mistershnerples

Hey all, I've had SimCity 4 since it came out. I have a huge region with about 16-20 large cities and half of them have a million or more residents. So my entire region is about 9 million. I have started working on this city that is connected to 4 other large cities. I probably set up a quarter of the map with infrastructure for residential and industrial. When I ran the city on cheetah speed, it stopped running after 3 months. I tried other speeds, but that didn't do anything. I had to restart the game and started the city again and it stopped after 3 months. The other cities run normally. I'm thinking it might be freezing because there is too much going on? I have the NAM, and there have no conflicts with other things I've downloaded. If you guys have any insight, I'd appreciate it!

Hey Livin in Sim, thanks for the response. This city only has about 200k residents, compared to others that have a million. I've done some recent infrastructure work and zoning work, about the size of 1/4 of my city and let it run. It may just be the sheer size of so many open zones and all this stuff happening, so I may just have to start and restart until the zones are filled. Thanks for the advice and I'll take a look at that thread!

Do you mean something like a viaduct, like the one in Seattle along the waterfront? Three lanes or so on each level going separate directions? ... I don't know of any on this site ... it would be nice though.

Hey guys, quick questions. I recently added the -w after the Target address in my SC4 shortcut to open the game in a window. However, how do I return it to the entire full screen of the laptop/desktop screen? I deleted the -w, however, it keeps on opening in a window. And maximizing the window doesn't help, b/c it just moves the screen around. I would like it to be like before, which is the entire monitor and with no start bar. Thanks!

All fixed! Thanks!

In my high-tech industrial areas, which seems to be everywhere in my region now, I usually zone 6x6. And in a few places I will place a block of three large parks and an Air Purification Plant, which rids of air pollution in the general vicinity, which I recommend if you are going to download something from the STEX. It is excellent. The parks help reduce pollution as well, but adds desirability to this area. You could also intersperse the parks as well. I have a city of about 100,000+ high-tech industry only. It's pretty cool. I also have tons of train stations and monorail stations, since I guess these people like commuting that way? And don't forget a police station and fire station in the area. High-tech also likes that. I hope that helps!

Hi guys, I have been playing SimCity for god knows how long, and have been in a capacity crisis. My passenger train stations are at least 500% used, my MMSB (by Brenda Xue (?) stations (which are amazing, monorail, subways, and busses) are also over 100% used, and my Imperial Bus Stations are at capacity. Are there any other suggestions for downloads from the STEX to help alleviate or at least take care of my mass transit-loving Sims? In particular, a high-capacity rail station maybe with the same size (if possible)? Thanks!

Thanks for all your input guys! You all make valid points. I think I will first play around with the NAM and see what I can do. I haven't looked at it much yet. Also, my commute time is very long at the moment because I think the commute to the city next door or it just takes a long time. In particular, binobi makes a very good point about how there are so many people in such a small space. Even though I may have alot of train stations, monorail stations, etc, that is still a ton of people for a very small area. I think I will put even more stations around. Also, I have started integrating more commercial and residential. But I may have been too engrossed in my planning and not put enough roads! That may be my number one problem. Trying to maximize space and thinking mass transit would solve the problems, I neglected to put enough roads down for those car-loving Sims. Thanks everyone!

I installed the NAM, but am still getting horrible over crowding and congestion. In my city next door, an industrial town, I have a station is over 800% over capacity. I have started using other train stations, such as Tonko's and this other one. However, it doesn't seem like the NAM did much. Thanks for the advice though.

And no, I don't use the NAM. I downloaded it once, and uninstalled it, as I didn't think it was right for my cities. They were functioning fine ... I think...

Here are links to images of my city. I've only developed on about 1/3 of the map and have about 545,000 residents. The city is in a region of about 7 million people. It's next door neighbor to the west is only high-tech industry (about 120,000 jobs) and to the north, a mix. This city is only residential and commercial. When I design my cities, I usually use the blocks, but with this city, I've experimented with the long blocks and a center area for a two monorail lines and in the middle, I can put civic services. Then train tracks usually surround the entire "block" and I can again put civic services in the 3x whatever swatch made by the train tracks. In addition to train and monorail, I use busses and subways. My roads are also highly congested, but I can fix that with one-way streets later on.

I think I"ve just gotten the tip of the iceberg on this new CAM thing from SC4Devotion. I haven't downloaded it, but I wanted to know what ya'll thought of it and what advantages and disadvantages there are to dLing this modd. Because I have a region of almost 6 million annoying Sims and I'm not sure whether to add this or not. Any thoughts or ideas would be great! Thanks!

you might want to private message ripplejet since he's on the BSC team that designed the CAM. or go to their website at www.sc4devotion.com and see if they know anything. and i'm not quite sure if this is the right place for a request such as this. i started this thread way back wen like 6 months ago, and it might be better to either 1. post a new thread on your situation or 2. post it in a more applicable location (like in the STEX discussion area, i think).

what do the other two city halls do for the city? are they just for show? or do they have an some sort of impact on demand or whatnot?

i got 1.3 million so far. otherwise, i'm not sure if there is a mod that will do that, unless you want to download the industry quadrupler and zone a lot of industry to make your residential demand skyrocket. but i think it's just playing the game and satisfying your sims.

there's a two page thread resulting from my inquiry into CAM as well. ripplejet explained a lot in this thread. https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=91770&enterthread=y hope that helps!

it is entirely possible to have no industry at all, but like everyone else said, a neighbouring city should have industry, for example, my city of like 1.2 million sims is mostly residential and commercial. and the city next to it contains about 105,000 IM and IHT jobs. and i also found out that in my main city that 93% of jobs are in the city and are commercial. but this is after building about 7 cities and working the region play. so in the beginning, like your first city, maybe a combo of all three wouldnt hurt. and then you can start doing specialty cities.

the same thing happened to me. i installed NAM and chose like 10x i think and my mass transit usage dropped significantly because sims were able to use the roads and highways as the fastest route to get to their work. i had high volumes, but not much traffic. my earnings from the transportation department went from about $50000 to like 35,000. it was crazy. i really like sims using my mass transit, b/c with all the traffic on the road, i started getting lots of street pollution, which my de-pollution parks didnt really take care of for some reason. i've like installed and uninstalled NAM like 5 times, because i can never get used to it or the results arent what i want. but i guess if it floats your boat, then definitely take advantage of it.

i love this tutorial and this whole thread. ever since sc3000 ive been using grids. and in sc4, i particularly like the 6x6 grids, with bus stop and subway in the bottom whatever corner. its very helpful. however, in terms of putting my city services in the 6x6 grids, i found that a 6x7 or 6x8 grid here and there wouldnt hurt and helps to organize these 4x3's and police station and fire station into a nice grid. but it is unrealistic to have all the services like that together, but it works for me!

ripplejet: i dLed the census. what does the available vacant jobs mean? so here's a link to my census. so if i have a large negative number, then there arent many jobs available and that there are that many looking for jobs? i dont understand why my residential population keeps going up if there aren't jobs available. however, the city to the east of this one is all IHT and has about like 103,000 jobs. so that may be why. https://s29.photobucket.com/albums/c282/mistershnerples/?action=view&current=montereycensus-year196.jpg

thanks ripplejet!

hmm. ripplejet, where would i find that? is it on the STEX? and what exactly is it? and do i need the CAM?

this might not be a CAM problem. i've had residential demand problems ever since my cities began hitting the 750,000 mark. basically all the residential demands would plummet, while IHT and some commercial would be up. at one point, nothing was up, except for IHT. however, i have alleviated some these problems by lowering some taxes to entire people to live in my cities. however, R$ is always up all the time. so it just might be your cities. oh and don't build country clubs. i used to have like 5 in one city to try and attract higher wealth, they don't really care for that. i ended up getting rid of all of the country clubs and crap. i would say, try lowering taxes and waiting, if not try more industrial. if not, try parks and better mass transit. on another note, one of my cities has about 400,000 residents and like 450,000 commercial jobs, dont ask me. its weird.

i think this is a great idea as well! there's so much focus on urban areas and dealing with their traffic woes so we need all these higher capacity stations and stuff. i mean it is true we need this, but after travelling in europe (spain specifically), as you get out into the country, there arent as many bus stops or subways, but rather trains. it would be nice to see this, rather than the train (if this was faster than the train - i guess hence HIGH SPEED) and it would fit in a rural area. so i really like this concept. i think it would also help develop those outer areas and promote rural areas, rather than just non-stop development, like i've been doing. so good job guys!

any good suggestions for a modern fire station with a larger radius, as well as police and elementary schools? thanks!