IronDogg

Not really enough information to provide a very specific answer. Can you provide a screenshot of your situation? There could be many things wrong here...

Hmm, I would like to see some pics of your situation to advise for sure, but let me speculate on whats wrong with your CO$$$. CO$$$ demand cap relief will increase with every TYPE of connection you create to neighbours, however will decrease when increasing the number of same type of connections. So for example in your CO$$$ city if you have one road connection, one highway, one monorail, and one passenger train track connection to an adjacent city, then CO$$$ demand cap relief will increase according to the regions "growth extrapolation". As soon as you add a second road, or a second highway, or a second rail connection, then CO$$$ demand cap relief starts to decrease accordingly. Remember that Sim Nation is one neighbour no matter how many adjacent cities you have, so exit your city and name all your adjacent cities so that you can get more demand cap relief from each neighbour.

Passenger trains utilize their own parking lots, so a parking garage will not be used as Yun Xiang mentions. Only use parking garages beside the bus stops, subway station, or monorail stations. Remember that sims don't like to walk more than 8 tiles.

Well, IMHO the avenue to huge metropolis's is all about patience. That is the one key item to growing a huge successful metropolis in this game without resorting to modifications or any add ins. If you want to, you can get there easily with a demand modification available in the STEX, but please don't listen to anyone that says that a huge metropolis is impossible without any mods. Your metropolis is very attainable with the generous use of patience, even with all your cities in the region on hard level with absolutely no modifications, you can have absolutely huge successful cities with the use of patience. Or if you don't have time or inclination to use patience, then install a shwack of mods and get your "successful" metropolis in no time at all. With the use of these installable modifications you can have a booming metropolis in just a couple of decades of play or way less even. Without mods, it could potentially take a hundred years before your region is a booming metro.

I have the Prima guide for SC4 Deluxe Edition, and it is definitely worth the buy for the cheap cost it is if you can find it conveniently. This guide is the best guide Prima has put out for a game. It is over an inch thick and covers every aspect (almost) of the vanilla stock version of SC4DE. Like users above have mentioned, there is more recent and updated information on the web, so the money does not need to be spent, but it is an awesome resource for 90 percent plus of whats happening in SC4DE. It is especially useful for the little "stats" that you would want to know for detailed City building strategies. For example there is the large table that details all the statistics for reward buildings. In one table it has listed all the proximity effects, the proximity effect radius, pollution effects and radius, crime effects and radius, costs and monthly costs, demand cap reliefs, and sim employment numbers. I refer to this table al the time for detailed strategy logistics. (please note that a ***** user of the game surely does not need these details at all to enjoy the game, but are appreciated for advanced users who care about the small minor details). Before I bought the guide I had been playing SC4DE for a long time already and thought I was a fairly advanced player who knew the ins and outs of the game, but the guide taught me a lot of stuff I did not know about the game and has made the game more enjoyable for me, and has extended my long term play time of this outdated game. The guide renewed my desire to build more cities. Reading little details about an aspect of the game I did not know before makes you want to start again and try out that "detail" on your own cities. So anyway, definetly buy the guide if it is conveniently available and cheap as even the most advanced users will "get" something from it, but it is certainly not necessary to play the game or to more importantly enjoy the game playing experience.

Cool! I have been wanting to do this as well for a region, but so far have been unsuccessful with the tutorials around here on how to actually get the greyscale map created and then into sim city. I will be interested in watching your progress with this project. A small city is 64 squares by 64 squares. A region has 16 cities by 16 cities. Therefore a region has 1024 squares by 1024 squares. A square is 16 meters by 16 meters. Therefore a small city is 1024 by 1024 meters. Therefore a region is 16384 by 16384 meters (or 16.384 kilometers squared).

Thanks for that tip. Just a question though. Is that technique designed in to the game as intended or is that an error/bug/exploit?

How does one keep landfills sustainable for long term? Is it possible to make money from them, or are they always a liability? It appears that they always cost more than what you could make from them, when you have a "dirty industrial" city with power supply and landfill services that serve a neighbour that is a mega city. How do you manage an efficient waste management program in this game?

Ok, thanks, unfortunately, that is more realistic and it should be that way, although it sure takes up a lot of extra space. So what then does a proper rail intersection look like? Is what I have in the pic about as good as it gets for utilizing space?

I was wondering how rail intersections work? If you cross a train track with another train track at a 90 degree perpendicular fashion, will the trains (both passenger and freight) still make that corner to get to their destination station? What about monorails? Or do you have to build "cut-corner" angular pieces of track to join up the two tracks that are perpendicular to each other? If trains could make 90 degree corners it would sure save a lot of valuable real estate, so that is why I ask...

One thing to try to reduce your "farm sprawl" as you call it is to de-zone the unused, unnecessary tiles of a farm, then rezone those tiles as ag again. After a while you can have 6-10 farms on a 6*6 zone. Typically 6-10 farms could hog up hundreds of tiles otherwise.

Thanks... So industrial cities only need fire protection and thats it? Cool!

I was wondering what municipal services are needed and which services are not needed at all in an Industrial City (city with only industrial zoning, no res or com)? I realize Fire Station coverage is very important, but what about policing? I get the impression that police stations only do good in residential cities? And maybe commercial cities too? Does my City with only industrial zoning need a police station at all?

I am a little less original than all of you. I use city names like ResCom 01, ResCom 02, ResCom 03, Dirty 01, Dirty 02, Dirty 03, HiTech 01, HiTech 02, HiTech 03, Agri 01, Agri 02, etc, etc... I know this is probably boring, but it really helps me out when I am looking at the regional view for planning, and organization, etc...

sudden death