City Planner

Maybe this has been said in the past umpteen pages that I've not read, but it seems when in the avatar editor, there is no way to get out of it. The checkmark works to save the avatar into the game but the X button is not clickable. I only have the Unlocker v2 and the files that said are needed in the unlocker 2 download on the stex.

It all depends on the new owners of the game. My personal opinion is they are going to have a hard time overtaking the bad rep that the game has and if they don't offer some concessions to existing owners it's going to be a really large hill to get over.

I'll tell you exactly what this feels like to me... My parents have been in the auto dealer business for about 50 years or so, owning a multitude of auto dealers. When my dad decided it was time to retire he sold off the dealerships, and as he did so, people were worried about losing their jobs when the new owners took over. The new owners staff came in and reassured all of the staff in the dealership that nobody was going to lose their jobs, it would be business as usual. Everybody felt relieved. The new owners took over, and within 30 days 80% of the accounting office staff was fired, within 60 days, 75% of the managers were fired, and so it was "business as usual", right? It's not a isolated incident, as the dealer was sold 3 more times while I was contracting for them, and each and every time it was going to be business as usual, nothing would change, and everytime the staff was let go. I can't pinpoint why it is that MC's situation reminds me of this, but it does. Maybe it's the business as usual, still moving ahead with CXL 2011 slurm that tips my brain a bit to remember this stuff, but really, I guess we'll wait to see what the courts in Paris do for MC and or if they can find somebody with deep pockets to bail them out. From the little reported in articles on the web, I would not be surprised that once the courts have offered them the protection, then they shut the doors and all go home to find new jobs. It's very common for that to happen in business today. I worked for a resort locally to me as their accountant (junior) and they were filing for a restructuring bankruptcy, and assured everybody they would be employed for a long long time to come (business as usual), and for whatever reason, they changed the filing to some other form of bankruptcy, let everybody go, shut down the resort and sold it off to help pay off their creditors. Yup, business as usual once again. Good luck to MC's staff, I personally don't like to see anybody lose their jobs, that's one of the harshest things that can happen to a person in life, it destroys a person self confidence while they are actively looking for a new job and not getting one, it disrupts and can ruin peoples lives so I won't wish any of them to lose their jobs, however it seems to me the writing is already on the wall and the employees should probably back themselves up by at least keeping their ears open for a position with a company that is doing financially better than MC is reportedly doing. Is the game dead? It was never alive to begin with.

So you have to collect ideas of what to put in a letter? Usually it goes the other way around, you have ideas and you put them in a letter. Personally, I think you're simply blowing steam, they didn't listen over the past several years and there ist certainly no reason for them to listen now. They've got a lot more important things to concern themselves with right now than a letter from their core audience that they were supposedly listening to but obviously didn't. You want to write a letter go right ahead, however many if not all of the things have already been said and ignored by Montecristo so writing a letter in my opinion is usless. This is a company that is arrogant and so full of themselves that they believe they know what is always best and as it turned out they don't know jack. And I don't believe that this experience has humbled them any either, I think they are still full of themselves and a letter will simply be passed around the office as a joke "hahahaha, look at these people, now they are writing us letters saying the same things they've been saying for years now". No, I think that it is pointless to write a letter at this point in time, they themselves don't know if they will have jobs next week or if they will all be tossed out on their ears and the primaries have to pay out a lot of money to their creditors or if they will receive protection from the bankruptcy courts. I honestly think it's time to stop beating this dead horse, it's got no life left in it. It's time to simply forget about Cities 2011, MonteCristo and the whole botched situation that they walked into foot by foot ignoring all the sane advise that they were offered. But hey, if writing a letter makes any of you feel good, then I say go for it. Just like wish lists however, don't be surprised if all you get in return is another form letter thanking you for writing them.

Look at thread in this forum, just a couple down named MC: and it links to an article that talks about how MC is having financial issues and is in the courts in Paris trying to fend off their creditors for the moment. I think dedgren is right, wishing for a unicorn and you maybe get the unicorn before you get Cities XL 2011, yes I'm feeling unfortunately pretty sure, the unicorn will arrive first.

Just a tiny update, more of a teaser than anything else really. I've been working in Addison Farming District 3A and all of my time has been spent there. The few residents (but increasing) that live in FD 3A have been demanding that they want a recreation area to be installed in town. Unfortunately adding a super sports complex like many of the residents have been demanding is just plain out of the question and out of the budget, but we have scraped up enough money to put in a little recreation area that includes two ponds, an outdoor soccer (football) field and a lot of area set aside for picnic tables, BBQ's and porta potties. Unfortunately, it's still under construction so all I have to show you today is a teensy weensy little area. As it turned out, this little bridge that runs over the little stream that connects the two ponds in the new recreation area turned out to be the most expensive part of the project but not because of the normal reasons. Really, it shouldn't have been very expensive at all, but while in the excavation stage of having this little culvert bridge added, a man was killed when it came time to lay the cement and rocks for this overpass. Nobody noticed (other than his wife when he didn't come home that night) that he had disappeared until the cement had hardened. His wife that was "curious" about his disappearance but chalked it up that he probably went on another little drinking bender again and gave it little more than a passing thought from time to time. Well an already too long story made short, the town council eventually heard from somebody that knew somebody who's brothers cousins, sisters, friend that saw the whole disgusting affair as the man fell into the streambed and saw the cement trucks dump their load of rock and cement into the bottom of the stream bed , and now he is permenently encased in the cement and rock flooring of the stream bed and the wife has now started a law suit to sue Addison FD 3A. The towns city attorneys office is likely to settle for 3 to 5 million dollars instead of trying to battle it out in the courts where they may have to pay even more than that, plus all the bad press they would likely receive. And so, you see, this is probably the entire regions most expensive recreation area to date. Oh, and are you wondering about the person that originally witnessed the accident but didn't do anything to stop the cement trucks from dumping their load and thus killing the construction worker? Well, as it turns out, the woman that witnessed it, was actually the ex wife of the man that was killed in the accident, and there being no love loss between them, she didn't tell anybody except for the person that just happened to report it to the police because her conscience was bothering her. The ex wife was denied bale and is currently sitting in the local county jail awaiting a trial date to be set, and charged with assisted manslaughter all because she didn't try to do anything to help her ex husband, and that she didn't report the incident to the police. It just goes to show you... My future CJ entries are likely to never have any stories attached to them again because my old brain can't keep my story straight and can't make up an interesting story to save my life. Later this week: The full recreation area in photos and some huge corporate bigwig farmers come to Addison FD 3A.

 The amount of time that you must have spent (that I know I would have to spend) to create those areas all hand crafted in all the images on this page must be staggering. The images really came out beautiful and I only wish that I had the talent to compose, let alone to actually create them in the game that you have.  Bravo to you, these images are fantastic.

Some basic questions I've got about 2011, perhaps whom ever is the community manager now could respond if it's not beyond their circumstances. 1. Will people that have bought Cities XL (*but not subscribed to PO) have their games updated to 2011 when it's available? 2. Will people that have bought Cities XL (*but not subscribed to PO) have busses and the Old England Content Pack patched into their Cities XL game or is that only for people that subscribed to the PO that will get the busses and Old England content pack? (I might be prepared to subscribe for the last month to ensure that I get busses and the content pack patched onto my game if it requires me to pay 9.99 for that last months subscription as that would be aproximately what I would pay [5.00 for the bus system and 4.99 for the content pack] to get those two items if they were offered as a micro transaction of sorts. 3. I assume that the full game of 2011 will be around the same price as CXL was released at, is that true or will it be lower? I ask because I have a lot of friends sitting on the fence with this title and they might be more enticed to getting into Cities if they know they are getting a break now of 10.00 off (where ever it could be found for that now) rather than paying maybe 49.99 come March or whenever they actually release Cities 2011. So knowing this might get more people to buy CXL now if it's going to be patched for free to 2011 when that is released if they can get a deal on XL now. Not to mention this could be a nice influx of cash if enough people sitting on the fence buys CXL now knowing that it will be patched to the full 2011 product when it's released. Thats about it, perhaps other have questions they wish to ask in here too. Thanks,

I think it really doesn't matter whether your city is built up or not built up. I see two ways (amongst others) of creating a CJ depending on the region. 1. If the region already has built up tiles, then you'd get to display the best areas of your region and individual tiles and create a story around them if you like. 2. If the region is still virgin, then you get the opportunity to take your audience with you on a journey as you build up your region. I don't think there is any right or wrong time in the stages of your region as to whether you should create a CJ. It's entirely up to you how you want to present it. Personally, I rather like the CJ's that start with a virgin territory and take us with the author as (s)he builds up the individual tiles, I think it lets the reader have a more personal feeling with the CJ, but maybe that's just me.

Flat landscape is the only place to build for me. But that doesn't rule out making some flat landscape as a terrace on a mountain, in fact I would prefer that, but building on anything other than flat land gives my buildings those awful foundations, some of which might be massively tall so I avoid building on anytyhing but flat landscape, even if I have to flatten some land to make a terrace to do so.

Hi, Could anybody tell me if there is any way to force the God mode tree tool to lay trees on my map while I'm playing one of my city tiles? I already have the plugin that adds the God mode functions to the menu when I am playing a city tile, however with whatever tree controller that I have, and all the others that I've tried so far (and that's a lot let me tell you), I can't get trees to pop using the God tree mode on flat and level ground like I would like to. I kind of understand how the plugins/mods were created so that things like trees only get planted on the side of mountains to where they are protected from the enviornment and I physically see how they are planted nicely in crevices in the landscape however for the most part they will not plant on flat level land and that's where I currently need the trees to be planted. So, is there some way to force the God mode tree tool to plant trees on flat and level landscape? Be it with a hotkey, or by altering a mod, or adding another mod etc? Thanks

Thanks, I'll do that.

When I first started playing SC4 (when it was first released) I usually played on medium or hard for the initial challenge. However now I just play on easy. The reason being that I use the BSC Funding Mod which allows me to stop any money leaving my treasury, and I can turn it on or off as I see fit. So I'll usually turn it off If I am going to do some huge highway expansion since my attempts at Massive highway expansions is usually trial and error and a huge waste of simoleans so the BSC Funding Mod prevents me loosing all that simoleans in trial and error. So... Theres little point to me to play on medium or hard if I am going to use a mod like the funding mod. Plus I no longer really play the game as it was intended to be played by Maxis anymore. I more play it to create cities that I wish to create instead of letting them fully develop on their own as the game plays in vanilla more most often. Anyway, it's easy mode for me 80% of the time and medium or hard if I want a challenge and intend to play SC4 the way it was originally designed to be played.

Some areas of my farm land that I enjoy: My favorite place to hang out in Farming District 2D Y7ou can't see it well here, but that's an old style water wheel. But I'm sure all of you knew that since I'm pretty sure it's an old plugin Some Overviews of the farm land of Addison Mountains: The above shot was from when I was still trying to cram in as many farms with the least amount of flora and fauna as possible to as to minimize land loss. So as you can see, the farms are crammed in there real tight with no vegetation between them This is a new farming district that just opened up in my CJ (Addison Mountains). In this farming district I am attempting to get away from grid farming and adding more trees between farms and on the tile in general in hopes that I get a more natural looking farming district. While theres still some square and rectangular farms in place (where isn't there in the world?) many more of them are now odd ball shapes with rough edges lined by my favorite trees plugin. Lastly, I have included that area shown in the first photo of the water wheel building that I really enjoy very much. It gives me a feeling of a very rural area and this is my *first* attempt to plop water and the junk around it. While you can't see much junk in this image if I were to rotate the camera you'd see a whole lot more piles of leaves, rocks, gravel, tree stumps etc. But I prefer it from this view. Dang that Grid! I thought for sure that I turned it off but now i see it by the side of the road. There was a time when I thought that farm tiles were a huge waste of space, then I came to realize that... 1. I have yet to ever fill up every single buildable tile in any regions that I've played with cities and 2. Farming districts have a certain something about them that is very relaxing to view. I usually turn down the amount of traffic in the games options and get a very relaxed feeling. 3. There just so damn cool to look at anyway, really adds diversity to a region instead of huge skyscrapers taking up every single tile in a region. Hope you enjoy my feeble attempt at putting together some photos, it's either my eyes or something I'm doing wrong that seems to cause the slight blur to most images (not to be confused with the one image where I purposely attempted to add a depth of field to the photo in the new farming district photo. More to come later as my farming districts expand, I'm sure.

My eyesight has gone downhill for the past couple years and it's hard for me to tell but..... Sometimes I think I see something (like this time) and it actually is. To the point: If I setup Nvidia's control panel to force AA to on for Simcity4's executable, will it actually be smoother like other games would be with their own Anti Alias selection in those other games options? It seems to me to take a minor hit in performance when I turn on AA in the Nvidia control panel for SC4 and I think on the 2nd closest zoom level things look a bit smoother with less jaggies but it could just be my imagination at work. If I choose AA to on in Nvidia's control panel does it actually do anything to SC4? Does it smooth out the jaggies a bit, does anybody else notice? Thanks,

Hi, I'm running Windows 7 64 bit and would really like to get hardware mode in SC4 to work correctly. Is there any possible way to get it to do so? The problems that I have... It's tremendously slower than software mode for scrolling around the maps it's so so jerky, however in my eyes it seems to look tremendously better than software mode so I'd really like to get it to work correctly. The other problem that I have with it, is that every now and then huge polygon shapes will flash on the screen, and sometimes when a popup window appears (like after taking a screenshot) the whole screen just flashes really fast like a strobe light. Anyway to get hardware mode to work properly or at least better in regards to the jerkiness, polygons and flashing? Thanks,

I'm not sure what it is that I'm doing incorrectly but it must be something... I started out with my city in one tile and put all but about 6 farms into another city tile, and basically filled about 1/4 of the farming tile with farms. However my city still kept demanding agriculture in the main city. So I added some more farms and finally it switched over to industry that they wanted. So I obliged them by converting farms to industrial. Now I just want to get rid of all the industry and the few farms that are left in my main city and move them into the adjacent farming community. But at what point do I do this? And is there anything special that I need to know to get it to work correctly so that my main city doesn't pester me about wanting more industrial zones in the main city tile? I would also assume that I should convert all the farms in the adjacent tile to industry before unzoning all the industry in my main city tile, is that correct? I basically want to end up with my main city tile that only has commercial and residential and the adjacent tile should hold all the industry and any farms that I want to keep around.