tunheim

Mission The goal of this experiment is to maximize the residential population of a city. This assumes no cheats or mods. Only Sim City 4 Deluxe / Rush Hour patched with the latest patch (currently build 638). The game is played at hard level. Method Here are some of the more obvious thoughts on how to accomplish this As many services as possible must be situated in the neighbouring cities Commercial and industrial zones will be in neighbouring cities All zoning, which will be residential, will be high density All residents will be §, since that gives the highest density Subway will be the mode of transportation, as it is the most area efficient This won't be a place you'd like to live. Public facilities will be cut to a minimum to save space. I'm not sure how to practically implement this, but here are some ideas. In order to have complete control of the traffic flow, I'd like to build the city as isolated neighbourhoods only connected by subways. This also reduce the space lost to roads. The building of choice would be the «Project Feelgood». This is the highest population density building I've seen. It's a 3×3 structure with around 2500 residents and 1000 commuters. My neighbourhood would be a 7×7 block cramming three of these buildings in around a subway stations. The remaining 15 squares would be used for other necessary city improvements. See figure below. RRRXXXX RRRXXXX RRRXXXX SSSUSSS RRRXRRR RRRXRRR RRRXRRR A possible 7×7 block. Residential, Street, sUbway station, X = unknown. A large city consists of 256×256 squares. Allowing some room for error, this gives us room for around 1000 7×7-neighbourhoods. Giving us a total of 3 million commuters and 7.5 million inhabitants. Each subway station is dimensioned for 2000 commuters, but I've seen up to 3000. 3000 would fit with the 1000 commuters coming from each of the three buildings in the 7-block. The traffic congestion of a subway line runs yellow at 2500, orange at 4000 and red at 4500, although I've seen up to 7400. However, some of the commuters will have to travel almost from the center of the map, so it will be advantageous to reduce commuting times as much as possible. This leads to having one separate subway line for each block. This means 1000 subway lines. A large city has 1024 possible exit squares, so this fits nicely. Moot Here are some ideas why it might go wrong Can high-density buildings be «forced» by simultaneously having a limited supply and high demand for residential areas. Will residents to commuters always stay at a 5:2 ratio? Can part of a residental building be without road access? 1/3? 2/3? What are the economics of running a city literaly undermined with subway tunnels? What problems will arise when there is no road access due to isolated neighbourhoods? U-drive-it missions might prove difficult Mhmmm... I would greatly appreciate any and all feedback on this. Especially my interpretation of the game mechanics. This thread is a continuation of the one at https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=23&threadid=77092 Also, can someone tell me how to get my bullet list to show<

Most populous small city Assuming no modds except informational ones, how many residents have you ever managed to pack into a small sized city?

And also my computer is wayyy to slow to run NAM

I'm very grateful for the feedback received. I just wanted to appologize in advance if I'm a tad slow posting results. It's just that I'm a rather slow player, and as always there is this so called "real world" that always interferes. Originally posted by: Bones1 Monorail has no capacity limit (it doesn't suffer from congestion).quote> Are you sure? I seem to have seen some sort of table giving monorail a high, but not unlimited, capacity.

Do you remember what kind of transportation setup you used in the final version of Sardineville? Did you stick with the nexus-subways or did you replace them with regular subways? Also, are there any good ploppable buildings with really, really many jobs in it? I just need some ploppable comerical and industry that I can put in the region around my city to create a really high demand. It would just be very convenient.

Originally posted by: Tolomar I'm not sure if I have Sardinevile still kicking about...was about 2 1/2 years ago I made the city...on my old computer and it sort of died on me during a brown out:S....I know I sent it to Dirk...he might still have it ...i'll pm him see if he can post a pic of it for youquote> If you could post the city-file itself that would be even better. But even if you can't find the file, maybe you can summarize up your strategy for building such a city? What amenities do you provide for your citizens?

Originally posted by: IGGYMAN 101 What should modding to do on the residential population? Thanks..quote> I'm not sure. But there are all kinds of modds you can use to make the game easier, and I'd like to avoid them.

Originally posted by: hahaha Could you post photos of these <2,5mill cities???quote> Yes, photos, general strategy and/or city-file would be greatly appreciated.

Originally posted by: Tolomar got 2.8 mil in a small city tile...Sardinevile...quote> Wow! How did you do that? I thought the theoretical maximum would be around 4.4 millions. Getting over 60% of that is just insane.

I've read that when calculating commute time, the game only calculates the morning commute and then doubles the time. If roperly planned out this should be possible to exploit using one-way-roads. You could build a road network with good connetions TO the work places, but with only one back. There would be massive traffic jams in the evening rush, but the game engine wouldn't take this into consideration.

Update As previously hinted at I'm working on a small sized city for speed reasons. I've also decided to include modds to make the testing easier. This means I'm now playing with multiple informational modds (modds that make no alteration to game mechanics) and one money cheat. Square-density My main focus now is increasing the square-density. (Square-density) = (city population) / (zoned residential squares). Write (pop/sq) for short. As far as I can judge the theoretical maximum would be around 1300 using exclusively Ong Condos populated by R§.Currently my square-density is around 315, but I'd like to increase it to over 330. I'm looking at different strategies to achieve this. Currently I'm using no schools (except museum) and no hospitals since they cost too much for such a high population. Also I'm working on strategies on how to attract R§§§ to build buildings and then have R§ take them over. One way to do this might be to have high R§§§ demand (low taxes, many §§§-jobs) but at the same time make sure the §§§-jobs are just outside of commuter distance. Thus the R§§§ lots will be taken over by R§. Well, that's the plan. I'm working on ways to test this out. What is the highest square-density anyone has achieved over a larger area? Zone-density Second to increasing the square -density is increasing the zone-density. This is where this experiments without road connection supposedly has it's strengths. My current superblock setup is as follows pppprrrrrrrrprrrRrrrrrrrrp rrrRrrrrrrrrp rrrRRRRRRRRRp rrrRssSssRrrr pRRRRRRRRRrrr prrrrrrrrRrrr prrrrrrrrRrrr prrrrrrrrpppp p = Skateboard Park r = High Density Residential Zone R = High Density Residential Zone facing road s = Street S = Subway Station The Skateboard Park is chosen since it's the most area effective non-reward residential cap increaser. Each park raises 4000, giving the superblock a max population of 8 × 4000 = 32 000. This means 5333 in each4×4-lot or 333 pop/sq. The superblock is 13 × 9 = 117 squares. Out of those 4 × 4 × 6 = 96 are residential zones. Giving the superblock a zone density of 82%. City population estimate For a small city this would give a population around 64 × 64 × 333 × 82% = 1118454. However this doesn not take into consideration the space lost on police, jail, fire and city edges where the superblock won't fit. It also diregards the space savings possible from using rewards instead of Skateboard Parks. Has anyone ever gotten over a million in a small city? But most importantly: I've no idea if the commuting will work. I've never ever squeezed that many people trough the same subway station.

Originally posted by: clindhartsen Well, the first item that comes up for me on that page is exactly that.quote> Yes, that's why I searched for it. I don't have any problem finding it, it's just that the search function seems to not work. Or did you mean to say that the search works for you?

The "Modds and Downloads"-search seems to be broken. Can someone confirm this? I tried searching for something I know excests, like sc4tool, but I got no hits.

I'm not sure if I follow your reasoning here. You have reduced the residential taxes of the no-park city with 44% to compensate for the hifher population. However having a higher population is the advantage of having a less properous city. It's easier to have a dense poor population than a dense rich one. So to me it seems that you have unfavourably removed the advantage of the no-park city. If we don't make this adjustment then the no-park city would be much more profitable.

I just wanted to say that this is very nice of you. I think most people just ignore these errors (at least I do) because we don't know how to debug them. Especially since this site is run for free we need volunteers. It's admirable that skilled developers take their time to volunteer like this.

Originally posted by: soldyne 1: open the lot editor and pick a building. you will see the lot size instantly in the pic on the right. you will also see the facing of the building as it will show where the road will be when the lot grows. 3: yes there are many different ways a building can grow and the general correlation is that large lot size = larger capacity, but that is not always true for all buildings. try to make your city full of highrise R$$$ as much as possible and then let them abandon and get refilled with R$, (...) (...) the layout can be such that you force all residence to take the subway (...) quote> 1. *blush* I've actually never used the lot editor. I'll be back when I've played with it a little. 3. So after playing around with the lot editor and sc4tool I still don't fully understand building growth and lot sizes. What is the largest size? 4×4? 6×6? And is it so that any arbitrary building occupying x×y squares can, given the right circumstances, occupy x×(y+1) squares? Because, as previously mentioned, it confuses me how buildings with identical names can occupy different sized lots. 7. Yes, this could be a way of making the city extremely dense. However, would it be a stable solution? 8. This is my current configuration. I'll play around with some different ones. RRRR RRRRRRRR RRRR RRRR RRRR RRRR RRRR ssssSssss RRRR RRRR RRRR RRRR RRRR RRRR RRRR RRRR s - street, S - subway PS. I just have to say I'm really grateful for the feedback here. I just recently picked up my old copy of SimCity 4 and I've learned so much more after I joined Simtropolis. My only regret is not joining earlier.

Originally posted by: mengo76 In the Transit preference section, car is obvious. MT = mass transit, that's bus and others, and Fast = what? If MT includes subway, train, EL, is Monorail fast and not MT? quote> Any news on what "Fast" stands for?

Spell checker that works in Opera/Firefox would be greatly appreciated.

I also have good results using Opera. Although real men use Lynx. GUIs are for wimps!

Hi, I just joined. I've been a longtime fan of the Sim City series and turn based strategy games. Oh, and I micromanage a lot.

Well, numbered lists are ok Aaaa Bbbb Cccc But the bulleted ones I have trouble with Aaaa Bbbb Cccc As you see the numbered ones show up nicely, but there are no bulllets in front of the buleted ones

Originally posted by: sam One suggestion for the residents in the centre of the city might be to have one or more dedicated subways which go straight out of the city with no stops on the middle or outer edges. quote> Sounds like a good idea. I might be giving every subway station a dedicated line. Originally posted by: cogeo If you want to pack as many sims as possible in an area as small as possible you should zone for lots sized 4x4 and 4x3 (not 3x4) instead of 3x3. The largest buildings come in 4x4 and 4x3 lots (just have a look at the lot editor and SC4Tool). You may also consider using custom buildings from the STEX, there are various sizes like 5x3.Some parks can keep desirability at decent levels so that you don't face dilapidation problems. Road top busstops and subways can also save some space, and they can prove useful after your lots have been developed. You will need an elementary school (preferably the large one) and hospital even for these ugly large tennements to develop; desiability should not be too low even for tennements. You can set bus and ambulance funding to zero (this will save you a lot of cash), the coverage radius is still large enough. quote> Where can you see the lot size in SC4Tool? When you say 4×3 instead of 3×4 I assume you mean 4 in the road-facing direction? The whole topic of lot-sizes is confusing me a little. The same buildings seem to sometimes occupy different sized lots. Sometimes within the same city. And they have different capacities dependent on the lot size thay occupy. Is there any pattern to this? Dilapidation - Is that the phenomena when loads of poor people move into your expensive buildings? Do you have any more in-depth advice on the topic of "giving just the right amount of services to make high density R§ to develop"? The road top subway is very tempting. But since it contradicts with my initial statements I'll have to pass on the custom lots. Originally posted by: Gridlock Hey cool experiment ,but without mods or cheats the people at the centre of the map will NOT find jobs or if they do the commute will be to long they will abondon for sure,i know this through my cj i tryed to zone resi in the centre of Dallas,and was forced to place Coms instead as the residents towards the centre could not find work . quote> Are you sure this wasn't due to a faulty transportation network? I tried running a subway line from the middle of a large city to the middle of a bordering large city. My commute time averaged at around 75 minutes.

Originally posted by: beebs What sort of problems are you having with it?quote> Well, lets try to make a bulleted list Aaa Bbb Ccc There are no bullets!

I'm having problems making bulleted lists. Is that a bug og the forum, or am I just being inexperienced?