Sense

The Hong Kong bats are some of the nicest buildings I've seen in the game. Moreover, many of them don't even require dependencies which make them a good first download.

I'll answer both for you. A; Growable means you just plan for residential and some building will grow, but (depending on many factors) can change shapes/wealth etc over time as the zone gets wealthier/poorer etc. It's opposed to 'ploppable', where you just place a landmark and it will stay like that throughout the entire game. B; As far as I know, you can't. The only thing you can do is choose building styles (one of the four Maxis styles)...

Does your computer have a dual-processor? If so, go to the windows task manager and select 'choose affinity' for SIMCITY4 and then select only 1 of the CPU's.

Originally posted by: tungston You just need to run the tracks out of the city to export the freight. Any industrial adjacent to the tracks will load freight directly onto trains, without a station.quote> Mm, very interesting, thanks for this advise, didn't know that..

Stations must not be too close to each other, then there must be a purpose for people to use it, I mean, people wont use it to go from residential zone to residential zone if they have to walk 30 minutes after their arrival to get to work. In other words, make sure you have other forms of public transportation available at the station to take them to the places they need to go. Moreover, it's better to use rail as intercity connections than for transportation within cities. Perhaps someone else can add some more details/strategy to my posts?

Check the amount of passengers using the station. And note that there is no continuously moving train somewhere on the track, just every now and then you will see a moving train really.

I don't think there's anything out there that can give you a complete medieval town, with roads and all that. There are some medieval buildings on the STEX though. Another thing, if you're into medieval town building, is to buy 'ANNO 1401' or something, which are good games (though with a focus not only on city-building).

I tend to disagree with the post before me. Laying out a transportation plan before starting to build is not going to help by itself. I did that in my last city, but then started building on the go and found that I build too many buildings in a relatively small area, which created huge commute time and a very randomly looking city. As for downloads you need to have... I'll give some very basic advise but still hope it helps. The STEX has so much stuff, that you can find anything really. Go and build your city. Then, when you think "hey, I need a better looking plaza than this Maxis stuff' go to the STEX and search for plaza. Do this continually and you'll find yourself with a lot of downloadable content and a better looking city. Pay also attention to dependencies. Most of the downloads on the STEX come with certain dependencies, in other words, other downloadable content that you need to have in order to make the thing work. Usually, the type and link to the dependencies are given in the file's details or readme's.

Well, if you have at least two stations and people actually using the train, trains and monorails will appear. Welcome to Simtropolis by the way!

Fairly easy, download the large greyscale jpg and put it somewhere you can easily find later. Also download the small bmp file that's next to the greyscale picture. Create a new region and name it however you want. Then, place the downloaded BMP file into the regions folder (in the my documents / simcity / regions folder). After that, ingame, press CONTROL ALT SHIFT R and browse to the downloaded JPG file. Afther that, it will take some time for the region to be shaped, don't do anything and don't let any other window interfere with the process or it will mess up the region.

Go to the charts and that will show you how much you have in terms of population, jobs, industry etc...

I humbly apologize for my mistake post earlier on, apparently I was very wrong... haha

I was walking around my neighborhood and found that all of the buildings are not on the stex or lex.... Haha, either I completely miss the point but this post is a joke, surely?

I think the stadium decreases desirability for residentials but increases a population max. It's good for commercial demand though. Correct me if I'm wrong..

Thanks Scifanta, I'll further expand my border cities and hope it will have its influence on commercial density in my city..

Originally posted by: TekindusT You can even be put out of office if you have a really big deficit. I think this happened to me when I was -500,000, but I'm not sure. I agree with Sense, I usually put a clinic and an elementary school when still nobody has moved it yet. It provides wealthier sims in less time and allows the city grow faster. Yes, you can be several times in a deficit, but once your city grows and you don't have to replace your facilities, the deficit becomes surplus.quote> Usually this doesn't even create a deficit (well monthly deficit, sure, but not on your 'bank account'). The couple of hundred of Simolians you lose each month will more than be offset in about ten years after you placed the services, due to increased growth.

I slightly disagree with some of the posts above. In the beginning, you can easily neglect education and healthcare as the town is too small to be able to afford such services. However, in the beginning I tend to spend more than I can afford, as you have the starting buffer anyway, and education and healthcare is really an investment. The sooner you lay down some good services (even if you can't afford them), the sooner it will have risen general education/health levels to acceptable levels that attract more commerce and residential demand, which can then compensate the extra costs of the beginning.

To add to comment number 2, make sure to not only download the greyscale jpg, but also the BMP config file, as this will determine whether the map can indeed be imported into the game.

Originally posted by: bluemoose lets not turn this into a CXL vs SC4 topic!!! I pray to God that there will be a SC5 Basically SC4 with- multiple lane tool(promised but not delivered by MC) -antigrid -everything promised yet not delivered by MC YUP quote> What's MC in this context?

Indeed, keep public services (schools, hospitals etc) very limited to about current number of students/patients. Then, whenever they go on strike you quickly increase the budget to meet the new situation. Also, make sure not to spend too much on government buildings, trash and city beautification, as those surely can take up a lot of your budget.

Where have you looked for in-game for placing them? It could be under 'landmarks' or 'parks/recreation'. Have you looked there?

Despite my low post count, I am not a newbie to the game. Here is some help, yet also a question regarding this topic. Let's start with some help. I find that the default Maxis hospitals do not really picture a real situation. A city of around 250.000 inhabitants will have at least 15 Maxis hospitals in it, and this seems a bit of an overkill. I would go with one of the custom hospitals on the Stex, as they have a higher radius and capacity. Then, on to my question regarding density. My current city has 250.000 inhabitants, with around 100.000 commercial jobs (of which I think 75% is office). Yet, I do not have commercial skyscrapers yet. When can I expect this to happen? My other question is, demand for office buildings all of a sudden dropped to the minus and commercial demand for retail exploded. Why would something like this happen, my sims are well educated, the city has a commute time of around 80 (i think) and it is well watered, low crime rates and low pollution.

Do an prop info on them (it's the question mark button). It should show you important criteria, such as commute time, crime and pollution. All these influence $$$ demand. EDIT; whoah... Post 1? I thought I have posted something in all this time I've been on Simtropolis. Shame on me....