Maxis92

Originally posted by: Homeless_Hobo Originally posted by: sam Your sims are saying there is no suitable job within a reasonable commute time. The jobs you have put across the street from them may not be the right kind, and they can't take just any job. They can only take jobs that are suitable to their skills (education) and social status (wealth). Maybe its not commercial jobs they are looking for. Maybe they want manufacturing industry. Check your detailed demand chart to see what kind of jobs they actually want. They will also only take forms of public transport they find acceptable. For example high wealth sims will never take the bus. You may also have high congestion on your roads, so even though its a short distance they may be sitting in traffic for a long time, so you may need to do something to reduce this. For example, don't have too many large residential buildings on the one road, or feeding onto the one road or avenue. Intersperse your zones more. Put more suitable workplaces closer to your sims.quote> Thanks for the helpful advice. I think that I still have a fair bit of variety in my city, but I never really thought about having a type of job availible for every sim. Thanks for the help. Any other tips are appreciated.quote> sam pretty much summed it up. The other information I have to add is that it helps to play at turtle speed, becuase it gives your sim time to find the right job that fits their skill.

Well, I start in my projected city center & build out. I usually place my dirty industry in a nieghboring city while keeping the high-tech industry in my main city (just to relieve demand). I usually place schools, police, fire, garbage, water, etc. when I have a good net income. Then once I spread out my city far enough (and the population is high enough), I zone my oldest neighborhoods & downtown with higher density & turn those specific streets into one ways. When traffic gets congested (around/after 100,000 people), I construst the first step of an extensive freeway system & start a bus system. Once the city grows a little more, I zone denser, add more services & add another step to my mass transit & highway system. That's basically it.

Originally posted by: bg7405 Hi, I've been playing this game for a while and my city Santa Cruz has a population of about 220,000 sims right now and a huge commercial population because it's the center of the region, but for some reason i have these wierd circles of low demand for high wealth commercial office, does anyone know what could be causing this i've never really seen anything like it before. thanks! quote> That's not a measure of demand, but desirability. This is how high-wealth commercial decides where they would like to construst their office & provide jobs. Usually that will only be red when there's a lot of air or water pollution. The difference between demand & desirability is demand is just the measure of how many people are looking for jobs in that wealth field. So really as long as you have commrecial zoned in areas that are green on the desirability map, high-wealth commercial should grow.

Ok, I downloaded the NAM traffic simulator to replace the Maxis in-game version. However, when I un-pause the game & watch the cars, they are always just commuting from home to work. It's like this from 5 AM one day to 5 AM the next day. I can never see the traffic leave work & return home. I know for certain the cars aren't taking a different route because there's a traffic jam on the freeway leading into downtown from the neighborhoods. It would only makes sense for them to use it going back home. Could someone please tell me what's wrong?

Originally posted by: manubeas hmmm that doesnt really look like a skyscraper district doorknob60. All the skyscrapers are very nice all of you!quote> This thread is for downtown areas in general. Not everyone on the site likes a skyscraper jungle in their city,

A one-way roads have both a higher car capacity & a higher speed limit than your in-game avenue. In fact, some people use one-way roads in place of highways.

BTW, very nice downtowns everyone.

Downtown Italia (see picture for details) BTW, that brown construction box is SimNations Bank growing (not plopped), it will be one of the tallest structures in town in completed.

There's also a modd on the game wher if your city is flat enough, you can see snow every Christmas. However, there's also a cheat that lets you see snow year round. Don't forget, you can see tornados.

In Detroit, it's around 900,000 (give or take), but if you were to include the communities of Hamtramck & Highland Park, we would have 1 million people. For the whole metropolitan area, it's a tad less than 4.5 million (maybe 5 million if you stretch it).

In Detroit, after a somewhat overcast morning, it turned out to be a pleasant, sunny (not a cloud in the sky) afternoon with temps in the mid 70s & we're not expecting clouds or rain until next weekend (although we can certainly use it) with temps at or above 80F with comfortable dewpoints (50s farenheit).

Originally posted by: steelersfanforlife no i didn't convert it to a jpeg imagequote> Yeah, one of the rules for posting pictures on Simtropolis is converting them to JPEG.

Originally posted by: Brad-MacD Wow, that picture of that tall building in Detroit is sad! Such a nice building, completely torn to crap. I think I saw it when I was there. Is it in view on the west side of the Ambassador Bridge?quote> That's the Michigan Central Train Station. It's just the shadow of how far America's greatest city has fallen Someone did a BAT model of it (on STEX).

Originally posted by: steelersfanforlife My Cites New Skylinequote> I can't see your picture. did you convert it to JPEG?

The solution I have is when you see those no job/no road connection signs appear over your residential homes, make sure there are enough jobs & play your game at turtle speed. Usually, the reason a building will dilapitate is because the sim didn't have enough time to find a job.

Originally posted by: ssnakes9 Hello everyone, I'm a long-time owner of SimCity 4 (I actually bought it the day it was released back in 2003). I was pretty young at the time so I don't really have many memories of playing or using any type of strategy whatsoever. It was just sort of a fun game for me. I recently picked it back up and I have discovered how in-depth you can go with this game. I have been using the "Making Money The Easy Way" tutorial in the Omnibus to sort of start things off. I'm currently doing all-right with a pop of around 5,000. I have some questions though and I was hoping you guys could help out... 1) Is it always advisable to build your city using the method described in that tutorial (ind. and energy in one city, low den/mid den res/com in another ect...)? It is working for me so far, but I was wondering if there are any strategies that are more realistic and still work. 2) Is agriculture an important aspect of any region? I'd like to create some farms near the north end of my suburbs but I wasn't sure if it was extremely important or not. 3)I have the NAM, and I played around with some of the "toys" a little bit. I was wondering if there was any glaring difference between standard ground rail and the "light ground rail" that you can build with the NAM? 4) I have also installed a few other minor mods/addons such as the huge pack by goober and some miscellanous water tweaks ect. Are there any other mods or addons I should look into? 5) Do you guys, as experienced players, have any tips to make my city as realistic as possible? I have read through many of the tutorials but some of them are just lacking the depth that I am looking for. I'm interested in creating very realistic cities in the long run. 6) Where is SimCity 5 (haha). Thanks, Snakequote> 1. If the strategy in the tutorial works fine to you, then go for it. Judging from the information given to us, you seem to be doing quite well for a beginner. Another easy way to build a city quickly & properly is placing your commercial, residential, and industry in separate cities & connecting them with roads, rail & highways. What I usually do is place my industry in a seperate city, then in my main city, I zone the area I want to have as my downtown later on (residential & commercial), then go from there. Make sure the downtown is built with very high density, then the inner city neighborhoods are built with medium density, then the neighborhood on the edge of the city are built low-density. That's how most real cities started. 2. From what I've learned, Agriculture isn't very important, but they do help to bring out the asthetic features of your region. If you're planning on building a small rural town, then I highly recommend farms. 3. Basically, the only real difference is the NAM light-rail is like a trolley or street car while the ground rail is like a heavy locomotive. Both can be used to your liking. 4. I would recommend taking a thorough search through the STEX for custom buildings like McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, etc. Really, the NAM, the Opera House Fix, and a Sim City 4 EP1-Update (adds nightlighting to the game) are the only "important" modds/addons you need. The rest of them depends on your style of play. 5. I explained it pretty thoroughly when answering your first question. However, one thing to remeber is make sure your city isn't very griddy (built with consecutive square street blocks), demolish any repetitive buildings, generate plenty of traffic, and plop down plenty of parks/trees. 6. Supposedly, SCS (SimCity Societies) is Sim City 5, but it sucks.

Ok, when playing in one of my cities, no matter what time of day, there's always a higher traffic volume & congestion going into my CBD & industrial areas. However, it just stays that way all day (from 8 AM to 8 AM). There is never any congestion found when doing the return trips exiting the CBD & industrial areas back to the residential areas. Could someone explain to me what may be the problem here?

Originally posted by: iPal I'm pretty new at SimCity 4, but how do you guys manage to create a skyscraper district ? All of my taller buildings are spread out and there isn't a particular area that sticks out. I tried spreading residential/commercial around but that became too expensive in the end and the city failed... anyways, if any of you guys can give me some pointer or an existing forum topic on this matter, that would be much appreciated quote> It's very easy. Just zone a large high-density commercial area (in one spot altogether), turn your streets into one-way roads, and watch your city grow. Density is really the key. I must warn you however, with that process, the buildings will be very repetitive. So if you want, just plop the buildings you like over a zoned commercial area. Of course, you will need a certain population margin. I usually see my first skyscrapers around 20,000 sims.