city. Here are my results: On a 256x256 map, I placed a small factory on the edge of the map. I then ran a street 256 tiles and made a connection to the next city. In the other city, I placed a house right along the edge where the street connection came in. Here were the results: Two pedestrains leave the house and head off to work, but they never arrive in the next city. I am shown a freight truck leaving the factory and going to the next city (256 tiles away), but I got the message about freight not moving. So I build a second factory right along the edge going into the next city. Here are those results: Two pedestrains leave the house and head off to work, but this time, they do make it to work. So now I put in residential lots 23 tiles away from the border. Here are the results: With only 14 jobs available, I have 77 pedestrains leaving their houses and headed off to work. 44 on lower road and 33 on upper road. Only 8 show up going to work in the factory sitting on the near border. I then place two factories on this 256 tile long street. One is 22 tiles away from the border, the other is 23 tiles away from the border. Here are the results: Without going back to the residential city, 8 pedestrains show up to work at the factory 22 tiles away, none show up in the other. So I have concluded that when it comes to city-to-city walking, you can take advantage of this bug and put your jobs as far away from the border you like. However, the Sim walking to work must be no more than 22 tiles away from the border. If you insist on seeing your Sims walking to work in your industry city, then you must place the jobs within 22 tiles. However, this is only needed for the visual effect.

Because I am afraid of getting more expense spikes. I can't afford anymore. I also have a habit of zoning everything high density right out of the gate so I won't have to bother rezoning later. So I instead use water restriction to restrict growth. I build great money making suburbs, but once I grow tall buildings, I get into trouble somewhere. I don't mind the R$. In fact, I prefer them over the R$$ and R$$$ who are too darn pickey and abandon everything they build. Wretched creatures. I just cannot build these huge cities with sky scrappers.

Most likely the issue is R$$ & R$$$ not being able to find jobs. You have to deteremind what wealth of the residents that are moving out and try to address their needs. Education raises the demand for jobs that pay more. You can also raise taxes on R$$ and R$$$ to control their growth some.

Thanks everyone for replying. No, like I said in my original post, I had added nothing. The big jump before the larger jump was where I added the Jail. There is a tiny one in between where I added a subway station. I was zoning for industrial lots when I noticed this building to start to rise. It was my first 3x3 building, so I knew it was going to be a big one. So I stopped and watched it. When it was completed, I began checking everything expecting a greater demand for services. All was fine until I got to the Income/Expenses chart. If you look real close, you can see income rose too which kept me in the black. So I continued with the city. All I did was continue zoning industry due to the increase of Sims needing jobs and again, I took another smaller unexplained jump in expenses without me adding or adjusting anything. I saw no other building rise. This second increase put me in the red and I have yet to recover. I did as it was recommended, I just started the game up and bulldozed the building in question. Income dropped, but expenses did not. The same building then rose again. Income rose to where it was and oddly enough, expenses dropped very slightly. Again, I didn't adjust or do anyhing else that should have caused expense to change. I am going to continue with this city to see if I have any other experience like this. I have also started a similar city where I am building without drinking water in order to control the growth. I'll keep an eye on that one too to see if this happenes again. Thanks all.

The name of the building is Impeccable Tenements. It is a 3x3 R$ building. It houses up to 2680 Sims. I do not believe it is a download. I usually download plopables. This building looks too plain for me to ever bother downloading it. Anyway, here is another pic from a different angle.

I have a question, what brings in the money? I thought population did, but I see it doesn't. I have several small cities which most do very well, financially. But my latest is turning out to be a disaster. City #1: Entire population is made up of 1x3 LDR$ Population = 9,625. Income = $4,105 from R$ @ 9.0% City #2: Entire population is made up of 1x2 LDR$ Population = 11,002. Income = $4,870 from R$ @ 9.0% City #3: Entire population is made up of 1x1 LDR$ Population = 15,575. Income = $7,290 from R$ @ 9.0% City #4: Entire population is made up of 1x3 MDR$ Population = 25,109. Income = $3,514 from R$ @ 9.0% City #5: Entire population is made up of 3x3 HDR$ Population = 18,856. Income = $1,801 from R$ @9.0% When I zone for Medium and High density, I get more people, but make less. Not only that, but I saw where large buildings developing would cause expenses to rise sharply as well. Where is the money supposed to come from to support cities with large buildings? And if the large buildings give me less and cost more, why desire them?

Oh my! Who would have thought that industry could be so..., um, pretty? Not I. Far from pretty, this is my low density dirty industry area built one tile at a time. Pretty intense looking. See how I snuck the word pretty into that?

I just finished going through this whole thread. While there are some good ideas, most of what I saw, even though eye-catching, seemed to have no practical use. So if I may, I'd like to add something useful to this thread, not to say there isn't anything useful here already. While boring to look at, it may give others some ideas on how to handle their traffic problems. Now the original thread said no grid networks. While at first glance this may appear to look grid like, I don't believe it is. If you all think it is, I'll remove it. This transportation network is for those who build suburbs, which I happened to love to build. It uses subdivisions, maximizing the limitations of streets, roads and avenues. It is designed to work like roots of a tree. The smaller streets are used to collect the Sims from their homes. Roads are used to connect the streets, forming a simple subdivision, which is then connected to an avenue which carries the brunt of the Sims to work. These images were from my first experiment with this system. This is the avenues by themselves. This is a typical subdivision. This is the entire suburb area. The rest of these images are from a modified second attempt after seeing mistakes made with the first. Here is the entire section after developement. No major problems. Here I used a one-way road to act as an access road to the industry section. This helped to take a lot of traffic off my avenue that runs in front of my industry section. A near perfect fit for my school zone. And while I am at it, from all the round abouts I saw, I don't remember seeing any for trains. So I quickly threw this together. Hope you all found something useful with all of that.

If the only mode of transportation is walking, a R$ Sim will walk up to 23 tiles to get to work. With your technique, they seem to walk further. But they aren't. Actually, they are walking half way and riding the subway the other half. You just have in broken up in segments of two's which makes it look like they are walking almost twice the distance. This is possible because riding a subway is faster than walking. So your Sims are willing to travel farther.

Author: jglei701 Have you tried to run the game normally, WITHOUT taxing the richer Sims early on? And perhaps giving them the services they need?quote> Yes, I did. It was worse because R$$ & R$$$ moved in before I had developed jobs to support them. From what I have learned from building small cities over and over again, you must educate your Sims first, so that they will demand I-M. Once I have a few I-M's built, I then allow R$$ to be built. Once thet happens, I get demand for CS$$ and CO$$. Like I said, I suck at building big cities, but with this technique, I seem to be getting better and better at it. Now that I have solved my traffic problem, my small city seems to be developing pretty nicely. I have it up to 18,000+ Sims.

Author: unexistance does the city grows?quote> Well, this is a new trick, so it will take time to see. I am using this trick on a 256x256 map, but I am sure others will use this trick and build faster than I can to give you a good answer. I tried using this trick using 6x6 and 8x8 grids. It sort of worked, except when R$$ & R$$$ moved in. It is also hard to get CS$$ & CO$$ going as they like high traffic. Apparently pedestrain traffic doesn't count. Bummer. Aurthor: jglei701 Have you tried it with more dense zones? What's the farthest distance (number of tiles) that it will work? And how about from one city to the next?quote> I have tried it with grids and dense zones. As long as it was R$ and CS$, things were fine. Problems arose when I untaxed the rich and allowed them to move in. 24 tiles is the longest, but they don't stay put at that distance. The small city I built I had the streets 23 tiles long. My new city, I decided to go 21 tiles with jobs on both ends. I have not tried any city to city testing.

Author: rctshack Please Show and Tell. This is getting annoying... quote> I am sorry if all this annoyed anyone. I did it this way to prevent from being annoyed by having everyone put me down for showing something I presume as new. I swear, if anyone says, Oh yeah, I done many cities this way, I am going to scream! Date: 1/25/2006 8:33:16 PM Author: soldyne Yes I agree. it could be said that your topic is posted in poor taste. if you have a good experiment and wish the share the results then do so. this is not a contest of who is the better city planner this is a forum for the sharing of ideas. to lead us on and tell us how 'great' you are is just plain rude.quote> Your comments sir really annoyed me. I believe you are the rude one. I explained why I posted the way I did. I suck at building cities. I came to these forums looking for answers to my traffic problems. I was intrigued by cities others had built using only mass transit. I combined a trick I had used unsuccessful with their tricks and made the city I did. It was quite easy and I was surprised that no one else had ever claimed of doing what I had done. So before I posted my findings, I merely wanted to make sure one last time that you all already didn't know about this. I hate getting made fun of and it happened anyway. You have no idea how tempted I am right now to really be rude and leave you hanging. But everyone else who is being polite and patient don't deserve that. So here you go... My original experiment which I spoke of: Notice how all the no-job zots and abandoned homes are at the end of these dead end streets. If I would have shortened my streets by 2 tiles, this would have even been better. This is a shot of the new city I was working on. I modified the original design to get it looking and working much better. This is the close up view of the trick. That portion of street that looks like a speed bump is actually a segment of one-way road. Here are the very easy steps on how this is done. Step 1: Lay down a one-way road 2 tiles long headed in the direction of the planned residential area. The rest is all common sense from here, but I'll contine anyway. Step 2: Connect that section with a street that gives access to your planned industry or commercial area. Step 3: Lay a street from the other end of that section. Step 4: Zone one side with jobs, the other side with housing. Your Sims are prevented from driving to work over the one-way section of road, thus they must walk or starve. Can you believe how simple that is? Neither could I. Now aren't you glad I am not as rude as some claimed that I am? As far as I know, this works with high density as well. The problem is when you have R$$ & R$$$. They hate walking. So all I did was set R$$ & R$$$ taxes to 14% to keep them away. Also, I tested emergency units with this. They do get stuck at those sections. Have fun. I will be looking forward to see what the rest of you do with this trick since I still suck at building large cities. But at least I solved my traffic problems.

Thanks everyone for your replies. I would like to reply to many of your comments. Author:pnorrell Not without the use of mods. At the very least, you would need the pedestrian mall tiles of the NAM, which function like streets for pedestrians. Even then, the size and growth of the city would be severely constrained by the long commute times.quote> I did not use mods. I did not use pedestrian tiles from NAM. Yes, my city is small. How large should I get it to call this a success? Author:BlackBeard A city without Roads looks good on paper but I'm afraid it can't survive.quote> It has roads. Nothing would grow without roads. So roads were a must. The trick is to get the Sims to walk the roads instead of drive on them which I manage to do on a small scale. Author:Glenni if you create residential lots and comerical aside each other in some kind of pattern it might work though.quote> While this might help, I did not use such a pattern. Author:dev it seems possible...but everything would have to be SUPER close togehter...and I'm not sure that Fire Departments could function...you could probably use the police kioskit seems possible...but everything would have to be SUPER close togehter...and I'm not sure that Fire Departments could function...you could probably use the police kiosk....but I dunno...I am not very sure how it would work. I did this with a small 64x64 city.quote> You did this on a 64x64 map, but you're not sure how it would work. How does that work? Okay, I am being mean. Sorry. I just know as soon as I tell everyone how I did it, everyone else will say, Oh yeah. Of course. I did that too. Yet no is saying or showing how. Fire and Police just need to cover the area. Seems they don't need actual road access to the entire area they are covering. I did however need to give them enough access so workers could actually work there. I wanted no no-car zots in my city. All my civic buildings that provides jobs have road access so that pedestrians can get to work there. Author:aaronperry trains a city of trains u said that we could use it in ur first postquote> I don't belive that post was for me or even this thread. I am not holding any kind of contest. If you wish to use trains on whatever you are working on, that is fine. My personal goal was to not use any kind of mass transit, which would include not using trains. Not even for frieght. Author:Bones1 Perhaps you could do it by using only single, unconnected road tiles in your city. Place a residential lot on one side of the road, and a commercial or industry lot on the other side. The sims would be forced to work at the job right across the street, because they couldn't get to any other job. I'm not positive, but they may just walk across the street rather than drive.quote> A road must be at least 2 tiles long to get anything to build on it. And yes, even if the job is right across the street or even nextdoor, Sims will drive. I tried this, but it didn't work. Author:Rymac91 actully yes it can be done but you have to use mods...but you have to use streets for residential and you have to make sure that the commerical grows faster then the residential...I made one but it's a bit crappy...but personally I prefer when sims are able to use mass transit.I mean it's problobly possible to do it without NAM but that'd be nearly Impossible.and yes a pedestrian city is possible...you just have to plan it right quote> No but's, no mods! And yes, for the most part, you need a plan. Author:bradleybaggins I believe this is possible, but it has to be low density. If you had 4 tiles square, it may work. quote> I started working on a larger city and had success with medium density as well (6x6 and 8x8 blocks). So I see no problem getting this to work with high density too. I just need to get a decent large city built to prove it. But I suck at building large cities, even with cars. Author:SamFlash One issue that I see as a porblem would be making enough money to stay afloat. Without mods or a money cheat how would you generate enough income to survive? No rail or road connections means no regional trade which limits growth which limits revenue.quote> My cities always make money without the use of cheats and/or mods. I have no idea why so many people have money problems. Alright everyone, here are my current city stats: Small 64x64 city Pop: 16,381 Ind: 8,444 Com: 3,178 Monthly income $4,761 (Res tax at 4.5%, Ind at 3.5%) Monthy expenses $4,357 2 Oil Power Plants 1 Waste to Energy Plant (Budget set at $0) 2 Water Pumps 1 Large & 4 Small Fire Stations 2 Small Medical Clinics 1 Library No neighbor connections of any kind. All civic building have road access. No no-car zots. Traffic volume is about 7,500 pedestrians. All other traffic categories is 0. Average commute time is 85 minutes. All zones are low density. I have about 10 houses which are abandoned. I am pretty sure I could correct that slight problem, but I wanted to work on this same idea on a bigger scale. I am using my trick on a large 256x256 map. I want to know how far you all want me to take this before claiming this a success?

I wandered upon this thread looking for answers to my traffic problems. A roadless city is a very unique idea, but seems to be impossible so far, unless I missed something. Like most others, I too set out to do my own experiments to create not a roadless city, but a vehicleless city. No cars, no buses, no trains, no subways. Foot power only. Of course, I still needed roads or nothing would build. But the trick was to keep cars off the roads. I almost succeeded... A small city of 16,646 Sims. 6,000 Sims walking to work! Only 48 or so who insisted on driving. I tried bulldozing and de-zoning the lots where the cars were coming from, only to have Sims elsewhere decided they too liked driving rather than walking. If it wasn't for the bus stops which employeed 2 people each, this could be done. I do not know how to build lots, but it seems to me if you start off with a bus stop, have in employee 0, make it flat looking and call it a pedestrian walkway, we'd have it made. Is this possible or perhaps already been done?

Best way to lower your commute time is to spread everything around. Don't have all your residents in one section and all the jobs in another. You can only get away with that on small maps. The best examples I have seen is where you have a 6x6 commercial area surrounded by 6x6 residential areas. If you hate the grid look, mix it up a bit, but keep the general idea in mind. Small commercial area surrounded by residential area.

With my city above, I noticed that the shorter the bus route was, the further the Sims were willing to walk to the bus stop. Hence, the maximum walking distance a Sim is willing to walk is determined on the overall commute time. So the only way to really determine how far a Sim was willing to walk was to get them to walk 100% of their journey to work. 24 tiles! The total commute time was 140 minutes. That is 2 hours and 20 minutes of walking.

When you start your first city (or at least when I start my first), just about all you can build is industry. Once you educate your Sims, they will begin to demand more commercial. But even educated Sims will demand some sort of industry. So how in the heck you built your first city without industry and and why your second city doesn't demand it doesn't make sense. Unless you are using custom made building that messed with the demands. That is the only thing that would make sense. So without knowing for sure, my only suggestion can be get rid of the mods.

Date: 11/29/2005 4:16:18 PM Author: Compromise This looks like a good experiment idea, I have always belived the manual with the idea the maximum walking distance is around 10 tiles.quote> I have a non-modded, non-cheating small city where I use a trick to get all the sims to take the bus. I have them walking 13 tiles to catch a bus. Very few will walk further, but as some of the other experiments show, it is possible. Try this: Lay a street 26 tiles long ($130). At each end of this street, place a bus stop. On the opposite side of these bus stops, run perpendicular streets that connect to each other and a third bus stop where your jobs are at. Use a High School if nothing else as it provides 100 jobs even with a budget of $0. Finally, place 26 1x3 low density residential lots on both sides of your first street. X=Street B=Bus Stop R=1x3 Residential Lot S=High School RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR XBXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXBX X RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR X X RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR X X RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR X X X X X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX BSSSS SSSS SSSS In this experiment, you may get 1 or 2 who will drive their car to the bus stop. But for the most part, they all will walk. My small dirty industry city below which has 15,847 sims who all walk or ride the bus. Only 5 managed to aquire a car and drive. No way off the residential street except through the use of the bus stop. There are always exceptions as this sim walks 17 tiles to catch the bus, but I found out that the exceptions to the 13 tile rule are too few to rely on when building a city.

Well, I just tried this twice myself. And I manage to break even in 24 months with just $357 left on the second try. But I used a much different stradegy, so this will be interesting.