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.

If you are using custom BATs in game, then NIMBY lots are another option to lower the desirability of an area and attract lower wealth residential and commercial growth. One thing I do is to pause the game occasionally and be sure to check 'Make Historic' on the lower wealth buildings, as this prevents them from growing into higher wealth buildings.

In truth...most games you play end with you destroying something. It's honestly fun to just play to create something with no intention of destroying it by the end.

@APSMS yes really unlevel terrain (and more importantly not using the smoothing tool or plains tool to flatten it) will force you to break the grid. I just wish I could force myself to follow the terrain a bit more than I do, as I have a nasty habit of 'embracing the grid' rather than breaking it.

Good advice in here. Some things that even I was not aware of. Question or two: 1. Are there any landmark or 'gift' buildings that have an effect on the population age? 2. I've also noticed that my elementary schools end up with virtually no use in the end game, I assume this is the aging process happening. Is it better to have elementary and high schools overlap in coverage, or to place them so they don't overlap?

As a general rule I use ploppable buildings sparingly, and Plops with jobs even more so. There are some that make sense, like some of the restaruant and fast food plops (example: since I live in an area that literally has a Dairy Queen in every town, I tend to use the DQ ploppable in all my cities). Skyscraper plops with jobs I really do avoid (and I actually delete most of those lots from my plugins folder when it has both plop and grow versions) though there are 1 or 2 I use occasionally. On the other hand, LM plops with no jobs I'm more likely to use. I get the look I want, without really messing up the in game economy. Or at least it doesn't have detrimental effects that I have noticed yet. I also like to use the ploppable buildings by SimGoober (specifically the churches) to make it look a bit more familiar to me (pretty much a church on every street-corner). Anyway, that's my thoughts on ploppable vs growable. Given the choice I prefer to grow my cities, but some things almost require me to plop them.

Going to date myself here...but oh well... I first played SimCity on the SNES console. Then of course SimCity 2000 (again on SNES) before going to the PC versions for SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4. I still have not even tried SimCity 2013, and have no intention to. I see no point in being forced online to play a SP game.

While the lack of variety is generally a bad thing, there are also times when you do want all the buildings to be the same (like a gated community). Never fails though, when you don't want the buildings to all be the same they are, when you do want them all the same they aren't.

I agree having a ton of ploppable buildings is more of a pain than it is worth. There are some that I consider a requirement, but I prefer growables as they will eventually appear in game at some point and I don't have to search through a list of umpteen lots in my landmarks menu to find and use them. My poor parks menu...well that's a bit frightening. My folder would likely be larger if not for the fact that I tend to delete any ploppable lot of a BAT that has both grow and plop lots, since I really only want the growables anyway.

Play folder (utilizing the DatPacker to condense a number of the files) 7GB Unpacked folder (the back up): 9.87GB This is constantly growing as I keep finding things I like and adding them. No I don't have everything, I shudder to think how much disk space it would take to install every lot available between the various content sites.

I guess there are two schools of thought when it comes to dealing with garbage in game. Those that want it gone as efficiently as possible, and those that prefer to build based on looking realistic. I fall into that latter category myself. Though I am not saying either way is good or bad, just different. When I go for garbage disposal sites, I'm more about how it looks as opposed to how efficient it is. Granted I tend not to use the Maxis garbage buildings (save the landfill of course) more due to the fact that they don't look realistic (too clean really). I build a big central site to process the garbage, with some recycling centers spread through-out the map to act as collection sites. When I set it up, I dedicate a large portion of a large city tile to setting up a landfill/garbage processing site. Then I will use some landfill space (cheap for starting), then when I get to a point I can afford it, start plopping custom Waste to Energy plants. All of this is in a security fence enclosed area. Mean while in various parts of the city, I will set up recycling centers, do some landscaping so the sims don't actually have to see it and turn on the trash presort ordinance. Bear in mind, I do recycling centers for even the smallest of cities, though not every tile has a processing center on it. I export from surrounding tiles into the tile with the processing center. Basically each of us will have their own way to do it, but I think we all tend to shy away from the Maxis buildings for one reason or another.