Awful Waffles

This is my first journal. If there is something I should or shouldn't be doing, I probably don't know about it so tell me. The Awful Waffle is a region that is dedicated to finding a city layout that I am happy with, and is repeatable on a grid style layout. Thanks to Photobucket for the image hosting. Haven't tried this yet so I hope it works. Mods in Use: NAM - Standard pathfinding and commute, just the basics. A whole lot of growable RCI, far too many to list. Some of PEG's stuff, although you won't see to much of it just yet. Hole Digging lots, Cycledogg Trees, Opera House and Toll Booth Mod (alternate 1x), some other basic stuff. Nothing really in that list considered 'cheating' I hope, and the game is set on easy for the first city to get things going. The Awful Waffle Region is a large, flat, grass region of 12 large cities. The first (and only, so far) city in the region is Pecan. The names of the cities will be taken from .. wait for it... waffles. Construction of the grid is very different than what I am used to doing, as I have just recently got the NAM, hole diggers, and other toys that let me do things I could only think about doing before. Here is three shots of the basic grid setup for each zone. Each zone is a 64 x 64 tile grid, based on my experiences with small maps. This is all done without mass transit initially, but now railroad is being added to the city due to severe industrial demand. Some passengers are taking the rail as well and I expect that as the region grows more passengers will use it. As the city grows to all edges of the map a mass transit solution may be put into place, but for now, amazingly, even with 120,000 cars the commute times and traffic are very manageable. The layout of RCI in each of the 64x64 grids is something that I can't really decide on an optimal layout yet. So far, I have been laying them to meet the RCI demand when they were built, leading to a lot of variation. As the city progresses I will be looking for a way to standardize the RCI distribution among the grids. You can see from that picture that the rail system goes between the grids and the highway is tunneled between the grids to allow for this. This also gives more industrial space to meet the seemingly endless demand for industry. The airport in Pecan is overwhemled, and construction on a new airport has begun in the center of the city. This airport complex in the city center also has plans for a country club, zoo, and some other things. Finally, a shot of a police helicopter checking out a busy area of Pecan at night. I will probably update this casually, I hope you find it interesting. I just wanted to share some of my experiences with the game, and welcome comments and suggestions.

Is this the kind of thing you're talking about?

I don't usually start with mass transit at all, for a very simple reason. It isn't likely that until you get some decent road traffic that you are going to need it. Generally I use mass transit as a relief for congestion, but that in itself a lot of times is simply caused by poor road design. I am finding, especially now with the NAM, that a well designed road grid can handle a LOT of traffic before it really becomes congested. Then a city will reach a certain point, its hard to say when this is, but you get a feel for it, that the density of the city is being limited by the road system... either due to commute times or congestion. Mass transit allows for greater density than roads as it offers the ability to move many sims at once to the same place, and often do so in a relatively straight (read: shorter) path, often at a higher or at least the same speed. Once put into place you can increase the city's density (readrofit) by using various forms of mass transit that bring more sims into or out of one area, or do so faster and reduce overall commute times. In the beginning of any city, though, there is almost no reason to start with mass transit, but it will make your life a lot easier later on if you reserve space for it from the beginning. As has been said by many people here high wealth sims don't really care for mass transit, so roads are still the most vital thing in any city. All in my opinion.

I didnt know that either. Never had a reason to know that before, but now that I have a ton of things in some menus it will help a lot, thanks for the tip!

Neat trick with one way roads connecting to ground level highways. Never would have thought to have tried that, but I just did And then.. noticed that, in the picture at the top of this thread, that the highways were um, seperated, and that some of them had a highway next to a portion of one way, and then back to a highway... This is what you are talking about https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?page=1&keyword=Lakeyboys%20MultiHighway%20Guide%20&type=all Oh, very nice. I'm not a big fan of mass transit as a replacement for a good solid road and highway system. I'm still working on a road grid that I'm happy with. This information will help a lot. Never thought you could do this. Thanks!

Fascinating thread. I certainly hope its being read by the right people Personally, I just can't see a release of these titles before Vista gets out... more specifically DirectX 10. The roadmap for everything is changing later this year, supposedly. AMD's new socket, Intel's new chips, MS new version of Windoh's. I can't really see a company like EA being blind to those developments, and until that settles, you certainly won't see SC5. On the upside, there has been four versions of SC spanning a decade or so. All versions of the product have been a success. Deluxe is still selling copies despite its age. Having said that, I think you'd have to be nuts to think there won't be a SC5, its just a matter of when, not if. My 2 cents.

NAM gives you some new things you will probably want, the custom interchanges and the new parallel ramps are just a couple of examples. The intersection turning lanes are cool too... too much to mention. Get it. You can also install it so that it doesn't effect much as far as the game goes other than giving you new options, choose standard from the installer. I'm not one who likes to alter the game in radical ways and I am very happy with NAM.

I had the same problem with the cars moving WAY too fast, LOL. Variable speed automata (spelling?) did the trick by turning it off.

Hello Simtropolis! I've been playing SimCity since Classic... 2k... 3k.. SC4 Deluxe now. Some of the things I have always wanted in the game are here, I've spent more than a few hours reading and downloading various things. The Network Addon Mod in particular is just great. I build mostly grid cities, and every once and while something off the beaten path. For someone who likes the grid, the NAM is a real treat. Some of these cities here just make me do this Anyway, hello everybody!