Shark7

Thanks for the heads up, couple of sites I hadn't known about on here.

I use it to keep my low wealth CS from upgrading. I do a lot of smaller towns on my maps, and I don't want them upgrading to skyscrapers. Its not so tedious if you pace yourself when building and just let things happen slowly.

Yeah, but what's the fun in that? No imminent domain, angry mobs, or lawsuits that way. Are there any RTMT you specifically recommend? I tried some long ago, but constantly had problems getting buildings to grow where they were at, kept giving me the no road access symbols.

I don't even consider a subway system unless I'm planning a population over 150k. Now up to that point I will use buses, ground rail and and mono-rail (I use mono-rail to connect all my cities in a region though). It's always fun to add the subway after you've built the city and you have to start tearing stuff down to place it. Kinda like a real city.

I've always been led to believe that there are actually very few ports worldwide that can accommodate a fully loaded super-tanker. Is this not right? I do know that during WWII there were a number of much smaller vessels (lighters and yard oilers, etc) that would be used to ferry cargo and fuel between the heavily loaded ships in the anchorage and the port facilities. One must keep in mind, however, that this was done due to the simple lack of port facilities in a large portion of the Pacific (in particular). Granted, I doubt this is the case in modern times. Still the question remains, how many ports world-wide can accommodate a super-tanker? Basically in terms of SC4, does every port really need to be that large? I can see a situation where you have one large 'regional' port in your region, with the others being much smaller. As for the question of the OP, I tend to use the single road tile leveling method...works out well for me, for the most part.

Around here, we have freight trains with 2 locomotives on each end. And oddly enough, they always seem to be loaded with a large amount of shipping containers. And they are very long, some may be a mile long or more. I have a feeling it depends on where the trains go to. I believe the ones I see originate from a port on the coast and head to a major rail hub north of where I live...so they are loaded both ways. In that case, it makes sense to be able to simply go the other direction by using a pusher-puller locomotive configuration. Probably hauling loaded shipping containers from the port to the transit hub, and empty containers are taken back to the port.

UDI in general is something that I avoid. However I will admit to having entirely too much fun driving through my city with the tank...leveling entire city blocks. Mwuhahahaha! Of course I save first then reload once I've had my fun.

Too bad SC4 doesn't work like the real world where every train has multiple engines at both ends and reversing is as simple as swapping which train is the 'lead' train. This is definately an innovative solution for those that want to do the UDI missions.

My preferred method is to build a large 'regional' garbage dump (though in truth I build several of these where the city tile the dump is in and the 4 adjoining cities can utilize it) and build a large fenced in facility with a small landfill and as many waste to power plants as needed. I import garbage into the regoinal dump, and in turn it produces a ton of power to be used/exported back. This system also has a positive side effect of causing less pollution since the garbage and power plant is one and the same. One thing to remember is that with this system, I only build a small town in the garbage dump tile (and I play on all large city tiles, much easier to make an area look rural) since the dump itself will be quite large and the idea is to import garbage, not produce so much that it takes all the capacity for just that tiles city...and lets face it, who wants to live next to the garbage dump? I keep the town away from the dump. There are so many different ways to accomplish the garbage gone goal that you should be able to find one that works for you.

I personally turn them into Llamas...since you can't fire them. Gotta love the extra cheats mod. But as far as listening to them, your right MandelSoft, I just ignore them. If you do everything they want you too, you'll always be in the red and never have room to actually build your city the way you want it to look. And since I like to build rural looking communities on large city tiles, it really pays to not pay attention to the annoyers...er advisors.