Zeth
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Everything posted by Zeth
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Yeah, this is pretty much correct, I think.
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I know it's a stupid question, but what are your tax rates?
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From the desk of Wise Guy Sammy: One word in this ticker is mispelled
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That's because they ARE spelled wrong.
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I have played around with this concept off and on for a few years myself, usually with regions that offer only little pockets of reasonably flat land to build on. I don't have anywhere near the dedication to detail to do things like that boardwalk, though; it's just a plaything for me. Your speling and gramers are spot on with two exceptions: "These scences make use of many plugins, notably PEG's OWW board walk, Captain Jack's Landing; Goldiva's water Taxi, and Yacht Club, and a couple of A Nonny Moose's utility lots" and no comma is needed or desirable in the phrase "And last but not least". And thank you for not misspelling "realise".
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It's not just turning it off, you have to delete Sound.dat from the Game folder. Or so I was told. I'd be interested to know if that's true, though, as I do miss the sound effects.
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Interesting. I don't run the sound effects, because years ago I read something (I think here) that asserted the sound.dat file slows performance and might have something to do with the crash to desktop problem. Has that notion since been debunked?
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Am I the only one that has a Winamp playlist that I fire up and leave in-game music turned off?
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My residential growth STOPPED on Condos phase
Zeth replied to amirapp's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
You're probably hitting demand caps. Make neighbor connections and then build neighboring towns; that's always a boon to demand. Build some cap busting structures (the Farmer's Market is awesome, plazas and flower gardens are good, tennis courts offer a very good cap busting-per-dollar ratio). Do you have the Census Repository Facility from the STEX? It's a building you can add to your city that, when queried, shows the city's demand cap status (among other useful things). -
I also have problems with too damn many R§§§ sims in cities where I provide blanket services. It's very annoying because (a) it's just aesthetically stupid to have a posh villa surrounded on all sides by slum tenements, which happens a lot and is an example of poor design implementation, and (b) half of the villas end up dilapidated before long. I usually deal with it by cutting off health services to all of the city except little spots where I want the rich people to live (then I build a hospital with ambulance funding 0). This isn't perfect, sometimes the damn rich oafs will move into the slums anyway (since I keep education high everywhere). Raising taxes works in the short term but I find it causes problems in the long term, because demand for high-wealth commerce and high-tech industry wants to grow but your city can't attract enough high-wealth sims to properly staff them.
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Basic SimCity 4 Deluxe Tutorial
Zeth replied to A Nonny Moose's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Ah, got it. Calling them R$$/R$$$ just threw my feeble brain for a loop, I suppose. Confused it with wealth levels. I'd love to see the tutorial go even further; it's a cool and informative "how to start a small farming-to-industry town" tutorial. I've been doing a similar thing to start towns/regions, except from the factory town concept; start with a couple big factories (medium Industrial zones) with a coal plant, hook up the water immediately, and build sprawling low-density residential all around it, then go back and do some upgrading to medium density as you add some more factories. You run in the red for a few years at first, but as long as you don't keep the simulation on high speed (instead switch to low while building then run it on high a few months, then repeat) you'll turn it around and run profits long before your money runs out. Then you can start adding services, although what I find more fun is just continuing to build a service-free city full of knaves, also paying little attention to a sensible street layout, until the map is full. Then I can go back and try to fix up the city. I have a lot of fun that way, and it does model how real-world cities develop and the challenges later planners faced trying to organize a functional city out of the mess people haphazardly made a hundred years go. -
Basic SimCity 4 Deluxe Tutorial
Zeth replied to A Nonny Moose's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
This is some really good content. I am confused by your references to R$$ and R$$$. Clearly in the screenshots these are not medium or high wealth buildings. At first I thought you were using that to refer to medium or high density, but again that obviously is not the case. Is this because you intend or plan for these areas to be the first to gain wealth levels? -
new forum member with intermediate game problems
Zeth replied to impdollars's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Nonny: Isn't hard mode, you know, harder? It would seem like if a newcomer is struggling on easy mode, hard mode isn't the thing to try. Or is the starting cash the only difference? -
What frustrates you about sim city 4
Zeth replied to Pasta-power's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Nonny: with access to the source, how long do you think it would take us (or one reasonably skilled programmer) to locate and fix the bug that causes the CsTD? -
I took the liberty of rewriting the description in proper, organized English. Here it is: As its name implies, this mod will shut up many of the advisers' most stupid statements, for example "Roads Rule in (City), But Streets Becoming Endangered". There is a mod called Stupid News Ticker, but unfortunately it did not take out all of the stupid adviser spam (like the Streets nonsense). This mod goes further than that one. Here's a summary of what I did to the advisers: City Planner: Took out that stupid Roads Rule statement and the need for more zones such as "Sims Scout for Office Advantages" and more. Finance: Took out her nasty warnings that your city is running low on money. You already know that your city's low on funds by looking at the numbers, right? But she will still tell you about business deals such as the Casino. Utilities: I could not find the right file for him, but most people say he's pretty helpful so I just tuned him out. Transportation: Found the file, but lots of people say he is good and helpful, so I ignored him as well. You can play around with the file, though. Safety: Good enough, but I did take out the need for jails and a fire station, as well as police and no road connections to the fire/police stations. Very useful if you are using the take out fire mod from the RCI pack mod. Trashed other stupid stuff as well. Health & Education: I shut her up for good. You will not hear any of the garbage she spews anymore. Environmental: Shut her up for good. She will no longer spew her garbage at you, either. This does not prevent your water from getting turned off, though, so be careful. You will still get reward alerts, airport upgrade notices, "good job" messages from the five advisers I did not completely shut up, and disaster alerts (including rioting, burst pipes, etc.) You will still be informed of police or fire strikes but NOT school or hospital strikes. To install, open the .zip file and put the Shut Up Advisers mod file in your plugins file. To uninstall the mod, delete the file. I tested this mod and it works great. No bugs, no crashes to desktop.
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Also you need to unzip the contents of library.zip into the same folder the terraformer.exe is in. there have been complaints that Windows protests that library.zip is corrupt when you attempt to unzip in windows; I ran into this as well. Winrar unzipped it just fine, though. Edit: I have since seen some documentation that says DON'T do this, but I encountered the same initial problem as the OP and doing that got me past it. Functionality still seems curiously limited, though (can't change size/intensity of brushes, for instance).
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The other annoying thing is that the instant you build a police station it will be demanded of you to build a jail, which costs a non-scalable §400 a month.
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Help a Newbie Learn to Make Money!
Zeth replied to BaronVonFancy's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
I don't need to be mean to my Sims, but it's effective! Besides, it's only in the beginning until the money gets to pouring in. Then I'm exceptionally nice to their descendants. Also, I'm less like Baal and more like Ashtaroth. -
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Help a Newbie Learn to Make Money!
Zeth replied to BaronVonFancy's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
If the cattle citizens get to moaning about not having water and you just can't ignore it anymore, just set strike a few of their houses with lightning and remind them who's boss. They get what they get from you when they get it, and they'll be happy with it or else. -
Help a Newbie Learn to Make Money!
Zeth replied to BaronVonFancy's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
You have to think of it less as "Mayor" and more as "Supreme Dictator For Life". The only way you get kicked out of office is if you run §100,000 in the red. Otherwise you can abuse your cattle citizens all you like. It's for their children's better good; after they've lived out their miserable, exhausted, sick, but mercifully brief existence, you'll be able to afford to provide some of that, whatyacallit, water to their kids. Some of them, anyway. And who knows, maybe even a school or something. -
I have no original thoughts to contribute--I don't believe I've ever had a profound original thought in my life but I'll let you know if I remember one--but I will share this wisdom someone came up with long ago: A woman has a close male friend. This means he is interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This is like a guy going for a job interview and the company saying, you have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we're looking for, but we're not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But we're going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn't work out, we'll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.
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Help a Newbie Learn to Make Money!
Zeth replied to BaronVonFancy's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Heh. Well, SC4 is a different and far less enjoyable game without the NAM, imo. Couldn't imagine trying to play it again without it. To answer your question, Baron: it may seem counter-intuitive, but police and medical services aren't mandatory. It's better by far, at least until you know what you're doing when you start a city, to just build vast (but profitable!) slums and then introduce services little by little, paying careful attention to your bottom line. Pretty sure it doesn't work without Rush Hour, though... many of the good downloads don't. If you need more cash feel free to use weaknesspays But it doesn't balance your budget for you, unfortunately. Also, Deluxe offers an easy mode in which making money is extremely easy. Not sure if that's your cup of tea or if you enjoy the challenge, as many players do. By the way: here's just one place where you can easily get Deluxe for under $15. -
I've scanned the forum for information on this one but haven't seen it -- if I missed something useful, please point it out and I will be grateful. My city (cities, but my attention is focused in one particular) has a population of about 90,000, workforce EQ around 125. Demand for CO$$$ is sky-high (over 6000), dwarfing demand for everything else except CS$ and RS$ (which always seem high). This is SC4 Deluxe, on Easy mode, with the NAM installed and no other mods except cosmetics and things like the census repository (there are no cap problems fwiw) and industry quadrupler. So, Easy mode being Easy mode, desirability definitely isn't a problem--much of the map that isn't affected by pollution is bright green, indicating high desirability for CO$$$ (yes, I'm looking at the correct zone/wealth type on the map). Land value is also high. So, high demand, high desirability... nothing builds. Nothing. When I zone commercial, add plazas, police, everything good, it sits empty until CS$$/CS$$$/CO$$ demand nudges above zero, then those things are built. (CS$$$ is normal--when demand goes positive, it gets built until demand is no longer positive. CO$$$ won't build no matter how high demand is.) There is a bug I presume you're aware of, where if you plant God Mode trees in the middle of some zoned buildings, almost immediately everything there is redeveloped into high wealth, regardless of whether high wealth should be built there. If you do it when high wealth shouldn't be built there, the high wealth stuff will still be built, and then will almost instantly dilapidate or abandon. This is precisely what happens when I try it in these commercial zones--CO$$$ gets built, and within a couple months dilapidates for lack of workers. Which is odd since I have a highly educated workforce, a ton of CO$$$ demand and no significant traffic problems. Tell me there's something obvious I'm missing here?
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UPDATE: The bad news is I still have no idea what was going on, but the good news is the problem vanished. What happened was, while fiddling around with zone layout, I demolished a 6x6 commercial block that had two CO$$, one CS$$ and one CS$$$ in it. Within the month, CO$$$ construction went up all over the city. Dozens of buildings, all at once. It's not like that was the first time I ever bulldozed a commercial building (might have been the first time I bulldozed a block though, at least since I noticed this problem), but a little urban renewal goes a long way, apparently. Thanks for your help, everyone. I'm going to see if I can duplicate the problem and solve it the same way in my next city...
