Spinmaster

I also hear that high-pitch shrieking (similar to a fire) if I have a toxic waste dump in the city. The sims tend to shriek in the same horror when one of the trucks goes by (lots of fun in UDI, incidentally). I sometimes hear a particular multi-syllable scream. No, not simlish, but an actual frustration-sounding scream. I'm pretty sure it's related to traffic. At least I usually notice it where I have traffic jams. Road rage, I suppose? I never noticed any sounds from crimes, except the occasional riot.

I'd swear I've seen a mod that takes the zombies out. And no, I'm not referring to the UDI tank from the army base. Found it: Ghostbusters You'll have to be registered on SC4Devotion's LEX to get it (separate registration for the forums vs. exchange).

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is a slope mod. It helps you draw much smoother networks, not the sawtooth stuff you're probably seeing now without one (unless you happen to be playing on a very flat region). Also, joerg's Bridge Height Mod, for me is a must. Without this the game tries to draw its own approach ramps for bridges. And it usually either refuses because the terrain is too rough for it to terraform, or it succeeds - which is usually worse, with very ugly results. With this mod you'll have to build your own terraformed ramps, so it is more tedious, but you'll be proud of your efforts. Buggi's Extra Cheats - you'll probably want this eventually. Yes, its name implies cheating and certainly you can use it for that. But it has plenty of other valuable functions, and I should point out, one player's "cheat" is another's "workaround" for game limitations. All depends on how you use it. If you simply increase the money in one city, you've cheated. If you also take it away from a neighboring city, you've transferred that money. Maybe you saw the cities as part of the same municipality, or maybe it's a deal - City A pays for something built in City B. Beware of mods that alter civic buildings you've already built (fire/police, schools, hospitals). Adding a new one isn't a threat, but mods that change the funding or radius of such buildings (usually the default, non-custom ones)... well they're perfectly safe, IF you haven't built one of those buildings in any city yet. If you have, and you change its stats, you'll get to experience first-hand the famed "phantom slider bug." Beyond that, Sense actually makes the most... well, sense. Download when you realize you're missing something and can use it right away. Don't get carried away downloading everything that looks good. Between STEX, LEX, PLEX, and a dozen other EX's, there is a whole LOTTA stuff that looks good - your plugins will be overwhelmed in no time, chock full of stuff you can't even remember what it is by the time you need it. Don't worry - as you build, you'll realize what would make your city look better, in terms of content. And chances are pretty good someone has already made whatever it is you're looking for.

Originally posted by: cavs3265 Here i found a mod that seems to be the only way aroind this problem. It removes the need for a big slope and makes the bridge level to the ground. https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=21327 - I hope this helps you.quote> Bingo - this is the only tool for this purpose! A slope mod as others pointed out is also highly recommended. Tip: always start with a road bridge, regardless of what actual network you're trying to build a bridge for in the end. The road seems much less picky about the land, and raising the bridge up high... very high, if that's what you're after. The other networks often complain about trying to smooth the terrain. Note that even with the bridge height mod, one side of the river/lake/whatever is most likely going to be higher than the other, even if it's so slight your eyes can't see it - so one end must be raised up by the game, mod or no mod, so the bridge is level. What I do is build a road bridge as above, but literally just the bridge - i.e. not connected to any network, and not extended any more than one or two tiles beyond either end of the bridge. The ends of the bridge become "anchors" - for the single-road-tile leveling trick. Plop a few single-tile road pieces around the end. If you're shooting for a 2-tile-wide bridge for avenue or highway, then plop one next to each end of the bridge. Also, plop some going away from the ends, to level an extra tile or two away from it. Now... destroy that road bridge (even if a road bridge is what you eventually want anyway). Take care to not demolish the road tiles you'd plopped for leveling purposes. Those now-empty tiles where the ends of the bridge were? (They might be flat, they might not be). Plop another tile on each end, right there, to finish leveling the "top" of the approaches. Now you have nice, level pillars at either end, at exactly the same height. This is where the bridge height mod works - when you build your real bridge between those pillars (not yet!!), neither end will move. It doesn't have to - but without that bridge height mod, the game would still try to "think" for you and end up moving the land. Now... keeping those last road tiles as anchors, and maybe a few others (if you want the approach to stay flat at the top for a few meters before it starts sloping down), put the slope mod to use - drawing a rail (or two if you're working on an avenue or highway bridge) from the top of the approach - right next to those top anchor tiles - to where you want it to end. Take care to not involve those anchoring road tiles, just start your "slope-drawing" adjacent to them. Note you may have to use a different network other than rail for this - each network has a different degree of smoothing, rail usually being the smoothest, but it also means the longest ramp down (and cars can handle a steeper grade than trains). Do this on both ends of your bridge-to-be. Now... you can destroy those last "anchor" tiles at the very end of the very top of the approaches... and draw your "real" bridge there, and finish up by drawing the network out from either end of your new, did-it-yourself bridge. Smooth as... well, ok it's pretty tedious actually. But the results are worth every minute of work. Optional: you may want to surround the approach ramps with retaining walls, if you see they're particularly steep cliffs/rock faces. You can't put anything under the bridge, but there are some wall sets that include special pieces that visually "wrap" around the edge.

I'd also highly recommend uroncha's farm street mods. They do a great job of sprucing things up around farms! There's an older one for the original (non-SAM) streets, and a separate one for SAM textures (peg's dirt and gravel, and trolca's darker dirt). They add seasonal trees and a random mix of farm props (tractors and hay piles mostly) on the streets next to farms. They don't touch streets in any other condition. Not sure if they're compatible with other "sidewalk" mods, but I never use any others anyway.

Actually underground rail does exist in NAM. FLUPs has underground roads/avenues/one-ways. Both appear to be UDI-capable, too (and emergency vehicles can use the FLUPs). Unfortunately neither allows building RCI on top, they're not "true" underground networks, just pieces you plop that "look like" what's on top, yet "look like" they pass traffic underneath. They're mainly intended for building one network underground with another network above. They also have grass/transparent pieces, useful for sending it under a park or even a river. I don't think either is capable of neighbor connections, though. For highway, yes - Big Dig I think is all there is, but since that converts highway to subway (not a "natural" conversion but subway is the only "true" underground network in SC4), UDI and emergency vehicles are impossible, plus you have to watch not to accidentally cross your Big Dig high-subway with a real subway line.

Apparently it was released - but only for Europe, so far: Update: We have been asked to remove the demo, as it was intended for Europe. A US demo will be released on September 8. From: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/60285 Capping the population at 22,000 does seem a bit short for a demo though, if that's the case. I'd think they could've found some other way to cripple it and still show off a decent array of its features. At 22,000 though... well I should hope not to see any major buildings with such a small population. But those are among the things I want to see. A combination of crippling power plants (so I'd have to build "a lot more than usual" of them to support a decent city), or capping city funds, or "can't save the game" kind of thing would've done fine. I'll still download and check it out of course, but I don't get the impression I'll be able to appreciate all the game's strengths - or weaknesses, with such limits. Kinda makes me cynical about it - are they trying to hide the latter?

Is there any such thing as a freight-only traffic generator? Is it even possible? Or would it only generate automata anyway, and not real traffic? Or as an alternative, is it possible to create an industrial lot that actually does generate a large amount of freight trucks - without actually provided any (or at least not more than 1 or 2) jobs? Why: I'm trying to think of some way to perhaps "artificially perpetuate" freight traffic across a region, so it could actually make sense to build a region-wide freight infrastructure. Imagine City A has no rail station. City B does, but has no seaport. City Q does have a seaport. So... trucks leave City A, drop off at the rail station in City B (which has truck blockers on its road neighbor connections), which takes it by rail to the seaport in City Q. Ah... would be nice, and I've always been bummed SC4 had this limitation, but is it possible to "fake it" somehow, beyond simply imagining it? Right now my truck drivers hit the edge of City A, and the last thing they're heard screaming is "Pythagorus was wrong!!!!!" as they plunge into the void.

Originally posted by: SC4BOY The beauty of the BriPizza stations is that they don't have the texture added, but rather a "blank pallet" .. by dragging the network through the station it creates the "overlay" for the image. This means that you can use it for rail, glr, mono, hsrp, el rail, etc... at least its worked for the ones I have tried.quote> I wasn't even looking for these yet, myself... and I think the original poster was asking for a different type of station, but thank God for the miscommunication - I love these stations!!! Especially the criss-cross one. Always hated having the lines either cross each other, hop over one another to hit two separate stations, or run 'em parallel. So now I have BriPizza bookmarked as well (yeah I know it was probably listed in at least one of a hundred other "check these sites" posts, but I never thought to copy and save any of those posts). However, I think he's looking specifically for stations for NAM's El-Rail-Over-Road, not GLR or off-to-the-side El stations. There is a one such station on BriPizza (that I could see, maybe there's more in a link I can't read)... very nice one, it's a curved station. But there are others, even on STEX, such as this one. There used to be at least one other I can recall (from when I first played around with EL-over-Road; I don't really use this any more though). Unfortunately I can't seem to find it now. It was long, overhanging - it could span an intersection or two, white/ish, rather ghetto looking... anyone else know which one I mean, and where the heck it's gone to?

That's weird, there isn't a maxis folder under program filesquote> Unless you changed the default path when installing the game, the Maxis subfolder should be there. Unless you're on a 64-bit operating system? In this case it may be in Program Files (X86) Other possiblities: If you were doing anything in that "area" within explorer, maybe you accidentally moved the Maxis folder? That would be the best possibility, it's certainly easy enough to accidentally do... if so, simply move it back. Might take some poking around to figure out where you accidentally dragged it to though. The folder and everything in it i.e. the game itself is gone, either by corruption or an accidental delete (or if you have a malicious brother/friend/pet spider, maybe not accidental). You'll have to reinstall in this case, but I'd recommend doing a thorough checking of the disk first. There's a tiny chance of recovering what was lost, but more importantly, reinstalling to a dying disk will put you right back in this forum again in no time.

Not likely, a lot of others would be screaming about this if so. A plugin conflict is possible, though it would probably show in newer regions as well. It has to be a difference between what you do and do not have now, vs. before, not "one thing" or a conflict. My first thought is a terrain mod. Perhaps the one you're using now can't handle what you or another plugin had done to that land before. Or, an older terrain mod that you're no longer using? Something along those lines seems suspect. Also, you did mention coast. I don't know how relevant this is, but there are issues with custom seaports when they're not treated very carefully. In particular, changing files around after building a custom seaport may cause crashes and irrecoverable cities, if not handled with care. Same is true for airports. Is it possible you'd built a custom air/seaport in that area back when you'd created that region? And don't have the same files for that port any more?

Cycledogg's mayor and god trees: yes - and the larger the tree, particularly the clusters that appear on the last chain-click, the more effect it has, but even for the largest of them it's a small effect and not a large radius, so as scifanata pointed out, you would have to spam quite a few to do a noticeable job, particularly if you're trying to corral industrial pollution Peg's park-tree lots: yes, but again it's a small effect... they do reduce water pollution *very slightly* as well though, in-line with a small park Neither seems to vary significantly from the default Maxis trees in terms of how much and radius (they also vary with size and number). The only real difference, besides aesthetics, is that the Maxis trees grow from seedlings. Cycledogg's are fully grown when plopped, and Peg's aren't really flora, just props on a lot (derned nice-looking ones though)

Actually, the demands are "what they really are" in Hard difficulty - this is how SC4 Vanilla was, when there were no difficulty levels. In other words, demand is not modified at all, neither boosted nor crippled - it's exactly what the simulator calculates it should be for each developer type, no more, no less. Medium and Easy difficulty give a small "artificial boost" to demand, I think it's like +10% and +20%, respectively. Same for tax revenues, also artificially boosted a little. Plus of course, you start with more cash. As for messages, yes they are minimal in Hard difficulty - for example, you won't get warnings about clinics and schools being slightly over capacity. You won't know that's happening unless a) you check your civic capacities often or b) you don't - in which case, you'll get strikes before you know anything is wrong. You won't be warned when a power plant is approaching capacity... you'll find out when you start getting rolling blackouts, or worse, your plant explodes. Basically, most of the "you better check , you're going to have a problem soon" messages are gone in Hard difficulty. And as Cougar2004 pointed out, there are a couple rewards that you can't "earn" unless you play Hard difficulty, though you can still get them by completing certain UDI missions. I know the Spaceport is the one such reward, I think the Marina is another. Can't recall all of them, but there aren't many anyway. And all are accessible via the "you don't deserve it" cheat, if you really want.

Tax income doesn't actually come from the workers - in any job. It comes solely from the buildings, based on the buildings' worth vs. the tax rates you've set. More workers does indirectly mean more tax revenue, but only because those workers have to live somewhere - you're getting extra tax income from their homes, which as buildings also have a "worth" attached, not because of where they're working or even what the wealth level is of the job. A poor R$ sim working in a CO$$$ job generates no more tax income than one working on a farm. If he lives in a trailer, you get tax income based on that trailer's worth, that's all. Really this isn't much unlike real life when you think about it, at least in the US, though it does vary by city even here. Most cities in the US don't charge "income" tax... but there are some that do (won't ever find me living in one though). The state might, and the federal government of course does... but the city doesn't get any income tax collected by the state or federal government. Ok, yes it does... indirectly via grants and various programs, including state and federally-sponsored infrastructure projects. But you as mayor are already getting that, indirectly. Do you really think it only costs 10 cents to build a 16m stretch of road? Costs a lot more than that just to repair a single pothole or install a speed bump! ALL cities do, however, charge "property" taxes. Once a lot develops, the tax from it stays the same based on the building's "worth." What buildings develop will depend on demand though. Higher demand -> larger buildings -> higher worth. Of course if a building dilapidates or abandons for whatever reason, it's worth less (sans the space if abandoned). Of course farms can't dilapidate, they're already low-wealth. They can abandon though, without power or roads, and the fields can "rot" if they're too close to traffic. Anyway, this "worth" value is also why many small farms provides more tax income than a few big ones - the farm fields don't have any "worth" at all, so you don't get any tax income from them, only from the farmhouses. The fields do employ 1~2 workers per grid square though, so again, you get something indirectly from the additional workers' housing. But like many things in SC4, reality is in the eye of the beholder. If all you're looking for is income from farms, then "many small farms" is the answer. Then again though, why build farms at all? Even with many small ones, they're by far the weakest money-makers for the space they take up, even small ones (though granted, they also don't consume much for amenities... power is about it, and very little at that). I'd say go with whichever strategy is "real" to you, really depends on your own experience. Some parts of the world are a checkerboard of tiny, 2-hand farms. In other places there are farms that take up huge swaths of land, almost city-size by themselves. You can make either (or even both) work just fine in SC4. Many small farms will also require more power, more roads, higher capacity roads and possibly bigger/more freight stations, rails and ports. And that much freight traffic buzzing around all those farms will make more of them subject to rotting fields. So you'll get more tax revenue, yes, but you'll end up spending more of it on infrastructure and services anyway. Myself, I never focus on the tax revenue from farms. If I don't have enough income (which is pretty rare in farm-only cities anyway), I cut services if I can, zone some more residential if there's demand for it, or even zone a little ID if necessary.

Everyone's "essentials" list will vary. It depends on your own definition of essential. Mine is "the game simply sucks too much without these things." So here are those things (I'm assuming you already applied the official patch, BAT update for night lighting, and have the two "buildings-as-props" files, which are dependencies for a very large number custom lots): These, there's only one of each (and even if there's a competitor, it's kinda like RC vs. Coca Cola; a few loyal followers, but no realistic match): NAM - 'nuff said Bridge Height Mod (joerg) - I don't see many people mentioning this one, but for me it's an essential. It prevents the game from building its own approach ramps for bridges; which it usually does poorly. I have to terraform my own bridge ramps now, but believe me, I'm much more satisfied with the results (what I do: 1) create a road bridge - seems least likely to complain if I adjust its height; 2) demolish the bridge and level the terrain at either end, a few tiles around it, and wider if I'm really trying to build a bridge for a different network e.g. highway, avenue, etc...; 3) build the real bridge I want, only from the raised land at either end; 4) using a slope mod, gracefully create the ramps from either end of the bridge) Opera House Fix - the game's opera house has a very low capacity; when placed in a dense city, it's quickly and severely over-capacity, which causes the entire education system to appear degraded (nevermind the resulting strikes that you can do nothing to fix). The fix adds sliders and a high capacity (and appropriate additional costs). (slider bug warning! - read its readme carefully and look up "slider bug" in the forums to appreciate what this is about... the consequences can be dire, if you don't) Buggi's Extra Cheats - whether you cheat for the sake of cheating (for whatever reason), cheat to "work around" game limitations (such as lack of a regional economy - I'll use "moolah" sometimes to transfer money from City A to City B, when City A wants to build something - but it can't really fit in City A), or are stricly against doing either... this is still an essential, as it enables many non-cheat, non-exploit developer tools as well Maxis additional landmarks (from the official EA site, also available in this forum, "Get yoru Maxis files here!") - many are also dependencies for custom lots... plus a lot them are just schweet on their own anyway iLive's Reader and SC4Tool - these are really easy-to-use tools that let you adjust many things about custom lots, or even override the default ones. I call these essential because there are many many great lots on STEX and elsewhere that, unfortunately, have very unrealistic parameters. Like custom bus stops that consume as much power as an airport, or have 100 high-wealth jobs in the bus stop with only a bench. No discredit to the authors of such lots, mind you, they were created long long ago when the Lot Editor was all there was - they couldn't see any of these odd figures, and even if they noticed them, they couldn't have changed them anyway without a hex editor. With either of these two tools, you can tweak them yourself, easily. There's a learning curve to each, but for simple tweaks, they're very simple to use. Essential but with options - there are more than one choice for each of these, and for each "there can be only one"... but to me, there must be one of each, else the game is seriously unpleasant: Terrain mod - there are many; personally, I love the Italia Terrain Mod Water mod - again, many; I like pegasus' Brigantine Rock/Cliff/Beach - many terrain mods include these, but they can also usually be swapped out with others if you prefer; read your chosen terrain mod's readme/instructions carefully to see if they can be and how Trees - cycledogg has some excellent trees; the default trees... there just aren't enough different ones to enjoy Slope Mod - assuming you don't find sawtooth-shaped train tracks and highways realistic, you need one of these. I like NHP_Ennedi's (from SC4Devotion's LEX; not sure if it's on STEX), it has swappable slope mods for smooth, normal, and mountainous terrain, and ties in nicely with NAM) Hole-diggers/Ground-lifters - in a nutshell, plop one down, drag a road over it, and the lot lifts or lowers a specific, measured distance, nice and level. Bulldoze, and plop single road tiles around it to make the neighboring ground the same level. Essential for making embanked or sunken networks, especially when combined with a slope mod for smooth ramps. NHP_Ennedi's slope mod comes with a set of these diggers/lifters, though smoncrie's are also very popular. Region Transport Legend - the default one is just too simple, but there are several custom ones to choose from. I use Constantina's. Even though it's worded for UK (and I'm not), it's the best one I've found that works well with custom resolutions (I use a widescreen, so I use 1280x800 for my resolution; not really sure why the others seem to have trouble with custom resolutions, but Constantina's doesn't). I also find it essential to have at least one completely separate set of rural civic buildings, and a couple small, cheap, "good for small town" landmarks and churches. If you don't build sparsely-populated rural areas, then you won't care about this. The default civic buildings are fine for a suburb or even a large city. But I'm sure some of us who grew up in truly rural areas we sometimes call "the sticks" remember riding a school bus (or even walking) many miles everyday. I have shmails "complete rural set" but I adjusted most of the lots in it to have a much larger radius - enough to cover an entire 4km x 4km "large" tile (with increased bus/ambulance costs). I only use them in sparsely-populated rural areas, mind you. They have very low maximum capacities to be sure I can't use them anywhere else. So even if I try to cheat and plop one in a ghetto, it'll have an almost instant strike even at full funding. But for rural areas where neighbors can't even hear each other scream, they're essential for realism. In a town with 200 people and 400 cows, you won't have 8 elementary schools just because everyone is spread out so far. Really, I wish civic buildings could span a few cities, but unfortunately this isn't possible. I didn't grow up in the "sticks"... I grew up in the boonies. I went to a "regional" school which served multiple surrounding towns... and still had less than 200 students in it. And the occasional stray cow. Yeehaw! But alas, there's no realistic way to simulate this concept in SC4... that I know of. As for other add-ons, particularly custom lots/BATs... I highly suggest you wait until you realize you need something "now". It's very tempting to see that sweet new residential skyscraper some God-of-BAT just released, but do you need it now? I'm not saying don't download it, but do think twice about installing it before you've any chance to see it in the game anyway. It's very easy to get carried away and end up with a 2 GB plugins folder chock full of stuff you don't really need, and probably forgot about by the time you do. Not to mention having a Parks menu that takes forever to scroll through, and a potentially long long LONG game loading time. Been there, done that... never again. With custom lots "now" is a good word to keep in mind. Got everything you need for now? Then enjoy the game now. Need a new bus stop or train station now? Go get one now. Need a new parking lot now? Go get one now. Got some weird thing happening you wish you can fix now? Search the exchanges and forums, or simply ask. If it's possible, it's probably already been done. Finding it is a challenge sometimes though.

Roughly half of the sims will work "somewhere." "Roughly" depends on age: the very young and very old don't work, and some don't work at any age. But "roughly half" is what I go by. As far as where they'll work, there isn't really a ratio of how many work in commercial vs. industrial. If all you have is industry - and you have enough of it - all your working sims will work in industry; likewise for commercial. Basically, they'll work in whatever suitable jobs are available regardless of C or I. What does "suitable" mean? That's a much bigger subject, but in a nutshell there are two factors (assuming commute isn't an issue): wealth and education. Two points bear highlighting about these: A rich company isn't full of rich workers. Very few of the workers are in fact rich. This is true in real-life, also. CO$$$ employs the largest % of rich sims ... 15%. The rest of the jobs are mostly R$$ and a good chunk of R$. But regardless of wealth... They still may need to be educated. CO$$$ is 20% full of R$ sims - but they must be well-educated R$ sims. Imagine a well-funded education system, in a dense, pollution-filled ghetto with limited police. Basically, you have to almost deliberately oppress your educated minions, else they'll no longer be minions. There's an excellent post by RippleJet on SC4Devotion about this subject, in much more details - I've only plagarized the tip of the iceberg. Click here to read the whole thing (not sure if you have to be registered to read posts, but no harm to do so anyway).

Is there any such thing as one that generates only freight traffic? Is it even possible?

Is there any such thing as one that generates only freight traffic? Is it even possible?

Is there any such thing as one that generates only freight traffic? Is it even possible?

Well of course Residential demand went into the toilet - there are 75% fewer industrial jobs now! But your solution is in fact what you want in the first place, is it not? Zone more industrial jobs... in neighboring cities if necessary. Yes, residential will tank meanwhile, might even have a lot of abandonment. But as the jobs build, the residents should come back. Almost like the coming and surviving of a severe economic depression, jobs dry up, residents suffer and leave, and the whole city goes to pot for a while. Will it ever fully recover? This process, itself, might actually make for an interesting CJ saga, actually. Note: just because a sim works in industry today doesn't mean he must tomorrow. They can all work in commercial just as well (or even civic jobs), depending on their education level. So you can also zone some or even all as additional commercial, if you prefer. Keep in mind you'll probably have to rework a lot of your transportation, too. 75% of the workers currently going to industry jobs won't be going there any more... but they will (eventually) be going to the new jobs. Also, all those new jobs will require their own power (and maybe water), and produce their own pollution. There's not much else you can do, really. The residents need jobs, and the jobs need residents. If you take a large chunk of either away, then you must say goodbye to the other as well... until your redevelopment efforts pay off. Might take a while, but I believe they will, and it would probably interesting to watch this transformation! Personally, CJ's that showcase not just a snapshot-in-time of a city, but a real evolution/transformation of a region, are much more interesting, to me anyway. One completely unrelated option: there are several demand mods, any of which could probably be used to artificially keep your residential demand high, despite this whole process (though you'd still have to deal with transportation, power, pollution, etc...). To each their own, but personally, I think watching you transform the city "on its own" without using a demand mod would be much more interesting, and even educational (plus it was an "artificial inflation" type of thing that got you into this mess to begin with, remember? )

Would be nice if we had true one-way "streets" ... that's what you're talking about I think, but currently in SC4 we only have one-way *roads*. Same speed as regular roads, and almost the same look except for the lines (and arrows if NAM isn't hiding them), but double-capacity (because it's all in one direction), and as-such yes, they look "wrong" for a cozy neighborhood.

There was an actual mod (not a lot that takes up space) by raphaelninja... the primary purpose of which was actually to increase the effect radius for power poles and water pipes, but also included options for half or no traffic pollution. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to find it anywhere now, not on STEX, LEX, PLEX... perhaps on some other EX I can't remember though.

2) about the regions... for the original Maxis-supplied regions (Fairview, London, Berlin, etc...), you can simply delete the ones under \My Documents\SimCity 4\Regions ... just delete the region subfolders in there, and copy the originals from the game's install directory, e.g. \Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Regions.

Hmm... I don't have the left hand version so I see the "problem" when I do have that LH plugin of NAM... hope it's not NAM itself doing it in your case, seems odd it would considering some if not all of that team is from Europe. Are the lights on the "correct" (not "right" lol) side without NAM?

I noticed you have 4 GB of RAM. Do you also have a 64-bit edition of Windows, by chance? I remember having the same curious issue about a year ago, when I bought a new computer (laptop). This may take a moment to wrap your head around, did for me... but the game can't handle 4 GB of RAM in the system very well (first of all, it can't use more than 2 GB of it anyway, no matter how much you have - that's simply how Windows treats 32-bit applications, with a few exceptions that almost never apply to games). It's not the video card - I had an ATI on my last computer, and it was flying... but it was 32-bit Windows XP and only 2 GB RAM. And I've been through at least 2 other ATI cards/chipsets in the past 6 years since the game came out... never had a problem (ok, once... they do put out bad drivers sometimes). On my new system, with an nVidia, 4 GB of RAM, and 64-bit Windows... I expected SC4 to scream. Instead, it was dead-slow. Yes, putting it to software rendering was "ok" but I wasn't satisfied with ok. The graphics, when using hardware, looked stunning... just couldn't play the game because it was so terribly slow. When I actually lowered Windows' memory - just a bit, to 3.5 GB (i.e. Windows itself won't recognize more than that), I got the response I expected. It screams AND looks great. Yes, it's a sacrifice.. and a sad one at that, as I do other things on this computer from time to time... like running multiple virtual machines. I often have to pop the memory back up to 4 GB then remember to drop it down before I play SC4 again. But in the end it's your choice - slightly less RAM, but you can play full-speed with full-graphics, or if you're truly satisfied with software rendering and don't want to "give up" the RAM... then do that. How: I won't go into details; if you're not computer-saavy, you could cause a more serious problem with your system if you're not extra careful... if you are, then a quick "it's here" should do... msconfig -> Boot -> Advanced Options ... Maximum memory. Anyone who doesn't know what this means... ask someone you know who does, please. I'll accept no responsibility if you whack your own system.